Left: Students protest fee hikes in Berkeley CalifIt is important for revolutionary socialists not to lose sight of the fact that the movement of the students in California that has arisen as a response to the attacks on education is not taking place in a vacuum, but during a historic crisis of the capitalist system.
A few years ago U.S. capitalism was wallowing in a sea of triumphalism, “We won” was the heading of a Wall Street Journal not long after the collapse of Stalinism, and the bourgeois talked of everyone finally understanding “how the world really works.” With the old Soviet Union out of the way, “Full Spectrum Dominance” became official US policy, British playwright, Harold Pinter said of it:
"I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources."
In short, it means that capital can go anywhere it likes free from restraint, from Unions, government regulation etc. Resistance to this unbridled freedom of US capital is met with other aspects of the spectrum, missiles, troops, unmanned drones and the accompanying violence.
The celebrations were short lived. The American century has lasted less than ten years. We have experienced the collapse and discrediting of the US economic model along with its lapdog Britain, known as the Anglo-Saxon economies. Alongside this economic crisis is the relative decline of the influence of US imperialism on the world stage and the accompanying shift in relations between the powers.
The present situation and intensified assault on US workers arrives after years of decline in living standards and widening of the inequality gap. Between 1972 and 2007 US productivity grew 90% yet wages during the same period declined 11%. In 1973, the highest 1% of households received less than 9% of the national income but by 2007 their share had more than doubled to 23.5%. Globalization has bolstered this trend.
Now the economic collapse and subsequent bailout of the system by the taxpayer has accelerated the process, has instilled a sense of urgency among the US capitalist class that the so-called American Dream must be put to rest. The material conditions that gave basis to it are no more and will never return. The bill for saving the capitalist system from collapse will have to be paid, the deficits brought down and the moneylender’s handed over their pound of flesh.
It is out of this objective situation that the movement in California (and student movements around the world) has been borne.
The movement in California has a fighting program due to the combativity of the youth in the face of a major assault by capital. Raising the cost of tuition at the state’s public university system by 37% has meant that some students will not be able to afford to go to a public university. Racial disparities, overcrowded classrooms, poorly paid teachers and lack of resources, are all factors that have fueled the present movement. The presence of various revolutionary groupings on the campuses has also influenced the movement.
The Role Of Revolutionary Socialists
The role, of revolutionary socialists in this movement has two aspects to it: (1) How to help this movement grow and move forward. (2) How best to build and strengthen a revolutionary socialist current within this movement.
It is crucial for socialists to recognize that movements like this are living movements, they don’t come ready made, those involved in them don’t come with their politics and views fully formed. They certainly don’t come to the movement as socialists, more often as reformists; they want to make the world around them better. Naturally then all sorts of confusions are present and mistakes will be made as the movement struggles to find its feet. Those of us that have participated in such movements can attest to this and for many of us it is our own personal experience.
We learn through struggle. It is through the struggle for reforms that we draw certain conclusions about the world around us as the state and all its organs come down on us for fighting for what the vast majority believe are just causes. Engles, writing to Borge on the Henry George movement in the US in the 1880’s commented:
“The masses must have time and opportunity to develop. And they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement, no matter in what form, so long as it is their own movement in which they are driven further by their own mistakes.”
The role of revolutionary socialists is to develop and refine the program of this movement, to push it forward. The program of this movement should bring it in to collision with the offensive of capital, in to conflict with the attacks---this is the main thing. But there are no absolute rules for this program; it depends on the forces we are trying to gather around us.
It would be a grave error for revolutionary socialists to have the position, as some do, that if the program is not “our” program, if it is not specifically a socialist program, we won’t participate or our activity will be dominated by efforts to force our program on the movement. The demands of the student movement thus far are combative demands, demands that bring the movement in to collision with the capitalist class, that bring the movement in to conflict with the capitalist agenda. One doesn’t have to be a socialist to support these demands.
So while revolutionary socialists play one role in the movement, that is to assist it to grow and move forward, we also introduce socialist ideas. Being in a United Front brings with it an obligation to a certain discipline, but this, like the program itself, is not absolute either. We do battle as we have in this case with those that seek to undermine the movement; that seek to temper the combative nature of the movement. We struggle openly against those that seek to put brakes on the movement and hold back its forward motion. In other words, we fight against those currents whose policies strategy and tactics act to the detriment of the movement or counter to the situation and mood of the masses involved.
Both the reformists and ultra leftists fit this bill as they introduce slogans and demands that are alien to the situation and fail to resonate with the participants in the movement.
It is clear that the crisis is not over and the offensive of capital will continue. But it would be a mistake not to recognize that the California movement has already produced results. The big business press has reported on numerous occasions the pressure that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is putting on the federal government. He is basically warning Washington that if money doesn’t come he will be forced to cut further and this will embolden the movement in California, will strengthen it. He has also now come out in favor of higher education and the state’s public university system. He has said he will raise money for education by privatizing the prisons and highway construction. This shift is a result of the student movement.
Included in Schwarzenegger’s plan was a proposal to give the state the power to fire teachers at will and destroy seniority rights. Naturally, these are not acceptable concessions but this is not the point. They will always, when faced with pressure from a strong section of the working class, try to shift the burden of cost on to another section, less organized or militant. This has the added feature of dividing one section of the working class against the other. It is important to note that at the Northern California Regional meeting of the student movement, funds from these sources were rejected.
With regards to the program it should be understood that depending on the movement, socialist demands are not ruled out. In the earlier stages of the crisis, had a movement developed in response to the bailout and foreclosures and given the hatred of the banks that existed, a significant movement arising at that time may well have thrown up specifically socialist demands. The capitalist class at this time were even calling for the nationalization of the banks themselves, this could have been taken up by a movement arising in these conditions but with a more socialist character, under public ownership and control for instance.
As socialists in this movement we are not merely members of the public, our goal is to change the system and transform society. Being willing to enter in to a United Front around combative demands in order to join with the movement in its struggle against the capitalist class, does not mean that we abandon the struggle for socialism.
Imagine if we had 100 cadres in the Unions and this movement at the present. Instead of two locals in the entire state passing the Local 444 resolution or one similar to it we could have 20, or 30. Whether they strike or not is a different question but 20 locals taking this action would undoubtedly increase the chances of one and the process itself would win concessions from the bosses. It would also make reaching out to the rank and file of Labor easier and increase the confidence of the rank and file.
We should emphasize that this battle around March 4th is still to be decided. The union leaders and their Democratic Party allies are still trying to choke it to death through the Union structures and to confine it to rallies after work. In contrast to this we are still fighting for the strike and day of action on March 4th and still fighting for the March 4th committees to be built and enlarged and developed to lead the movement. After March 4th it would be a logical next step to call a statewide meeting of the strike committees to strengthen links between them, develop a more rounded out program and help build these committees throughout the state.
With regard to actions after March 4th, linking this with the war issue is fine as long as the emphasis is kept on education ending the wars to fund education not diverting the movement into a different track. We should not underestimate the importance of the historic Oregon vote to tax the rich and corporations that was recently passed with an overwhelming majority. Is it possible that the March 4th movement through the March 4th committees could provide a basis, a structure for building an initiative movement in California to tax the rich and the corporations? A campaign to tax oil as it comes out of the ground for instance. California is the only one of 22 oil producing states that doesn’t do so. Could these committees tap in to the mood and anger that exists against the rich, the mood that the trade Union leaders and their Democratic allies want to suppress? Statewide, but especially in local communities a concerted effort by an organized group such as March 4th committees, could possibly wage a successful campaign to get initiatives on the ballot similar to the one in Oregon and through this process draw people in to struggle. Through this process workers and youth would inevitably begin to raise questions about the nature of society and the system itself. It is through struggle that we learn.
It is also important to recognize that while the movement is in danger from the right and left trade Union bureaucracy who do not believe any reforms can be won and are afraid to mobilize the working class and youth, that the movement is also in danger from the ultra left who want to divert the movement with calls for a workers government or refusing to support the movement’s demands to make the rich pay or to tax the rich. As is always the case, their error is not that what they call for in general, but their inability to function in the here and now, to intervene in a movement in such a way that can strengthen the movement and move it forward rather than split it and throw it back.
Trotsky explained that you can only build revolutionary Cadres through struggle. This means a confrontation with the bosses, and much more difficult and complicated, the struggle against the Union bureaucracy. It is important then that
(1) We struggle in a non-sectarian way to build and strengthen movements as they develop.
(2) As we do this we build a permanent revolutionary current that can continue to fight and build as a movement subsides.
At some point this revolutionary current can go from being a part of the objective situation to a much more influential subjective factor in the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment