For free education for all, for a job for all.

Capitalism cannot live with full employment. One of the main tasks of the Federal Reserve is to manipulate interest rates to keep unemployment at a high enough level. What do the capitalists mean by a high enough level? If there was full employment this would increase the power of the working class to demand higher wages and benefits. So every few weeks the Federal reserve has to go to Congress to reassure these representatives of the profit addicted corporations that they are keeping enough workers unemployed so they do not feel they have the power to fight. Unemployment is not an accident. It is a deliberate and inevitable product of capitalism.

Of course the actual level of unemployment is also affected by the ups and downs, the crises, in the capitalist system itself. The recent financial collapse has resulted in over 10.00% unemployed in the US according to official figures. The real figure is much greater. There are over six times as many Americans looking for work as there are jobs. And the duration of unemployment is the highest since the 1930's.

The student movement in California and around the world is fighting for access to decent education for all. This is not just a movement for decent education for all. It is also a movement for a decent job for all. Without a decent education it is much harder to get a job. If the student movement recognizes this it has a real opportunity to build a wider movement, to gain new allies. To do so means fighting for a program that deals with the problems of all working people.

The student movement should fight for:

Free education for all.

A program of public investment to build and develop the infrastructure and provide jobs.

A shorter work week with no loss in pay to provide more jobs and create more time for study and leisure.

We should build our movement around this program and around mass direct action based in the colleges and universities, in the high schools, in the workplaces and we will have a movement that will be unstoppable.

This is the way to build student and worker unity and successfully take on the struggle for jobs for all. In the course of this struggle we will come up against the reality that to have jobs for all we have to get rid of capitalism. We have to move towards a democratic socialist system.

Sean.

Sean.