Some of the Haitian students first met Young Socialists members from Canada and the United States at the 12th Congress of the Organization of Caribbean and Latin American Students in Havana in April 2000. These students, who were members of the Federation of University Students of Haiti, participated in the anti-imperialist world youth festival in Algeria last August, where they met up with the Young Socialists again.

The group has rejected the social democratic and bourgeois liberal parties that claim to speak in the interests of working people in Haiti and have set out on a course to build a new organization. They decided to adopt the name "Young Socialists" and invited leaders of the communist movement in North America to their founding conference.

Some conference participants traveled three to seven hours to join the event. Three people came from the city of Gonaïves, another from Jérémie, and another from Nippes where he works with a peasant organization.

In the 20 minutes before the opening of the YS event, the table with revolutionary literature published by Pathfinder was mobbed by students. The nine books of classic works of communist leaders Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and V.I. Lenin were sold out in minutes.

The forum opened with a welcome by YS leader Vogly Pongnon and the singing of the national anthem of Haiti. Jack Willey, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party, gave the first presentation under the title, "Fighting imperialism from within the United States."

Willey opened his remarks by pointing to the recent labor victories by meat packers at ConAgra's Northern States Beef plant in Omaha, Nebraska, and by coal miners at the Maple Creek mine in western Pennsylvania. Members of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists are directly involved in these struggles and part of the cadre that form the emerging working-class vanguard resisting the assaults by the bosses today, he said.

He spoke about the social crises gripping both the imperialist and semicolonial world, pointing to the example of the Argentine economy which went into a free-fall in December, devastating the livelihood of wider layers of working people and the middle class with each passing month.

"The central aim of the YS, published in Nouvelle International no. 6, is to build a revolutionary youth organization and communist party that can help lead the fight to establish a workers and farmers government that will abolish capitalism in the United States and join in the worldwide fight for socialism," he said.

Willey explained that the SWP consists mainly of industrial workers, who are the main target of the capitalist offensive in the United States. The communist movement is concentrated among the social movements developing among working people and places sales of the Militant, and books and pamphlets by revolutionaries at the center of its work. The SWP and Young Socialists is part of constructing a world communist movement, participating in events that attract other anti-imperialist youth such as the Algiers festival, and draws on the lessons from the victorious socialist in Cuba, he said.

One person asked how socialists can confront a capitalist system that is stronger today. Another asked why socialists in the United States do not see elections as the most effective method of making change in society, as the Socialist Party in France does.

Willey said that imperialism is in fact growing weaker as it is driven to carry out more bloody wars and to place troops in a growing number of countries to try to defend its economic and strategic interests. He also pointed out the bosses must continue to squeeze more out of working people to try to bolster their sagging profit rates, which fuels greater resistance by workers.

Regarding elections, he said that while the SWP runs candidates in many bourgeois elections, its candidates point out the only fundamental advances for working people and the oppressed have come through struggle--from the labor battles in the United States in the 1930s that forged the industrial trade unions to the civil rights movement that smashed Jim Crow segregation in the South in the 1950s and '60s. There is no lack of courage to fight against the brutalities of the capitalist system, he said. The greatest challenge is building a communist party in time that is capable of leading the toilers in a revolutionary fight for power.

On the second day of the conference, Pierrot Exama, a leader of the Young Socialists in Haiti, reported on "The contribution of women and youth in the revolutionary struggle."

He spoke about the place of women in one of the most powerful bourgeois revolutions of its time, which won independence for Haiti in 1804. During the war, women were responsible for guarding weapons and many also spied on the colonial masters, he said.

One person asked whether socialist revolution is possible, especially with Haiti's dependence on imperialist countries for trade and goods.

Exama said that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and European imperialists claimed the strength of capitalism would open a period of prosperity. The majority in the world, however, is growing poorer, not richer, he said. Health care is declining and life expectancy is dropping in many countries. Capitalism is breeding more wars as the curve of capitalist development is in a decline.

The Cuban people made a revolution and are now building socialism. "I don't say we can make a revolution, but we can join the masses, especially the peasants, to build a movement that can fight to take people out of their misery," Exama said.

Michel Prairie, a leader of the Communist League in Canada and the director of French-language publication for Pathfinder, spoke on the "History of American Trotskyism." The talk was based on the book of the same name soon to be published in English, French, and Spanish with a 24-page spread of photos of struggles from the 1920s and 30s.

Prairie said the continuity of the communist movement goes back to the Russian Revolution, where workers and peasants took power, "showing that they were not only victims of exploitation, but actors in the transformation of society."

Coming out of the devastation of World War I, imperialist invasion, and years of civil war, a layer of the Bolshevik Party degenerated and began applying policies against the interests of working people, he said. As that layer began to take hold of the leadership of the Communist International and carry through a counterrevolution, Leon Trotsky, a central leader of the Russian Revolution, led a consistent fight to defend the course of the Bolshevik Party.

As the book explains, "Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival, of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian Revolution and in the early days of the Communist International," he said.

One participant said there were two opposing classes in Russia--the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but in Haiti there's a very small working-class. He asked how a revolution could take place under such conditions.

Prairie responded, saying that there were two revolutions in Russia--a democratic revolution and a socialist revolution. The big majority of the population were peasants and many lived in semifeudal conditions. One political tendency in the workers movement, the Mensheviks, argued the bourgeoisie must lead the democratic revolution against czarism and landlordism, while the Bolsheviks argued that the working class must build a communist organization and, together with the peasantry, lead the democratic revolution. Anything else would lead to the defeat of the struggle.

In October 1917 the Bolsheviks did lead the revolution, bringing a workers and peasants government to power that defended the interests of working people and oppressed nations. The government mobilized the population to carry out unfinished democratic tasks that would pave the road toward overturning capitalism. This process was accelerated under the impact of the civil war, he said.

Prairie pointed out that the Cuban Revolution in 1959 started as a bourgeois-democratic revolution, in which the leadership carried out measures such as agrarian reform, elimination of racist discrimination, and a literacy campaign before expropriating the factories, mines, and mills from the capitalists and the land from remaining large landowners.

Prairie's points were brought home to the U.S. and Canadian delegation during the trip. The majority of Haiti's population works in the countryside as peasants and agricultural workers. Most people are never taught to read or write. Life expectancy averages 50 years and nearly 5 percent of the population suffers from AIDS or HIV, according to official government statistics. In street after street in the capital of Port-au-Prince lines of working people sell fruits they grow, charcoal from wood cut down in the countryside, and other goods to earn enough money to scrape by on. Unemployment hovers above 70 percent. The poorest districts have no electricity or potable water.

The international YS delegation visited one home in the Pétion-Ville district, an area considered "bourgeois" in Haiti. The family faces blackouts ranging from four to 12hours a day and family members live several people to a room in the modest house.  
 
Hunger for ideas, revolutionary solutions
The forum discussions spilled into the hallway where a table with revolutionary literature was set up. Each day a couple dozen students stayed around for an hour or so after the program to discuss and debate political questions. Many were interested in the fight for women's liberation. After a lengthy debate over whether women should have the right to abortion, one person bought the pamphlet, Abortion Is a Woman's Right in Spanish. A couple of others bought the Education for Socialists booklet on the socialist revolution and women's liberation. All seven pamphlets and New Internationals with writings by Thomas Sankara were picked up.

Best sellers were Capitalism's World Disorder, Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, and The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning, reflecting the rolling discussions over the character of the party needed to lead workers and peasants in revolutionary struggle.

Seven copies of New International were also purchased, including Nouvelle International no. 1, which includes the SWP resolution, "Their Trotsky and Ours: Communist Continuity Today." The resolution explains the need to build a communist party capable of leading the toiling masses in city and countryside in a revolutionary struggle against the conditions imposed on them by capitalism. It explains that in economically backward countries this struggle takes the form of a democratic revolution that, carried out to the end, opens the door for wresting by degrees the power of the capitalist class and landlords.

During the visit to Haiti, Michel Prairie and Nancy Seguin, a leader of the YS in Canada, were interviewed twice on Radio Galaxie, one of the three main stations in Port-au-Prince. Over the course of the hour and a half of air time, they were able to speak about the struggles taking place in Canada and the weekly activity of the communist movement.

At the end of the weekend, YS members for Haiti, Canada, and the U.S. met to assess the successful gathering and discuss further steps to deepen their collaboration.  
 
 
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