OFF OuT /' STUDENT MINIONS N.U.S STRANGLE NO The movement of opposition to the government's proposals on student unions, has evoked the largest student response to any issue since 1968. Nevertheless since the great days of May 1968, apart from often isolated outbursts, the international student struggle has undergone a tremendous decline. Now, when there are apparent signs of a limited revival, it is necessary to assess the record of the past years and to try to understand the developments of the future.
THE STUDENTS AND THE WORKING CLASS-FIRST STAGE.
The real strength of the student movement of 1966-69 was its relatively high political level. This was determined by the whole way it developed. Cold war ideology had been built on a mutual understanding between Stalinism and capitalism. Both agreed, for their own reasons, that Eastern Europe and the USSR represented Socialism. This suited the Stalinists because it allowed them to posture before the working class of the world as the enemies of capitalism, and it suited the bourgeoisie because it allowed them to point to the oppressive regime of the USSR and thereby discredit the whole idea of socialism. It was the colonial revolution, particularly in its victorious form in Cuba and in the continuing possibilities in Latin America and Vietnam that shattered the whole cosy set-up. It meant that new possibilities other than those of senile stalinism or ineffectual liberalism were opened up. The old consensus was shattered for ever. This whole process of the rebirth of a revolutionary movement however occurred in a way that no-one predicted. In the 1950's every revolutionary had a very comfortable picture of the world. It was assumed that any rebirth of revolutionary struggle would be led by the working class.
It was clear and obvious. Every Marxist knew that the working class was the only truly revolutionary class in society and therefore any movements must of necessity be led by it. The whole world was a rosy picture of certainty. Reality was to dictate otherwise for several reasons.
Firstly. The way in which capitalism decayed after World War Two, meant that the organised working class gained proportionately more than anyone else out of the boom. Capitalism could grant wage claims. It could not however solve the problems of social expenditure such as housing, education, health, etc. For this reason the most continually increasing oppression was felt initially not amongst the mass of the working class but amongst groups such as immigrants, racial and national groups, etc. Thus for example in the United States, oppression began to build up far more rapidly the black ghetto than it did in the white working class.
The Red Mole 24th Jan. 1972 Page 6 LIAISOS ENT UNIONS IMMITTEE SAYS SUr HANDS OFF UN TUDENT UNIONS!
Secondly. One of the ways in which the inability of capitalism to solve the problems of social expenditure showed itself was in the failure to be able to finance higher education in the old lavish fashion. This was particularly unfortunate for capitalism as it co-incided with a period when the need to expand the highly skilled sections of the labour force increased epormously. Tens of thousands of new students were crammed into universities which had nothing like the ability to cope with their numbers. The increase in numbers can be seen from the fact that before the second world war only 2.7 per cent of the suitable age group were in higher education, this had only risen to 5.6 per cent by 1956, but had bounded to 15.7 per cent in 1968 and is projected to reach 33 per cent by 1980 (Brosan et. al., Patterns and policies in higher education, p.23).
Thirdly. The whole process of the increasingly obvious inability of capitalism to solve the problems of poverty, housing, education and every conceivable form of necessary social expenditure, the ever more obvious nature of imperialism, the fact that the increase in the number of students meant that higher education was no longer a clear ticket for membership of the ruling class, all acted together to create an acute crisis of bourgeois ideology. The poverty marchers of the Southern States of America, the civil rights workers, the 'rediscovery of poverty were all the forerunners of a state of complete discrediting of all the rubbish which the ruling class refers to as "academic truth'.
The period of the glorious "freak out' was entered. The era of the 'course-critique was upon us.
Fourthly. The depopulation of the mass proletarian organisations over a period of 20 years meant that a layer of young workers had come into existence who were well outside the control or influence of the Labour Party or the Trade Union bureaucracy. Although fragmented, this group would be sucked in behind any real political movement that developed.
The focus which united briefly these tremendous confused layers of society was the issue of the Vietnam war. On October 27th 1968, a hundred thousand people marched through the streets of London claiming to be moving against the Vietnam war but in fact hoping that somehow, from somewhere, the revolution was going to happen. Vietnam had become merely the focus for the greatest display of militant political opposition to capitalism since 1945. But by October 1968 the whole world had changed. In May of that year the French working class had shattered the entire picture of the world built by the bourgeoisie. The students had reintroduced the barricades to Paris and the workers had reintroduced the mass occupation strike, to politics. In one week the entire political situation of Europe was transformed.
It has never returned to the old state since.
In Britain in the period after 1969 the largest struggles since 1926 occurred. In Italy fifteen million workers took part in the biggest strikes in history. The old days of euphoric its all happening man' politics had disappeared. The very highest point of the student movement, the night of the barricades in Paris, had under-