Against Cinderella Memberships, Yes We Can Have Blood-Soaked Steaks On Every Plate (not that we should), and Other Comments on Bulletin #2 (YCL-LJC Convention Discussion Contribution)

I think that the convention contributions about Constitutional Amendments and By-Laws and also about Vegetarianism in Bulletin #2, and Third Worldism more recently, are exactly the kinds of contributions we need before the YCL Convention and exactly the kind of issues we need to hash out a the Convention.  These contributions are a sign that we have a healthy organization with people who can use their brains to think for themselves, that we’re not just a collection of pets and mannequins who are (barely) warm bodies for other people’s words and ideas. 

Of course, that does not mean I agree with what these contributions say, and I hope to address some of the Constitutional Amendments and By-Laws from the Trail Club as well as the article on Vegetarianism here. 

I am against the age-ceiling to YCL membership in the proposal (by-law 4 Ageing Out) from Trail.  I think this is a reckless change, to say that you should not be a YCL member when you hit 30, because it automatically removes membership without looking at the need for a careful transition to younger members.  Leaving the YCL should not be something determined by a clock, but is a political task that isn’t always conveniently managed like a calendar.  It takes figuring out to see who to transition the tasks and roles to.  Also a 29-year old YCLer might be in the middle of finishing a responsibility or task close to their 30^th birthday, it would be arbitrary to say they cannot finish their job because of their birthday. 

Having an automatic cut-off for membership when the clock strikes midnight on your 30^th birthday would also create 2 tiers of membership, those who are eligible for election as leaders because of how far they are from being 30 and those who are not.  This is undemocratic, YCL members should be allowed to elect ANY member regardless of their age to leadership positions. 

The age-limit is a mechanical proposal.  I confess, I am 32 years old and would not have been eligible to be elected to the Central Committee if this rule was in place then.  But my reasons against it are that it handles the question of transition without regard for the consequences of people leaving the YCL when the clock strikes 12 on their 30^th birthday and also is undemocratic because it creates two classes of members.  I have worked out a transition out of the YCL in a way where I can take proper responsibility for my work up to the convention, something that depends on more than the Earth’s revolution around the sun. 

Amendment 7 asks for National and Provincial Committees to meet at least monthly.  I think this is impractical, executives might meet monthly at best.  Full committees, which are larger and not executive bodies, would probably need to meet less frequently if they are not just going to be an executive. 

I am in favor of gendered speaking lists and use them sometimes where there is a big gender imbalance, but I think it would be wrong to make that a bylaw as for parliamentary meetings like a Convention we need a more simple straight-forward democratic mechanism of every member or speaker having the same rights, even if the composition of the meeting is imbalanced.  In a non-parliamentary meeting it’s worth promoting voices that are not often heard, but where top policy decisions are being made we should use parliamentary procedure that is designed to give  elected representatives equal voice like in Roberts Rules of Order. 

I like the idea of a pro- and con- speakers list, but what about those who are not pro or con? 

By-law 6, requiring a uniform and pins, is too much like a paramilitary organization or the boy scouts or girl guides, which is not what the YCL is.  We are not an organization of youth with para-military aspirations of uniformity, but have an uneven mix of people struggling against capitalism from different levels of development.  Uniforms and pins, especially those differentiating Communist Party members from non-Communist Party members which should be irrelevant as the YCL is independent of the CPC, are the wrong kind of discipline. 

Lastly, I call for rejecting the idea that our personal consumption should be restricted.  Our personal consumption is not the main danger to the world, the capitalist rule of the world is.  While meat eating is certainly less efficient than vegetarian lifestyles, the fact is that we can actually produce enough beef for the whole world under the current system.  I calculated that if you took the highest per-capita beef consumption (from Argentina) and calculated how many cows would be required, based on the highest carcass yield statistics by country (so pick a Japanese beef cow), assuming a cow is slaughtered at age two, and from that figured out how much grassland would be needed for 2.5 acres per cow (the low end of the range for organic farming), current grazing lands can cover this amount of cows.  Under the current level of agricultural technology we actually can have steak for dinner for everyone every day, but we don’t not because the Earth can’t support it but because production is for profit and not need. 

Under socialism we might decide not to have steak every day because we might want to use the resources for something else, but if we decide to have steak every day for everyone we can.  The idea that we should restrict our consumption under socialism because of valuing restricted consumption itself, instead of some rational trade-off with an alternative uses of resources, is a defeatist revision of Marxism-Leninism championed by people like Hans Heinz Holz of the German CP who claim the USSR should not have tried to out-produce capitalism but should have tried to pursue alternative non-consumptive ethics.  Marxism-Leninism says socialism can outproduce capitalism in terms of making things we need because socialism transitions us to where we can eliminate scarcity and produce for needs and not profit, the way forward is to be able to provide steaks for everyone who wants one rather than saying we should all be vegetarians.  Of course, this doesn’t mean we should not be vegetarians for other reasons, just that production capacity under socialism should not be one of them.