💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › workers-solidarity-movement-the-student-movement.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 14:55:41. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: The Student Movement
Author: Workers Solidarity Movement
Date: 2008
Language: en
Topics: student movement, position paper
Source: Retrieved on 15th October 2021 from http://www.wsm.ie/c/student-movement-wsm
Notes: Workers Solidarity Movement postion paper on the Student Movement as amended at Autumn 2008 National Conference.

Workers Solidarity Movement

The Student Movement

1. Make-up of student population

Students come from all social backgrounds and are in College for a

wide variety of reasons. There is no underlying political or economic

base that unites or could unite all students.

Therefore any movement will be limited to a fraction of the Student

population.

2. Student Unions

Theoretically Students’ Unions are constitutionally democratic, based

on the principles of directly elected, mandatable and recallable

delegates.

However due to the college cycle, the only continuous force in a

Student Union is ironically its entanglements with college bureaucracy,

theoretically limited these links can strangle and impede the work of a

union.

The main thrust of our work should be in increasing direct

participation in union direct democracy, while defending and increasing

the existing autonomy of the organisation from college and state

bureaucracy.

On an ideological level, as in the trade union movement, Students

Unions are rapidly moving toward a service providing model rather than a

campaigning one.

They seek to remedy the symptom rather than strike the root cause. The

task ahead is to break the myth that Students’ Unions are there to exist

as apolitical service providers in ‘partnership’ with the college

authorities. The service model serves only to further alienate the

student body and reduce it to passive consumption of the union rather

than directly taking part in it.

Currently, Students’ Unions are mainly concerned with student welfare

and services within the College. Very little of what they do is

political. There is, however, potential to use unions for political

struggle, given the limitations of student movements. This largely

depends on grass-roots work by political activists who may or may not be

in college at the time.

3. The National Movement

Once again the Union of Students’ Ireland is in theory democratic and

once again the thrust of our work is in reinforcing its democratic

structure and in encouraging grassroots reclamation of its structure.

However, Like all unions the political effectiveness of the national

union is threatened by the services model, represented best by the Forum

of University Students’ Union (FUSU) which splits the student movement

into University students and Institute of Technology students.

Also, because of the diverse social composition of the student body

and the fact that student life is temporary, it is implausible that

‘student politics’ can result in anything resembling a uniform level of

consciousness nationally.

4. Student Movements

Since students are from many social backgrounds, student political

movements tend to use the shallowest politics possible to capture the

largest amount of students.

Movements based on singe issue demands will eventually collapse due to

the political, social and material differences that are inherent in the

make up of such campaigns.

Anarchists should encourage attempts to organise in tandem with

similar movements on other campuses.

Student movements by their nature are limited but are the place where

students interested in actively producing political and social change

will gravitate.

Anarchist students should use student movements to argue their

political and organisational line among this milieu as well as engaging

in more agitational/theoretical anarchist propaganda. From this it will

be possible to recruit any potential anarchists.

By actively engaging in these movements rather that issuing

theoretical edicts we will contribute to building a stronger libertarian

movement by encouraging and developing self organisation, and

implementing certain libertarian methods in practice.

However it is possible to offer a lifeline to these progressive

student movements by making attempts to co-ordinate with forces outside

the campus, pricking the bubble world of the student radical and pulling

them into more sustainable activity which has a long term project.

5. Students, Workers, and Academics.

The campus does not just consist of students and academics, there are

also technical and services workers.

For there to be any progress in the creation of a libertarian mode of

education in a free society, the movement towards it will have to

consist of students, workers and academics.

However, due to the pressures, foot loose nature and restraints of

academia, academics are usually concerned with advancing career wise or

carving out a niche for their own research. This often results in

silence and a fear to ‘rock the boat.’

As anarchists, we view the working class as the agent best placed to

create social change. It follows that as students, we argue for and

strive for links with workers in and outside our campuses.

These links should not be exploited solely for the benefit of student

concerns as is often the case with the student movement.

6. Students As Workers

With the reduction in state aid and increasing fees, a sizeable

minority of students are increasingly forced to work through college.

Despite the non-homogenous make up of the student body, a sizeable

minority of students face the same problems as many workers (low pay, a

lack of housing etc).

As anarchists in the student movement we should advance demands and

tactics transcending the campus and offering a potential continuity

across a sizeable minority of working class students and the working

class itself.

7. Commitment

As Anarchists we believe that our politics are the most realistic ones

being argued and so for the student movement to succeed it needs our

ideas and tactics. Since at the moment we are the only people arguing

our ideas, it is fair to say that the movement needs us.

Within Student Unions and campus politics we will join progressive

campaigns and argue our politics within them, while doing our fair share

of the legwork. If it becomes obvious that nothing productive is going

to come from a particular campaign we should withdraw from it. We are

not interested in “gesture politics”.

A proper class-struggle movement must be connected with the

working-class. Therefore links with unions at a grass roots level must

always be argued for.