November 5, 2009 — Alderson Warm-Fork

At a rally for cheaper education. A chant starts up:

“The students! united! will never be defeated!”

My first thought: Wait, is that true? No, that’s not remotely true. You could easily get all the students together and have the rest of society crush them with impunity.

My second thought: In fact, doesn’t that drain all significance from the original chant, ‘the workers, united, will never be defeated’? The significance being, that it’s actually true, and that disunity and disorganisation of the working class is a necessary condition for capitalism.

But now apparently any group with a cause to push is happy to declare itself the invincible revolutionary agent. *sigh*…