[GNM2010]

Hi guys,
I gathered this would be the perfect forum to send out this message.
There is a huge campaign in the UK as there has been across Europe against the government’s austerity measures .
The Governments across the world are penalising hard working innocent people for this global recession.
We are not to blame. We did not cause this mess. Capitalism has failed us. It isn’t working.

I am working on a grass roots campaign in the UK using nothing but my camcorder to get out there and interview people from across all walks of life to gather how the cuts are affecting them.
This coming Thursday 9th December, parliament in the UK will vote on increasing university student fees, which will deeply affect students from less well off families.

This cannot be fair. We cannot have a system where only wealthy people can afford to go to university.
As you may have seen on the news, there has been widespread protests across England against the raising of the student fees. This coming Thursday the 9th December is pivotal. We need direct action against the government.

I am putting this message out there to help me out. The idea is for as many people to forward messages of solidarity with the students.
These can be in the form of video clips of yourself recording a message of solidarity for the UK student protestors or a picture of yourself with a message.
The videos and pics will be put up on Youtube and across hundreds of Facebook pages and various activist websites here in the UK and will go along way to inspire many people over here. Its a global struggle therefore global support is necessary.

HOW TO SEND YOUR MESSAGES OF SUPPORT
If you’d be kind enough to participate with a message of solidarity, please do so by either sending the pic to my email which is
Dalnijjar@hotmail.co.uk
Include your name and where you are from. Your details will be published on the video if you don’t want me to do this just let me know.
If you are sending in a video message please do so in any way you want and just send me the link where I can download it.
I do recommend uploading your file to Mediafire. However it’s up to you.

Thanks for the support
Dal

[BassHole]

which will deeply affect students from less well off families.

Actually, it will deeply affect students from middle-income families. The "poor" don't get a monopoly on whinging. They get grants and extra loans. What do middle-income students get? That's right, nothing. So keep this self-pitying bollocks to yourself.

[Eauz]

If you've ever been to a major party that lasts into the morning and then you're completely wasted and have forgotten about everything? Then you're told that the party is over, maybe due to the police or whatever reason, so you go home, but then you don't even consider who is going to end up cleaning up for that party? Well, the party of the early 1990's recently finished and now it's time to clean up the mess. I think it's time that students actually helped clean up for once.

This cannot be fair. We cannot have a system where only wealthy people can afford to go to university.
As you may have seen on the news, there has been widespread protests across England against the raising of the student fees. This coming Thursday the 9th December is pivotal. We need direct action against the government.

Capitalism has never been fairness. It's just that we were capable of covering up the negative aspects of it for a certain amount of time. Parents might have spoiled us, so we believe we should have the same things as they did, but the reality is that no one group was specifically linked to the economic problems. Just as we blame the banks for the problems, the individual is also to blame for wanting to take on more debt then they could handle, as well as the countries. Four options exist, none of which would involve improving the students goals, which are connected to the sustainablity of capitalist mode of production:

1) Clean up the mess (austerity).
2) Leave the mess to future generations (more debt).
3) Revolution (variety).
4) Default on Debt (a la Argentina-style).

[sans-culotte]

A Marxist cheering for the decimation of working class power and material standard. Should I be surprised? (answer: no )

Well, the party of the early 1990's recently finished and now it's time to clean up the mess. I think it's time that students actually helped clean up for once.

You guys are really bitter about not being listened to in the '90s, aren't you?

1) Clean up the mess (austerity).
2) Leave the mess to future generations (more debt).
3) Revolution (variety).
4) Default on Debt (a la Argentina-style).

For Marxists, things are always black and white, but in reality they never are. How about the option of reorganising education bottom up and decommodifying its workings? Or do you expect commodity production to end by state decree? (probably yes).
It's already being conceived across Britain with a cascade of occupations and sit-ins, with students organising their own lectures and seminars.
Here's a letter I got through email today, which reflects on the social organisation of the ongoing struggle:

A STATEMENT REGARDING THE GOLDSMITHS OCCUPATION

Hi all

I was among those supporting a real occupation of Goldsmiths this week. A large group of students, staff and supporters agreed before the library was occupied that only a significant disruption of the normal functioning of the university would contribute to blocking the govt's plans and forcing action from the university management.

For me the idea that symbolic protests with banners, or more innovative tokens of opposition, are the only 'positive' forms of protest is regressive aesthetically and politically. It shows how far we are from grasping the powers which collectively we already possess. We have much more powerful and effective materials at our disposal.

In a society in which just doing our jobs and carrying out our tasks - whether writing essays, teaching, or stacking (book)shelves - is the main way in which social relations are reproduced, it may be that NOT doing anything is our real weapon. Far more effective, say, than doing even more, or doing something additional to our existing jobs. So sitting in a library doing paid teaching or studying work (like those attending radical teach ins with their radical paid teachers yesterday and today) is a purely symbolic gesture which refutes and undoes itself.

Symbolic gestures can be enabling, catalytic, tied up with a subtraction and refusal of work which really does make a difference. But it is not enough to mime the withdrawal of work. The occupied library - insofar as it was ever truly an occupation - at least began to interrupt normal paid teaching, studying, and library-keeping. The library was opened up for 24 hours a day and put at the disposal of the whole public - a crucial gesture, and ACT, at a time when the state is about to take access to such libraries away from all but a privileged minority.

Returning to symbolism - I do support the disruptions which will arise from tomorrow's protest, but it is worth remembering that a punctual day of action confined within the groove laid down by unions and government will be less likely to achieve anything than one which precisely disrupts the normal functioning of society. As such the attempt to make the library truly ours, to control entry and exit and functioning, was already a more effective and powerful move than that of many of the symbolic actions which will have been planned within it. It was an attempt to create a kind of 'bank' of struggle that could pay out in the accumulation of ever more effective oppositional actions. We could turned the financialised university on its head, and turn it into a hub for the expansion not of speculative bubbles but oppositional combinations and activity. Against this, a lot of what is now going on there, now that business as usual has been resumed and occupiers are having to deal with harassed librarians trying to carry out their normal jobs in exceptionally difficult conditions, is just small change.

What the government has in mind is no small change, it is the most massive reduction in all our living standards since the creation of the welfare state. Small change will not be enough to prevent it. Since all our protests have in common the fact that they respond to the government (and capital as a whole's) decision that society must be scaled back, massively cut down, in order for business to carry on expanding, I think we should all use our existing social relations to interrupt society's functioning as much as possible.

They want to shut down our society? Fine, we'll shut it down. And not just for a few moments, or for a day, but for as long as it takes to reverse their decision to axe our services, our jobs, and our futures.

Sorry to use this space to make my own symbolic protest, but having participated in the occupation of the library and watched it go from a takeover to a glorified sit in with the connivance of pseudo-radical academics, anxious union reps, obnoxious sub-trotskyists and pedantic anarchist hangers on, I feel email lists are an appropriate and necessary forum in which to try and recover a sense of what our material tools are in this struggle.

If we confine ourselves to symbolic gestures, we will produce merely symbolic effects. Everything that has moved this struggle forward has tried to cross some line that hitherto the majority thought fixed and uncrossable. The action of the crowd in kicking in the windows and entering Tory HQ had more poetry and more wisdom than the cautious councils of the bureaucrats and stewards. Likewise the attempt to take over and control the functioning of the Goldsmiths library was more subversive of the management than any previous gesture by university occupiers, in that it offered students, staff and support workers the chance to control their space for the first time, and to interrupt the functioning of the whole university at a crucial point in the struggle against cuts and fees.

If replicated across the existing university occupations in the UK this would be a powerful obstruction, more effective than any amount of colourful sambas in the streets, but by no means antithetical to futher action in the streets and shops and workplaces of the country. On the countrary, a network of truly occupied and student-controlled universities could feed struggle across the entire public sector and help us force - not persuade, or argue or negotiate, but force - our self-appointed executioners to lay down their axes, and let us begin salavaging some of the rudiments of a society from the wreckage they have been trying to impose on us. This kind of collective force, through withdrawal of labour and of reproduction of social spaces and institutions, is both the most appropriate and the most effective tool, since, as the poet said, we are many and they are few!

If you feel the same way, or can see a shred of reason in what I say here, please join me at Goldsmiths college library this afternoon where I will be holding tutorials and a non-paid teach-in, where we can at least discuss and plan for the coming days of actions. I shall be somewhere in the library foyer, where the occupation began. On this site, the occupation was quickly turned into a discussion-about-an-occupation by a more academic faction of occupiers. This was much to the chagrin of those who had for the previous few days collectively and democratically planned and discussed occupying, carefully avoiding ceding control to a timid and intimidated student union while said faction were carrying out their teach-ins and radical seminars. Sadly we took them seriously when they said they wanted to occupy, and that they would join in our plan to occupy specifically the library. We did not realise they wanted merely to hold yet more discussions and workshops, or banner making sessions, yet another sit in.

Still, we did achieve something. Although the library may now have resumed 99% of its function for management and business purposes, it also remains open - at least in theory - to people from anywhere who want to plan and organise. Please do come down to the library and join me for a discussion of how to use the very real tools and possibilities at our disposal in a truly disruptive and transformational way.

But of course for bitter Marxists, society is run by state decree and not by social organisation around the means of production. (which makes modern Marxism ahistorical, idealist and generally a religion for the bitter).

[Eauz]

A Marxist cheering for the decimation of working class power and material standard.

Sorry, but if the working-class needs to rely on students to improve their situation, then the working-class is surely in trouble. The problem with the students cry about tuition is that they have, for so long, had free tuition and thus continued to support the existence of the capitalist system, by pushing through, year-by-year, the same number of graduates to supply the pool of labour required for the capitalist system. I don't remember these students complaining that the capitalist system is a problem, nor did I see them revolting to destroy the capitalisation of the education system. Now, just now, that measures need to be taken to salvage the capitalist system, that was supported in great part by the working-class, to gain even a small portion of the material standard, are we complaining, NOT about the system, but about the tuition? This is the reality of a society that was pampered for so long and is only now crying about the structural failures of the system? Is this the base of our socialist revolution, on the backs of students?

How about the option of reorganising education bottom up and decommodifying its workings?

This would require an absolute restructuring of society, both socially and economically. Universities are in the business to make profit and it also ensures that there is a constant pool of labour for the market. Decommodifying education will not fit in with the market economy, as you're either raising the taxes of the working-class or you're taxing the richest (which will probably leave when that happens). If you want to nationalise the richest, great, but then we are speaking of a full restructuring of the society and the potential elimination of the market economy.

It's already being conceived across Britain with a cascade of occupations and sit-ins, with students organising their own lectures and seminars.

Reading your letter, it sounds like the students are still concerned about the government and don't really view beyond that. What are these sit-ins going to do to change the fact that there is no money in the government? Do you expect the richest to feel sorry for the students and give them some money? Sure, do the sit-ins and your own lectures, this is not going to get you the diploma and lets say even the university gave you the diploma for those student lectures, they are missing the point that they are only cogs in the system. Do you think they will end up finding work with the companies in Britain? Some companies may even leave, because the educational knowledge will be lacking, or the government will bring in more educated masses to take the places, while these students work at Starbucks.

But of course for bitter Marxists, society is run by state decree and not by social organisation around the means of production. (which makes modern Marxism ahistorical, idealist and generally a religion for the bitter).

Of course, dictatorship of the proletariat has always been the short-term goal of Marxists, not the dictatorship of (insert special interest group).

My advise to the students, expand your protest to be more than just about tuition. Look at controlling the state and bringing down the structural base of the system. Beyond that, you're only hurting yourselves and future generations.

[sans-culotte]

Sorry, but if the working-class needs to rely on students to improve their situation, then the working-class is surely in trouble. The problem with the students cry about tuition is that they have, for so long, had free tuition and thus continued to support the existence of the capitalist system, by pushing through, year-by-year, the same number of graduates to supply the pool of labour required for the capitalist system. I don't remember these students complaining that the capitalist system is a problem, nor did I see them revolting to destroy the capitalisation of the education system. Now, just now, that measures need to be taken to salvage the capitalist system, that was supported in great part by the working-class, to gain even a small portion of the material standard, are we complaining, NOT about the system, but about the tuition? This is the reality of a society that was pampered for so long and is only now crying about the structural failures of the system? Is this the base of our socialist revolution, on the backs of students?

I don't think the ideological abstractness of your position is yet justified. Capitalism is a set of relations, founded on material conditions and perpetuated by everyone through conscious activity; it is an evolving set of relations, and there are different social groups that, through acting in their interest, push this evolution in a certain direction, depending on their relative power. There are directions that evolve capitalism and its material base towards socialism, and there are those that do the opposite; it must also be noted that any direction is dialectic and has impulses in both directions, with a net effect determining outcome. The current actions clearly gravitate in a collectivist direction, which is desirable; their origin and context, which you have problems with, are irrelevant in the large scheme of things. What started as a response to a hike in fees has now evolved into a broad movement that seeks to decommodify education, attack political institutions, and provoke an even broader movement. When that happens, that's when your position becomes justified. In other words, you just can't expect a messianic movement with concrete and final goals to appear overnight, or to constantly exist. It appears in certain situations.

This would require an absolute restructuring of society, both socially and economically. Universities are in the business to make profit and it also ensures that there is a constant pool of labour for the market. Decommodifying education will not fit in with the market economy, as you're either raising the taxes of the working-class or you're taxing the richest (which will probably leave when that happens). If you want to nationalise the richest, great, but then we are speaking of a full restructuring of the society and the potential elimination of the market economy.

Again, I can employ the same logic as in the previous response to counter this. Restructuring can only be done when real agency is applied to real structural elements, but it is unjustified to expect real agency to be applied to all elements at once. How about we start with decommodifying university campuses, and see how the force applied to this element effects other elements and other forces?

Reading your letter, it sounds like the students are still concerned about the government and don't really view beyond that. What are these sit-ins going to do to change the fact that there is no money in the government? Do you expect the richest to feel sorry for the students and give them some money? Sure, do the sit-ins and your own lectures, this is not going to get you the diploma and lets say even the university gave you the diploma for those student lectures, they are missing the point that they are only cogs in the system. Do you think they will end up finding work with the companies in Britain? Some companies may even leave, because the educational knowledge will be lacking, or the government will bring in more educated masses to take the places, while these students work at Starbucks.

You apply the same logic as before, the false dichotomy of either all or nothing. Sit-ins and self-organised education is a nice start for the future growth of non-commodified, collective education that can expand and, through a cascade of hybrid forms eventually replace authoritarian bourgeois state education, in parallel with changes across the rest of society, too. Obviously, this can bring down the extorters and usurers that are entrenched in university governing boards - we don't really need them or overrated and overpaid celebrity lecturers that no-one listens to anyway for gaining knowledge. Most knowledge is obtained in group study and self study that is increasingly easy with modern information technologies, and falling lecture hours, non-authoritarian seminars and flexible timetables have reflected that already.
What is needed, just as elsewhere in society, is a force applied to change outdated power structures. If it doesn't happen this time, it will later - evolving productive forces constantly gnaw away at the division of labour and worker-manager split that are the obvious basis for capitalist organisation.

Of course, dictatorship of the proletariat has always been the short-term goal of Marxists, not the dictatorship of (insert special interest group).

Looking at real political events where Marxists participated, I'd say more like dictatorship of themselves.
And making the dictatorship of the proletariat a short-term goal is not at all pragmatic or materialist. How can it be a goal at all when it is evident that the proletariat is not capable of dictatorship, and won't be for a while? And when it is, it certainly won't wait around for Marxists to give it the go-ahead.

My advise to the students, expand your protest to be more than just about tuition. Look at controlling the state and bringing down the structural base of the system. Beyond that, you're only hurting yourselves and future generations.

We agree on this bottom line. I just hope I can help you see that the relatively narrow scope we operate on at the moment does not in the least preclude us from achieving what you advise us later on. You’d definitely get that feeling if you read some of the leaflets circulating during our demonstrations.

[grassroots1]

GNM 2010... if you didn't notice, this was probably the exact wrong place to ask for help. I would be interested if I was in the UK, but I'm not, and as you can see this place is a Twilight Zone where no one can agree on anything, let alone come together for a common purpose.

[sans-culotte]

^ I actually directed a few people to contact the project.

[grassroots1]

Fair enough. I stand corrected.

[Eauz]

The current actions clearly gravitate in a collectivist direction, which is desirable; their origin and context, which you have problems with, are irrelevant in the large scheme of things.

This was far from collectivist. This was putting up posters, joining facebook groups and showing up for a march/protest. If you want to talk about collectivism, then look at Thailand, where there was more thought put into organising and implementing a collective change. Sure, they eventually failed, but the leadership existed to help move the protest further than just people showing up. The leadership and ideology was completely missing from this protest. It doesn't matter what present day people think of your protest, what matters if that you're able to sustain a collective force to bring about the change, even if it ends up failing, the roots of the movement have already been planted. None of this happened and it saddens me to see the protesters constantly go down the same idiotic path that leads to police arrests, news agencies labelling everyone idiots and even terrorists.

How about we start with decommodifying university campuses, and see how the force applied to this element effects other elements and other forces?

The problem though is that there would be this disconnect between what is demanded within our labour market and that of our educational institutions. Decommodifying education will give the government reason to open the labour market to more people from other countries to do the jobs. They will be more than willing to come, because it would be in their interest to find a well paying job. You're only helping to loosen any benefit that socialism has had in the past century (if any), if you are doing this, within the context of capitalism. This is why it is essential to a major social movement, so actually sustain itself, in order to bring about change. There was nothing that actually fought back against the state and no one held out for very long. No parts of the city were taken over, nothing. How do you expect to even see change, when the increase in tuition was already passed? The movement needs to be better organised and planned, for longer stand-offs and goals of taking control of parts of the city. Again, I have nothing against decommodifiying education, but having random protests and people throwing stuff at windows and cars just isn't going to see the change these people want. If it is seriously desired, then the leadership of this movement should have done a better job of planning and organising the event.

What is needed, just as elsewhere in society, is a force applied to change outdated power structures. If it doesn't happen this time, it will later - evolving productive forces constantly gnaw away at the division of labour and worker-manager split that are the obvious basis for capitalist organisation.

There will always be someone willing to take your place in the labour market. However, I believe you are getting somewhat of an understanding of what I am asking for. The social movement needs more than just people to show up, it needs to transform these people into a collective and develop it into a force. Providing people with shelter, food and safety will help to develop this force, however, trust must exist within this movement, if we are to make any development.

We agree on this bottom line. I just hope I can help you see that the relatively narrow scope we operate on at the moment does not in the least preclude us from achieving what you advise us later on.

It's good to know we agree and I hope I can help you move away from yet another dead-end operation that has its roots in reactionary ideology.