no drugs. no sex. and no leaders

[bcbm]

They’ve been dismissed as naive idealists, but today’s student protesters are pragmatic, democratic and astonishingly media-savvy. Laurie Penny gives a first-hand account of a group battling to find new methods of resistance
http://images.newstatesman.com/articles/2011//20110203_student_w.jpg
Hi-tech revolution: the New Statesman gathered a group of student protesters for a portrait in east London, on 24 January.

It's just before midnight, in the damp chill of an austerity winter, and a gang of students and schoolkids is standing smoking against the iron railings outside an occupied lecture hall. "All that aspiration was pretty much for nothing when there are no jobs," says Amit, 18, a computer science student from Medway. "This fight is so much more important than blind careerism. Just don't tell my parents I said that."

It is the last day of November, and we are outside the Jeremy Bentham Room at University College London (UCL), the unofficial London headquarters of a national youth movement that has sprung up in protest at the government's cuts to higher education and welfare. Some of these protesters already have scars and bruises from the riot lines.
continued:
http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2011/01/student-protesters-young

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

If there's no sex, I'm not interested.

[Kalifornia]

If there's no sex, I'm not interested.

Yeah these guys seem pathetic IMO, they certainly put the N in cuts.

These posturing students can eventually get a good high paid job, try being a normal working class youth in these times.

Its like the squatting crowd, who are 99 percent middle class assholes, who do not need to worry about getting by as mummy and daddy are always there to catch them if they fall.

[ed miliband]

For all Penny's claims that the movement is "leaderless" it seems that their are a vast array of people who want to lead it, amongst those many who celebrate it for its leaderlessness.

But idk.

[gorillafuck]

Then, behind her, another shout goes up. "It's snowing!" says one of the students, interrupting a debate on police brutality to rush over to the window. "It's snowing!" These members of the so-called lost generation press their faces against the glass, or hurry towards the doors to go outside and catch fat, frozen snowflakes on their tongues.What the fuck?:blink:

This is an interesting article, though. And I don't think it mentions the kids backgrounds, except for saying that they come from a variety of different backgrounds.

[Kalifornia]

they are mainly liberals who parrot hollow critiques of the system, they just wanna be raaad mannn:thumbup1:

[ed miliband]

These posturing students can eventually get a good high paid job, try being a normal working class youth in these times.


I am a student (not at uni yet tho) so I can't agree with this completely, but on the student demos I certainly encountered an array of people who seemed to be there for a May '68 moment and little else. In itself that isn't too bad (or rather it's understandable), but when you hear people say that they "don't mind David Cameron" and think that he's "just doing what he has to do" (and I promise I haven't made those quotes up!) it's impossible not to feel a little disheartened.

On the other hand it isn't even remotely true to say that all those out were wealthy kids who'll end up with high paying jobs. To reinforce this point I heard a student who fits such a description bemoan the amount of "chavs" out. Take from that what you will.

[bots]

Yeah these guys seem pathetic IMO, they certainly put the N in cuts.

These posturing students can eventually get a good high paid job, try being a normal working class youth in these times.

Its like the squatting crowd, who are 99 percent middle class assholes, who do not need to worry about getting by as mummy and daddy are always there to catch them if they fall.

As a working class student I can tell you you're being a dink. I've got a shit load of debt, no guarantee of a better future (especially with austerity economy), and it's difficult for me to make ends meet. I'm actually worse off than some of my friends who work crappy service sector jobs.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Yeah these guys seem pathetic IMO, they certainly put the N in cuts.

These posturing students can eventually get a good high paid job, try being a normal working class youth in these times.

Its like the squatting crowd, who are 99 percent middle class assholes, who do not need to worry about getting by as mummy and daddy are always there to catch them if they fall.

dumb post. ii'm a poor student and most of my student friends are poor - none of have guarenteed careers, but guarenteed debt. you sound like some reactionaries i've met who tell me that students are wasting their time building a movement in unity with workers, as if we are all middle class wannabe rebels. many of us are working class youth who have gone to study instead of work (both in many cases).

also, my mother and many people she grew up with HAD to squat coz they were kicked out their homes and stuff - hard times with no mum or dad around in fact. don't generalise based on one article!

[Ravachol]

Yeah these guys seem pathetic IMO, they certainly put the N in cuts.

These posturing students can eventually get a good high paid job, try being a normal working class youth in these times.

Its like the squatting crowd, who are 99 percent middle class assholes, who do not need to worry about getting by as mummy and daddy are always there to catch them if they fall.

How about you read up on what class is all about before opening your big internet loudmouth.

'Trying to be a normal working class youth' is exactly what we shouldn't try to be. Communism is a revolt against the condition of being proletarian, it is the self-abolition of the proletariat not some glorified manual-labourist cultural identity politics. Sure, a significant segment of the student population isn't working class, ranging from managers-to-be to financial bureaucrats and well fuck 'em. But a far larger segment of the student population are either being streamlined and molded as a working class gear in the Capitalist megamachine or they're working class already by 'virtue' of being forced to rely on precarious work to pay their tuition fees. As for the squatting movement, sure there's plenty of liberal 'activists' around there but this goes equally for a lot of ML movements. So whatever bro.

[Kalifornia]

Yeah ive heard it all before, however everytime students are involved in stuff, look at them 20 years later, they are liberals with good jobs looking down on working class people and lumpen.

[DiagnosticDDT]

No drugs, but no sex? oh come on now...We all need a little bit of something from time to time :D

[gorillafuck]

Yeah ive heard it all before, however everytime students are involved in stuff, look at them 20 years later, they are liberals with good jobs looking down on working class people and lumpen.
As opposed to you, a guerilla fighting for revolution day and night.

[Kalifornia]

As opposed to you, a guerilla fighting for revolution day and night.

Hey im not trying to be arsey, I just think students generally are on a path to becoming less radical once they finish their higher education, I don't say it hoping its the case, however I think for most this is true, ofcourse there are exceptions.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Yeah ive heard it all before, however everytime students are involved in stuff, look at them 20 years later, they are liberals with good jobs looking down on working class people and lumpen.

marx, engels, lenin, mao, trotsky, che - stupid liberal bourgeois stoooooooodents!

[The Vegan Marxist]

Fuck the leaders, but no sex and drugs!?? FUCK THAT! lol

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Hey im not trying to be arsey, I just think students generally are on a path to becoming less radical once they finish their higher education, I don't say it hoping its the case, however I think for most this is true, ofcourse there are exceptions.

pretty much any left intellectual you admire was a student.

[Kalifornia]

I do not admire them as people, just the movements they are part of.

[gorillafuck]

Hey im not trying to be arsey, I just think students generally are on a path to becoming less radical once they finish their higher education, I don't say it hoping its the case, however I think for most this is true, ofcourse there are exceptions.
If you think being a student is a sign of affluence in the western world, then you are really living in the past.

[Kalifornia]

If you think being a student is a sign of affluence in the western world, then you are really living in the past.

Bro thats not what I am saying, What I was saying is that alot of students have their youth rebel phase then go on to have careers and never touch politics again, I do not think students can lead a revolution and think building up hopes of these protests doing anything is just going to lead alot of people to becoming dissolusioned.

Yeah socialists who atudents and woring class are awesome, however everything ive seen on the subject leads me to believe once people have let college they end up looking down on the rest of us and basically looking at their radicalism as the rebel phase they went through in Uni as a great story to reminise and pass on to the family:lol:

But sure maybe I was a bit aggressive in painting all students as such, that was not my intention.

[Amphictyonis]

These posturing students can eventually get a good high paid job, try being a normal working class youth in these times.



Partly true but students have played major roles in the struggle for decades. The problem I see is a lack of a real bond/solidarity with workers and students. Theoretically it's there but in the USA I don't see it manifesting in reality (on any meaningful scale). The only time I saw some meaningful solidarity between workers and students was the WTO protests and that's because workers were pissed about jobs being outsourced.

Intellectuals in general need to throw themselves into the work force and sacrifice their careers in academia. All too often students are radicalized during school but join the middle class and "grow up" after a few hefty pay checks but this isnt universal by any means. Students are very important for the struggle.

[bcbm]

i think an action oriented student movement that is building ties with trade unions and other groups while opposing austerity and causing trouble is pretty cool. maybe they will "grow up" and "sell out," but i don't see why we need to force this onto this from the start. previous student protest movements had much different outlooks because of general prosperity but that no longer exists today and many students face the same bleak future as working class youth and many others. why insult those starting to fight it instead of building off it?

[The Grey Blur]

here is a response to this article by one of the students who took part in the occupation and took exception to penny's tone: http://zetkin.net/journalism-subjectivity-movement/

i have lots of problems with laurie penny's style of writing (bit romantic and cringe-worthy, no?) and her creation of an artificial 'generational politics' angle. recommend the above article and the writers' two follow-up pieces and that we on the left shouldn't be so quick to take a bourgeois source (the guardian) as gospel.

the student/worker debate is utterly redundant and has been for about 60 years since tertiary education become progressively more available to working-class students (and since something like 1 in 3 students today work during their degree) and with the current context for major post-graduate un/under-employment. the whole point of these education/funding reforms is that this positive step will be reversed.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Bro thats not what I am saying, What I was saying is that alot of students have their youth rebel phase then go on to have careers and never touch politics again, I do not think students can lead a revolution and think building up hopes of these protests doing anything is just going to lead alot of people to becoming dissolusioned.

A lot of this is because the communist party elites have the same position as you. During May 68, when the student protests were heating up, the French communist party ended up passing the protesters off as a bunch of whiny brats... and then with the help of the large leftist trade unions, they successfully persuaded the workers (many of whom joined the students in protesting) to stop protesting and go back to their job.

The problem isn't that the students lack revolutionary potential, the problem is that many leading communist officials perceive they do. Then after being left out to dry, many of the students abandon their views as 'idealistic'.

Also, I'll add: 1. The vast majority of the American protesters in the 60's fit your mold, as the 60's American 'leftist' movement failed absolutely horribly. But that's because it wasn't a real radical movement in the first place. 2. The radical groups in West Germany were also detached from the working class, although I think that's more or less because they were either terroristic or they focused on hedonism, etc. instead of revolution (see American Left above).

[Raúl Duke]

What the fuck?:blink:



They might say there's no drugs...but perhaps they're tripping. I mean, why did they get so excited over snow?


Communism is a revolt against the condition of being proletarian, it is the self-abolition of the proletariat not some glorified manual-labourist cultural identity politics.QFT

:thumbup:

Personally, I think the comparisons to the May 68 thing might be weaker these days. Unlike back than, there was still hope for people to get middle class jobs and such. Now we're living in a time where even if you graduate (sometimes even with an advanced degree) you will probably not easily find a job in your field and might end up working a job you didn't even need a college education (which in some countries getting it can put you in debt). Another thing was that the current generation of young adults, many of them were small kids and teenagers during the 1990s where the "future seemed bright" and were told that they would easily succeed and even go beyond their parents' success. Now they're coming to the pessimistic realization that this is not the case, and surely they must be pissed off.

[Jalapeno Enema]

The problem isn't that the students lack revolutionary potential, the problem is that many leading communist officials perceive they do. Then after being left out to dry, many of the students abandon their views as 'idealistic'.That is true, but the students could help their cause, too. When a group of teens/young adults protest wearing Hottopic rags, it's hard to take them seriously. I'm not saying wear a tie (couldn't hurt, though), but dress like protesters, not poseurs.


Personally, I think the comparisons to the May 68 thing might be weaker these days. Unlike back than, there was still hope for people to get middle class jobs and such. Now we're living in a time where even if you graduate (sometimes even with an advanced degree) you will probably not easily find a job in your field and might end up working a job you didn't even need a college education (which in some countries getting it can put you in debt).Worse yet, you end up competing for these menial jobs with others with degrees.

I did not graduate college to work at a fueling station, but I'm lucky to have the job.


Another thing was that the current generation of young adults, many of them were small kids and teenagers during the 1990s where the "future seemed bright" and were told that they would easily succeed and even go beyond their parents' success. Now they're coming to the pessimistic realization that this is not the case, and surely they must be pissed off.Even for those whose future didn't seem bright, it was assumed we could only do better then our parents.

[bcbm]

The problem isn't that the students lack revolutionary potential, the problem is that many leading communist officials perceive they do. Then after being left out to dry, many of the students abandon their views as 'idealistic'.

i think "communist officials" need the protesters more than the other way around.

[Magón]

Is it just me, or when these stories come to light, the picture of the people always has one of the people wearing one of those Middle Eastern Keffiyeh scarfs? I don't know why, but that person always sticks out to me in the pictures?

[Robocommie]

why insult those starting to fight it instead of building off it?

Socialist crab bucket ftw

[revolution inaction]

These posturing students can eventually get a good high paid job, try being a normal working class youth in these times.



I'm an ex student, i'm unemployed and have only had low paid temporary work