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Dear comrades and friends,
It’s really vital and useful to evaluate the features and the objectives of the capital’s and imperialism’s attack against the education, labor and democratic rights of the youth. Otherwise it’s impossible to understand the uprisings and revolts of the youth nowadays. Otherwise it’s impossible to understand the urgent need of the militant revolutionary forces to unreservedly participate and decisively contribute to these uprisings. In order to inflict blows, delays, cracks and overthrows to the reactionary attack, conducted against youth and its rights. In order to create, in a process, the necessary conditions for the militant youth, to meet the revolutionary liberating movement of the working class and the people.
First of all we should identify this period in and its features.
We live in a period where the economic crisis of the imperialist-capitalist system generates and is being generated by the fierce rivalry of the imperialist countries. The question is who will rule the markets, which imperialist will conquer the critical regions and finally the world domination. The collapse of the regimes of the so called (inexistent) socialism in ’89-’91 aggravated the contradictions of the system. We witness a new bloody circle of aggressive wars by the USA which slaughter people and conquer countries in order to succeed their goal for world domination.
Simultaneously the ’89-’91 collapses raised globally and in each country the most reactionary forces and liberated the capital’s most barbaric appetites. So the general attack which had started since the 80s developed to an attack of strategic character against the gains of the working class and the people. The aim is the re-establishment of the capital’s class domination. They want to “restore” the normal function of capitalism, without leaving any gain that would remind the people’s struggle in society. They want to impose on the broader masses of toilers and workers a modern working and social dark ages model. This attack has expanded and already includes extended parts of the middle strata. The majority of their children is in higher education.
Comrades and friends,
The attack against youth is part of the general attack which is conducted against the people and as such it must be faced by youth itself and of course by the revolutionary forces which act in it.
The education mechanism has great importance for the ruling classes having as a fact that a huge part of youth today and for a long time study in the various education levels. In Greece the vast majority of youth is being educated. Only in Universities and Technological institutes there are about 500 thousand young people.
So education while it still maintains its “pure” educational side, which is the provision of the necessary knowledge to the future toilers, simultaneously continues bring the most basic mechanism for a) The reproduction of class stratification and b) the reproduction of the dominating bourgeois ideology. So that youth will be distributed and finally being “harmonically” (that is on system terms) involved in the capitalist production and in general in bourgeois society.
On the other hand education in every country, more or less, includes “elements”, strange to the system, which are gains of people and youth as far as education is concerned. A result of their struggle was the right to education for all the people. It was a result of the fact that during a previous period (50s-60s) the increased needs of capitalism in higher specialized technical and scientific labor led to the increase in mass scale of the students in institutes like universities.
The economic crisis that has been spreading since the 70s set the issue of abolishing all people’s gains in education. This reactionary attempt accelerated in the post ’89-’91 collapses period.
Today in Greece we witness an unprecedented attack on youth’s right to education. This attack originates from the Imperialist European Union and is supported by the bourgeoisie of our country.
New examination and economical barriers are set up for people’s strata starting from Primary and Secondary Education. A parallel network of so-called professional education is being restated, which is virtually a parking place for students and a hallway of unemployment and black labor. These in combination to the economic and social diminution of people’s households, leads thousands of children even to abandon educational process. So phenomena of dropping out school as it happens in Asia, South America and Africa start to appear in countries of middle development and the capitalist metropolis.
It is very important for our country’s ruling class to discourage the youth from university studies. In this attempt they mobilize a lot of things. From the examination barriers at the end of Secondary Education to “canalize” youth to departments that are nothing more than unemployment parking lots and which have been created during the last 15 years in the direction of supposedly giving mass access to higher education.
During the last year the Government of New Democracy (Right-wing party) with the collaboration of PASOK (social-democratic party) promotes a new law for the University and Technological Educational Institutes.
This law imposes time limits for studies and expulsion of students who exceed these limits. It also opens the way for the application of the two circles of studies (bachelor and master) which for the majority of students means at most a certificate at the end of the 1st circle so that only a small minority will continue to the 2nd circle which leads to a university diploma. So the government promotes one of the portals of the reactionary commands of the Bologna, Prague and Berlin Summits.
The new law draft abolishes free books (no payment), as many free provisions left in feeding and housing students, with the goal of enforcing tuition fees in higher education. The same thing is promoted in Germany also and it has caused many demonstrations and mobilizations recently. So they want to prevail as the main dogma that “ the one that has many will get education”. Furthermore to strengthen this reasoning, viewpoints of loans and scholarships which are going to be paid off by working for the university are being promoted more and more. In this way they turn our right to education into a privilege of few.
This law seeks to abolish University Asylum which was gained in our country through youth and the people’s struggle. Asylum defends free social and union student activity and prohibits the intrusion of police and army forces in university campuses. The law parallel to this, institutes arbitrary internal regulations and tries to set under constriction the function of student unions.
It also creates the position for Managers in the Universities and Technological Institutes and orders the institutions to sign 4-year contracts with the government, promoting in this way the so-called evaluation (or ensuring quality). This is nothing more than a tool to conform the institutes in the direction of serving better the needs of foreign and local monopolies. A tool used by Imperialist E.U. to adjust higher education in Europe to the rivalry needs of its guiding imperialist countries (mainly Germany and France) against USA and Japan. Besides all the measures are “inspired” from the need of the European imperialists to create the United Space of Highest Education so that they can respond to this rivalry from a better position.
The attempt of the government to reform the article 16 of the constitution was the final objective in order to abolish the right to education and in order to establish private universities, something prohibited by article 16. First of all the government wants to impose a function based on free enterprise criteria (abolishment of free provisions, tuition fees) to public universities. It wants to impose the strictest discipline to public universities through the so-called “competition” between public and private universities. Simultaneously it opens the way to the foreign capital (England, France, Germany and the USA) to expand the so-called “exporting of education services” through franchising in our country and legalizes local businessmen which made profits by selling fake hopes and degrees without real value.
This reactionary attack from time to time uses the business vocabulary, like competition, flexibility, efficiency, “students-clients” etc. Thus it tries to legalize itself ideologically and politically. It tries to exploit the negative balance of power in the ideological field and impose its policy which isn’t new. Even in using parts of the education structure by businessmen to produce profits through selling research, subsidies and tuition fess, the basic issue remains the same: education doesn’t have as a purpose to produce profit but to produce-prepare those who will produce profit for capitalism and will also be used to preserve-reproduce-expand this process.
Comrades and friends,
The attempt to abolish every right to work for the youth, gained through the struggles of the previous generations of workers is closely connected with the attack on the right to education. They try to consolidate the new and negative for the working forces balance of power on the youth’s rights. Thus the youth will accept to become a modern slave which serves the capital’s needs for more and more profits.
From this viewpoint, the reactionary overthrows attempted in education have to do with the preparation of youth to accept without complaining and as something inevitable and normal the lurid future they prepare for the youth. The disconnection of the diploma from the right to work is the first step to abolish the right to work for the youth. The “system of transferring and accumulating credit points” and the “diploma supplement” which is promoted by E.U. converts young people to chasers of credits and certificates, puts them in the vicious circle of individuation of studies and of ruthless competition of their fellow-students. In this way the so-called “life-long education”, promoted by the imperialists and the bourgeoisies will come as a natural outcome. They want to prepare the youth to accept without complain its conversion to tools which the employer uses whenever and in each way he wants. That is, the youth will accept the vicious circle of working without rights, being thrown to unemployment and start again re-training etc. Wasn’t the goal of the infamous CPE in France that tried to turn the young workers into slaves for the capital that raised that huge struggle wave from the French Youth? And wasn’t this youth’s reaction that forced the imperialist E.U. and its right-wing and social-democratic mouthpieces to invent the spurious term flexi-curity (flexibility and security) in order to obscure things and promote their reactionary policies?
Obviously it’s difficult for the youth to quit from its rights the rulers arm themselves legally, judicially and repressively. They grow the state – the one they allegedly are shrinking – to face the youth’s and people’s resistance. Their armory is extended from the new repression and police forces with their over-equipment to the gigantic development of a network of the youth’s misinformation, enervation and sedation. They use the orchestrated Media and the repression of demonstrations and inhibition of free thought and activity. We will mention only a few recent facts, part of this huge operation of terrorizing youth and its struggles is the attempt to abolish Asylum in our country and the consecutive repression of youth’s demonstrations in Chile, up to the intrusion of the famous CRS in Sorbonne.
Comrades and friends,
The attack the youth is part of the attack against the people, and in the same way the youth’s uprisings and revolts recently are objectively part of people’s waves of resistance and struggle to face and overthrow the attack against them. In a sense, the new generation is trying to take the place that belongs to it right next to the people who are fighting.
The first and vibrant message of the new generation was the two months mobilization of French university and high-school students and young workers all over France that forced the French government to withdraw CPE. In the same direction of defending youth’s rights to education and work, was the growth of the students struggle in Chile.
Since last May also in our country a great struggle of the student masses has unfolded. For two months (May and June) the vast majority of the University and Technological Institute Departments were occupied by the students after decisions made in their General Assemblies. The peak of the dispute was the law draft mentioned before. In autumn the primary-school teachers continued the struggle started by the students by having a six weeks strike while the high-school students raised against the “basis of 10”, a rule that prohibits the access to thousands of high-school students to universities and technological institutes.
Despite the cracks in its policy New Democracy promoted in January the revision of article 16 (which we have mentioned before) with the collaboration of PASOK. The reaction was rapid and continues up to now. The majority of the departments were re-occupied by thousand of students. The student movement with its second enormous struggle in a year forced PASOK to withdraw from the constitutional reform procedure. So the movement was able to break the reactionary alliance which was set up and to set under dispute the reform.
These days in our country a new and very critical episode of the attack in youth’s rights is in progress. New Democracy having the conviction that it will bend the militant morale of the student masses put forth for voting, ten days ago the law draft which had been temporarily withdrawn in June due to the impact of our mobilizations. The answer of the students after three days was immediate: At a demonstration in Athens, 30000 of students participated, twice the number that participated in the previous demonstrations.
As it’s being understood in our country we have a great struggle in progress. That doesn’t prevent us but on the contrary it obliges us to express some thoughts about these struggles in our country which despite their specific features we believe that they have a lot in common with the youth’s struggles in France, Chile and Australia.
The youth that was considered by many more or less a lost case, once more surprised everybody with its ability to understand. It understood the substantial: that the system has blacklisted it, that no matter how many sacrifices will it make it will live in insecurity and repression. It has seen that the measures being promoted were obviously against it so the youth took the significant decision: youth chose the path of struggle after many years of inactivity. At that point individualism, fatalism and disappointment which dominated in extended parts of youth and which tied down their militant moods started collapsing. Youth started to recognize and embrace the human values of comradeship, of solidarity and the possibility to fight for a better life. It started recognizing the enemies and the feigned friends. It started realizing more deeply the causes of this attack.
In this struggle youth is fighting for the self-evident right that at the same time the system deprives from it. Youth fights for public and free education. So that all the students can study for free and no tuition fees will be imposed. Youth fights against class barriers during studies either before university or during university which discourage youth from continuing to study. Education isn’t a privilege of the individual but a social right. Youth fights for the right to work and against the predatory mood of the capital to make youth its slave. That’s why students fight for the fortification of their diploma as the only precondition for work against the disconnection of the diploma and the working rights and life-long insecurity. Youth fights to defend Asylum, its unionism freedoms, its freedom on thought and activity against bans and repression.
Nobody put youth into this struggle; youth did it on its own because instinctively it understood that serious things were endangered. And with the authenticity, the massiveness and the rage of its struggles forced reformist forces which stood even hostile to its struggle to make a 180 degrees turn so that they wouldn’t collapse.
The existence of radical and militant revolutionary forces inside student youth of course played a role in unfolding youth’s struggle. But and as things have shown when some radical forces tried not to express the moods for struggle to justify their fixations they were isolated.
The Militant Movement of Students from the very first moment tried to contribute to the battles that student youth has given and is still giving. Despite their small forces they fought and managed to become a discernible and respected political and trade unionist force of the movement. They insisted and still insist to the necessity of unity on the goals which arise from the movement of the student masses and against the pursuing of the system. All this time they contributed into taking militant decisions and fight against any efforts to turn these great struggles into matters of a few so-called “vanguards”. This attempt objectively undermines the struggle and turns student youth into a prey for system’s plans.
Because these struggles express the resistance of youth to the attack of the system and it’s not the peculiarity of some wise men. That doesn’t mean that these struggles haven’t presented (presenting) and don’t have weaknesses. We shouldn’t forget that youth experienced and is experiencing a negative balance of power while the defeat of the communist movement is a burden on youth’s backs. These things could not be solved in such a short time. That’s where the agents of the system stand on to confuse youth, to blackmail youth and finally to tie it down.
Comrades and friends,
Whatever the temporary outcome of this battle in our country will be, only one thing is certain. This battle and the other recent struggles of youth are not part of the last glances of the historic phase that is fading out. On the contrary they are the first remarkable incidents of a confrontation period with the capitalist and imperialist system. Objectively they stand next to the struggle of the Palestinian people and the militant youth of Idifada for abolishing Zionist and imperialist ties. They stand next to the fighters of the heroic Iraqi resistance who are bogging down the biggest imperialist of the planet. They stand next to the unchained Nepali youth which fights for social and national progress. They stand next to the fighting Turkish and Philippino youth. They objectively stand next to the new waves of people’s resistance. So the new generation through the attack it is facing started discovering the other side, the one which they kept hidden from youth and which they slandered. It is the struggle for a better life on the side of the working class and the people. And that cannot be defeated by any force. Because “when you see swallows you know spring is coming”.
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Introduction
For more than 10 months there has been “turmoil” in education in Greece. It started in May, when the government (rightwing) with the collaboration of the parliamentary opposition (social-democrats) tried to pass a reactionary law regarding the function of universities. This law was preparing the way for a overall overthrow in education and the people’s gains, the result of our people’s struggle for decades. They were planning to pass a constitutional reform right after this. This reform was concerning the establishment of private university schools and the abolishment of the state’s commitment to provide free and public education to the people. For two months, May-June more than 95% of university schools were seized and the students were sitting in. Every week there was a big demonstration in many Greek cities with tens of thousands students participating. This huge movement managed to postpone the voting for this law.
The government was planning to pass the constitutional reform during summer but it was forced to postpone it again – with the collaboration of the parliamentary opposition – for October. In September the big strike of primary school teachers started. This strike lasted 6 weeks and for reasons concerning the balance of power in the teachers’ movement was “stopped” –sold out – the moment it was about to involve every sector of education, university students, high school teachers and high school students. In more than 1000 high schools the students were sitting in them. The voting for the new law and the constitutional reform was postponed again for January.
Right after Christmas holidays, in January the 10th, the government tried to pass the constitutional reform through a parliamentary committee. In that day there were mass demonstrations in many Greek cities with thousands of students participating. And after that, one school after the other were seized despite the extortions for losing the exam period and consequently the semester, the brutal police attacks and the orchestrated media. Every week the students in their general assemblies reconfirmed their commitment to the struggle against the reactionary attack. Every week in many Greek cities there have been big demonstrations, concerts, theatre plays, mass mobilizations to inform the people in the neighborhoods and open debates. Due to this political pressure, PASOK (social-democrat parliamentary opposition party) retreated and announced that it was withdrawing from the constitutional reform process and that it wouldn’t vote for it. This was a big victory for the movement. Yet there are still many things to be done and many dangers to be confronted. The struggle goes on.
The ground of struggle
So why are the youth and the high-school students, the university students and the teachers as whole fighting for? What do the university students pursue, what would the high-school students want, what are the teachers demanding? Why is there all this turmoil? We could first set it in general. We live in a specific capitalist society in which the dependency from the imperialist forces has a “special weight”. Simultaneously we live in a period in which the system escalates a generalized attack against the working people’s masses as a whole. So all this contradictions originate and develop on this ground. All these uprisings, all these struggles are the expression of these contradictions no matter the way they are expressed.
What’s the situation of education? What features did it shape in a course? What changes were attempted and continue to be attempted in this field? How and in what are these connected in the general frame which has been forming during the last years?
What are the basic goals of the educational process in the capitalist system that determines its substance and its character? We can summarize them to the followings:
a) The plainly educational side. To provide the necessary knowledge to the future working people-citizens.
b) The reproduction of class stratification.
c) The reproduction of the dominating – bourgeois – ideology.
d) The “prehistory” of the issue
Education and basically the university structure have a quite long history. The university was a creation of bourgeoisie and a weapon in its hands in its struggle against feudalism. It raised the necessity to research and study nature and society against the theocratic, metaphysical, obscuring concepts dominating up to then. It was a development field for progressive, democratic, social concepts and again in contradiction to the then standing concepts. In this form it was the target for the church, the feudalist forces and so bourgeoisie had to defend it. The concept of the asylum (transition of the concept of the temples’ asylum to the “temple of knowledge”) originated from this confrontation.
After seizing the power, the bourgeoisie became in time a reactionary class which was now functioning oppressively on the other classes and mainly on the working class.
This reversal is expressed in every field and certainly in the education field.
The universities for a whole historic period continued to serve the bourgeoisie without the necessity to use further oppressive measures and constraints for their function.
The faculties had exclusively bourgeois origin, education, ideology and were reproduced as such by themselves. So the scientific and ideological production moved on a basis of bourgeois concepts without needing any constraint measures.
From this point of view, the concept of free scientific research and study, of university’s academic character didn’t bring any troubles to bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it was the showoff of a system that in every other sector was reactionary. But on the other hand also, the university students had free access and no time limitation for their studies. The “sorting out” was being done on its own. The vast majority of those that could study, based on the economic and social facts, used to come from the bourgeoisie (actually from the upper layers). They had the respective social and ideological specifications and the respective destination. The rare exceptions didn’t reverse but on the opposite served this reality.
The impact of class struggle
This situation started changing with the relative broadening of the education field and also from the aggravation of class struggle. The reflection of the developing struggle of the working class and the communist movement started affecting the student youth and the teachers, basically in primary and secondary education and less in the universities, where the limits of the closed leading club were restricted. But even in this the few luminous exceptions became quite dangerous for the system since they attended a specific audience. They couldn’t be faced anymore as the “eccentrics” of the scientific community, who could be tolerated by the system and prove this way its “broadness of intellection” that characterized it. They emerged as prominent personalities that provided special weight and prestige in doubting the bourgeois ideology and the system in general.
This development forced the system to face the need for control and the respective measures, basically of administrative and police character. They were the firmer sorting out in hiring educational stuff, measures of control and oppression and even firing and prohibiting of union activities. Similar measures were taken against the “participation” of the student youth in “politics”. It was the prohibition of student unionism (or only after the permission and under the control of the university authorities). It was also disciplinary measures, even expelling the politically active students. It was the police presence in the universities, open repression measures against the students, establishment of specific control and suppression mechanism.
The big turmoil
Yet, the great turning point was noted when the very development of the system led to the mass increase of student youth. This also happened in a similar degree in the teachers’ section. This development set a number of serious and difficult problems for the system to face. The “natural” (class, social and economic) sorting out of the previous eras lost in a decisive degree it importance and its effectivity. The administrative and police control wasn’t enough any more. From a certain point on, the role of education blocked, regarding the reproduction of class stratification. What was initially welcomed (based on its broad needs) became a trouble for the system. The consequences in the field of bourgeois ideology reproduction were similar and quite sharp.
The class struggle was transported in the education field both as a reflection of the class struggle conduced in society and on the basis of the specific problems that the students and the teachers – social categories with an increased weight in the overall social order, were facing in their sector (regarding their perspective). The bourgeois ideology lost the monopoly in education. There were many cases that the students’ movement particularly, developed to percussion force of people’s movement and political confrontation to the system. In our country it was the movement for 15% for education, the French May, the students uprising in Thailand in 1970, the students mobilizations against the imperialist raid in Vietnam (even inside the US), the uprising against the junta in the Greek Polytechnic School in 1973 etc.
System’s problems
To solve the problem the system was facing more essential regulations required than the usual administrative and police measures. So we had the readjustments in the university structure in combination with the collaboration with the reformists, a development that played a significant role in the adjustment process of the faculty and the relative “obeisance” of the student movement.
The problem which seemed unresolved was the role of education in reproducing class stratification (with impact to the other aspects of the issue also). The admission exams for universities were established many years ago. Nevertheless and despite all the adjustments, the problem couldn’t be faced since the masses of the high-school graduates wanted to continue their studies in the university. Several solutions were invented on order to deal with this problem like the establishment of “higher” (technological) education in many variations. The results were not satisfactory at all.
They even thought to establish a fourth education level, but this wasn’t (and isn’t) something that could be done without certain overall economic and social readjustments. The institution of postgraduate studies (master degrees, etc) gave a partial solution to the problem and also the creation of selective university departments where the system’s future elite studied. The key-issue that emerged was the control of the student youth number – and they seek to do that in the education process before university (mainly in secondary education). So it started promoting a series of measures (barriers) which aimed in discouraging high-school students in continuing their studies in universities, their turn to the so-called technological education or even to quit school. So the final barrier (the admission exams for the university) would deal with less pressure and would be more effective.
These measures (taken as a whole) gave certain results since the access to university became tougher by the time, especially for youth originated from people’s strata. However the whole problem remained and it couldn’t be otherwise.
No system can solve the social problems it creates on its own via regulations in…education. The relation between them is and remains always the other way around. (That is why every fancy suggestion for education “reform” is nothing but rubbish).
The system’s attack
During the current period the system is orientating to more radical solutions for this problem. There are the problems concerning the very educational structure and process and their combination with the general social and political overthrows already conduced.
We live in a period that great overthrows have been conduced in favor of the capital and against the peoples. It’s a period of the capital’s attack and its objective is the re-establishment of its class domination in every field and on the most absolute basis. The imperialist powers are attacking with the objective of re-conquer, and re-colonialism of the world.
The basic objective of the capital’s attack is the complete subjugation of the working class. The main element of this policy is the promotion of the new labor relations, the so called “liberation of labor market”, and the “flexibility”. That is the consolidation of the capital’s ability to hire the ones its wishes, as many it wishes, with labor conditions and salaries it will arbitrarily decide and it will fire as many and whenever it wishes, without any restrain. At the same time, they plan to consolidate this policy with measures of restriction or even abolishment of trade unionist, democratic rights.
This attack doesn’t concern only the youth and the working class. It also includes the peasantry, the petit bourgeois (even the medium strata). It is about an overall social re-order. The measures promoted in education are also directly connected with these general overthrows and the respective policies. The international dimension of the issue is quite interesting. Particularly, it’s the increasingly intensified rivalry among the imperialist powers and specifically in regards with the control of information, hi-tech products etc.
The promotion of various measures today has initially a significant difference with the previous attempts. Based on the system’s general attack, the economic and social position of broader social strata have been declined. It is already a factor that limits the ability and the aspiration for higher studies early enough. On the other hand, it generates dissatisfaction and rage in the people’s masses and it forms the conditions of a broader support for the youth’s-teachers’ struggle.
Control of the number of students - Class barriers
The main element is the control of the number of students, so the education would fulfill its role in reproducing the class stratification. The – class character – barriers that rise almost from kindergarten (there are such tendencies and plans) until inside the university. Viewing the issue in another aspect, here we have the abolishment of education for all, the prevention of exercising the right to education. This prevention turns to a form of exclusion for the young people that originate from people’s strata regarding the higher education levels. These directions are obvious in the suggestions of the committee that is responsible for the education reform.
These are the introduction of admission exams from one level of education to the other (from primary to secondary and from secondary to university), similar to the German Education Model. The sharpening of class barriers that is responsible for the compulsory “turn” of high-school students to technological institutes. Similar role in this process of “turning” youth away from universities plays the creation of lots of private institutes that provide “degrees” of questionable or no value. The final barrier for the high-school students who wish to study to university are the admission exams.
In addition to all the aforementioned barriers we also have the limitation or even abolishment of student rights, such as housing, food provision and healthcare by the universities or the state. In a direction of further increasing the cost of living and studying of the youth, so that the youth will be forced either not to study at all or to quit its studies.
The objective is smashing the movement
The basic axis of the system’s intervention concerns the “discipline” of the education sector. The reproduction of the dominating ideology is a basic element of the educational process. The ruling bourgeoisie considers every deviation from this function of education as unacceptable. “Academic freedom”, “free circulation of ideas” and “research” is considered acceptable only and as long as the viewpoints of the system are circulated “freely”.
This reproduction is connected both with the context of studies (especially in social studies) and with the ideological “education” from kindergarten to university in general. The questioning of this ideology is developed both based on the controversies in context but also and mainly based on the growth of the movement.
Both the student and the teacher’s movement is the main field where the terms of questioning the dominating ideology are shaped. It is shaped as an arsenal of ideas and viewpoints which not only questions but also leads to the collision with the system, to opposition to it. It’s converted to a workshop where viewpoints which orientate to fighting the system, to confront it are developed. Many times it forms into a political force which creates very serious problems to the system and which can create much more serious ones in its perspective of connecting with the more general people’s movement. That’s why the smashing of the movement is the main objective. The administrative, oppressive and police measures are an old story which remains in the agenda.
The threats for expulsion from the university for several “academic” reasons, e.g. if you fail to pass a course, aim at smashing the movement, constraining the students from having political activity, having sit-ins. The “evaluation” methods play a significant role to this and also the use of either the police or private security corporations in the universities. The system created and continues to create the terms of an oppressive environment which will discourage the development of unionism and political activities.
The adjustment to the “needs of the Economy”
The argument used by the system, which opportunistically (or stupidly) is also adopted from other sides. Actually it’s the education that gets adjusted to economic and social given facts and not the other way around. Of course the issue doesn’t concern an immiscibly scientific, technical problem which could be faced as such as many claim. The truth is that what the system really wants to do is to adjust education to the new class, social and economic given situation which also it’s also trying to modulate.
The system wants to create a new balance of power of social forces through the downward suppression of social categories like the proletarization of a part of peasantry and lower and medium strata. The main axis of its policy is the re-configuration of the new labor relations in favor of the capital. Every measure that has been promoted, from class barriers to the smashing of the movement, serves this direction. Regarding the latter, a decisive role plays the disconnection of the degree (diploma) with the right to work.
The free-public Education and the “new era”
What we should clear from the beginning is that the system will continue promoting its policy in every possible way.
The reason the system wants to change the free and public character of education (wherever it didn’t manage it already) is what we are interested in. First of all, it’s promoted on the base of the general dominant systems trends internationally and in every field. Privatization is dominating our era and not only regarding the productive, profitable enterprises. Not doing the same in universities it would seem like questioning this doctrine. There are even more serious reasons. The social character of certain organizations (such as universities) shouldn’t exist at all. Even if this character up to now existed in an inadequate and distorted way. So this dimension of things should disappear at all, if possible.
The existence of free and public education is a symbol of another period which the system wants to leave behind and move over to the period of a new balance of power and conditions it wants to impose to society.
Privatization as a crowbar of overthrow
The issue which has decisive importance was and still is the promotion of the measures we mentioned before in every possible way. The promotion of privatization comes to serve this, among other things. In modulating the terms and correlations on which the promotion of this reactionary, monopolist overthrow will stand on.
The specific problem on which privatization comes to help, by overriding it, are the so-called “stiffness” and “inelasticity” which characterize the education field at the moment. Education and especially universities have a certain structure, a history, a status, a prestige. Simultaneously there is a world that functions in its bounds with institutionally established roles and rights and in the case of universities based on a relative independency.
In this world we have to include all those that based on the changes of the previous years and the political forces (reformists), gained access and role based on these changes. The rights and demands of the teachers of all levels of education and also the student youth with its “hot-temper” and revolting spirit.
The parliamentary majority the system has, doesn’t correspond at all to the real will of the social body regarding this chapter. The new measures have to pass “through” the resistance of all these forces.
Reinforcement of capitals domination
In this concept, privatization (and independently on the bandwidth it will cover in the end and the forms it will take) works as a crowbar of a reactionary, monopolist overthrow of the current relations and structures. It modulates and mobilizes forces which support the new policy. It creates given situations which will function “as an example to follow” and will pressure to certain directions. It modulates a group of people that will claim its “space” and proportional treatment from the state
Regarding the way and the time these reforms will be applied in the private sector, that’s quite easy to tell. Obviously there will be tuition fees, payment for the books, and everything concerning studies will be more expensive. They will impose “private” discipline to the teaching staff and students as well. It will be the abolishment of the asylum, since they will be protecting their “property” from the “vandals”. They will face in a completely reactionary way any demand, either from the students or the teaching staff.
Many things have been said about sponsors. We only have one question. Who is blocking them from sponsoring in the already existing system?
The capital has been “working” with the universities years ago. This relation is under certain conditions and it wishes to change them in order to get benefit. The general development has formed new balance of power that allows the capital to impose its terms in every field and turn science to its servant.
The issue of research is also involved. The capital wants the research. But it wants it on the basis of its own conditions and above all under its control.
A basic criterion is if the results of research could be included in the profit circle. This is the basic criterion and it is completely secondary if the product is useful or harmful for the people. But it has to be certified “scientifically”. Therefore the science should comply with this on the basis of mutual interest and by the law.
In general the privatization is meant to form the conditions of the capital’s domination in every field.
The imperialist dimension of the issue
Certain decisions of various summits (Bologna, Prague etc) and certain European Union directions have played a particular role in the formation of the measures that are being promoted. There are two basic axis related between them. It is the capital’s attack against the people of labor with the objective to impose its conditions in every field. It’s the imperialist attack with the objective of re-conquer and re-colonialism of the world.
At the same time, in the latter there is a sharp rivalry between the imperialist powers in every field also. The measures concerning education are related with the first axis. Yet they include elements of the other aspects and their importance is obvious in a process.
The campaign of re-conquering the world hasn’t only the form of the armed and bloody imperialist interventions. In the same policy is included the so called free access to the markets, the abolishment of economic borders (of the depended countries), the free distribution of capitals (of the imperialist countries) and the formation of dependence and subjugation conditions for the weaker countries to the imperialist powers where the ideological-cultural suzerainty has a significant role.
There is a very sharp inter-imperialist rivalry regarding the hi-tech products. It is a problem connected with the issue of scientific research and technology and its control. It is also the rivalry concerning the control of information, which is also aggravating.
The tendency to form conditions of questioning the US monopoly in the cultural level (cinema, songs, and TV products) has been consolidated. It’s a rivalry concerning both the cultural model that has been imposed and its connection with economic interests, since it is about industries of global dimensions.
A particular aspect of this issue is connected with the EU and its relation with our country. During the recent years we have experienced a deindustrialization process and the takeover of enterprises basically by the European imperialist capital.
There was a similar development in rural field. Recently we also witnessed the attempt to takeover Greek banks and their networks in the Balkans. The education sector could not be left out of this development, despite its specificities. Regarding this certain tendencies have been developing that have largely “European” direction. Thus there is a direction of forming a “European” ideology and a common (at least linked) European education field (respective projects like Erasmus etc) and more particularly in the field of research and technology.
It is also the formation of elite that will be inspired by the “European” ideals. It should be noted that with the term European we mean the plans and the aspiration of the powerful imperialist European countries. If this process hasn’t developed so fast, this wasn’t due to the resistance of the ruling classes of the weaker countries. Mainly this happened due to the contradictions among the great European powers. In these countries, as certain given facts have shown, there is a strong tendency of safeguarding their “national model” (and not only in education).
The youth that is struggling
What happened in our country didn’t fall from the sky. It was the outburst of a rage accumulating for years.
The measures the government attempted to pass ripped the veil. And the youth saw the world as it really was. Everything they sensed was right there in front of them. Everything that oppressed youth, without being able to define it, started taking its shape. The anguish for the future took a more concrete form.
And while the illusions, that for years had been feeding it, started losing their glamour and disappeared form its horizon, the youth started recognizing its really problems.
It recognized the reasons and who was responsible for these problems.
And it became very infuriated. And it started moving. And during its raged move it started discovering more things.
The youth discovered its own power.
It discovered its ability to fight, to demand.
It discovered its enemies and its friends.
It discovered what they were trying to hide form it.
It discovered the value of comradeship, solidarity and collectivity.
It discovered the value of struggle, organized struggle, organized political struggle that was so calumniated by the system and by various “prominent personalities”.
This development is already a victory.
No matter what the outcome of this struggle is in this particular phase, they are now valuable consignments for the coming struggles. And they certify what Marx has said many years ago. “Every real step of the movement counts a lot more than a dozen programs (Criticism to Ghotta Program).
Why does the student’s youth fight for, what do they demand?
Well for the self-evident things. No argument would be required if there wasn’t so much obscuring over them.
They fight for the right to education. They fight for the self-evident right of young people to have access to every level of the education process.
They fight for the right that the system has already deprived form the young people in secondary “technical” Education by rising new class barriers and the thousands that throw out of school.
They fight for the self evident right to work. They fight for the right of every people to be placed among the society, not as an outsider member but as a person who leans on its fundamental relation with life. His/her accession in the productive, economic process, the process that gives him/her the right to realize his/her role and demand his/her rights. That is why they refuse the future the system is preparing for them.
They fight for the self evident right to life. They fight for the free development of a creative relation with life, based on true values, freedom, equality and social justice. That is why they refuse the “rotten” values the system is trying to indoctrinate to them. That is why they seek the values that can inspire them in the way of struggle.
The struggle of the student’s youth stands firmly on the real contradictions that separate it from the system and its policy.
That is why it managed to develop despite the overwhelming negative balance of power and the coordinated attempts to disorientate and deviate it form its objectives.
That is why the youth remains strong, having already achieved significant victories.
On the same basis it can gain more, by remaining the stable militant pole that can inspire the activation of other forces in the education field.
It can gain the support of broader people’s strata.
This is the question today.