We publish this
text from Revolutionary Perspectives#61,
Spring 2012, Magazine of the Communist Worker’s Organisation, affiliate
(Britain) on the Internationalist Communist Tendency because we are totally in
agreement with its contents even if we have no organizational link with ITC.
Internationalist Communists -
Klasbatalo
The
Student Strike in Quebec Poses the Question, Only the Working Class Can Answer
It
Largely
unreported in the global media 170,000 students in Quebec (more than a third of
the total) have now been on strike for three months. It has lasted so long that
some journalists have taken to likening it to the movements in the Arab world
and dubbed it “the Maple Spring”. The students in universities and GECEPS
(colleges) are fighting to prevent a 75% hike in tuition fees over the next
five years. It will come as no surprise to anyone that this is part of an
austerity package of budget cuts announced by the Liberal Government of the
province to “bring down the deficit” from $3.8 billion to $1.5 billion in a
single year. On this level it has a familiar sound.
The Issue
The
bitterness and extent of the conflict is however remarkable. Behind it lies two
different visions of the world we live in. On the one hand you have students
who uphold the right to a free education (something abandoned everywhere else
some time ago). They point out that Canada is a signatory of the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which calls for “the
progressive introduction of free education”. On the other hand are the corporate
interests promoted by the decidedly corrupt Jean Charest (1),
the Liberal Prime Minister of the Quebec Government. Already under
investigation for corruption over construction contracts his favoured project
is the so-called Plan Nord. This will pave the way for the destruction of the
ecosystem of Northern Quebec as it opens the area up to the likes of
Rio-Tinto-Alcan, ArcelorMittal, IAMGold, Alcoa, Agnico Eagle, and Xstrata. All
have already benefitted from promotional fees (worth $500 million) and huge
government grants worth over $1.6 billion are planned over the next five years (2).
The annual savings from the higher education fees hike would only be about £250
million. The connection has not been lost on the student movement
"On April 20, students demonstrated outside a job
fair for Quebec’s Plan Nord — a major initiative to develop the province’s
north — where Mr. Charest was speaking. One demonstrator was pepper sprayed in
the face as he tried to enter the Palais des Congres. In his speech that day,
Mr. Charest mocked the protesters and offered to give them jobs in the province’s
north (3)."
Little wonder
that two days later a quarter of a million demonstrated in Montreal on Earth
Day. Many of the demonstrators pinned the small red squares which denotes the
student movement to their clothes in solidarity with the strike. No wonder the
Government would not negotiate and has poured vitriol on the students. It has
tried to portray them as selfish spoiled brats who want everything for free.
This flies in the face of the fact that they were not fighting for themselves
but for the rights of those who would follow them. No wonder this Government
rhetoric has incited its paid thugs (aka the police) to use unprecedented
violence on peaceful demonstrators – a violence which makes anything seen so
far in the “advanced democracies” look rather tame. No wonder it has cited the
antics of a few who have responded with violence to condemn the whole movement
when the real violence has been that of the state.
A Wider Struggle is Needed
In the face
of this the tenacity of the students has been admirable. Militant and resolved
though the students have been they cannot win this fight alone. Some them know
this, and have made attempts to reach out to rest of the society and, in
particular, to the wider working class. They have not done enough of this but
they have also come up against the hypocrisy of the unions. The unions have
supported the strike verbally (how often do they do that with workers?) but
have not once organised a single day of solidarity action with the students.
This is because they are in reality part of the corporate management of the
state. In recent years they have signed hundreds of deals to ensure the
profitability of Quebecois capitalism which has led to lay-offs, speed-ups and
wage freezes for workers. And this weekend the union leaders were the ones who
“brokered the deal”, as one of our comrades put it, to get the student leaders
into signing away the principal aims of the fight.
When it comes
to negotiating a defeat behind closed doors no-one can compete with the union
leadership. The deal that was finally stitched up was nothing less than a
complete climbdown for the students. The fees will rise but over seven years
rather than five and the way is open for further fees rises in the future. A
committee is to be set up to look at further savings from university budgets
which might then reduce administrative fees students have to
pay. But as its composition is dominated by business and government this is
unlikely to find any and the Government has already said it is unlikely to make
savings.
Not
surprisingly the leaders of the three student organisations have held this last
clause out as a sop to the movement to hide their sell-out. It is equally unsurprising
that they have not been able to sell the deal to their members.
The stakes
are indeed high. Global capitalism in crisis cannot renege on its need to make
us all pay for its plight. By resisting its attempts to turn back the clock the
Quebec students are implicitly posing an entirely different mode of social
organisation. If capitalism can only offer more misery, more debt and worsening
conditions of existence it is time to explicitly reject it. But the students
can only pose the question. The answer can only be given by the working class
as a whole. The movement has to widen to become a full-scale anti-austerity
movement which takes in the fears and aspirations of the majority of society.
This is not going to come about any time soon but the anger and rage of this
movement has to be built on. What is needed is an organisation which recognises
explicitly that capitalism offers no future. We need to abolish the society
that puts profits before people, that needs money for its functioning and its
state to repress all opposition. It is time for a communist programme.
Jock
(1) And
opinion polls suggest that he and his Liberal Party cronies will be thrown out
at the next election this year (as happened after the last big student revolt
in 1990).
(2)
See “Violence budgetaire” by Michel Chossudovsky at mondialisation.ca
Thursday, May 17, 2012
email: uk@leftcom.org
website: http://www.leftcom.org
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