The group “Socialist Youth/SMC” (in German: “Sozialistische Jugend/Stamokap”) is the Marxist-Leninist movement within the Socialist Youth of Austria (“SJOe”). The SJOe is Austria’s largest leftist youth organization, having a fraternal relationship with the Social-Democratic Party of Austria (“SPOe”). As the SJOe is an autonomous structure, it remains a Marxist organization, although the Social-Democratic Party does not pursue Marxist ideas or any really socialist goals for the moment, but promotes “social capitalism”. Nevertheless Marxist socialists are aware of the fact, that there cannot be a kind of “social capitalism”, due to unsolvable contradictions within capitalist society, due to the unavoidable conflict of interests between working class and the capitalist class.

Therefore the class struggle between workers and capitalists is the starting point of our political work. Our work is devoted to the interests of the working class, our task is the social revolution of the workers. We believe in a revolutionary solution of capitalist contradictions. We want to overthrow the existing social and political order of things, we want to overthrow capitalism. Following the proletarian revolution the workers will seize the political power. By these political means they will become the owners of all means of production. While the working class power enhances socialist production and economy and builds the socialist society, the capitalist class – losing its historical “necessity” for the social structure – will vanish. The end of all class struggles leads mankind to communism, a social community of free individuals.

The Group “Socialist Youth/SMC” is part of the organization SJOe, but has its own points of view, a different Marxist-theoretical basis and its own political strategy, in particular concerning the proletarian revolution. Our group regards Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and Vladimir Lenin as most important socialist scientists and revolutionaries, while especially Lenin’s great importance is often neglected by other parts of the SJOe. These different theoretical opinions within the SJOe do not only concern political strategies, but – first of all – certainly also political and economic analysis. Our mean of analysis is Marxism-Leninism; in order to analyse the character of contemporary capitalism our central “tool” is Lenin’s theory of imperialism (“Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, 1916/17). Since the time Lenin published his important work about imperialism (or monopoly capitalism), this monopoly capitalism transformed into state-monopoly capitalism (“SMC”). The theory of SMC, which was basically already evolved by Lenin himself, gained increasing importance within Marxist science after World War II – and this theory contains our further main ideas about present capitalism until today: that’s why our group is known as “Socialist Youth/SMC”. The theory of SMC says, that continuous evolution of imperialism led to a merging structure of political power of imperialist states and economic power of monopolies and financial capital (the power of transnational corporations). This concentrated power dominates not only economy, politics and policies, it dominates every single concern of our lives. This giant global power causes imperialist wars all over the world, it causes starvation and death in the so called “less” an “least developed” countries, it causes unemployment as well as an increasing group of “working poor”, it causes more expensive costs of living, it causes higher taxes for the working people. On the other hand the system of SMC is supposed to be the guarantee of highest profits for the capitalist monopolies. SMC means the increasing imperialist suppression and oppression not only of the working class, but as well of the peasants and the small business – and especially of women.

Today’s task is primarily the defence of our democratic and social rights against the power of the monopolies. The capitalist monopolies want low wages, high taxes for workers, their (own) private ownership of industries and all commercial branches instead of public or state-ownership, they want to remove the public social-, educating- und health-system – to cut it short: the monopolies want everything else than to improve our conditions of living, but only to improve their conditions of making greatest profits at the public expense. Therefore our first task is to stop all further aggressions of financial capital against the people. The working class will have to organize wide social alliances with all democratic, peaceful and progressive members from different sections of the society against the big capital. This force will be a united anti-monopolist alliance of all men and women, who are in different ways suppressed by the monopolies – no matter, what’s their genuine social strata. But the struggle of the working class cannot be reduced on defending present conditions, which are not positive either. Necessarily the next step of a movement of the working class against imperialism has got to attack the power of monopolies directly. That means, that the big industries and the banks must be owned by the state and in democratic way controlled by the people instead of the big capital. The policy of the state has got to be changed into another direction: the mass of people needs a real social welfare-state, not an imperialist state, which only serves the monopolies. However the movement of the working class has got to be aware of the fact, that even a social welfare-state would not change the bourgeois character of the state itself – it would still remain the capitalist system with crises and unemployment, even though several positive changes concerning the conditions of living would be already possible within capitalism. But that is not enough. Reformist progresses are not able to solve capitalist contradictions deeply – these progresses can only moderate problems for a certain time. Therefore the socialist revolution of the working class is still absolutely unavoidable, because only socialism is able to overcome all capitalist problems. Only socialism would be a guarantee for the workers, that they can live in peace, freedom and self-determination, that they can free themselves from political, economic and social oppression, that they can create a world without exploitation, suppression, economic crises and war.

In order to be able to use a revolutionary situation workers must primarily organize in trade unions and political organizations. In these organizations the members must evolve their proletarian class-consciousness and they must spread revolutionary Marxist ideas. Only an organized, class-conscious and revolutionary-socialist working class will be able to overthrow capitalist rule.

Our group, the Socialist Youth/SMC, is one of these revolutionary-Marxist organizations, which want to contribute to this important and difficult task of the working class. We support Marxist, socialist/communist, revolutionary and anti-imperialist movements in all countries and we would appreciate it, to establish contact with comrades all over the world.

Workers of all countries and oppressed peoples, unite!

Long live the international revolutionary socialist movement!

Down with imperialism!