Students today are operating in a campus climate of almost unprecedented repression. What does it mean for socialist students trying to build political organisations in the universities?
The last great period of radicalisation, from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, was a time of huge struggles and social change. Like Palestine today, the Vietnam War revealed the sheer barbarity of capitalism to a new generation. An economic boom following the Second World War and the massive expansion of higher education raised the expectations of young people who chafed at the restrictions of a profoundly conservative society. The social and economic conditions generated a “youth rebellion” that helped build a bridge between radical students and a working class that was far more militant than today.
The workers’ revolts that challenged capitalist rule in France in 1968 and Italy in 1967-69 were sparked by student protests and displayed a high level of worker-student cooperation. These events shattered the myth of Western capitalism’s stability and prosperity, and proved that workers in advanced economies still had revolutionary potential.
But the uprisings that promised so much in France and Italy were defeated—not because of any lack of fighting spirit, but because of the politics of the left organisations to which left-wing workers traditionally looked—especially the Communist parties, whose Stalinist politics had dominated the left since the late 1920s. They worked frantically to end the mass strikes and break up the alliance between workers and students. Russia’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, following its brutal suppression of a workers’ revolution in Hungary in 1956, confirmed that the USSR had nothing to offer those fighting for a better world, and indeed was part of the problem.
In Australia, Labor’s crushing defeat in the 1966 election, fought on an anti-war and anti-conscription platform, led a sizeable minority to conclude that parliamentary politics was a dead end. A new generation of young activists emerged, whose militancy and deepening criticism of capitalism created space for the formation of new left-wing groups that rejected the politics of both Stalinism and reformism.
But what was the alternative? Grappling with this question generated intense debate and considerable political confusion, as various currents battled it out.
Some drew inspiration from the revolutions in China (1949) and Cuba (1959) and anti-colonial struggles in Asia and Africa. Others viewed students rather than workers as the leaders of a coming revolution. Some rejected the idea of building any kind of organisation, arguing that parties always led to authoritarianism. A minority (including Socialist Alternative’s precursors) sought to recover the revolutionary core of Marxism and advocated building a mass revolutionary party based in the working class.
The Communist and Labor parties were increasingly challenged by more radical forces. A plethora of groups—Maoists, Trotskyists, anarchists, libertarians and radical liberals such as the Students for a Democratic Society—competed for influence on campuses. The ideas that dominated varied by location. There was a sense of urgency, a widespread hope that revolution was around the corner. (Socialist Alternative’s Mick Armstrong, a leading student activist at La Trobe University, recalls being asked when he thought the revolution would start. When he replied “in about five years”, he was derided as a pessimist.)
The universities were a major front in the battle against imperialist war. Newly radicalised students joined left-wing clubs at militant campuses in every state. Student unions—which today view their role as “providing services” and running sausage sizzles—became activist, political bodies.
Socialist students campaigned to politicise the national student union, turning it into a body that could mobilise and coordinate mass activity across the country. By 1973, a broad alliance of socialists and unaligned far-left activists had won control of the Australian Union of Students (AUS, the precursor to today’s National Union of Students) from the Labor Party.
For a period, Monash University was at the centre of student radicalism. In 1967, when a majority of the population still supported the Vietnam War, the Labor Club (a left-wing club not affiliated with the Labor Party) began collecting money to aid the National Liberation Front, the military organisation fighting against the Western invasion and therefore responsible for killing Australian and American troops.
This widely publicised act of “treason” caused an enormous furore, but actually resulted in a shift to the left, both in the anti-war movement and broader society. Mere opposition to the war was now a moderate position; the radicals opposed US imperialism and supported its defeat. The National Liberation Front’s Tet Offensive in 1968 confirmed that the US could not win. In September 1965, a Gallup Poll had found 56 percent in favour of continuing the war. By August 1969, 55 percent opposed it.
The Maoists were highly influential in the student movement because of their militancy and strident opposition to US imperialism—such as the 4 July 1968 anti-war protest, when the US embassy in Melbourne had its windows smashed and there were running battles with police. But their support for Stalinist regimes like North Korea alienated many students, as did their appalling positions on women’s and LGBTI rights. They also argued that Australia was colonially oppressed, so Australian workers should ally with “patriotic” capitalists against US and multinational companies.
At Monash, the Revolutionary Communist Club, of which I was a member, took the Maoists on politically, using our weekly broadsheet to critique their politics and, in 1973, hosting a debate on “the road to socialism”. To their Stalinist argument for a “two-stage” revolution (first win national independence, with socialism postponed to the indefinite future), we argued for a working-class revolution to overthrow capitalism. Several hundred students attended, with most favouring our position.
A few days later, the Maoists distributed a leaflet titled “Icepick”, (the weapon used to assassinate Leon Trotsky), regurgitating the Stalinist lie that Trotsky was a fascist agent. But by then, we had supplanted them as the leading force on the Monash left. The following year, we led the longest occupation of a university building to that point in Australian history.
Political debate in those days was not always verbal. As their influence waned, Maoists often resorted to violence against their rivals on the left, especially Trotskyists. At the 1975 AUS conference, for example, they viciously assaulted La Trobe delegates, including the aforementioned Mick Armstrong. If you were a revolutionary socialist, you had to fight for your ideas, sometimes literally.
The period of radicalisation didn’t last, but it left an invaluable residue in the form of small groups of socialists who continued both to clarify their politics and to build organisations. Socialist Alternative has been the most successful of these.
We’re operating in very different circumstances today. Despite some similarities, particularly regarding student activism, the Palestine movement has not led to a generalised radicalisation on the scale of the 1960s and ’70s. What was then a vibrant and combative labour movement is today weak and passive. Strikes are at historic lows, and the trade unions have been hobbled by bureaucrats whose loyalty to the Labor Party (and their own career prospects) overrides any commitment to defending the working class.
In the 1960s and ’70s, left-wing trade unions took up political as well as economic issues. They played a prominent role in the anti-Vietnam War movement and in the protests against the 1971 South African rugby tour. Today, with Labor supporting Israel to the hilt, few unions offer even verbal support for Palestine. The only strikes for Palestine that have occurred here have been organised and led from below by Socialist Alternative members.
Students play an important role in the class struggle. Often the first to move, they can act as a catalyst, drawing broader social layers into activity. They have played a distinct role in all revolutionary movements, even when universities were largely the preserve of the upper classes. For example, during the 1905 Russian revolution, Vladimir Lenin (who had been expelled from Kazan Imperial University in 1887 for his activism) praised “the radical students, who ... are the vanguard of all the democratic forces”, and insisted that the Bolsheviks, the party that went on to lead the Russian Revolution, take work among students seriously.
In Australia today, approximately two-thirds of people aged 15–24 (1.6 million) are engaged in education, so students constitute a substantial social layer whose actions can have a significant impact. This alone would be sufficient reason for socialists to do serious work among students, but it is also the case that students are of immense strategic importance for any revolutionary organisation—especially when the left is small and socialists do not have mass influence in wider society or the workers’ movement. The fact that Socialist Alternative is now the largest far-left organisation in Australia testifies to the success of this strategy.
Socialist students can play a pivotal role, whether on their campuses, in social campaigns and movements or relating to groups of workers in struggle. The radicalisation around Palestine presents an opportunity to rebuild the socialist movement, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and this is most likely to occur on campuses.
The immediate task of socialists in the student movement must be to expand our base among students and win broader support for revolutionary socialist ideas. With clubs on every major campus, Socialist Alternative’s student members are well placed to do this.
