La Ligue de la jeunesse communiste (LJC) est une organisation marxiste-léniniste de jeunes, vouée à la lutte pour le socialisme et pour la construction d’un puissant mouvement de jeunes et d’étudiants et d’étudiantes.
Nous sommes une organisation multiethnique de jeunes, de travailleurs, de travailleuses et de sans-emploi, de femmes, d’hommes et de personnes à l’expression de genre diverse. Nous militons dans différents mouvements de masse pour la paix et la démocratie, contre le racisme, l’exploitation, le sexisme, l’homophobie, l’hétérosexisme, le capacitisme, l’oppression nationale et la destruction de l’environnement.
Nous luttons dans nos syndicats et lieux de travail pour de meilleurs salaires et conditions de travail, et dans nos écoles secondaires, cégep, universités et écoles professionnelles pour une éducation démocratique, gratuite, égalitaire et accessible à toutes les personnes. Nous publions un magazine «Jeunesse Militante», où nous y faisons notre agitation-propagande.
Nous nous travaillons ensemble pour un Canada sans exploitation, où les travailleuses et les travailleurs pourront avoir tout le pouvoir dans les domaines économique, politique et social. La jeunesse représente l’avenir, et nous devons donc jouer un rôle vital dans la lutte pour un monde socialiste.
La jeunesse constitue le futur de l’humanité, et l’avenir est au socialisme!
Rebel Youth offers pan-Canadian socialist perspectives on the youth and student movement across Canada and internationally.
Produced by the Young Communist League of Canada, we publish in print, bilingually, multiple times a year. To subscribe click here.
Read the media that fights back. Because there is no time like now to organize!
A brief history of our magazine
Our magazine adopted the name Rebel Youth in the early 1980s, but it had many lives and incarnations before that. This is a short time-line of our magazine:
Our magazine was first published as the Young Worker, after the foundation of the Young Communist League of Canada (then called the Young Workers League) in 1923. At that time, the War Measures Act, banning Communist and other radical organizations in Canada, was still in effect — despite the First World War having ending five years before.
Our offices were raided, entire issues seized, and sellers were given a hard time and even jailed. But fortunately, the RCMP and the intelligence division of the Ministry of Labour kept detailed archives! You can read some of those early issues here:
- Farm youth and slavery of the ‘home children’ (1924);
- A critique of the British Empire and other stories (1925);
- Residential schools – fight for the rights of Indian people! (1934);
- Fascism in Quebec, the KKK, YCL club life, left history (1936);
One of our first journalists was Leslie Morris, who went on to become the leader of the Communist Party of Canada.
Working with Leninist principles of organization, the YCL almost always published a newspaper or magazine. While the name and frequency of publication changed, the press has always been an important YCL activity.
Despite illegality and repression, our magazine grew. By the late 1920s, the Young Worker was supplemented by a children’s publication produced by youth and children with a circulation of more than 4,000.
With the special economic crisis of capitalism in the 1930s, the Young Worker became a monthly publication, first under the editorial guide of Stanley Ryerson in 1932 and then under John Boyd. During Boyd’s time as editor, the paper changed into a new weekly called Advance.
In response to the dangerous rise of fascism, Advance called for a united front of communists and social democrats. The YCL worked closely with local Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) youth organizations through groups like the Canadian Youth Congress. Editors proposed that Advance not be an explicitly Communist publication, but the CCF youth were not interested, so it remained a Marxist-Leninist publication.
Advance was quickly replaced by New Advance, edited by Robert Laxer, and then a more successful magazine in the early 1940s called Challenge was launched with a campaign to broaden its appeal to young people.
Challenge was published well into the late 1950s. This marked a difficult time for our newspaper, but after two or three years, a new editorial team came together to transform Challenge into a refreshed, energetic publication called Scan by the early 1960s.
Scan‘s editorial team, after a number of successful magazine-format issues, transitioned the paper into a broadsheet around 1968, again taking the name the Young Worker. The broadsheet form had less success than a magazine, so the Young Worker changed formats once more, and was then renamed New Horizons (later simply Horizons) in the late 1970s. This new title came from a speech by Communist Party leader Tim Buck about the struggle of youth. This name was also short-lived, replaced by Rebel Youth around 1983.
Rebel Youth was, at that time, an expression of the times — the dying punk scene, the arms race, Ronald Reagan, and the massive movement against total nuclear war. But it also payed homage to the Cuban revolution and the publication of the Communist Youth of Cuba, Juventud Rebelde.
The late 1980s were again a tough period with much debate being held in the pages of Rebel Youth and within the YCL itself. In the early 1990s, following the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, the magazine folded. It wasn’t until 2004, a year after the YCL had begun re-organizing, that a magazine of its type re-appeared. It seemed natural to take up the name Rebel Youth and pick up where we left off.
Over a decade has passed since then, and we have produced, on average, about two or three issues a year. The magazine was initially produced only in small runs, but is now printed in a proper press. In 2012, we added colour to the magazine, and soon we joined forces with the YCL-LJC’s French publication, Jeunesse militante, to publish bilingually.
In 2020, under a new editor, Rebel Youth-Jeunesse militante received a make-over, keeping its long-standing name but updating its look, frequency of publication, and format to appeal to a broader audience. RY-JM continues to work hard on a shoestring budget to present a modern, Marxist-Leninist point of view on the youth and student movement in Canada and beyond.