[READ FIRST: due to the level of unprincipled "argumentation" that has been taking place in the comments section, where Anonymous commenters are accusing a revolutionary organization of "sabotage" and making all sorts of baseless accusations––due to the fact that half of the arguments against this article have relied only on throwing insults and barely debating the content of this article––I am going to be clear about my comments policy. I have a job, I am not a student with too much time on my hands, and I've just wasted hours of work time dealing with asinine bullshit written by students who think they are revolutionary leaders. Some of these comments, thankfully, finally engaged and produced a useful discussion. Others are just poisonous and unprincipled allegations that not only attack the PCR-RCP as "counter-revolutionary" but also make the typical opportunist claims that anarchist militants are collaborating with cops. Any more comments of this ilk, which produce nothing but the same stale repetition of rhetorical sloganeering, will be deleted. Grow up and, if you think the position I'm advocating here is wrong, keep on organizing in the way that you see fit.]





Conference for Revolutionary Youth and Students , it is somewhat ironic that Fightback put out a statement regarding the student movement, on the Monday following the conference, entitled ? The irony is not only that right at the moment of this piece's publication the germ of a revolutionary student and youth movement was already founded, but that this article's analysis (which was claiming to answer the same question and almost precisely at the same time) ended up being at odds with the analysis of the conference documents and conference proposals. Even more ironic is that the author would cover some of the same territory, and make similar points here and there, of the conference's promotional pamphlet, circulated weeks earlier, but still draw the typical wrong-headed conclusions that we've come to expect from groups embedded in bourgeois legality. Since students and youth from across Ontario and Quebec (including observers from New York and Boston) recently gathered in Toronto for the PCR-RCP initiated Why No Student Movement in English Canada ? The irony is not only that right at the moment of this piece's publication the germ of a revolutionary student and youth movement was already founded, but that this article's analysis (which was claiming to answer the same question and almost precisely at the same time) ended up being at odds with the analysis of the conference documents and conference proposals. Even more ironic is that the author would cover some of the same territory, and make similar points here and there, of the conference's promotional pamphlet, circulated weeks earlier, but still draw the typical wrong-headed conclusions that we've come to expect from groups embedded in bourgeois legality.

What is most interesting about the approach taken by the above linked article is that it is paradigmatic of the myopia that has hampered the student movement for years: the desire to "take back" the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) from bad leadership in order to found a "united front against austerity". The author rightfully notes that the CFS leadership apparently has no interest in student radicalism but then concludes, without any historical analysis of what a student federation is within the context of a capitalist state, that the solution is to fix this federation and transform it into some sort of "anti-austerity" project. The logic is reformism because, just as one cannot transform a bourgeois party into a revolutionary party (and history has been quite clear on this point), one cannot transform any structure that depends on the capitalist state into an anti-capitalist vehicle.





Maybe the let's-fix-the-student-union position of this article is due to some sort of naivete, the fact that the author might lack the long perspective of someone who has been involved in student activism for more than four or five years. After spending four years as an undergraduate, two as a Masters student, and seven as a PhD student (I shouldn't be admitting to 13 years as a student!), and in this time being involved in student activism, like many I have the experience, gained through struggle, of understanding the role that student federations such as the CFS have always played as well as what happens to people who want to enter the CFS and fix it from the inside. Indeed, I've lost count of the number of well-intentioned activists who have disappeared into CFS fantasyland in order to change the leadership, conforming the institution to radical politics. Many of them did become CFS leadership and, in this becoming, ended up just as much bureaucratic and social democratic as their forebearers. At least I possessed the where-with-all to realize the stupidity of this practice and, by the time I was a graduate student, treated any activist who thought the CFS could be a viable political body if it was changed as out-of-touch with the concrete political reality.





does represent petty-bourgeois students which is In any case, the goal of a revolutionary movement should never simply be about fighting austerity––fighting cuts to welfare capitalism, fighting proletarianization––but about building a movement capable of challenging capitalism… And for a student and youth movement, this would require a connection with a broader and militant communist movement. Indeed, the reason we do not have a student movement in English Canada (a question asked by the article in question but never truly answered) is not because of some failure to make the CFS truly represent students––because itrepresent petty-bourgeois students which is the normative class identification in universities ––but because there has been a tendency to channel the student movement in this institutional direction.

The lack of a student movement in English Canada cannot, in light of the Quebec student strike, be explained away by some idealist appeal to "the two solitudes" nor can it be asked in a context of over-fetishizing the Quebec student strike. For even this student strike, though a significant rebellion, was also ultimately reformist and not a revolutionary student movement––as those activists heavily involved in this strike through the Mouvement Etudiant Révolutionnaire (MER) who attended the PCR-RCP sponsored conference pointed out. In fact, one of the express reasons for this conference was to address the lack of revolutionary perspective in the student movement throughout Canada rather than assuming that the so-called "Maple Spring" solved even the problem of austerity, let alone student radicalism vis-a-vis capitalism. As a conference attendee reported:

"Comrades gathered also discussed the lessons to be gleaned from the heroic student strike in Quebec: especially, that a revolutionary politics and revolutionary programme must be the leading force in such a movement, and that a struggle for reforms can produce only reforms, not the revolution we need. For the maintenance of these revolutionary politics, it was also noted that revolutionary student activists must maintain a separation and independence from the established student federations, which, according to their very nature, can only ever be reformist."

Those students and youth in attendance from Montreal, Quebec City, Rimouski, Saint-Therese, Guelph, Toronto––even observers from Boston and New York City [shout out to readers in Boston and New York City!]––not only endorsed this general analysis, but were energized by the way it broke from the stale reformism inherent in the whole "take back the CFS" political line promoted by social democratic ideology. For, as the 22 page document [the product of social investigation missing in the Fightback article, and which I will hopefully be able to make available as a download in the future] prepared by the PCR-RCP conference committee pointed out, again showing the irony of the above article:

"Most students' unions in English Canada are governed by the Corporations Act (including the CFS itself, which in every province, is comprised of three distinct corporations––National, Provincial, and 'Services'). This requires, among other things, that the organization remain strictly within the framework of bourgeois legality. Of course, a break with bourgeois legality is necessary in the course of developing the revolutionary movement we need and carrying its purpose to fruition: the revolutionary overthrow of this system. More than just an incorrect political directive, the commitment to this legality is written in the genes of the student unions and we must be well aware of this when charting our path to revolution."

The document goes on to argue that the ignoring the CFS, rather than trying to "fix" its leadership, is the correct political line––a line which should lead to building an autonomous student movement that is not embedded in bourgeois legality. And the students and youth who attended this conference not only endorsed this line––because they understood from experience and from discussion that the old way to do student politics has always been ineffective––but endorsed a variety of proposals that pushed for organizing students in high schools, colleges, CEGEPs, as well as indigenous and out-of-school youth. Proposals that were also aimed at wedding the student movement to the proletarian movement in general, partly by recognizing that out of work students, especially those who do not have the privilege to go to university and those facing national oppression, will constitute a reserve army of labour for capitalism.





Here is a student, not in attendance, who might have benefitted from the conference.

Of course, the Fightback article also recognizes the need to connect the student movement to a broader working class movement, though they seem to think, without any significant social investigation, that labour unions and the NDP constitute workers mass organizations. If the author of this article had bothered to examine the CFS leadership and its history, of which he is formally critical, he would probably notice that the ranks of said leadership are filled with NDP careerists and that the CFS is already intimately connected with this supposed "mass workers' organization"––and if this is the case, then it is already the kind of "proletarian" organization he wants it to be and doesn't need to be reoriented.





So what the author of Why No Student Movement in English Canada? fails to consider, let alone adequately address, is that the masses of students, and proletarian students in particular, are not paying attention to the CFS. Most don't even know they are members to begin with! This is because the very structure of the organization excludes––and is in fact necessarily averse to––mass participation. And to characterize the problem as one in which "bad leadership" plays the focal role (as though Fightback could do a better job) serves only to direct time and attention toward this essentially meaningless game of "inside baseball". Rather, what we ought to be doing is building a movement capable of the militancy and political clarity demanded by the struggle ahead.





But, as I noted, the Fightback article is simply paradigmatic of a common approach to student politics that, while imagining itself to be radical, is still caught within the reformist bounds of bourgeois legality.

Thankfully, those students and youth who participated in the recent PCR-RCP initiated conference, since they endorsed the analysis and proposals, will take a revolutionary perspective back to their own cities and hopefully begin building the kind of movement students, and especially proletarian students, across Canada need.