SonofRage
15th June 2005, 07:41
This is an old SDS document, which I believe we are making available online for the first time. It may be a bit dated, but it's a good document and good starting point. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on the idea.
here's an excerpt
TOWARD A STUDENT SYNDICALIST MOVEMENT, OR UNIVERSITY REFORM REVISITED by Carl Davidson
Toward student syndicalism
In the preceding analysis of the university (by no means original with me), we can find an implicit antagonism, or, if you will, a fundamental contradiction. Namely, our administrators ask of us that we both participate and not participate in our educational system. We are told we must learn to make responsible decisions, yet we are not allowed to make actual decisions. We are told that education is an active process, yet we are passively trained. We are criticized for our apathy and for our activism. In the name of freedom, we are trained to obey.
The system requires that we passively agree to be manipulated. But our vision is one of active participation. And this is a demand that our administrators cannot meet without putting themselves out of a job. That is exactly why we should be making the demand.
What is to be done?
Obviously, we need to organize, to build on the campuses a movement that has the primary purpose of radically transforming the university community. Too often we lose sight of this goal. To every program, every action, every position, and every demand, we must raise the question: How will this radically alter the lives of every student on this campus? With this in mind, I offer the following proposals for action.
1) That every SDS chapter organize a student syndicalist movement on its campus. I use the term "syndicalist" for a crucial reason. In the labor struggle, the syndicalist unions worked for industrial democracy and workers' control, rather than for better wages and working conditions. Similarly, and I cannot repeat this often enough, the issue for us is student control (along with a yet-to-be liberated faculty in some areas). What we do not want is a company-union type of student movement that sees itself as a body that, under the rubric of "liberalization," helps a paternal administration make better rules for us. What we do want is a union of students in which the students themselves decide what kind of rules they want or don't want. Or whether they need rules at all. Only this sort of student organization allows for decentralization and the direct participation of students in all those decisions daily affecting their lives.
2) That the student syndicalist movement take on one of two possible structures: a Campus Freedom Democratic Party (CFDP) or a Free Student Union (FSU).
a) Campus Freedom Democratic Party. This is possible on those campuses where the existing student government is at least formally democratic (that is, one student-one vote). The idea is to organize a year-round electoral campaign for the purposes of educating students about their system; building mass memberships in dormitory and living-area "precincts"; constantly harassing and disrupting the meetings of the existing student government (for instance, showing up en masse at at a meeting and singing the jingle of the now-defunct "Mickey Mouse Club"); and, finally, winning a majority of seats in student government elections. As long as the CFDP has a minority of seats, those seats should be used as soapboxes to expose the existing body as a parody of the idea of government. It should be kept in mind that the main purpose of these activities is to develop a radical consciousness among all the students in the struggle yet to come against the administration.
What happens if a CFDP wins a majority of the seats? It should immediately push through a list of demands (the nature of which I will deal with later) in the form of a Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence or both. The resolution should indicate a time-Iimit for the administration (or regents or whatever) to reply. If the demands are met, the students should promptly celebrate the victory of the revolution. If not, the CFDP should promptly abolish student government or set up a student-government-in-exile. Second, the CFDP should immediately begin mass demonstrations: sit-ins in the administration buildings, in faculty parking-Iots, in maintenance departments, and so forth; boycotts of all classes; and strikes of teaching assistants. In short, the success of these actions (especially when the cops come) will be the test of how well the CFDP has been radicalizing its constituency during the previous two or three years.
b) Free Student Union. The difference between an FSU and a CFDP is mainly tactical. On many campuses, existing student governments are not even formally democratic; rather, they are set up with the school newspaper having one vote, the interfraternity council having one vote, and so on. In a situation like this, we ought to ignore or denounce campus or electoral politics from the word go, and, following the plan of the Wobblies, organize one big union of all students. The first goal of the FSU would be to develop a counter-institution to the existing student government that would eventually embrace a healthy majority of the student body. It would have to encourage non-participation in student government and to engage in active, non-electoral, "on-the-job" agitation. This would take the form of organizing and sponsoring the violation of existing rules. Such violations might include staging dormitory sleep-outs and "freedom" parties in restricted apartments, nonviolently seizing the building that houses IBM machines used to grade tests, campaigning to mutilate IBM cards, disrupting oversized classes, and nonviolently attempting to occupy and liberate the student newspaper and radio station. All this should be done in such a manner as to recruit more and more support. Once the FSU has more support than the student government has, it should declare the student government defunct, make its demands of the administration, and, if refused, declare the general strike.
Obviously, the success of either a CFDP or an FSU depends upon our ability to organize a mass radical base with a capacity for prolonged resistance, dedication and endurance. Bearing these needs in mind, one can easily see why such a student syndicalist movement must be national (or even international) in its scope. There will be a need for highly mobile regional and national fulltime organizers to travel from campus to campus. When critical confrontations break out, there will be a need for sympathy demonstrations and strikes on other campuses. There may even be a need to send busloads of students to a campus where, because of mass arrests, replacements are required. Again, we can learn much from the organizing tactics of the Wobblies and the CIO.
3) That the student syndicalist movement adopt as its primary and central issue the abolition of the grade system. This is not to say that other issues, such as decision-making power for student government bodies, are unimportant. They are not; and, in certain situations, they can be critical. But to my mind, the abolition of grades is the most significant over-all issue for building a radical movement on campus. There are three reasons why I think this is so:
a) Grading is a common condition of the total student and faculty community. It is the direct cause of most student anxieties and frustrations. Also, it is the cause of the alienation of most faculty members from their work. Among our better educators and almost all faculty, there is a consensus that grades are, at best, meaningless, and more likely, harmful to real education.
b) As an issue to organize around, the presence of the grade system is constantly felt. Hour exams, midterms and finals are always cropping up (whereas student government elections occur only once a year). Every time we see our fellow students cramming for exams (actually, for grades), we can point out to them that they are being exploited and try to organize them. In every class we take, throughout the school year, every time our professors grade our papers and tests, we can agitate in our classrooms, exposing the system and encouraging both our classmates and our instructors to join with us to abolish that system.
c) The abolition of the grade system is a demand that cannot be met by the administration without radically altering the shape and purpose of our educational system. First of all, if there were no grades, a significant part of our administrators would be without jobs, for they would have nothing to do. Also, large mass-production TV classes and the like would have to be done away with. Since education would have to take place through personal contact between the student and his professor, classes would necessarily be limited in size. Since the evaluation of a student's work would not have to be temporally regulated and standardized, independent scholarship would be encouraged, if not necessitated. As a result, the corporate state might have some difficulty in finding manipulable junior bureaucrats. Finally, the Selective Service would have a hell of a time ranking us.
For these reasons, it is my feeling that the abolition of the grade system should serve as the "umbrella" issue for a student syndicalist movement, much in the same manner as the abolition of the wage system served the syndicalist trade union movement. Under this umbrella, many other issues can be raised, depending upon which segment of the student community we were appealing to and upon what degree of strength we might have at any one time.
4) That the student syndicalist movement incorporate in secondary issues the ideology of participatory democracy. This can be viewed as an attempt on our part to sabotage the knowledge factory machinery that produces the managers and the managed of 1984. There are numerous ways to go about this. I will list a few:
a) Approach students in teachers' colleges with a counter-curriculum that is based on the ideas of Paul Goodman and A. S. Neill for the radical education of children.
b) At the beginning of each semester, request (or demand) of the professors that you and your fellow classmates participate in shaping the structure, format and content of that particular course.
c) Sign up for, attend, denounce, and then walk out of and picket excessively large classes.
d) Organize students and liberated faculty members in certain departments to work out a model counter-curriculum and agitate for its adoption, mainly because students participated in shaping it rather than because of its merits.
e) Hold mock trials for the dean of men and dean of women for their' 'crimes against humanity.'
f) In the case of women students, organize a decentralized federation of dormitory councils (soviets?) where each living unit would formulate a counter-set of rules and regulations; and then use them to replace existing rules on the grounds that the women themselves made the rules.
I am sure that if we use our imaginations, we can extend this list indefinitely. And because they embody the philosophy of participatory democracy, these suggestions, to my mind, are of intrinsic worth. And I also believe that they might have far-reaching effects. For participatory democracy is often like a chronic and contagious disease. Once caught, it permeates one's whole life and the lives of those around. Its effect is disruptive in a total sense. And within a manipulative, bureaucratic system, its articulation and expression amounts to sabotage. It is my hope that those exposed to it during the time they are building a movement for student syndicalism will never quite be the same, especially after they leave the university community.
Position paper delivered at the August 1966 SDS Convention
The complete document is available on the Direct Action Tendency's website here:
http://actiontendency.net/NLN/sds_wuo/sds_...yndicalism.html (http://actiontendency.net/NLN/sds_wuo/sds_documents/student_syndicalism.html)
here's an excerpt
TOWARD A STUDENT SYNDICALIST MOVEMENT, OR UNIVERSITY REFORM REVISITED by Carl Davidson
Toward student syndicalism
In the preceding analysis of the university (by no means original with me), we can find an implicit antagonism, or, if you will, a fundamental contradiction. Namely, our administrators ask of us that we both participate and not participate in our educational system. We are told we must learn to make responsible decisions, yet we are not allowed to make actual decisions. We are told that education is an active process, yet we are passively trained. We are criticized for our apathy and for our activism. In the name of freedom, we are trained to obey.
The system requires that we passively agree to be manipulated. But our vision is one of active participation. And this is a demand that our administrators cannot meet without putting themselves out of a job. That is exactly why we should be making the demand.
What is to be done?
Obviously, we need to organize, to build on the campuses a movement that has the primary purpose of radically transforming the university community. Too often we lose sight of this goal. To every program, every action, every position, and every demand, we must raise the question: How will this radically alter the lives of every student on this campus? With this in mind, I offer the following proposals for action.
1) That every SDS chapter organize a student syndicalist movement on its campus. I use the term "syndicalist" for a crucial reason. In the labor struggle, the syndicalist unions worked for industrial democracy and workers' control, rather than for better wages and working conditions. Similarly, and I cannot repeat this often enough, the issue for us is student control (along with a yet-to-be liberated faculty in some areas). What we do not want is a company-union type of student movement that sees itself as a body that, under the rubric of "liberalization," helps a paternal administration make better rules for us. What we do want is a union of students in which the students themselves decide what kind of rules they want or don't want. Or whether they need rules at all. Only this sort of student organization allows for decentralization and the direct participation of students in all those decisions daily affecting their lives.
2) That the student syndicalist movement take on one of two possible structures: a Campus Freedom Democratic Party (CFDP) or a Free Student Union (FSU).
a) Campus Freedom Democratic Party. This is possible on those campuses where the existing student government is at least formally democratic (that is, one student-one vote). The idea is to organize a year-round electoral campaign for the purposes of educating students about their system; building mass memberships in dormitory and living-area "precincts"; constantly harassing and disrupting the meetings of the existing student government (for instance, showing up en masse at at a meeting and singing the jingle of the now-defunct "Mickey Mouse Club"); and, finally, winning a majority of seats in student government elections. As long as the CFDP has a minority of seats, those seats should be used as soapboxes to expose the existing body as a parody of the idea of government. It should be kept in mind that the main purpose of these activities is to develop a radical consciousness among all the students in the struggle yet to come against the administration.
What happens if a CFDP wins a majority of the seats? It should immediately push through a list of demands (the nature of which I will deal with later) in the form of a Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence or both. The resolution should indicate a time-Iimit for the administration (or regents or whatever) to reply. If the demands are met, the students should promptly celebrate the victory of the revolution. If not, the CFDP should promptly abolish student government or set up a student-government-in-exile. Second, the CFDP should immediately begin mass demonstrations: sit-ins in the administration buildings, in faculty parking-Iots, in maintenance departments, and so forth; boycotts of all classes; and strikes of teaching assistants. In short, the success of these actions (especially when the cops come) will be the test of how well the CFDP has been radicalizing its constituency during the previous two or three years.
b) Free Student Union. The difference between an FSU and a CFDP is mainly tactical. On many campuses, existing student governments are not even formally democratic; rather, they are set up with the school newspaper having one vote, the interfraternity council having one vote, and so on. In a situation like this, we ought to ignore or denounce campus or electoral politics from the word go, and, following the plan of the Wobblies, organize one big union of all students. The first goal of the FSU would be to develop a counter-institution to the existing student government that would eventually embrace a healthy majority of the student body. It would have to encourage non-participation in student government and to engage in active, non-electoral, "on-the-job" agitation. This would take the form of organizing and sponsoring the violation of existing rules. Such violations might include staging dormitory sleep-outs and "freedom" parties in restricted apartments, nonviolently seizing the building that houses IBM machines used to grade tests, campaigning to mutilate IBM cards, disrupting oversized classes, and nonviolently attempting to occupy and liberate the student newspaper and radio station. All this should be done in such a manner as to recruit more and more support. Once the FSU has more support than the student government has, it should declare the student government defunct, make its demands of the administration, and, if refused, declare the general strike.
Obviously, the success of either a CFDP or an FSU depends upon our ability to organize a mass radical base with a capacity for prolonged resistance, dedication and endurance. Bearing these needs in mind, one can easily see why such a student syndicalist movement must be national (or even international) in its scope. There will be a need for highly mobile regional and national fulltime organizers to travel from campus to campus. When critical confrontations break out, there will be a need for sympathy demonstrations and strikes on other campuses. There may even be a need to send busloads of students to a campus where, because of mass arrests, replacements are required. Again, we can learn much from the organizing tactics of the Wobblies and the CIO.
3) That the student syndicalist movement adopt as its primary and central issue the abolition of the grade system. This is not to say that other issues, such as decision-making power for student government bodies, are unimportant. They are not; and, in certain situations, they can be critical. But to my mind, the abolition of grades is the most significant over-all issue for building a radical movement on campus. There are three reasons why I think this is so:
a) Grading is a common condition of the total student and faculty community. It is the direct cause of most student anxieties and frustrations. Also, it is the cause of the alienation of most faculty members from their work. Among our better educators and almost all faculty, there is a consensus that grades are, at best, meaningless, and more likely, harmful to real education.
b) As an issue to organize around, the presence of the grade system is constantly felt. Hour exams, midterms and finals are always cropping up (whereas student government elections occur only once a year). Every time we see our fellow students cramming for exams (actually, for grades), we can point out to them that they are being exploited and try to organize them. In every class we take, throughout the school year, every time our professors grade our papers and tests, we can agitate in our classrooms, exposing the system and encouraging both our classmates and our instructors to join with us to abolish that system.
c) The abolition of the grade system is a demand that cannot be met by the administration without radically altering the shape and purpose of our educational system. First of all, if there were no grades, a significant part of our administrators would be without jobs, for they would have nothing to do. Also, large mass-production TV classes and the like would have to be done away with. Since education would have to take place through personal contact between the student and his professor, classes would necessarily be limited in size. Since the evaluation of a student's work would not have to be temporally regulated and standardized, independent scholarship would be encouraged, if not necessitated. As a result, the corporate state might have some difficulty in finding manipulable junior bureaucrats. Finally, the Selective Service would have a hell of a time ranking us.
For these reasons, it is my feeling that the abolition of the grade system should serve as the "umbrella" issue for a student syndicalist movement, much in the same manner as the abolition of the wage system served the syndicalist trade union movement. Under this umbrella, many other issues can be raised, depending upon which segment of the student community we were appealing to and upon what degree of strength we might have at any one time.
4) That the student syndicalist movement incorporate in secondary issues the ideology of participatory democracy. This can be viewed as an attempt on our part to sabotage the knowledge factory machinery that produces the managers and the managed of 1984. There are numerous ways to go about this. I will list a few:
a) Approach students in teachers' colleges with a counter-curriculum that is based on the ideas of Paul Goodman and A. S. Neill for the radical education of children.
b) At the beginning of each semester, request (or demand) of the professors that you and your fellow classmates participate in shaping the structure, format and content of that particular course.
c) Sign up for, attend, denounce, and then walk out of and picket excessively large classes.
d) Organize students and liberated faculty members in certain departments to work out a model counter-curriculum and agitate for its adoption, mainly because students participated in shaping it rather than because of its merits.
e) Hold mock trials for the dean of men and dean of women for their' 'crimes against humanity.'
f) In the case of women students, organize a decentralized federation of dormitory councils (soviets?) where each living unit would formulate a counter-set of rules and regulations; and then use them to replace existing rules on the grounds that the women themselves made the rules.
I am sure that if we use our imaginations, we can extend this list indefinitely. And because they embody the philosophy of participatory democracy, these suggestions, to my mind, are of intrinsic worth. And I also believe that they might have far-reaching effects. For participatory democracy is often like a chronic and contagious disease. Once caught, it permeates one's whole life and the lives of those around. Its effect is disruptive in a total sense. And within a manipulative, bureaucratic system, its articulation and expression amounts to sabotage. It is my hope that those exposed to it during the time they are building a movement for student syndicalism will never quite be the same, especially after they leave the university community.
Position paper delivered at the August 1966 SDS Convention
The complete document is available on the Direct Action Tendency's website here:
http://actiontendency.net/NLN/sds_wuo/sds_...yndicalism.html (http://actiontendency.net/NLN/sds_wuo/sds_documents/student_syndicalism.html)