American youth occupy a singular position at this juncture of history, a position different from that of European youth and from the depression-matured generation of the Thirties. Most of them were depression babies and it is, of course, impossible to measure the unconscious effects that this crisis-filled and insecure era had on them. Their conscious social and political experience, however, crystallized during the Forties, during World War II and its aftermath.

No worker can afford to be uneducated about the meaning of Stalinism. Of the enemies against whom the working class must guard, there is none more insidious and destructive than Stalinism. For it lives inside the working-class movement and nourishes itself on subverting labor's struggle against capitalism in the interests of the Russian slave society which is described elsewhere in this issue.

The Independent Socialist League is unalterably opposed to all racial, national and religious discrimination. It stands for the full social, political and economic equality of Negroes and all other minority national, racial and religious groups.

From 1950 to 1957, each May Labor Action, the paper of the "Third Camp" Trotskyists, the Independent Socialist League, gave over a week's publication to a special "pamphlet issue" on a big political question. This is the May 1954 special.

IT is impossible to discuss any important political problem of our time, let alone take a part in resolving it, without a clear understanding of what Stalinism really signifies.

It is just as impossible to get such an understanding from the writings and speeches of capitalists, their statesmen, politicians, hangers-on, apologists, or any other beneficiaries of their rule. They are quite capable of describing the notorious vices of Stalinism. Its true social significance, however, escapes them, and so also therefore does the simple secret of combating it effectively.

In the United States today, it takes very little intelligence and no courage at all to be "against Stalinism." Outside of the tiny American Stalinist movement and the narrow little circle of its non-party apologists, everyone is against it.

It is impossible to discuss any important political problem of our time, let alone take a part in resolving it, without a clear understanding of what Stalinism really signifies.

It is just as impossible to get such an understanding from the writings and speeches of capitalists, their statesmen, politicians, hangers-on, apologists, or any other beneficiaries of their rule. They are quite capable of describing the notorious vices of Stalinism. Its true social significance, however, escapes them, and so also therefore does the simple secret of combating it effectively.

What kind of organization and movement is the Communist Party?

We know that in the countries where Stalinism is in power, it is the "state party," the ruling institution of the regime, the instrument through which the bureaucracy holds together the reins of totalitarian power. But what is the Communist Party in countries where capitalism still rules and it is in opposition?

There is a paradox - only an apparent one - in the development of Stalinist imperialism.

A workplace bulletin for Lewisham Hospital workers, by Lewisham Hospital workers.

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