It is not only important to identify the problems facing students at UCL in the form of extortionate student fees and rents, growing class sizes and cuts to staff, departments and services. It is also necessary to point out the source of these problems, that not only affects education but every area of society today.
That is why the opening line of my manifesto states that the fight for education is directly linked to the fight for socialism.
Take rising tuition fees, for instance. Why is it that at one point Higher Education was free and students received grants, and now that is not the case?
One reason is the destruction of industry by the short-sighted capitalist class. A massive increase in the student population in the past 20 years is the consequence of a decline in apprenticeships and skilled labour. Thatcher’s onslaught against the miners, print workers and dockers in the 1980s means that young people today have the choice between insecure casual labour or going to university.
Therefore the rise in university applications puts pressure on the HE system, and that increased demand for university places also means university management are in a stronger position to demand fees.
However, £9,000 tuition fees are only a recent introduction, whilst the university population has been growing for years. An excess of students is not the explanation.
Bank bailouts
The government can no longer make the contributions to Higher Education as it did in the past because it has bankrupted itself trying to bailout the banks in 2008-09. It nationalised, not the profitable enterprises, but the huge holes in financial institution’s balance sheets. The national debt, when we take the nationalised banks into account, is well in excess of £1trn pounds. In percentage terms it is the same size as the Greek national debt.
The government cannot continue to borrow at favourable interest rates unless it shows the international money markets it is taking measures to reduce the national debt. However, even this month, Moody’s have downgraded Britain’s AAA credit rating, demonstrating that even from a capitalist point of view, austerity isn’t working.
Capitalist crisis
Capitalism is a system of boom and bust. It inevitably enters into a crisis of overproduction because, through private competition between different capitalist companies, bosses produce for a market they cannot predict, and do it as cheaply as possible in order to gain a competitive edge.
This means, among other things, reducing the wage bill of working people. But workers are also consumers. By reducing the purchasing power of ordinary people, the bosses sawed off the branch they were perching on. Temporarily they were able to get out of this problem by the issuing of cheap credit, so workers can keep buying commodities. But credit had to be paid back at a certain point, and with interest!
The 2008 financial crisis, the biggest in history, which is still with us five years later, was because working people had been squeezed so much in the drive for profits that banks found themselves with enormous debts that were not going to be honoured. Hence the banking crisis, massive state intervention (taxpayers money - so much for the free market!) to save the banks, state indebtedness and the consequent introduction of austerity at all levels of society, including education.
This is what we mean when we say that capitalism can no longer afford the reforms of the past. The massive extension of credit in the years before 2008 was the equivalent of pumping drugs into a patient on a life support machine.
Ideological cuts?
Some argue that the cuts in education and society at large are due to the ideological excesses of the Tory party. While the Tories may enjoy fostering the elitism that tuition fees introduces into the education system, this misses the point.
The real point is that the post-war boom allowed labour to wrest concessions from the ruling class. This period is now at an end. Capitalism is not expanding, but in a deep crisis of overproduction.
However, this does not mean that nothing can be done. The Economist reported last summer that £750bn of uninvested capital lies idle on the balance sheets of British companies. This amounts to well over half the national debt. Yet no capitalist will invest where they cannot make a return. This money is being sat and not used to develop the economy, or the education system, whilst phD students face the prospect of employment in Starbucks post-graduation.
Socialism
What this shows is that the fight to abolish fees is inextricably linked to the fight against capitalism, which directs everything on the basis of private profit. It therefore means a fight for socialism. Even the attempt to defend the most modest reforms of the past - a semi-civilised form of existence for many people granted by housing and unemployed benefits, a national health service or free higher education - runs up against the limits of the capitalist system.
The fight for free education - the abolition of all fees, not just a fight against fee rises - immediately raises the question: who runs the economy? We should take that £750bn of idle capital, along with the profitable sections of the economy (not just bank debts) into public ownership under the control of ordinary working people.
What can be done?
The crisis in society is already mobilising people and forcing them to question the system. This is the explanation for the Trades Union Congress adopting a position exploring the possibility of a General Strike last September - the first time this has been the first time this has been posed at such a level since 1926. This is why my union, UNITE - the biggest in the country - has adopted the position in favour of the nationalisation of the banks in the interests of working people. This is why 25,000 people marched last month to defend the closure of Lewisham hospital A&E wards.
The crisis itself is organising people and pushing them to challenge the system. When we look at the attacks on Gower Place Practice, the Carpenters Estate, our staff faculties or departmental libraries, these are not accidental events but consequences of a system in crisis.
As Education and Campaigns Officer I will make it my priority to break down any artificial separation between the problems faced by UCL students and the problems faced by society at large.
That is why I say that the student movement cannot advance except in alliance with the labour movement. Not the NUS, and certainly not UCLU on its own. We must broaden out the fight for our basic educational rights, as they cannot be defended in isolation.
That is why I say ‘Workers and Students: Unite and Fight!’
That is why I say fight for socialism!
That is why the opening line of my manifesto states that the fight for education is directly linked to the fight for socialism.
Take rising tuition fees, for instance. Why is it that at one point Higher Education was free and students received grants, and now that is not the case?
One reason is the destruction of industry by the short-sighted capitalist class. A massive increase in the student population in the past 20 years is the consequence of a decline in apprenticeships and skilled labour. Thatcher’s onslaught against the miners, print workers and dockers in the 1980s means that young people today have the choice between insecure casual labour or going to university.
Therefore the rise in university applications puts pressure on the HE system, and that increased demand for university places also means university management are in a stronger position to demand fees.
However, £9,000 tuition fees are only a recent introduction, whilst the university population has been growing for years. An excess of students is not the explanation.
Bank bailouts
The government can no longer make the contributions to Higher Education as it did in the past because it has bankrupted itself trying to bailout the banks in 2008-09. It nationalised, not the profitable enterprises, but the huge holes in financial institution’s balance sheets. The national debt, when we take the nationalised banks into account, is well in excess of £1trn pounds. In percentage terms it is the same size as the Greek national debt.
The government cannot continue to borrow at favourable interest rates unless it shows the international money markets it is taking measures to reduce the national debt. However, even this month, Moody’s have downgraded Britain’s AAA credit rating, demonstrating that even from a capitalist point of view, austerity isn’t working.
Capitalist crisis
Capitalism is a system of boom and bust. It inevitably enters into a crisis of overproduction because, through private competition between different capitalist companies, bosses produce for a market they cannot predict, and do it as cheaply as possible in order to gain a competitive edge.
This means, among other things, reducing the wage bill of working people. But workers are also consumers. By reducing the purchasing power of ordinary people, the bosses sawed off the branch they were perching on. Temporarily they were able to get out of this problem by the issuing of cheap credit, so workers can keep buying commodities. But credit had to be paid back at a certain point, and with interest!
The 2008 financial crisis, the biggest in history, which is still with us five years later, was because working people had been squeezed so much in the drive for profits that banks found themselves with enormous debts that were not going to be honoured. Hence the banking crisis, massive state intervention (taxpayers money - so much for the free market!) to save the banks, state indebtedness and the consequent introduction of austerity at all levels of society, including education.
This is what we mean when we say that capitalism can no longer afford the reforms of the past. The massive extension of credit in the years before 2008 was the equivalent of pumping drugs into a patient on a life support machine.
Ideological cuts?
Some argue that the cuts in education and society at large are due to the ideological excesses of the Tory party. While the Tories may enjoy fostering the elitism that tuition fees introduces into the education system, this misses the point.
The real point is that the post-war boom allowed labour to wrest concessions from the ruling class. This period is now at an end. Capitalism is not expanding, but in a deep crisis of overproduction.
However, this does not mean that nothing can be done. The Economist reported last summer that £750bn of uninvested capital lies idle on the balance sheets of British companies. This amounts to well over half the national debt. Yet no capitalist will invest where they cannot make a return. This money is being sat and not used to develop the economy, or the education system, whilst phD students face the prospect of employment in Starbucks post-graduation.
Socialism
What this shows is that the fight to abolish fees is inextricably linked to the fight against capitalism, which directs everything on the basis of private profit. It therefore means a fight for socialism. Even the attempt to defend the most modest reforms of the past - a semi-civilised form of existence for many people granted by housing and unemployed benefits, a national health service or free higher education - runs up against the limits of the capitalist system.
The fight for free education - the abolition of all fees, not just a fight against fee rises - immediately raises the question: who runs the economy? We should take that £750bn of idle capital, along with the profitable sections of the economy (not just bank debts) into public ownership under the control of ordinary working people.
What can be done?
The crisis in society is already mobilising people and forcing them to question the system. This is the explanation for the Trades Union Congress adopting a position exploring the possibility of a General Strike last September - the first time this has been the first time this has been posed at such a level since 1926. This is why my union, UNITE - the biggest in the country - has adopted the position in favour of the nationalisation of the banks in the interests of working people. This is why 25,000 people marched last month to defend the closure of Lewisham hospital A&E wards.
The crisis itself is organising people and pushing them to challenge the system. When we look at the attacks on Gower Place Practice, the Carpenters Estate, our staff faculties or departmental libraries, these are not accidental events but consequences of a system in crisis.
As Education and Campaigns Officer I will make it my priority to break down any artificial separation between the problems faced by UCL students and the problems faced by society at large.
That is why I say that the student movement cannot advance except in alliance with the labour movement. Not the NUS, and certainly not UCLU on its own. We must broaden out the fight for our basic educational rights, as they cannot be defended in isolation.
That is why I say ‘Workers and Students: Unite and Fight!’
That is why I say fight for socialism!
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