The American Student Union, the most important student movement of the 1930s, was particularly notable for uniting Socialists and Communists in a common organization. Hal Draper, in November 1937 National Secretary of the Young Peoples Socialist League and a member of American Student Union’s National Committee, writes on the crisis facing the American Student Union over its stands on war and imperialism. Changing political positions in a world heading to global war saw the Communist Party begin support for Roosevelt’s ‘collective security,’ and splits hitting the influential Socialist Party with much of the left wing, of which Draper was a leader, leaving to form the Socialist Workers Party, and the right forming the Social Democratic Federation.

‘For a Left Wing in the American Student Union’ by Hal Draper from Challenge of Youth (Y.P.S.L.). (New) Vol. 1 No. 2. November, 1937.

The coming Christmas convention of the American Student Union will go a long way toward deciding the fate of the organized American student movement. Will it turn its back upon the past of anti-war and anti-imperialist struggle, militant activity, participation in labor struggles? Will it become a machine for mobilizing students for the war which up to now we have been fighting?

Is the ASU Against War?

The program of the ASU, on paper at the present time, faces in an anti-war direction. It is based on the following ideas:

1. Analysis of war: The cause of American-Japanese tension is over economic (imperialist) stakes, “as in the case of all wars fought by imperialist nations.”

2. Peace agencies: No reliance on the League of Nations and Kellogg Pact, but only on “independent organization and action” by the ant-war forces, “pereminent among which is the organized labor movement.”

3. ASU attitude: It will organize students “against the steps which lead to war and in the event of war to the war itself.” It therefore accepts “without reservation” the Oxford Pledge “to refuse to support any war conducted by the U.S. Government.”

This program was further concretized, at the founding convention, by the resolution printed herewith.

This, to be sure, is not a complete program. It leaves unanswered questions (such as the struggle for socialism, turning imperialist war into civil war) which can be answered only by a revolutionary organization. It does, however, take up key questions of orientation, and has served as a united-front platform for conducting the fight against “the enemy at home,” American imperialism.

And now today, the spokesman for the Young Communist League in the ASU, Strack and Wechsler, propose to throw it overboard–lock, stock and barrel. They propose that the convention eliminate the Oxford Pledge and substitute ‘pressure” upon the government to line it up for “collective security”, based on reliance on the Kellogg Pact and the League of Nations.

What is the “collective security” which the ASU is asked to inscribe on its banner? It is the program of American imperialism, as announced by Roosevelt in his recent speech on foreign policy, and which was hailed by Knox, Landon’s running mate; Stimson, Hoover’s secretary of state; Democrats, Republicans, William Green, Old Guard Social-Democrats AND Earl Browder for the Stalinists–the people’s front of American imperialism.

It is a war program. It demands that the government join in action taken by the European imperialist powers against an “aggressor” (Japan currently). Such “collective action” by the imperialist governments can only lead to collective war.

It is based on the lying myth of the good “defensive war”, and “the war to save democracy” which was so thoroughly rejected by the ASU (on paper) in 1935, following the lessons of the World War.

It means lining the ASU up on the side of the war forces, trailing in the wake of the Young Communist League’s new-baked patriotism. We call upon every sincere anti-war fighter in he ASU to see to it that this turn in the policy of the student movement is blocked!

Maintain the anti-war program of the ASU! Defeat Celeste Strack’s proposal for collective security! For a vigorous campaign against the looming war danger, around the Oxford Pledge!

Where is the Old Militancy?

Every old student activist recognizes a change that has come over the student movement. The old spirit of militant struggle that animated the National Student League and Student L.I.D. has been progressively dissipated, to make way for the new cloak of “respectability”; anxiety for collaboration with the administration; “legality” at all costs; care not to offend the prejudices of the most backward elements; aversion to fighting on the campus as a militant minority, if need be.

The two lines are distinct. Celeste Strack proposes to gain the majority of the students by watering down ASU action and program, policies and militancy, to the level of the back ward majority. We propose to struggle for the adherence of the majority of the students by educating them up to the level of the militant vanguard–NO watering down of program, NO avoidance of militant manifestations in order not to “antagonize the liberals”. No movement, certainly no meaningful movement, can be built up in this way. The “liberals” outside the organization will be won to the ASU program, not by catering to their backwardness, but by involving them in action for specific objectives. When this brings them up against the administration, they will learn what the administration represents, just as in the event of war, they will learn that the administrations will be the agents of the war machine.

This question of militancy becomes most important in connection with the Student Strike. The strike in the high schools has already been killed; “peace assemblies” have been accepted in their place. Even in the colleges, wherever administrations learned that the best way to kill the strike was with kindness, peace assemblies have been substituted where once there were militant demonstrations. This is the path of the degeneration of the student strike movement.

Once the student strike was a “dress rehearsal” for the event of war, with the Oxford Pledge as the content and the strike action as the form. With the new line of “collective security” and “collective imperialist war”, a peace assembly under the wing of the administration is the fittest dress rehearsal for planned inaction in the event of war.

The student strike meant a wave of fighting enthusiasm through the strikers. Its effect on the participants was often its most valuable feature. The peace assembly is just another anti-war meeting.

The student strike made the headlines everywhere. It brought home vividly to the masses of people that a militant anti-war movement existed. The peace assemblies bring editorials in the school papers noting (sadly, ironically or triumphantly) that the “strike fever” is over. This is the second task before the ASU: For militant action on the campus! No substitute for the strike!

Is the ASU on the Side of the Working Class?

This question is not at all answered by the ASU decision to “go into politics” on the side of “progressive” candidates, some of whom may be supported by, or give lip-service to labor. Support LaGuardia and his ilk, whose record is one of pro-labor phrases and anti-labor action, serves only to line the ASU up on the side of old-line politicians and bring splitting issues into an organization which is a united front of different political tendencies.

The real answer was indicated in the Program of the National Student League before the amalgamation, in the pamphlet “Building a Militant Student Movement”, as follows:

“In conducting their campus struggle students find themselves confronted by the dominant economic groups and their subservient political machinery…

“In this clash the students have a powerful ally in the working class which is engaged in the constant struggle against the identical economic interests…

“After graduation students will find themselves bound to the workers with ever closer ties…

“The students therefore ally themselves with the working class which bears the brunt of these conditions, and join its fight for security and a decent living.

“This we can do by joining in the demands for social insurance for unemployed workers and graduates, and by giving active support to the militant organizations of the workers and farmers.”

This is the third task before the ASU: direct participation in the struggle of organized labor! It is our belief that students can play a progressive role in society only as an ally of the working-class movement; this alliance must be consummated in common day-by-day experiences.

Will the ASU Pass the Test?

This about-face in the student movement is no mystery. It is well known that it is due to the about-face of the YCL leadership. And it has been no secret that the leaders of the student movement have been Young Socialists and Young Communists.

About 1935, the policies and program of the Stalinists, on a world scale, began to swing around rapidly in a sharp turn. From the old days of rabid sectarianism when they denounced all non-Stalinists as “social-fascists”, they swung around to the ultra-opportunist “new line” of peoples-frontism and social-patriotism. And, as in every other field, the apparatus went into action for the “coordination” of the student movement in accordance with the latest turn.

The clash between our policies for the student movement and the new policies of the YCL is now coming to a head. That is the significance of the coming convention.

But while the old program still remains on paper, the practices of the ASU have become increasingly in line with the desires of the Stalinist leaders. The Oxford Pledge has been gradually showed out the back door into virtual oblivion. The ASU National Committee has taken the first step toward collective security (before a convention!) by calling for an embargo by the U. S. Government against Germany and Italy. Such government steps are incipient belligerent acts.

We, for our part, stand for action against Germany, Italy and Japan by “independent organization and action against war by the anti- war forces of the world”–independent of our government’s imperialistic war in China, by OURSELVES, and not for the intervention of American imperialism in these imbroglios.

We are not pacifists who object to supporting violence, but revolutionary socialists who refuse to support or “sic on” our own imperialist government. We are not isolationists who want to have nothing to do with European troubles, out revolutionary internationalists who believe in the international collaboration of the workers of the world independently of the imperialists of the world democratic or fascist, American or European.

The Great Change

The situation in the ASU today is the first test for the organization. On the one hand is the right wing of the ASU, led, inspired and organized by the Young Communist League forces and the ‘liberals” under its influence. On the other hand-the left wing forces, the militant progressives. They are divided by differences which involve the very existence of the militant student movement.

This situation demands the fullest application of internal democracy in the procedure of the ASU and the most compete preconvention discussion to bring the problem into the full light of day. When sharp differences exist, the bureaucratic suppression of opposing tendencies can lead only to disruption, the responsibility of which falls upon the opponents of democracy. For this reason, we have proposed that the leading committees, delegates, etc. of ASU chapters (which are not merely executive but definitely policy-making and policy-enforcing in their operation) be elected by proportional representation to insure the collaboration of all tendencies; and that preconvention discussion be consciously organized through internal discussion bulletins, city or district or chapter membership meetings on the main problems before the convention, and provision for bringing varying viewpoints before the membership. No less can be asked when it is a question, not of ordinary decisions, but of the basis of the whole movement itself.

This is our program for the coming ASU convention, openly put forward. We want: (1) the maintenance of the Oxford Pledge program of the ASU as against the war program of collective security; (2) a policy of militant action, especially in the student strike, (3) real labor action by the chapters. We call upon the members of the ASU to rally behind this program, and to see that the discussion on it is carried on on the basis of principle and argumentation, not slander, or undemocratic suppression of viewpoints.

FOR A LEFT WING MOVEMENT IN THE ASU AROUND A MILITANT PROGRESSIVE PROGRAM!

Challenge of Youth was the newspaper of the Young People’s Socialist League. The paper’s editorial history is as complicated as its parent organization’s. Published monthly in New York beginning in 1933 as ‘Challenge’ associated with the Socialist Party’s Militant group (the center/left of the party around Norman Thomas). Throughout the 30s it was under the control of the various factions of the YPSL. It changed its name to Challenge of Youth in 1935 and became an organ of Fourth Internationalists, leaving to become to the youth paper of the Socialist Workers Party in 1938. In the split of 1940, the paper like the majority of YPSL went with the state capitalists/bureaucratic collectivists to become the youth paper of the Workers Party.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/challenge-of-youth/371100-challengeofyouth-v01n02w02.pdf