Re: final points on the student occupations

[Fiocco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Fiocco Laura)]

Dear Bruce, your analisis is ok but.......you forgot two groups: parents
(who have to pay the fees) and the teachers (who have to produce "flexible
labour forces").
Why do you think you ought to involve unions of some kind and not people
who are directly interested in what is happening?

I have no idea of the concrete situation for suggesting anything. But I
read your analisis thinking of the news about a occupation with no toilet
and no food.
And I am wondering why not induce parents to help into the occupation's
organisation (starting from mothers bringing food passing through police
line) and to the other end make the teachers to take position?
For the teachers I think the possibility of making them come out of
"private" is to put into question their own job (contents) and their
selective power (examination), both related to your point 2. If this is
done in a way that at least a small part of them think it is reasonable
then that will make them fight each other (and thus take a political
position)

ciao laura






>[Marg, I don't know if this is adequate to Leftlink, becuse it may be more
>for discussion purposes - and I'm sure it would draw them, which I know is
>not really what leftlink is about. It's more about circulating information.
>I'll leave it up to your discretion whether you want to post it. Thanks,
>regards, Bruce Lindsay][ everyone else can probably just ignore this bit!!]
>
>
>
>
>Further to the reports on the series of actions of the student movement in
>the last few weeks and days. At my own campus - Monash Clayton - I have
>been told by comrades of mine that the rally held yesterday to coincide
>with the University Council's meeting to endorse up-front fees actually
>produced the first notable setback for administration, when it forced the
>meeting to be abandoned and postponed until July. Those who saw the news
>got an idea of the increasing police presence and repression that is
>accompanying the students' actions these days. The Monash rally, was called
>at short notice and there were a couple of hundred students involved - and
>more to the point there were bands (who performed for free) and the action
>lasted all afternoon - the Council meeting being at 5pm. Apparently there
>were rumours of underground entrances but if so it didn't seem to make any
>difference. I was told that a number of councillors just gave up and went
>home, others (obviously with loser stamped across their foreheads) tried to
>get passed the students' line but failed. Also, the admin building was
>locked from early in the morning to deter occupation. So, like on the
>living income rally in March when BHP locked the building down in
>expectation of an occupation, we can use the *sense* of our power to make
>the Power go into seige-mode, without even actualizing it. I would say that
>this is a specific form of making our power real.
>
>I would like to make some further analytic points on the present movement,
>at least as far as I see it here in Melbourne and see the rest of the
>country from this perspective.
>
>Firstly, beginning with the BHP occupation last and building to the present
>wave of actions, there is a sense, if uncertain, that some space has opened
>by our collective actions, that there is *possibility*, and that it is a
>new possibility not dependant on the thankless petitioning of parties,
>government's, lobbied, etc, or upon the depressing memories of past glories
>(Whitlam?) or defeats (everything since?). This sense cannot be either
>overstated or ignored. Nor can it be isolated from other struggles. In many
>ways nothing has changed, we did not get Melbourne Uni to overturn its
>decision about fees. But I feel it was certainly a "strategic withdrawal".
>Part of its success was that it seems the strategic terrain has changed up
>to now, and that the demoralizing passivity of rallying and going home to
>our private, atomized existence is being shed. The technocratic-gangster
>state (in the university, or elsewhere) has not been so worried. We have
>many other struggles peppering it to thank also. It is important to
>remember I feel that, while getting many more people involved is important,
>we are striving for a qualitative change in the state of things - that
>those involved and getting involved begin to know something of their own
>power, ie. of our power and not their Power.
>
>Secondly, the character of the refusal in the student movement -
>specifically  the present refusal of formal privatized, user-pays
>mechanisms - should be put in to the context of the restructuring of higher
>education (education as a whole?), accelerated by the conservative
>governments.
>
>It is aimed at an "amercanized" system, of elite (privatized/corporatized)
>schools, middle level technical schools, and the TAFE and labor market
>training system.
>
>The university I used to work at  - Swinburne - stated this explicitly, and
>provides an excellent example of the middle level school: vocationalized,
>automated, austere. This system as a whole is aimed at reproducing the
>"dual economy" of elites (and the narrowing band who strive - mainly
>through massive debt - to enter their institutions) and "mass
>intellectuals" (whose  skills are narrowed and education is increasingly
>integrated into a precarious, "flexible" labor-market).
>
>In so far as the restructuring imposes spending cuts and so forth, which
>must be seen in the context of the reorganization of welfare, income
>support, etc, serves on the one hand to push down the value of the *social
>wage*, that is it produces austerity. This increases and intensified the
>work of the unwaged student as well as the waged staff in the institutions,
>and also the work needed to survive studying (ie, waged work outside study,
>the reproductive work of women at home, etc).
>
>On the other hand, notably in *parts* of the technical universities (and
>even large universities) and in the TAFES/labor market training programs
>there is a tendency to *fuse* the unwaged work of the student to the needs
>of the labor market (eg. the constant move into and out of the
>school/workforce, the tailoring of courses to industries and capital's
>needs, incorporation of unpaid work as students into industrial
>workplaces). There is a an attendant heirarchy of exploitation in the
>education system as in the labor market itself.
>
> What the struggle against fees seems to represent in this context is a
>refusal of a key, strategic area of development - that of the establishment
>of elite schools (no doubt subsidized by taxpayers), which are in reality
>already massive corporations. The character of this refusal emerges out of
>the historic demands of the student movement for public education, not
>constituted as a *private* commodity. This does not means it has yet or has
>ever (or necessarily believes it has) come to terms with the status of
>education as a *public* commodity (eg. in the grading system), which
>organized heirarchy through the state instead of the "corporation." Neither
>does it mean that the movement has come to terms, to such a degree, with
>the struggles in other sectors of education and training (eg.against
>austerity, automation and "mechanization" of curriciulum,
>super-exploitation of the unwaged/low-paid, etc). Certainly, the increasing
>focus on a "living income" in place of Austudy/the dole is an important
>broadening of struggle against cuts to the social wage. Esepcially in its
>capacity to link with sectors outside of the "middle class" students.
>
> On the other hand, the occupation at Northern Met. TAFE was part of the
>struggle for the student union itself as a means of protecting students at
>this pole of the education system - vicious de-unionization is not just the
>province of the most exploited sectors of the working class but of their
>schools also - in the effort to further push down the conditions
>accumulated in the social wage.
>
>Thirdly, the series of occupations and "disruptions" reveals that the real
>strategy available to the movement is the public reappropriation of space
>(both social and physical). Furthermore, this is determined by the content
>of what students do - ie their work - which is essentially socialized,
>creative, intellectual, interactive. They cannot "withdraw" their labour in
>this regard because to withdraw from being social, creative, etc, is really
>negating yourself, even though capital wants us to do this more or less
>anyway. The occupations showed the possibility of reappropriating
>creativity, interactivity, etc, *on our terms* - even if this was on a very
>limited basis.
>
>It would seem to have been more fully developed at UTS, where they began to
>make links to other struggles such as Bougainville, as well as transform
>the nature of power and politics to participatory-democratic, collective,
>ethical, etc, processes. We can glimpse all of this in what has just
>happened.
>
>It is also important to note that at Melbourne Uni at least there was
>considerable sympathy generated among the staff - whose character of work
>is based upon the same creativity, interactivity, etc, as the students,
>only they are waged workers (and with differing interests because of this).
>The management likes to call them effectively "service" workers now. At the
>height of the actions on Friday, when there was a large march around the
>campus and the possibility of occupying other buildings (which happened
>half-heartedly in the Law Library), it would seem that there was some
>possibility of the some staff more concretely supporting the students.
>
>This would have been a decisive development but as it happened this didn't
>come off. The local staff union apparently refused to call a meeting of
>members.
>
>All of this raises the question of the relationship between the staff and
>students, and I guess more broadly the students and workers in general now
>that the bulk of the workforce is in the service sector and similary
>perform work that is social, creative, interactive, "personal," or
>whatever. For my part, I think that '68 is way dead, and the students
>cannot be seen as just a "detonator" of other social sectors, notably the
>factory workers, wage-workers, etc. Like other "social", community, etc,
>struggles, the students are being looked to as a way out of the mess. Now
>they are not just asserting *right* but moreover asserting the possibility
>of (democratic, collective...) *control*, ie, over their existence and
>their future, over social and material space.
>
>Fourthly, because the state is geared to "crisis" there has already been a
>visible increase in the level of repression and intimidation on the ground,
>although the student movement has been faced with overt political
>repression for several years. There is every likelihood that the level of
>repression will remain or get higher. This is true of the state police,
>including the regular presence of paramilitary forces in relation to the
>student movement (and the young working class in general), but on campus
>the increase in the level of campus cops and their greater presence (and
>probably enthusiasm). Fortunately the networks of student activists seem to
>be pretty well aware of the question of repression and the need for
>security. However, it would be reasonably safe to assume that numerous
>teams of well-paid (white, emotionally-retarded, homophobic...) members of
>Victoria's finest are buried away (in their well-appointed offices)
>figuring out how to "neutralize", "pacify," "surgically remove," etc the
>irritation in the student movement right now. Perhaps they know about all
>of this before you do!
>
>Well, that no doubt is more than enough for now. I can just imagine the
>criticisms that'll come down upon me for these suggestions. Oh well, that
>is the nature of learning I guess.
>
>Regards,
>
>Bruce Lindsay.
>
>
>
>
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