On the university students occupations

greece / turkey / cyprus | education | press release Friday March 09, 2007 10:10 by OAE-Greece - Anarkismo outetheos at yahoo dot com dot au

Statement of OAE (Press Office)

Federally coiled students affixing their direct action and not their subjugation in various centres and experts will have the essential syndicalist reflexives to side quickly with every class mobilisation of educational, labour, economical or environmental concerns.

The occupations of universities after the decisions of the student associations are continued against the revision of Article 16 of the Greek Constitution which in theory ensures the public free education and also against the law-draft that imports more the various enterprises in the universities and intensifies the studies.

We had (as OAE) pointed out that the students’ struggle in order to solidify victories it should obtain a class and not a corporate character. This orientation can be achieved by the class fermentation of the students, the upgrade of the demands, with the class constitution of the struggle jointly with the workers, unemployed and pensioners. This class orientation of the struggle has not been achieved yet despite the good preconditions had the victorious start of the whole struggle during last year. Under the responsibility of the corporate and party students’ and academics’ associations we have a going back of the struggle in the known “wooden” reason of the Left-museum by which the Left conceives the students as sheeps and itself as the shepherd of the absolute truth.

There existed time to upgrade the demands, comprehended by the students that their struggle is common with this of the school teachers and the high school students. But, the party and corporate unions and associations had serious interests not to seek a class struggle that would put in the centre the exploited and oppressed because they would lose the control of them, they would be passed on the margin and this was the last the Left wanted because its existence is mostly based in the universities.

Thus the students’ struggle, with the indirect sabotage from the interior, progressively looses its mass character and various demands are floating such as... “possible Greek degrees”. Beyond the demands, the lack of a sufficient safeguard of the collective students’ decisions creates the impression in the society that the student struggle has not aims, that every small unknown minority can impose its “opinion” on the lot of struggled students even by violence. We saw this lack of safeguard of decisions and the corporate dimension of the struggle in its most tragic form during the last educational year which began with a big strike of primary school teachers, it continued afterwards with the occupations of high school students and now we have the mobilisations in university students and professors.

We believe that the situation will become very simple if we adopt the revolutionary syndicalism. If the revolutionary syndicalism is adopted as a method of action then we will have joint mobilisations of primary school teachers, high scholl and univeristy students, professors and parents who agree with the struggle. If the revolutionary syndicalism is adopted we will have as a basic demand the equalisation of the wages of all workers and then the struggle will take a character of a popular uprising. Moreover, we must not forget that the revolutionary syndicalism is based on the rank n’ file organisation, the discipline in the collective decisions and approves the violence only for aiming at the safeguard of the struggle from government owned and dominating interventions.

Today we realise that the one after the other the struggles lost from because of the multiple split in the interior of the exploited and not by the force of the capitalist State and government. All those who today speak for the supremacy of capitalism, government and State are deceit us. We should realise that the authoritarian of all colours use this argumentation in order to disorientate the popular classes from the party and corporate syndicalism responsibilities in the defeat of the struggles.

The poor univeristy students who later will become workers and no bosses, should draw conclusions. The student movement should change orientation, take a class character, organising his forces from under to above. It should realised by the students that they are not the centre of the world because they had the economic comfort, or enjoyed or had big faculties to pass in the third degree education. We believe the students must not be privileged against those social layers who did not have this opportunity and this should become conscience of the big part of students in order to escape from the corporate struggles.

OAE proposes a federal coiling of all revolutionary syndicalist forces of students to be formed immediately, regardless of ideological positions. We have to fight with class demands and revolutionary means in the student communities and this can become with long-lasting work of revolutionary syndicalist forces in the universities. The federally coiled students affixing their direct action and not their subjugation in various centres and experts will have the essential syndicalist reflexives to side quickly with every class mobilisation of educational, labour, economical or environmental concerns.

Thus it will exist a bidirectional relation between the student struggle with the workers, unemployed, pensioners and only then we will live collective victories of the classes suffering exploitation and oppression.

Forward in the class struggle!

Federation of Anarchist of Greece (Press Office)

March 2007