FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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November 30—”We’re not that much different than the people being killed” by cops, said a black student at elite Claremont McKenna College.
He’s right. There is no safe space anywhere in racist capitalism.
Anti-racist uprisings have swept over fifty US universities this month, led mainly by black students rooted in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Their anger and passion come from the racist disrespect, threats, and attacks they experience at school daily.
The University of Missouri (Mizzou) was the spark. Its football team made national news by threatening a boycott in response to a series of racist attacks. Faced with losing $millions, two top administrators had to resign.
Before Mizzou came South Africa’s University of Witwatersrand (Wits). Last March, Wits students joined the anti-colonialist #RhodesMustFall movement. They called for removal of statues and symbols celebrating Apartheid. Many followed the misleadership of Julius Malema’s nationalist Economic Freedom Fighters. Students at Princeton, Harvard and other US schools have made similar demands.
Militant #FeesMustFall protests started at Wits on October 13 and spread to campuses across South Africa. Their demands – now including free tuition – are also spreading in the US. But capitalist schooling always comes at a price: the alienation of students from the working-class masses.
This movement “cannot be seen in isolation,” according to a Wits student leader, “but as part of the cracks that have been showing in South African society since the Marikana massacre.”
These “cracks” have been opportunities for the rapid growth of the International Communist Workers’ Party in South Africa, as our recent conference there showed. We must redouble our efforts to take advantage of them.
Students, Workers and Soldiers Need Communist Revolution, Not Reform
After Mizzou came Yale. Ithaca. UCLA. Brandeis. South Carolina. Stanford. Towson State. Northwestern. And dozens more. When racist counter-attacks began, the movement grew stronger – like at Howard.
Many student demands are the same as generations ago: more black professors, students, black studies courses, multicultural centers. Mizzou students insist that “the University of Missouri meets demands that were presented in 1969.”
That alone should make today’s activists think twice about demanding reforms. Capitalism is racist to its very core. Only the masses – led by industrial workers and soldiers, especially the super-oppressed—can end it, and only by mobilizing for communism.
But it goes deeper. Some students demand that University administrators crack down on students, teachers and staff – maybe forcing them into “diversity training.” This is like asking the fox to guard the chicken coop. The capitalist rulers want the masses to see them as saviors when their own system is the problem. This is a deadly trap! Instead of “demanding” that the rulers “fix” their system, we workers and students must organize to destroy it.
The “set goal” of the #StudentBlackOut movement, said Black Liberation Collective (BLC) organizer Brandan Marshall, is “What can we do to fix these situations.” But the BLC calls for a “student revolution” and quotes Assata Shakur (quoting Marx): “We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Such contradictions create more cracks. Our comrades must bring communist revolutionary ideas to thousands of students already mobilized against racism, and thousands more.
Universities: Tools of Class Oppression, Not “Ivory Towers”
Those who oppose the anti-racist protests invoke the myth of the university as an “ivory tower” where all ideas can (or should) be debated in isolation from society. It was never that!
In a sense, the Black Liberation Collective shares this ideal. It says that its common thread is “the desire to experience learning spaces that are safe for ALL Black students.” But the notion of an “ebony and ivory tower” is just as mythical.
Universities have served the ruling classes ever since they were first established in Fez, Morocco (859) and Bologna, Italy (1088). They distinguished the “mental labor” of the “professions” (law, theology, medicine) from the “manual labor” of the masses.
Every major US university was built with the bloody profits wrung out of enslaved black people. The rise of science and engineering alongside 19th-century industrial capitalism revitalized the university system on the backs of wage laborers. Wits started off as a tool of imperialist mining interests.
Communism Won’t Have Universities
Communism won’t separate work from learning or research. Technical training (like engineering or medicine) will be freely available to all workers who want to deepen their knowledge. It will mainly occur at worksites like factories and hospitals.
All workers and youth will be able to study philosophy or history or the arts. Study groups will meet at workplaces or neighborhoods, using on-site and internet resources – and others not yet invented!
Communism will have no “degrees.” These only prop up the myth of a “meritocracy” where some deserve more than others. Nor will we have “grades” and “tests” that pressure students to compete. The real test of knowledge is practice. How well do you know a language? Start a conversation with someone who speaks it!
We all want a “safe space” in which to live, to work and to learn. Only communism can get us there.
