Student Movement - Issues and Perspectives

7/31/2019 Student Movement - Issues and Perspectives

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As mentioned in the Communist Manifesto Communists disdain to conceal their views andaims . It does not proceed otherwise in this booklet that we submit to debate and criticism.

How to put an end to the capitalist system? How to stop this system of oppression andexploitation? How to put a term to the rule of the so powerful bourgeoisie and its modern state- a real center of management for the needs of capital? It is through hard work, but not just anywork a revolutionary one that we can accumulate enough forces and to make lose even more


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to the bourgeoisie to overthrow the balance of power that is currently unfavorable to theexploited proletariat with the prospect of a radical social transformation, a revolution. No morehere than elsewhere, the youth of the proletariat who represent the majority of the youth cannot pursue anymore a political system that is not primarily an expression of their interests. Unlikethe elements of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie who dominate the student movementand for who the relationship to politics can only exist inside the limits of the capitalist system,young proletarians should instead put forward the only adequate response to historical needsthat they face : the abolition of the current system and thereby, for now, the implement of theneeded practices that can enable this reversal.

This booklet written by activists present the ideas of the Revolutionary Student Movement ofthe Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada. It includes some elements of history, a briefanalysis of the current situation in Canada, an analysis of the student movement as well as anumber of perspectives that we put forward among students.

In the history of student movement in Canada, there is little talk on the political ideologies that

have crossed and influenced it. We usually limit our disccusions to claims, specific struggles andcampuses associations. However, class struggle and political ideas will directly influenced thestudent movement.

The Cold War period following World War II was a period of tension, resulting in permanentconflict and superposed major crisis (Korean War, Berlin Blockade, Cuban Missile crisis, VietnamWar, etc.) In imperialist countries, youth is growing up in a climate of economic prosperity butmust also deal with political tensions around the world. The contestation of both Soviet andAmerican imperialism takes radical forms; revolt in Hungary (1956), revolt of workers and


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students in Poland (1950 and 1960), Prague Spring (1968). Western countries are no exception :powerful anti-war movements are formed to dispute the politics of imperialism, in Europe andAmerica. In the third world, it is the rise of liberation movement of peoples. Around the globe, the60's will be important years of struggle that will sometimes threaten the capitalist word order.

China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution began in 1966 also influences students both by therole played by the youth and by the practical experiences carried out by the masses. The barefoot doctors who will treat people in the countryside, the fight against the variousmanifestations of sexism, the struggle to reduce privileges and against the division betweenintellectual and manual labor, the excitement for ideas and culture, all that is known bypoliticized students. People are interested in the revolutionary classics, like Marx and Lenin, andnow Mao too.

In France, the protesting movement is growing so fast : during the month of May 1968, theFrench social order is disrupted, threatened to fall when the student struggle join the worker'smovement. Maoism appeared in France in early 1960's as part of a great ideological debatebetween USSR and Mao's China on modern revisionism. French youth takes the part of theChinese thesis and will lead with correctness the criticism against modern revisionism that is

embodied in France by the PCF (French communist party). The comrades who support theChinese thesis will form the UJC-ML (Union of Communist Youth Marxist-Leninist), a maoistinspired group that is also the result of the split of the communist youth with the PCF. Withstrong presence on campuses, UJC-ML and PCMLF will play a significant role in the Movement ofMay 68 in his stand against the PCF, the Social democrats and the union in action betweenstudents and workers. In the end of 1967, CAL (High School Action Committees) are formed toorganize events against Vietnam War.

The struggle is not limited to France : student protests affects all the West and even Japan. In1966, the English students are struggling against the rising of tuition fees and against theVietnam War while the IRA (Irish Republican Army) receives considerable support from the

British New Left. In Italy, there is violent labor strikes during the 1960's. In 1968, a major wave ofuniversity occupation affects more than half of them. Major movements of the extreme left areformed during this period of social turmoil. In Germany, following the French May 68, the SDS(German Union of Socialists Students) gets active and radical. Violent occupations of universities,anti-war demonstrations and protests against the reduction of civil rights will be conducted in1966, 1967 and 1968.

In the U.S.A., the 1960's were very rebellious in many aspects. The creation of the SNCC (StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee) in 1960 against the U.S. military intervention around theworld has changed in the following years into an open struggle against the Vietnam War. The SDS(Students for a Democratic Society) formed in 1962, combined with the FSM (Free Speech

Movement)of Berkeley in California will take significant proportions in the fight for thedemocratization of both schools and society. There has been several important demonstrationsand universities occupations in 1967 and 1968. The struggle leads by the African American isalso growing and tends to join the proletarian struggle especially with the Black Panther Party,founded in 1966.


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Each time in a historical process, here as elsewhere, is punctuated by turning points, momentsthat put the revolutionary forces in front of new problems, new essential questions that requestanswers that we need to make the whole movement progress. We are undergoing a troubledperiod in the developed capitalist countries, a period that starts from the crisis of thedevelopment of capitalism that began in the mid-70's and is still growing year after year. Thisperiod is characterized in the imperialist countries by an almost permanent economic crisissituation, by the weakness of the more combattive organizations of the masses, by a crisis ofreformism itself, etc.. In this context, each and everyone is called to react and make actions thatwill either permit us to escape from this situation stronger or either leave us weaker than before.Canadian bourgeoisie understands the challenge and already began the offensive. Thebourgeoisie must act or risk losing its place in the world economic stage. Under the currentconditions of the capitalist crisis and recession, the bourgeoisie must fight for its place bycreating a space that help to achieve maximum profits levels and by the same way, maximumexploitation levels.

The bourgeoisie has give terrible blows to the proletariat in the last years : on the economic andsocial front, cuts in social service, shop closures, relocations and restructuring; on the ideological

front, it is the bourgeois education and mechanisms of selection that reproduce the bourgeoissocial relations; on the political front, it is the renforcement of the Capitalist State apparatus whocontrols, suppresses and dominates all aspects of our lives.

To achieve this, the bourgeoisie has patiently worked to retrieve and integrate unions, people'sorganizations and youth to its projects. Gradually, the petty-bourgeois direction of the popularmovement and of the labor aristocracy, a part of the student movement, their networks, theirorganizations, their newspapers have had to play the role of watchdogs to the interests ofcapitalism. Using their privileged position, these forces control and dominate ideologically theproletariat and make sure to break any hint of revolutionary action. The indication of thisrecuperation can be seen in the drastic fall of work conflicts as special laws and lock-outs are

increasing. We can also see it through the financial dependency to the State of organizations likethe student federations that become real schools club for bourgeois political parties.

But to finish this job, the bourgeoisie will have to be able to eliminate one after another each andevery improvements that the proletariat was able to wrest over the years. To achieve theseobjectives, the bourgeoisie proceeds in different ways : direct cuts, changes that madeineffective some measures for the proletarian masses or by leaving on their own structures thatare related to these social services, like schools and hospitals.

And we find ourselves in a situation where on one side more and more people will be brought tofight for the social progresses we won in the past, to resist to attacks of the imperialist

bourgeoisie and will possibly threaten the existing social order while on the other, the directionsof the labor, popular and student movement will instead of preparing clashes to come foldmasses towards reformism, electioneering, and all other political alternatives offered bycapitalism to survive.

As a result, trade unions, grassroots groups, student organizations will be rip between two pathsthat can't coexist together : overthrow throw capitalism or maintain it.

In the absence of revolutionary leadership for the proletariat, it's class collaboration and


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reformism, whether moderate or radical, that expressed naturally as representations of thegeneral interests of the proletariat. This policy maybe these policies are implemented in thedefense organizations of the working class annexed by the forces of the bourgeoisie and thus,represent the efforts of the bourgeoisie and its allies to influence and divert the proletariat fromits real interests. At a smaller scale, we can find these same currents with the same objectives inthe student movement.

This reality can be seen in how we confront the major problems generated by capitalism. We facethe attacks of the bourgeoisie without being able to actually do anything but try to keep someassets, without ever being able to gain new ones. This way of dealing with the capitalists improvising in no particular order, no real purpose, no strategy and no tactics is not acoincidence. This way of fighting is the practical result of long time incorporation of ideas andstruggles methods accepted and controlled by the bourgeoisie in our struggles.

In the current global crisis, reformism is a politic that can not give favorable results to themasses. The imperialist bourgeoisie can not satisfy even the interests of segments of society thatare already won to it, and yet, the little that it is forced to give by one hand is taken back by theother one. Briefly, this crisis period is not a period in which the imperialist bourgeoisie can easily

grants improvements. The proletariat and the various movements of struggle may be able to wina concession, retain an advantage but only by setting large forces in hard struggles. And preciselyto answer properly to the attacks of the bourgeoisie, we must be able to encourage theemergence of a militant movement of proper scale.

More generally, the immediate consequence of this crisis in development is the collapse - that isgetting larger and larger between the masses and the current reform movement which, unlikethe reform movement associated with the period of capitalism growing, can not succeed toimplement its own proposed reforms. This collapse is showed, among other things, by thesignificant drop of youth participation in bourgeois elections. While we can applaud theregression of the reformist movement, this should not make us forget that more and more the

crisis is going to exacerbate and more the solutions proposed by the reformists are going to provetheir ineffectiveness, the more the objective division into two opposing camps (bourgeoisie andproletariat) becomes visible and the masses are called upon to take action under the direction ofone side or the other.

The long-term effect of the penetration of bourgeois ideas assimilated by mass movement is thereplacement of revolutionary perspectives by reformist ones that have become the naturalorder of things and were all factors that have stop the enlargement of the movement, this iswhy liberating the movement is an important political issue to which the revolutionary youthmust tackle.

In Canada, there are 4.4 million of young people aged from 15 to 24 years old. We can say thattwo-thirds of them belong to the proletariat. After 19 years old, six out of ten are no longer inschool. Despite this, and despite the fact the rate of activity in the general population has beenhigh in recent years, the rate of youth employment in 2005 was only at 57,5%. This means thathalf of young workers earn less than 9$ an hour. Indeed, 45% of all young people who are nolonger in school and working full time live below the poverty line.

Today, being a young man or woman under 25 years old means to be more educated, to earn


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less and to be less likely to find a stable job than the generation before.

According to a report by the Canadian Labour Congress published in 2005, workers aged 15 to24 years old earned 25% less than the wages of workers from the same age group but ageneration ago (taking inflation into account).

One in six in Canada is a person from a minority, and 41% of them are born and educated inCanada. Despite higher levels of education than average, this growing group continues to livewith lower employment rates and higher unemployment than other young people. Similarly,Native youth face unemployment well above the average.

In the first half of 2005, the rate of youth unemployment has averaged 12,5% (360 000 youngpeople), slightly more than the double of the unemployment rate of 25 years ago. It isastonishing that today, one young worker out of three is in an unemployment situation.

In addition to underemployed youth, capitalism in recent years mainly offered low-paid and low-skilled private sector services jobs. Today, these are jobs that usually entry points on the labormarket for young adults most of them work in industries characterized by low wages, few or no

social benefits like healthcare and retirement, and part-time or split shifts schedules.

Rather than quickly improve their situation, many young people, including those who are highlyeducated, spend several years in a series of low paid and low skilled jobs.

Contrary to trade unions or community groups to which they often identify themselves, studentunions organize a social group whose class composition is particularly heterogeneous. All classesare represented, so obviously disproportionate to their relative importance in society. In the

minority of young adults that will study in the University, it is not difficult to understand that thebourgeoisie is over-represented while the proletariat is underrepresented. This is precisely one ofthe factors explaining the reproduction of these two classes, hoarding knowledge as a necessarycondition for the occupation of positions of power in society.

To this objective reality, we can add another one, a subjective one, specific to the consciousnessof students. Our time is a time when class consciousness is far less sharp than in other periodsof the history of capitalism; they are themselves particularly blunt. The bourgeoisie today have anoverwhelming ideological hegemony over the whole society and its representations of the worldor evacuate specifically obscure the reality of social classes. According to it, rather than enteringcollectively in conflicting social relations of domination and exploitation, people are just pure

individuals whose trajectories are analyzed in terms of successes and failures. Collective marksfade of consciousness of proletariat; subjectively, we identify ourselves less than before as partof a social class and as related to its collective destiny. This phenomenon is even morepronounced among the student population. The University is seen as a bridge to fit into theadvantage ranks of the social hierarchy. Many children of proletarians who feed high aspirationsof upward mobility identify themselves more readily to the bourgeoisie than to their class oforigin, that they want to leave. They do not dream of emancipation, but of promotion.

The heterogeneity of classes in the student movement and the strong influence generated by the


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bourgeoisie has determined its objective limits. This is probably the main factor that determinesits reformism. There is no common interest within the student movement that can betransformed into a strong political point of unity. It is condemned to oscillate between differentinterests, contradictory, unable to decide. One can politically works in it based on its mostproletarian elements to put forward the most progressive views more accessibility, morefinancial support, etc. - But it will still have to deal with large student contingents of bourgeoisand petty-bourgeois who refuses to break with capitalism. The class composition of the studentmovement as it is organized today (especially by imitating the union model of Rand formula)neutralizes the will of strong ideological demarcation. It is only possible to have a struggle formore social justice under capitalism, with more or less radical peaks depending on thecircumstances, according to the activist tradition on a campus or another.

This reality can be seen at a large scale during the major clashes of the student movement withthe State, for example the big strike of 2005 in which General Assemblies could both extend thestrike and vote at the same time proposals condemning violent militant actions. On a smallerscale, it is common in the student movement to say that one union is leftist and another ismore rightist . In any case, few people have tried to understand the origin of these realitiesbeyond the militant traditions that would explain that students of certain colleges and

universities are more activists than others. The tradition is a really limited reference andanalysis base.

If these remarks define the limits of student unions as an instrument of struggle, we should notbelieve that activists are condemned to reformism. The whole question is which political life canwe have beyond the student unionism ? Or in other words, how do we let the studentunionism impose its limits?

For many, the political reality is apprehended mainly through categories such as left/right ,

radical/moderate . Useful categories, of course, but that offer a vague portrait, or at least veryaproximate, of the reality. These are essentially relative, without content or specific politicalorientation; these refer to elements that change with the ebb and flow of class struggle. Doesbeing at the left in Canada in 2011 mean the same than in Russia in 1917, in Spain in 1936 orin France, 1968? And actually, be at the left of what?

To support a revolutionary project, we must be armed with a much more precise picture of thesocial and political reality. We must, in fact, based ourselves on a scientific conception of theworld. The absence or the weakness of class analysis in the student movement is a seriousobstacle to a more advanced and more ambitious political practice. If we do not understand themulti-classist character of the student movement, and we simply think the student community as

a political subject, we can neither define clear objectives or know on what forces we must baseour activity; it will be impossible to formulate a consistent revolutionary strategy. But theconfusion in social change is always recovered by the bourgeoisie, that clearly knows what itwants to do with the society.

A class analysis means to investigate how the different social issues in education and elsewhere,contain the conflicting interests of different conflicting social classes how the various strugglesreflect a global problem : the emancipation of one class against another. Feeling leftist andadvocate social justice is not enough. What is important is to discern where is the demarcation


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line of this contradiction and clearly choose on which side are we positioned. It's only in this waythat we can hope to get a grip on reality and overcome the vain pursuit of an illusory commongood , to use a social-democrat idea that is as widespread as it is pernicious. We've got to say it :between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, there is no common good, there is only oneirreducible relationship of domination and exploitation. To pretend otherwise is maintainingconfusion, is giving an handicap to the proletariat in its class consciousness. If we want a societythat is working for common good, we must first overthrow the bourgeoisie, and eliminated it as adominant class.

Approach struggles with the interests of a specific class and based ourselves on it will prevent touselessly appeal to the conscience of the so-called civil society , another muddy concept fromcontemporary reformism. Civil society is all social classes as they are organized in civilian life,that is to say outside the State, which generally mean bourgeois organizations who claim tospeak for the entire society. Again, behind this frontage of unity, it is important to determinewhat are the camps if we want to build a political project around the only class that is reallyinterested in get rid of capitalism, the only revolutionnary class to the end. One of the mostimportant victories won in the history of the student movement in its high time was undoubtedlythe political elevation that led new generations to consider the stuggle on revolutionary bases

and on a radical questioning of capitalist society. This elevation was closely related to thereconciliation of a large segment of students with the camp of the revolution. If we stop in 1968,we could see that all the struggles started with simple corporatist and unionist claims, butpassed quickly to struggles related to the capitalist system. Then the revolted students began tolook for the real path of liberation and became aware of the need of unity with the working class,based on a clear political platform. It is in this context that we need to understand the rise ofMarxist-Leninist organizations which succeeded the eruption of the student movement.

For the activists of the student movement, it is more precisely about the idea of going futher thanjust building unity around student interests. Such a thing does not exist. We have to choosebetween the interests of the proletariat or those of the bourgeoisie. And we must do it clearly 1.

Whether we like it or not, consider the formation of a balance of power as a strategy is toconsider the urgent need being the strategy, in any struggle, to create a movement strongenough to achieve the goals is the ABC of struggling. But it's also a convenient way to remove theneed to develop long term strategy or a substantive orientation with specific goals and toaccumulate new forces through struggling. We can not satistisfy ourselves by going from a striketo another, with some successes and too many failures. We seek to understand the reasons thatcould explain how our decisions and our methods of struggle are the right decisions and the rightmeans too infrequently. This is precisely a major obstacle that prevents the student movement togrow and can be see through the years by the incapacity to conduct offensive struggles to winnew gains and to always be placed in a defensive position, leaving to the bourgeoisie theinitiative to decide when it will attack us.

Theoretical weaknesses of the student movement are illustrated in the relation that so manyactivists hope to develop with the union movement. This hope means a wrong comprehension of

1 Don't consider that this means that we limit the class analysis to the bourgeoisie/proletariat dichotomy. This question ismore complicated than this. There is, for example, another social class the petty-bourgeoisie that plays an important

role in the class struggle and particularly on the student movement. Otherwise, each class is divided in different

(COUCHES), different sectors of which boundaries are not always clean cut and have its own contradictions. However,

it is true that all these (NUANCES) exist around a main contradiction that oppose the two structuring poles of the

capitalist society that are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.


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the role played by unions in this period of the history of capitalism. We must arrive to thisconclusion : today, unions are a powerful adhesion factor of workers with capitalism and arepressive force against workers combativeness in class struggle. This mistake takes the form ofa fetishization of trade unions and a reduction of the worker's struggle to its unionist aspect. Howmany times people religiously claim a will to act in solidarity with the unions and the socialmovements? It's a constant of each and every action plan, at least for the left wing of themovement (represented by ASS in Quebec). Invariably, this will is related to the reflex oftendering friendly perches to unions and to some community organizations. Some people hopethat unions will struggle, that they will vote for a social strike. But we must make the review ofthis solidarity . What comes from it? Sometimes, very shy supports at the end of a pressrelease (generally more given to the right wing of the movement), participation to unfructfulcoalitions where we must make all the compromises, expression of sympathy for studentstruggles from individual activists but who can't talk on the name of their organizations, afashionable speach during demonstration that is generally only a simple paternalist publicdisavowal.

There is never the beginning of a real struggle lead side by side with workers. All the good willsare stopped by the bureaucratic (stamp of unions. Do we have to identify some examples? The

impressive quantity of union leaders, from the top to the base, that are politically suvbservient toa bourgeois party like the Parti Qubcois in Qubec or the NPD in the rest of Canada. Theintefgration of union apparels to financial capital by the intermediate of investment funds,workers interests are now more than ever subject to capital rentability under the cover of jobsaving. Examples of working conflicts in which unions ended with shameful compromises, asrecommended by the union direction. Passivity against special laws that force work return is atrue demobilization of union activists. And this list could be long.

Make a junction between student movement and worker's movement is a commendableobjective, it's even an imperative. But this junction could not only exist theoretically. It must bedone on appropriate political bases, which are proletarian and revolutionary, and this could not

be done by the action of unions. We must meet directly the workers, and the organizations thatcould help us to do this are not created yet.

Among the heaviest ideological barriers that are obstacles to the revolutionnary potential of thestudent youth, there is a variety of tactical conceptions thare are wrong or limited. At thestrategic level which is the level of global and fundamental objectives we must see that a lotof militants are part of the proletariat vanguard by claiming with more or less precision thatthey are in favor of revolution or anticapitalism. But the path that lead to these objectives, thatcan materialize the strategy day after day, is made of choices, steps, methods, deturns. That iswhat we call tactic, and it's in this tortuous road that a lot of good wills are lost.

The principal tactical obstacles that affect extreme-left anticapitalist revolutionary activists iseconomism and opportunism. Opportunism, in the way we understand it, does not necessarilymean a dishonest careerist or bureaucrat who puts his/her personal interests first even if thiskind of opportunism also exists, but it's not the more problematic one. It is not a moral attitude,but a political analysis mistake shared by activists that are oftenly honnest. If we describe thismistake, we could say that it is based on the substitution of immediate interests to thefundamental interests of the working class, research of immediate success instead of thestruggle for proletarian revolution and for socialism , to drop the revolutionary strategy by short-


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term tactical consideration. We owe this definition of opportunism from revolutionnaries of thebeginning of the twentieth century, as Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, who analyzed how the SecondInternational deviated from the revolutionary road and got stock in bourgeois reformism. It isobjectively a betrayal of the revolutionary goal on behalf of immediate needs of the revolutionary process . The most common form of opportunism in the student movement today could bedescribed as the theory of radical stagism. It's more a kind of an intuitive conception than atheory, but it is clear enough for us to recognize it as a widespread trend among student activistswho sometimes give to it anarchist colors, sometimes marxist influenced ones, and other timesstrictly trade unionist ones. This conception means a tactic that essentially relates on a processof radicalization of the masses (students or others) by the struggles until the conditions of arevolutionary uprising arrive. Let's heat the pot and the pressure will come one day to blow the lidoff. Let's feed the fire but above all, don't smother it! Let's not get ahead of the level ofconsciousness, of radicalization of the masses. Founded in 1889, the Second Internationalbrought together the social-democrat labor parties (which still meant at the time Marxistrevolutionary). It went through a serious crisis with the outbreak of WWI, while its main memberparties rallied behind their respective bourgeois governments, betraying the revolution inpreferring the imperialist slaughter. Its left wing, led by the Russian revolutionaries, seceded toform communist parties that will soon form the Third International.

According to this point of view, this is what we should do. For now, what is supposedly importantis to organize struggles based on concrete and realistic claims, which mean the livingconditions of people, and to win some gain, even modest or only cosmetic ones, to make theconfidence in the social struggle grow. We must promote the assertion of social rights, install acritical approach to authorities, put the light on injustice, promote militancy. When this long andpatient work of radicalization will have matured to the point of giving birth to a genuine popularuprising, then the time to talk about revolution will come and we could give its real name to thisalmost already accomplished movement, that was hidden until this point behind struggles,claims and reforms. So it will be the time to suggest a specific target to the angry masses , totalk about armed struggle and overthrowing the bourgeoisie, to talk about socialism! But today,

we are still far from this time!

We can see that this radical stagism allows : conciliate an essentially reformist and economistpractice to a theoretical adhesion to a revolutionary horizon. This is the cheap way to claim beingof extreme-left, where the revolution becomes less a political practice than a subculture group,with its symbols, songs, micro-controversies and evenings where alcohol flows freely... For now, itis entirely absorbed in immediate struggles, in the spontaneous movement in order to raiseconsciousness step by step, here and now, without really care about the destination. Political,strategical and tactical issues of the revolution are never clarified because it is a prospect thatalways appears too distant and too abstract. This oftenly takes the form of contempt fortheoretical debates and reflections in the name of a denunciation of a so-called petty-bourgeois

intellectualism, in favor of pure activism. This is largely what explain the ideological poverty ofstruggles in the current student movement and the stagnation of its politics.

The materialization of this tactical conception is the encampment of militancy into studentunionism frameworks, the so-called tool of campus radicalization. Student Association andGeneral Assembly shall be the only horizon : the next proposition, the next event, the nextcongress and the absolute imperative to win each and every vote are all that matters and long-term politics are actually nothing. Worse, under the pretext of popularizing and expand thehearing and to be better understood, we adopt the vocabulary of the bourgeoisie, the one that is


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already the current dominant discourse, regardless to the severe ideological handicaps that thiscause in the (re)construction of class consciousness; in this regard, we oftenly chose the easiestpaths, characteristic of opportunism. If words like social classes, proletariat, bourgeoisie, classstruggle, revolution, socialism, etc. have been so effectively removed from the consciousness ofmany by the ideologists of the bourgeoisie (journalists, politicians and intellectuals), it is exactlythe reason why it is imperative to rehabilitate these. We do not deprive ourselves of a scientificway of understanding the world that we need to have if we want to change it.

Without independant revolutionary political work which means free from associative andmulticlassist structures, based on explicit revolutionary positions student unionism, evencombattive one, quickly becomes a ceiling in the process of radicalization. First, it is a movementthat is strongly marked by cycles, ebb and flow of mobilization and militancy, the renewal of itsmembers. It seems difficult to provide anything more than a reproduction of its workforcemilitants. It's because the status of student is, by definition in our society, transitory. Inevitably, ina more or less long term depending of courses, militants take their retirement from the studentmovement. How many of them need to face the effects of their indifference to the responsibilityof establishing political issues in the student movement, opportunities that allow to considersocial and political issues wider than immediate student struggles and organize beyond a small

social group? Those who have based their hopes in trade unionism or on communityorganizations realize that it is otherwise more complicated to be radical there than in thebastions of the student left. Several student will give up, frustrated by powerlessness andisolation. Others will yield under pressure for a bureaucratic activism of class collaboration.Others will resign themselves to offer the best of their ability to support populations in difficulty,healing simply the gaping wounds of capitalist society, without a real hope to ward off evil in thissocial intervention. But this is at most a secondary issue. The most problematic one is thatwithout independent revolutionary political work and by only confining in the structures andlanguages of combattive student unionism, we are wasting much of the political potential thatthis movement holds. We can't pick the fruits of the radicalization of the student masses whichwould means accumulate forces for the revolution. Despise all the good will, overthrowing the

bourgeoisie and constructing socialism is not going to happen in the next few years. Others triedbefore us and there is no reason why it could suddenly be easier. By then, however, it islegitimate for the masses to fight and advocate for improvements to their fate in the short term,for reforms under capitalism. Moreover, like it or not, capitalism imposes conditions whichinevitably generate eruptions of rebellion and aspirations to more dignity. It would be downrightridiculous to condemn it under the pretext that it is limited and that it does not formulatespontaneously an aspiration for socialism. On the contrary, these are the roots of the struggle forsocialism. For us, the struggle for reforms or immediate demands and the struggle forrevolution and socialism are not diametrically opposed or mutually exclusive. There is a way tocreate a link between the two, to address the pressing needs of the masses without slipping intoopportunism, without compromising with our basic objectives. However, the dominant tactical

ideas in the radical circles of the student movement do not arrive to do it. We must use of a littlemore dialectical spirit : in this case, it appears that we must reverse the problems that serves asa premise to the thesis of radical stagism.

Much has been argued that if the struggles for immediate needs are so hard to lead the recentstruggle over school fees for example is that we did not sufficiently keep driving home the pointof preserving the achievements and that we did not have enough build the movement in its unionist and reformist forms, gathered in a wide united front; we had even frightened emerging socialconsciousness with extremists positions, like free education. We believe instead that if the


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front of the preservation of social achievements retreats and a fortiori the fight for further reformis impotent, the main factor is the absence of a revolutionary movement that would be at least alittle significant. What is the interest of the government to satisfy, even partially, claims of thecurrent radical reformist wing of the student movement? None.

It will be interested in these claims only if it could see in this wing the lesser evil, a way to escapeworse. But for now, it is an organization like ASS that represents its most antagonisticopposition in the student movement. So when it starts to heat up, governement knows really wellhow to use student federations which, at the cost of minor concessions, allow to isolate andfrustrate the left wing. It is a dynamic well known of those activists. The bourgeoisie engaged insocial reforms only by fear of a revolution. The offensive of the bourgeoisie around the worldsince two or three decades, often referred as neoliberalism, correspond to the reflux of therevolution. And the trend to reverse. The day there will be a significant fringe of activists capableof deploying a revolutionary agit-prop in the student movement to build a radical opposition tothe interests of the bourgeoisie, then the need for the government to isolate this segment willarrise, to cut off its support. And since law enforcement alone will not be sufficient, that there willbe a need for a political response, the State will have to lean on the reformist movement. Andthen new social gains may be ripped off. Facing this situation, a new choice will come to

activists : consolidate these new gains and serve as a safeguard plan to capitalism or enlargethe gap by the revolutionary path, by passing to another stage.

By advancing the idea that it is possible to transform the student movement, we assume that it ispossible and necessary to deploy a revolutionary political activity within the studentmovement. For doing so, we believe that there is a number of challenges, which are mainlyideological. Student Activism, even in its strict unionist form, politicizes those who run it. It actsas an awakener of social consciousness. Soon, however, the ideological weapons (concepts,principles, strategy and tactics) submitted by this activism are insufficient to tackle broaderpolitical tasks, to advance significantly in the path of the revolution.

We must therefore address the relative lack of political and theoretical benchmarksspontaneously conveyed by the student activism. There is a rich revolutionary ideologicalbaggage that we can use, which has accumulated over the incessant class struggle of the lasttwo centuries under the domination of capital and which summarizes the more advancedrevolutionary experiences. To ignore this historical legacy is to make a dramatic decline in thestruggle against bourgeois domination and it's liquidating highly paid lessons from the strugglesfrom the oppressed of the world. We should instead make a review of the student movementbased on these lessons. We propose to do so, without attempting to have the full ownership ofthis precious heritage. Remain humble but without avoiding our responsibilites, without the fearof committing ourselves.

Struggle to transform a social system also requires to organize differently. There is a need formaking reviews and analysis of the current movement, more than just evaluating the status offorces. We must enter inside this social movement in order to identify principles that will beuseful later time. We have to understand the evolution and the different trends that cross thestudent movement. We should highlight all its ideas and trends and then determine which serveand reinforce the revolutionary camp and which are dividing it and therefore, that we must fight.For a qualitatively different movement from what already exist, the question is not to form a new


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organization bu to unite consciously on the same principles and objectives, on the revolutionarypoint of view and the aspirations to revolution, a youth that is trapped for too long by the (radicalor not) reformist trends of class conciliation in the student movement.

Revolutionary students do not seek to eliminate all student organizations, student unions, theirinstances, etc. Revolutionary students struggle against the reformist currents that trap thestudent movement and frankly seek to organize, promote and develop a broad movement ofideological struggle in the student movement and from this starting point, promote amongstudents a new way to see their involvement in student activism, in the way they organizethemselves to fight.

Traditional trade unionism or combattive unionism that is supposed to be broad and democraticdo not bring anything if the foundations are based on reformism. In the name of stricly studentinterests, this wall of ideologies, practices and conceptions isolate and particularize the studentsand confer to them a specificity that should make them a separate group. This create twoopposing movements that do not lead the same fight. The first reformist one's goal is to improvea privileged position. The second revolutionary one's goal is to enroll in the broader movement toabolish capitalism and thereby, privileges.

We need to build a broad movement, which in practice and in theory is based on the mostexploited and oppressed by imperialism masses. A fundamental shift that highlights andaddresses the causes of exploitation and oppression, not just the effects. We need a movementwhich strengthens the existing trend in the youth that sees that it's only by the completeelimination of the syste, here as elsewhere, that it will be possible to solve the problems of thepeople. We must resolutely deploy the spirit of revolt that lead the exploited masses, especially inthe youth as was showed in several important moments in history, uniting the general struggle ofthe proletariat to advance the revolutionary struggle.

Organizing youth around a revolutionary program in a movement based on a conscious

mobilization of youth and students, that can fight why we must fight and how to do it. Themovement that we want to build is founded where the proletarian youth is : in high schools,colleges and universities, in proletarian neighborhoods and in solidarity with the people.

We affirm that we must work for a student movement that united the various democratic andanti-imperialist student organizations, not hypocritically and without principle, but throughdiscussion and practice in determining what is right and what is wrong, to put revolutionnarypolitics at the control station. Then, the student movement will have concrete politics to serve thepeople in its fight against capitalist system.

We know that our insistence on talking about revolution and being critical of the system

will displease to those who are accustomed to accomodations in favor of the bourgeoisie. But forthe proletariat, and especially for young people of the proletariat, there can be only one worthypolitics, the one that leads the class struggle. This simple idea is the one that revolutionarystudents must defend fiercely.

To the shortcomings of the tactics of radicalization inch by inch, we oppose the necessity of anindependant communist work. We postulate that we can't just warm up the masses and


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radicalize the struggles that will always be spontaneously generated by the constitutivecontradictions of capitalism itself, but concretely build the camp of the revolution. We must notonly win some activists to the idea of revolution, but also encourage them to organizethemselves on that base.

To exist and to highlight the driving force of the proletariat that students need, it needs adirection, a center of aggregation that opens the way for collective action. This center ofaggregation is a set of practices, the party and its political line. Revolution is a process ofpolitical struggles organized with the objective of destroying this society in all its foundations andbuild a new world. The first step is taking State power to give to the proletariat the means of thistransformation. The revolution therefore requires an orientation, a program, a vision of the pathto communism in its various stages. This can not be acquired without a vanguard party.

The spontaneous movement by itself, a possibly radical and widespread one, can bespontaneously created, but not the revolution. Because exploited people, in their vast majority,envisage their future only as part of capitalism. Their struggles are moving towards a betterdistribution of wealth, a better organization of society, without questioning the exploitation andthe rle of producers in this society; they are spontaneously reformists.

The anger provoked by exploitation, loss of jobs, high rents, increasing poverty, are theindispensable basis for the development of revolutionary politics. Based on these movements,the Communists, by their activity, may lead workers to overcome limits, to break the narrowimmediate reports and to be aware of the need to transform the whole society; the overthrow ofthe bourgeoisie. In all these battles, reformist and revolutionary directions guidance clash.

In this sens, reveal and put forward the interests of the revolutionary proletariat and the forcethat is guiding it in the struggle the Revolutionary Party is the beginning point of a consistentrevolutionary activity. In this work, a multitude of political currents will come to oppose us. Theseshare a common misunderstanding of the masses. To hide their own reluctance, they put forward

arguments like students do not understand, students are not ready yet, we must radicalize themovement step by step starting with some progressive demands, then with the reforms and thenthe radical fight, etc. Each of these arguments highlights will clearly displayed unwillingness tounderstand the real movement of things and the needs of the movement in general.

To make our political and practical action more effective, we must have a strategy andappropriate tactics. Having a strategy is much more than having a philosophy of organization.Forexample, we usually separate the student movement in two. The first one, the more imposingone for the moment is the student movement led by the reformist currents which main politicaltool is class collaboration with the state. The other, the smaller one, associated with combattivetrade unionism has a certain distance with the state. Apparently, the two camps are divided. But

if we look closer, we can quickly realize that the two currents have a similar objective, which is toprevent the youth to develop real practical action lying outside the rules imposed by thebourgeoisie.

Combattive unionism itself is an empty shell if we do not ask what are we combatting? How dowe do it? Who are we defending? The interests of who are put forward? Simply labeled itself leftist because we add the word combattive to unionism is to forget that 9 times out of 10it's the boringly reformist unionism that wins. While it is positive to not wanting to engage incollaboration with the State, it also brings the requirement to develop an appropriate strategy for


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this choice.

To fight effectively both theoretical, political, economic and immediately assertive, we shouldequip students with a clear understanding of the revolution, the capitalism, the steps, themethods of struggle, all those things that nourish a movement and that allow it to exist and tochange. The existence of the Party and its political line gives the material conditions necessary toadvance in its direction.

Revolutionary students agree on the essential task in their schools, neighborhoods, workplaces :to bring a majority of students, whatever their class origins, on revolutionary positions. The firststep towards this movement is the effective participation of students in the long-term fight forthe reconstruction of a student movement on new proletarian revolutionary bases.

For us, the construction of a new student movement or the deconstruction of the former onemust pass by a more profound political and ideological reorganization of the movement and thisreconstruction is itself dependent on the construction of the Party. Without a strong party it isunrealistic to expect organizing a student movement really different from the current one.

To achieve this, we must change our approach to student activism by putting forwardrevolutionary principles that will give life to such a movement. The main principles that guide ouractions and characterize the distance between reformist positions and revolutionary ones are :

Each claim earned within the current order is nothing more than a temporary and partial gain,and even if we must fight to win those claims, liberties and rights, we must keep as a goal theoverthrow of the capitalist system that currently dominates in our country and we must fightagainst the Bourgeois state in order to build a completely new society, where several of thecurrent problems of the people will begin to be permanently and profoundly resolved.

We must try to solve problems at their root, and this requires to reinforce the organization ofstudents in opposition to the current political and economic system, and to all of its repressiveapparatus and propagandist appliances. We must raise the partial economic struggles to thelevel of political struggles, that is to say struggles against the system that are aimed to structuresociety and the state in a radically new way. We should not seek to deal small reforms to thecurrent system, but to fight for building a completely new society, led by workers for the benefitsof the people.

It is not by integrating ourselves into the capitalist system or working with it that we can earn

rights and liberties. Whatever the good intentions of some people, regardless of the name ofthe governement. This system determines that thousands of young people must be kept ousidethe schools and that we must work to enrich a minority. This system appeals to the armed forcesand police to repress the people when it rise. The real revolutionary changes take place only withthe struggle of millions of people against the minority of oppressors who whill defend theirsystem by any means. The rest is an illusion.

Workers in different countries who are the pillars of society all around the world have strong


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similarities between them and almost equal living conditions. There are for sure specificconditions associated with the imperialist domination and oppression in various parts of theworld but these are minimals in comparison to the differences with the exploiters of eachcountry. In this sens, all the oppressed must join their struggle against their common ennemy, inalliance with the masses of workers and peasants, regardless of whether they speak Spanish,English or Arabic. The aspirations of the peoples of the world are already similar, although thereis still a need to convert these in the true aspiration and the true function of the internationalproletariat : to be the gravedigger of the old order and the creator of a new society.

The state is a machine of repression of the ruling class against the people. To go forward, thisneeds to be clear. We must clearly rejects all proposals of consultation and of class conciliationthat the State may seek to make us swallow like a bitter pill to force us being the participants inour own oppression. Similarly, reformism must be fought as it aims to convert the studentorganizations in a State appendix and make these completely unnecessary and unable toconquer and defend our rights but very useful for the exploiting classes.

Education must serve the vast majority of people to build a society free of imperialism andunited to the peoples of the world. Scientific in the sense that allows the people to find the truthfrom facts through researches on society and nature that can transform it to the benefit of thevast majority. Mass in the meaning that all the masses of the people have access to it andappropriate this new kind of education to themselves. This means fighting now against thecurrent system, for free education at all levels, but it also means fighting for a new educationalcontent depending on the People's liberation, being aware that an education that really servesthe people and the masses will be obtained only in a new society for which we must fight.

For the Communists, the intervention in the student movement has two main fields of

organization 1) The revolutionary struggle for the revolutionary organization of students (toprepare the conditions in which students could bond with the masses, lead the class struggle andmake revolution) and 2) the struggle for immediate demands from the current demands ofstudents. These two groups of tasks are inextricably related, and none can be neglicted.

Become a revolutionary student activist means to lead consciously the class struggle and thestruggle for revolution. In student struggles, this means to put forward and organize studentstruggles from the class interests of the proletariat in prospect of making grow the camp of therevolution. In their work practice, revolutionary student activists put forward the need of therevolution, explain to other students what is the current social and economic system, exposes the

foundations of capitalism and its development in Canada, reveals the existence of social classesand class struggle, the rle of the State, its institutions and relationship with the big bourgeoisieand imperialism by demonstrating that improvement to the conditions of existence of themasses are never given out of the generosity of governors, but are taken by struggle.

In a similar vein, it's also about raising consciousness among students on the fact that studentstruggles must be linked to the interests of the proletariat and of the entire people, by explainingthe historical role of the proletariat, the successes and failures of revolutionary movements in theworld, the need for a revolutionary party and by leading the struggle against reformism,


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revisionnism and opportunism in all its expressions, in defense of the scientific ideology of theproletariat : Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

The tasks of the struggle for immediate demands in the student movement include politicalagitation around conjunctural problems that affect them. Agitation among students means thateach revolutionary comrade take an active part in student demonstration, in the confrontationbetween students and the State that is attempting to stop the movement, in struggles motivatedby gaps in infrastructure, on educational approach, in educational reforms, on the denunciationof debts, etc. Revolutionary activists must learn to face these problems and to direct theattention on major abuses and they must learn to formulate demands in an accurate andpractical way. By making agitation among students, by taking as basis the immediate demands,activists must also learn how to relate things to the imperialist condition of our country, with thesubmission to capitalists and the exploitation of the proletariat and the people. They must alsobe able to show the effects of capitalism on students today and on their future working life.

In any context, the publication of revolutionary ideas (oriented with the political struggle) andagitation on immediate claims are closely related. Marxism has shown in theory and in practice

that both are essential for the development of class consciousness among students, proletariatand all the masses. All of these tasks, developed systematically and increasingly by revolutionarystudent activists will raise the consciousness of students, organize them, prove their ownstrength to face problems and defend the gains.

Student mobilizations have shown the potential of student struggles with a revolutionary point ofview. With little organization and little coordination tools, many important struggles could beconducted. Now, we need to integrate to it new revolutionary traditions of struggle. The studentmovement has shown that is is capable, under certain conditions, to fight hard for democraticand economic demands. For these battles, the student movement has used in particular theweapon of the strike to reclaim improvements of the loans systems, free education, etc. In

general, student struggles are a spontaneous movement the practical movement of themasses goes forward as its organization and management do not meet the requirements of themoment.

One of the challenges of the current period is precisely the takeover of ideological, political andpractical struggle by students that will enable the emergence of a proletarian revolutionarypolitical orientation among students. This struggle is now powered by sincere revolutionaryactivists and will be increased further by the emergence of a vast revolutionary studentmovement capable of fighting capitalism and leading the revolutionary struggle for communism.In any form and under any conditions, situations, etc... in all daily political decisions as instruggle, it's a matter of principle for every revolutionary to never lose of sight the ultimate goal.

In the current period, the Revolutionary Student Movement of the PCR-RCP Canada intends toplay the role of an active revolutionary core in the student movement. This core will be used topromote consistently of a real current of class struggle among students. We consider to be, inview of our current level of forces and general conditions prevailing today, the beginning of a longprocess that starts with the requirement to deploy largely revolutionary propaganda in thestudent movement. Of course, there are organizations reformists, anarchists, trotskists whoall claim to lead the fights against capitalism. Some of them are older, or more established in


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the student movement and perhaps most influencial as well. But none have shown up for now areal desire to train and organize the student movement in a different way from the one thatcurrently exists. For the moments, according to our forces, what we are fighting are the trendsand groups, ideas and concepts related to the bourgeoisie, to electoral reformism, etc. by puttingforward revolutionary perspectives. The means for this work are communist agitation andpropaganda and independant communist intervention in masses struggles for claims.

Documents

Student Movement - Issues and Perspectives