Vote rod! Rod for NUS president.

[Futility Personified]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/...nus-presidency

Says it all really. My experience of NUS is that they are extremely ineffective. Either apolitical and in it because they're that strange community minded uber social type, or wanting to join the labour party at some point. Socialist students normally can't compete with them, and all the recent gains in the movement I feel sadly are irrelevant. The NUS is institutionally wank. I'd vote the rod any day.

[CyM]

Sectarianism at its finest. The 1905 revolution was sparked by a union led by a priest who was a police agent.

Fight for a proper leadership at the NUS. Put forward a socialist, revolutionary candidate who stands for free education and a national student strike to get it.

You can shove this rod.

[Futility Personified]

A socialist revolutionary candidate who stands for free education isn't going to get in. Besides, even if they did, standing for it is all well and good, but they can't actually do fuck all about it. A national student strike would be nice, millitancy would be a boon to improve things, but all the fervour has gone. And the argument that it was taken by the shitty leadership is spot on imo. The fact that people are going to prefer 3 shots for the price of 1 as opposed to idealistic constructs that to properly disseminate would require us to be leading the NUS is bleak, but something that we have to accept. Working outside the NUS is going to be a better option now. We lost the fight on tuition fees and we can't really rally around much else for the moment.

[goalkeeper]

I don't know if I hate the people behind this rod campaign (people like Michael Chessum and Sam Gaus) or the Liam Burns, Aaron Porter type people of the NUS more

[Leo]

Sectarianism at its finest. The 1905 revolution was sparked by a union led by a priest who was a police agent.

No, it wasn't. The 1905 revolution was sparked by two workers who had a fight among each other in a factory called Putilov. They were fired, which resulted in the factory to walk out, which led to spontaneous sympathy strikes.

By the time the police agent priest you mention, Gapon, who actually headed a police-sponsored union organized his demonstration - which was attended only by a crowd of less than five thousand - to give the Tsar a petition there were already near a hundred thousand strikers in Petrograd. Foolishly, the guards of the Imperial Palace opened fire, which caused the strike-wave to spread like wild fire.

The bourgeois idealist who looks at the 1905 revolution might say it was sparked by Father Gapon. For the proletarian revolutionary, for the materialist, the revolution was sparked by the working class, by the workers of the Putilov factory.

Fight for a proper leadership at the NUS. Put forward a socialist, revolutionary candidate who stands for free education and a national student strike to get it.

You can shove this rod.

Up that new "proper" leadership's ass, perhaps, for as soon as they are elected they will go against all their previous revolutionary rhetoric. Of course, if what people are saying about the NUS is accurate, such a candidate will never be elected, because no one who actually wants to be a union leader would employ socialist rhetoric unless the membership is getting more and more radical.

Not that there is any point in voting for the rod. After all, you don't have to vote to be able to use a rod.

[Sam_b]

I don't think this should be in politics at all.

A socialist revolutionary candidate who stands for free education isn't going to get in

So you would prefer to vote for the nonsense candidate instead of the socialist, who is also not going to get in?

I'd vote the rod any day.

Sorry, but what an idiot. Vicki Baars is an anti-cuts activist who has been a great campaigner for LGBT and women's rights, and you would 'vote the rod any day'. The anti-cuts NUS students, who are using this election for a strong left showing, to show that the labourites and exec can't just streamroll proceedings without being scrutinised, and want to make the NUS a fighting student union after years of betrayal, fucking thank you so much for this enlightened position.

[Futility Personified]

I think the nonsense candidate is more likely to get in, as it happens, and the absurdity of that is part of the point. If you want hard political thought, you are not going to find it in contemporary student politics. There are reasons they have degenerated as far as they have.

Thanks for calling me an idiot by the way!

And while it is laudable that some people think still change is going to come out of the NUS, and they put a lot of hard work, time and effort into it, the whole issue is that by and by students take little notice in what their union does besides getting them slaughtered. The biggest opportunity to politicize students of my generation has seemingly come and gone, no thanks in part to the SWP who showed a multitude of young people that yes! leftism is all about calling everyone comrade and going to meetings!

Trying to reclaim a dead institution is a waste of time.

[Sam_b]

I think the nonsense candidate is more likely to get in, as it happens, and the absurdity of that is part of the point. If you want hard political thought, you are not going to find it in contemporary student politics. There are reasons they have degenerated as far as they have.

You haven't got a clue, have you? This is the same sort of argument reformists use to vote for Labour as they're 'more likely to get in'.

the whole issue is that by and by students take little notice in what their union does besides getting them slaughtered. The biggest opportunity to politicize students of my generation has seemingly come and gone, no thanks in part to the SWP who showed a multitude of young people that yes! leftism is all about calling everyone comrade and going to meetings!

You just don't get it. It is, to be quite honest, fucking irrelevant what you think of the NUS as an institution if you're going to help try and split a vote to allow the exec-backed Presidential candidate to sail through. It is people like yourself that are aiding and abetting the right of the NUS to get everything they want through, rather than uniting with the anti-cuts movement to try and rekindle it on campuses.

I think your sophisticated knowledge of the NUS is laid bare with your one-liner analysis, which then apparently out of the blue goes and blames the SWP for something which they in fact had little control over.

This thread is an embarrassment.

[Luís Henrique]

So you would prefer to vote for the nonsense candidate instead of the socialist, who is also not going to get in?

That's not even the worst about this silly campaign. The fact is, it isn't merely against voting, which would be understandable - it is indeed against organisation. It would be one thing (perhaps mistaken or sectarian, but still within the broad camp of struggle) if they were calling for a new or different students' organisation. But in practice this campaign is liquidationist, it aims to destroy the NUS without even pretending to put anything in its place.

Luís Henrique

[goalkeeper]

That's not even the worst about this silly campaign. The fact is, it isn't merely against voting, which would be understandable - it is indeed against organisation. It would be one thing (perhaps mistaken or sectarian, but still within the broad camp of struggle) if they were calling for a new or different students' organisation. But in practice this campaign is liquidationist, it aims to destroy the NUS without even pretending to put anything in its place.

Luís Henrique

I think the people behind it are trying to start a separate student union though.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I have spent time with Samuel Gaus. He's a wealthy liberal, and quite an annoying one at that. Of the hipster variety.

Kinda like one of those people who will get on TV by calling Tony Blair a war criminal or protesting on top of Buck Palace about income inequality, then you later find out that their last name is Smyth-Jenkinson and their parents paid for their gap yah to Thailand before their History of Art degree at Durham or Bristol commenced.

Yeah I get angry.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

I have spent time with Samuel Gaus. He's a wealthy liberal, and quite an annoying one at that. Of the hipster variety.

Kinda like one of those people who will get on TV by calling Tony Blair a war criminal or protesting on top of Buck Palace about income inequality, then you later find out that their last name is Smyth-Jenkinson and their parents paid for their gap yah to Thailand before their History of Art degree at Durham or Bristol commenced.

Yeah I get angry.

Reminds me of one of my step-sisters; very liberal and with a lower case L and went to Palestine on a school trip, private Hogwarts-esque school, reads the Guardian no doubt...most boring girl I know.

[Mather]

I think the nonsense candidate is more likely to get in, as it happens, and the absurdity of that is part of the point. If you want hard political thought, you are not going to find it in contemporary student politics. There are reasons they have degenerated as far as they have.

Thanks for calling me an idiot by the way!

And while it is laudable that some people think still change is going to come out of the NUS, and they put a lot of hard work, time and effort into it, the whole issue is that by and by students take little notice in what their union does besides getting them slaughtered. The biggest opportunity to politicize students of my generation has seemingly come and gone, no thanks in part to the SWP who showed a multitude of young people that yes! leftism is all about calling everyone comrade and going to meetings!

Trying to reclaim a dead institution is a waste of time.

You make the point that the majority of students are now no longer interested in radical politics and that may well be true. But the very same can be said of the wider working class and that the majority of people in Britain are not interested in radical politics.

Going by your own logic, should we give up on the struggle to organise the working class and social revolution?

[Futility Personified]

"This is the same sort of argument reformists use to vote for Labour as they're 'more likely to get in'. " Well, funnily enough that can be applied to you too. The NUS is scuppered, ergo we should abandon it and see where energies can be channelled positively amongst the student demographic. I'd like to call it bourgeois but that sounds a bit dramatic. You want to vote for something seriously, I want to protest vote.

The SWP comment was out of the blue, yes, but given what we are discussing I still feel relevant. Part of my cynicism towards the SWP and the SPEW is the high burnout rate amongst my peers. Whether they had little control over it or not, my (admittedly poorly made) point is that if an organisation is shitty, you should abandon it and see if something better is going to come along or be made. I hold that with the aforementioned parties, and the NUS.

With regards to vote splitting, that is a fair point, but i'd still rather hold the protest vote and see what can come from the showing of the sham as it were, than endorse a candidate who although is correct in their thinking, is fighting on a sinking ship. Why not make her the captain of a new one going in the right direction? My main argument for this is that broadly speaking there is little the NUS can do now things have passed the point, people have resigned to losing. Networking is different now and I do not think it is far fetched that new methods of student empowerment can be formed without the NUS.

Mather: My argument, although given the charming bluntness i've been presented with above shows i'm poorly translating it from my own head, if something is rotten, you do away with it. Think parliamentary elections! While I feel more cynical every day that goes by, it's not impossible to help raise consciousness, I just don't think socialist sentiment is going to be ripe in the NUS, and even if it was, if any gains could really be made from winning an election that largely students don't care about. I'd rather with a little encouragement locally students self organised as to meeting their own needs and making their demands, making political change at a level that most people will be interested in if it helps or involves them, than by winning yet another sloganfest. Shouldn't we be glad the elections for tainted institutions are being met with more cynicism? It means people will be more interested for radical ideas down the line. As opposed to a well meaning candidate getting in making promises that with an apathetic membership base she'd struggle to keep. Things reached their peak a while ago, things need to start building back up again from scratch.

[Sam_b]

Well, funnily enough that can be applied to you too. The NUS is scuppered, ergo we should abandon it and see where energies can be channelled positively amongst the student demographic. I'd like to call it bourgeois but that sounds a bit dramatic. You want to vote for something seriously, I want to protest vote.

You are living in a fantasy land. Saying that something isn't good enough does not cut it unless you've actually built and started a movement to both a) split the NUS and b) establish your own organisation. I don't think you've done either. I've never once seen you mention anything related to other student movements like NCAFC and so on. Your 'protest vote', is in fact a vote to split the left. You even recognise in your opening post that socialist students have been making progress, yet you wish to spit in the face of that by voting for a joke candidate.

The SWP comment was out of the blue, yes, but given what we are discussing I still feel relevant. Part of my cynicism towards the SWP and the SPEW is the high burnout rate amongst my peers. Whether they had little control over it or not, my (admittedly poorly made) point is that if an organisation is shitty, you should abandon it and see if something better is going to come along or be made. I hold that with the aforementioned parties, and the NUS

This is just liquidationist, as has been pointed out above. This move is not going to change anything aside from giving NUS bureaucrats further chance to trample over students. Let's be frank here - I doubt you would make this argument if it was in regards to say, Unison or the GMB because you know it doesn't work like that.

If people are keeping track, the argument has now gone from endorsing a joke candidacy to calling to pull out of the NUS altogether, confusingly while still using NUS structures to vote for a candidate anyway. Doesn't make sense, does it?

With regards to vote splitting, that is a fair point, but i'd still rather hold the protest vote and see what can come from the showing of the sham as it were, than endorse a candidate who although is correct in their thinking, is fighting on a sinking ship. Why not make her the captain of a new one going in the right direction? My main argument for this is that broadly speaking there is little the NUS can do now things have passed the point, people have resigned to losing. Networking is different now and I do not think it is far fetched that new methods of student empowerment can be formed without the NUS.

Again, this line makes no sense at all. There are going to be many students making a protest vote in favour of Baars after the NUS failed over the cuts issue, and the NUS demo situation. The rod is not going to show up the NUS as a 'sham', it is in fact going to show how many NUS delegates wasted their vote and failed to get behind a candidate in which a real movement can be built from. The student movement is not what it was two years ago, but a strong showing from Baars on a national level can get things moving again, get more leftists to stand and kick-start a fightback in the organisation. If 'people are resigned to losing' why are so many anti-cuts students standing for Presidential and Vice positions?

As for "I do not think it is far fetched that new methods of student empowerment can be formed without the NUS" - nobody said it was. But it is clear here you have no strategy at all in how to achieve this so in essence you're calling on students to be left with no representation at all; and to wander about in a wilderness until you can dream-up some mega-super-cool-leftist fighting union for students. It has never worked like this. It seems to me that you've been called out over this nonsense and are resorting to abstract half-arguments to cover your back.

[Futility Personified]

Hmm, well I can't really argue much further, I concede to you. To be fair to you, mainly it was my hurt ego (i don't like being called an idiot, dug my own hole there though i'll admit) that I kept trying to play devils advocate.

[Mather]

Mather: My argument, although given the charming bluntness i've been presented with above shows i'm poorly translating it from my own head, if something is rotten, you do away with it. Think parliamentary elections! While I feel more cynical every day that goes by, it's not impossible to help raise consciousness, I just don't think socialist sentiment is going to be ripe in the NUS, and even if it was, if any gains could really be made from winning an election that largely students don't care about.

Your comparison is irrelevant as it ignores the one key difference between a bourgeois institution such as a parliament and a trade union such as the NUS.

Parliaments were specifically created as institutions to rule society in the interests of the bourgeoisie whereas the same cannot be said of the NUS. Parliaments can and do pass legislation that attacks the living and working conditions of workers and they often act against the interests of the working class as a whole. It can be said that the NUS seeks to manage dissent and opposition amongst students but that criticism can be said of all trade unions and how they react to all workers struggle from below. However unlike parliaments, trade unions are not part of the bourgeois state and do not share the same oppressive functions as institutions such as parliaments do, for these instutions were created by the bourgeoisie specifically to perpetuate their own class rule at the expense of the working class.

While there are many good criticisms of the shortcomings of the NUS (and trade unions in general) and while I personally share many of those criticisms, your above comparison is not one of them.

I'd rather with a little encouragement locally students self organised as to meeting their own needs and making their demands, making political change at a level that most people will be interested in if it helps or involves them,

I am all in favour of developing organisation amongst the working class and your above points are ones that need to be taken into consideration by student activists both inside and outside of the NUS. Unfortunately, these points and other valid points of criticism are totally lost on a cynical campaign such as the Vote for Rod! one.

than by winning yet another sloganfest.

Given that the Vote for Rod! campaign offers no practical solutions to the dismal state of student politics and activism and that all it has to go on is it's silly campaign title, this cynical campaign is running in the elections on nothing other than a slogan. I fail to see how a campaign devoid of any solutions and based around a single slogan is supposed to be an alternative to "yet another sloganfest"?

Shouldn't we be glad the elections for tainted institutions are being met with more cynicism? It means people will be more interested for radical ideas down the line. As opposed to a well meaning candidate getting in making promises that with an apathetic membership base she'd struggle to keep. Things reached their peak a while ago, things need to start building back up again from scratch.

Cynicism is not necessarily a good thing. Cynicism can make people apolitical and it breeds defeatism, it can easily put people off the idea that any change is possible. More often than not, cynicism breeds reactionary political views and reactionary politics.

There is a big difference between class consciousness and apolitical cynicism (which is just another form of false consciousness). As communists we should seek to raise the former at the expense of the latter.