~ All Power to Students and Workers ~

By

~ Espoir Manirambona ~







1
Table of Contents

Introduction
The Teachers
The Corporate Campus
A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Digging Deeper
The Cooperative Campus
Democracy Works
Rise of the Student Movement
United We Stand
Transcendence
Sources
4-15
9-15
16-30
16-20
20-29
29-30
31-41
32-35
35-40
40-41
42-43
44-47






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A conscious, radical research essay submitted in fulfillment of the
requirements for PAPM 4908 as credit
towards the degree of Bachelor of Public Affairs and Policy Management
[Honours]




Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs
Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario

~ On Unceded Algonquin territory ~




April 2014
3
Introduction

Because were moving right out of Babylon and were groovin to our Fathers
land - Bob Marley

~ We are living in revolutionary times. It may not always seem that way, but my
heart tells me this is true. Everywhere we look, people are waking up and
questioning everything around them from political institutions, leaders, religious
bodies, economic systems, educational systems, writing styles, etc. More and
more people are coming to the conclusion that some fundamental changes need
to be made in our society in order to overcome the many challenges that
humanity has been struggling with for eons.

One cause
of this recent
phenomenon
is the
economic
crisis which seemed to hit us out of nowhere in 2008-2009. Banks went
4
bankrupt, the media went hysterical and many politicians just seemed to not
know what to do. Some saw the crisis coming though; it was quite obvious that
with a deregulated financial market, bankers would get greedy and start loaning
money to people and countries beyond what they could possibly afford to pay
back, with interest of course. All of the recent changes which have occurred in
our economy and beyond can be traced back partially to this crisis. Bankers
got bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars globally and in Canada that
amount is around 114 billion dollars according to the Canadian Center for Policy
Alternatives (2012) report entitled The Big Banks Big Secret. While bankers
were bailed out, the working class suffered greatly in many countries;
particularly in countries whose banks had the most trouble; Greece, Spain, UK,
Ireland, Iceland, and others.

While the stock market in many countries including Wall Street in the US have
fully recovered, the working class in such countries have not recovered and in
many cases are doing worse. Governments that bailed out the banks soon
found themselves more heavily indebted to those same banks (incredible eh?)
and as a result those same bankers that crashed the economy, with their other
corporate friends, demanded that governments pay them back first (with
5
interest) and cut social spending to meet the needs of the people. In short,
finance capital (the increasing merger of finance and industrial capital) called
for austerity; a fancy word for cut everywhere. Most governments in the West
(if not all) are now cutting social spending or reducing increases to such
spending. In Canada, cuts have been made to various sectors such as health
care, education, environmental sustainability, transit, social assistance,
employment insurance, and other things Canadians deeply care about and rely
on.

Governments since the 80s have been cutting
social spending for a while now and lowering
taxes for the wealthy and corporations. This
phenomenon has been dubbed neoliberalism;
capitalism without the welfare state. Various
governments have been cutting funding for
post-secondary education ever since the late 80s.
According to the Canadian Association of
University Teachers (2009), in 1992 government grants represented around 67%
of all university revenues. That figure is now around 57% and continues to
6
decline in many provinces. Tuition fees as we all know have increased
substantially in Ontario. In 1990, students paid on average $1,680 per year for
university; that is now around $6,500 on average (CCPA 2011). To sum it up,
university has become very expensive and inaccessible for many students.
This increasing reliance on private money (fees, private donors, etc.) has lead
to a process now widely known as the corporatization of post-secondary
education, a process sadly occurring not only in Ontario but across Canada, the
US and other industrialized countries (as well as some developing countries).

The corporate campus is different than the traditional one in some very
negative ways. Whereas universities were once run democratically by faculty
workers, today virtually all universities in Ontario have been bureaucratized;
non-faculty administrators or bureaucrats now manage the university (Newson,
2010). Even worse, power has been centralized in Boards of Governors that are
mostly unelected and unaccountable to students, workers and the public. Many
of these governors are part of the monopoly business community and as a
result part of the dominant ruling class in our society.
This has lead to some detrimental impacts on workers and students on
campuses; the aforementioned rising fees, reduction in funding for research
7
and teaching not geared to commercial purposes, attack on unions and
progressive groups, attack on academic freedom and tenureship, increase in
low paid, precarious teaching positions, and have likely worsened mental health
issues like stress, depression, anxiety and others (Newson, 2010). More
importantly, the corporate campus is attempting to change the very nature of
higher learning; from a pursuit of truth and the public good to a pursuit of
money, self interest and domination. The main thesis of this essay is that we
need to democratize universities in Ontario in order to ensure they remain
public bodies serving the public good.

The first section of this paper will deal with the changing nature of academic
learning, how this is affecting the traditional role of universities as vehicles to
advance the public good and who is driving this process. The second section
will deal with how students and workers can organize to rebuild democracy and
community on campuses, in addition to working with broader social forces for
electoral victories and social mobilizations which can lead to meaningful positive
social change. The final section will offer some ~ transcendental ~ thoughts on
moving forward.

8
Theory and Inspiration

To guide the writing of this paper, Ill be utilizing a theory which has undoubtedly
been one of the most influential
in recent history. Gramscis theory
of cultural hegemony in my view is
essential to fully understand why
universities are being
corporatized, how and by whom.
Antonio Gramsci was an italian
marxist theorist who helped found
the Italian Communist Party before
the Second World War. He was
heavily influenced by Marx and Engels writings on capitalism, class and the
state. Marxism as well will play a role in guiding this paper. That theory, which
underlies Gramscis, is that our society (a modern capitalist society) is
essentially divided into two classes (more or less); bourgeois and proletarian or
capitalist and worker. The capitalists own the means of production; they control
what gets produced, how it gets produced, what to do with the surplus, etc. This
9
gives them a dominant position within our economy and society.

Workers on the other hand, such as myself, are forced to sell themselves, their
labour power as Marx calls it, to capitalists in order to survive. They have little to
no property and do not possess the means to produce what they need to live
like food, housing, clothing, etc (Marx, 1848) Thus, they work for capitalists and
receive less in compensation for their work then what they produce; the
difference is surplus or profit and becomes capital (wealth used to create
more wealth). According to Marx, workers produce all new wealth (or surplus
value) but do not get a say in how this value is utilized (Marx, 1848).

This is where Gramscis theory of cultural hegemony becomes very insightful.
Marx had explained that much of a capitalists profit is used to recreate the
conditions of existence for such a system of capitalist exploitation (Wolff,
2012). Therefore, the capitalists seek to use the State and other tools to
enforce their domination on others (which can be expensive). The State can
use repressive tools like the police, the army and the justice system to keep
workers in line, but as Gramsci argues, this becomes unsustainable in the long
term and the ruling capitalist class understands this. So, as Gramsci explains,
10
the ruling class must seek to impose their norms, values and worldview on the
working class in order that the working class consent to capitalist hegemony,
become ignorant that their even being oppressed, and/or fall prey to fear,
despair and apathy, thus preventing the need for more repressive tools
(although these will still be used as a backup).

Cultural hegemony is the
domination of a culturally
diverse society by the
ruling class, who manipulate
the culture of the society
the beliefs, explanations,
perceptions, values, and
mores so that their ruling-class Weltanschauung becomes the worldview that
is imposed and accepted as the cultural norm; as the universally valid dominant
ideology that justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural
and inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial
social constructs that benefit only the ruling class. (Wikipedia, 2013) I could not
have written a better description myself, but in other words, the capitalist use a
11
big part of their money (the wealth that workers produced and was in fact
stolen from them) and control over the economy to brainwash workers into
accepting and even loving their subjugation.

Cultural hegemony though is more like a negotiation or compromise for capitalists
because they have to adopt some working class notions and values in order to
keep this game going. As a result, workers still play a very important role in how
this process unfolds but as Marx, Gramsci, Engel and other marxists and
revolutionaries emphasize; the rule of the capitalist class can only be completely
undone through transforming capitalism into socialism (or economic democracy
as I prefer to call it), the social ownership and democratic control of production
and equitable distribution of wealth and power.
As will be discussed throughout this paper, the ruling class needs to control
universities in order to ensure that what gets taught contributes to this process
of ruling class hegemony. They cannot allow university workers, students and
the public to control universities because they will likely use these vehicles to
change themselves (their programming), society and the economy as a
necessity; ending capitalist rule as a result. The corporatization of universities
in Ontario is part of the process of further controlling the minds of workers so
12
they will not question the system and will behave in ways that further their
exploitation and oppression by the capitalist class.

As you will see though,
marxism and cultural
hegemony are not the
only theories which will
substantially influence
this paper. It would be
impossible for me to
write this essay without
being guided by my spiritual practice. Spirituality is the worldview that we are
spiritual beings (not material beings) subject to spiritual forces and that
materialism is only one tiny aspect of spirit. Spirituality is much more than a
collection of theories but more of way of being in the world, a certain
understanding that comes with practices such as mindfulness, yoga, meditation,
intuition, etc. Whereas marxism is concerned with material forces, spirituality is
concerned with how different states of being or consciousness impact
humanity and society. Such insights of mine have been guided by ancient
13
spiritual teachers like Jesus Christ, Buddha and contemporary ones like Eckhart
Tolle, Thich Nhat Hahn, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others.

Spirituality teaches us that capitalist exploitation, political oppression and
injustices like high tuition fees and the corporatization of education, are the
result of a deeper distortion in the human psyche or consciousness. These
destructive actions are the result of eons of suffering that humanity has
endured; suffering which has distorted our perception of reality. Suffering is
the direct result of what Eckhart Tolle, a German-Canadian spiritual teacher, calls
identification with form or simply ego. Ego is the strong, unexamined belief,
that you are this little person, this material body with no soul that is separate
from others and the universe. Ego (which is different then the concept of ego
in psychology) causes suffering because its a form of delusion or what
mystics have termed maya.

The truth is ~ we are/I AM one with life ~ and the goal of spirituality is to
understand the ego-delusion and transcend it. There is a way to transcend
suffering through healing, being present, being conscious of the negative
emotions within, focusing on the breath...Spirituality is a bit more tricky to
14
understand then marxism because it requires a great deal of introspection and
personal practice to understand; it comes from beyond thinking. But I feel that
it is very important to learn in order to fully grasp what we are dealing with
when it comes to education and other issues. Its about being really radical;
digging ever deeper for the real root causes of a policy problem and in doing
so discovering the real solutions. As we will see, the process of corporatization
is part of bigger process of radically changing the nature of what it means to
be human. In democratizing campuses, the goal is to reclaim our own power to
define ourselves and our society.



Section I: The Corporate Campus

Fear is a path to the dark side...fear leads to anger, anger leads hate, hate
leads to suffering. - Yoda

A New Hope

15
Academia has never been perfect and it would be dishonest to say that prior
to corporatization, all was well on university campuses. It is generally agreed
though among academics, that there use to be a time when getting a good job
and earning a lot of money wasnt the main goal of pursuing higher learning.
According John McMurtry, a philosopher and professor at the University of
Guelph, the purpose of higher learning was the critical pursuit of truth (Newson,
2010).

Universities were meant to be vehicles for advancing learning and
disseminating knowledge throughout society to solve social problems and
advance the public good. According to Janice Newson, universities traditionally
held universalistic ideals; a sense that they were somehow serving the public
interest and helping to move humanity forward together. Of course, academia
use to be very elitist; in countries like Canada most students in universities
were rich white males. It was only in the post war period that campuses were
opened up more to the working class and eventually to more women and
people of colour (Newson, 2010). This post war period in many ways was the
golden era of capitalism in the West; a period where relatively strong public
institutions worked to counter the worst effects of the laissez-faire capitalist
16
system.
This golden era, in which universities became more inclusive and accessible to
workers, was the result of the tumultuous period of the Great Depression, the
New Deal and subsequent war. According to the Professor of economics
Richard Wolff, capitalism is fundamentally unstable and always creates income
inequality. The system oscillates between periods of strong growth and then
periods of decline, sometimes extreme. Due to conflict between wages and
profits, the system left unchecked always worsens income inequality. All these
flaws leads to periodic crises of the system which leads to bankruptcies,
unemployment and growing government deficits. The Great Depression was
one such crises similar to the one were experiencing now, but whats different
is the response to the crisis which lead to the so called golden era of
capitalism during the post-war period (Wolff, 2012)
17

With the return of soldiers from the war, the rise of the welfare state, near full
employment, relatively strong unions, the emergence of a counterculture across
the Western world, university campuses became ground zero for critical thought,
discussion and action. Many students and faculty workers were questioning
the system, calling for reforms and some were even calling for revolution. Even
with an effective anti-communist campaign on the part of the ruling class
across Canada and the US, various movements for peace, for civil rights, for
gender equality, etc, were noticeably influencing many people and putting
pressure on the capitalist class to make concessions (Wolff, 2012).

This period created an
opening for creative thought,
expression and action. What
was very important, was the
determination by some to
embrace new ways of
interacting with each other,
new ways of dressing, of
18
speaking and of perceiving the world. With this opening, many were introduced
to eastern philosophy and spirituality for the first time, a breakthrough which
should not be underestimated. Although it ultimately left the fundamentals of
the capitalist system in Canada intact, this period did lead to major changes
and posed a significant threat to the cultural hegemony of the ruling class.

As mentioned in the previous section, the ruling class never has complete
control over the culture of a society, there are always working class elements
with influence; there is a balance of forces that the ruling class tries to
maintain in its favour (through fear, control, ignorance, etc). During the 60s and
70s, its clear that that balance had been altered in a significant way. This
period was also marked by a fall in the rate of capital accumulation due to
rising wages, union power and other factors (Wolff, 2012). The subsequent
period of the 80s and 90s, dubbed the neoliberal phase of capitalism, was in
many ways a reaction to this period of progressive advance and an attempt by
the ruling class to reinstate their hegemony.

Empire Strikes Back

19
Neoliberalism has been a transformative experience for much of the world. In a
nutshell, neoliberalism has been and continues to be a class project; liberalize,
deregulate, privatize, etc. The goal of those forces which are pushing for this
(the capitalist class) is to centralize power; break the labour movement, globalize
the economy, deindustrialize the West and move production to where labour is
cheap, increase productivity, reduce wages, reduce public services, get people
and governments into debt, financialize the economy, increase the power of
finance (banks and other financial institution), continue to corporatize politics,
the media and of course, universities and colleges (Wolff, 2012).

These changes have clearly had negative effects on workers across the globe.
In many countries in the
global south, like in Chile
and Iraq for example,
these changes were
brought in using brutal
force by unelected
governments supported by
imperialist powers. In
20
Canada however, where there is at least the slight appearance of a democracy,
many of these changes were brought in through legislatures. The ruling classes
in so called liberal democracies have had to push for these measures using
psychological and cultural means. To be brief, the strategy has been to
demonize all public institutions like governments and promote the private sector,
markets as the best way to organize production. This has been accompanied
by a strong push to paint taxes in a negative light and to promote individualism
and self-interest as much as possible; all with the goal of promoting the new
spirit of the age gain wealth, forget all but self. The ruling class has had to
convince workers that corporatization and privatization of public bodies was
necessary to cut the national debt and taxes.

The process of corporatization has attempted to transform universities into
profit making bodies; tools to be used to produce tradable knowledge that can
produce a profit for corporations. Research is now increasingly geared
towards profit making, universities are administered like corporations, the
bottom line becomes the crucial priority and everything that counters that must
be done away with.

21
According to Noam Chomsky, the corporatization of campuses was partially a
reaction to the social mobilizations of the 60s and 70s for civil rights, equality
and cultural freedom. Chomsky believes that the Powell Memorandum, a leaked
memo written by Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer, in 1971 (who would become a
justice on the Supreme Court) to Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr. of U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, gives us a glimpse into the reaction of the ruling class to those
social breakthroughs. Powell writes that he is very worried about the trend of
respectable Americans questioning the free enterprise system and
demanding a revolutionary transformation to socialism or just radical reforms.
Powell states The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come
from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the
pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and
from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is
participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the
most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.

Powell identifies social
science faculties as being one
of the key sources of the
22
problem; Social science faculties (the political scientist, economist, sociologist
and many of the historians) tend to be liberally oriented, even when leftists
are not present. This is not a criticism per se, as the need for liberal thought
is essential to a balanced viewpoint. The difficulty is that balance is
conspicuous by its absence on many campuses, with relatively few members
being of conservatives or moderate persuasion and even the relatively few
often being less articulate and aggressive than their crusading colleagues.
Powell was essentially arguing that there needs to be more capitalist promotion
within social science faculties; which obviously goes against traditional notions
of academic freedom that academics should decide what gets taught and the
faculty make up.

Powell goes on to argue that the Chamber of Commerce, capitalists, should play
a more aggressive role in ensuring that campuses promote obedience to the
system. He states The Chamber should consider establishing a staff of highly
qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system. It should
include several of national reputation whose authorship would be widely
respected even when disagreed with...The staff of scholars (or preferably a
panel of independent scholars) should evaluate social science textbooks,
23
especially in economics, political science and sociology. This should be a
continuing program.

So among other things, Powell was arguing that capitalists should monitor what
gets taught and ensure that nothing anti-capitalist gets through; anything that
would teach workers to think for themselves and choose a different system
that doesnt oppress them. Chomsky believes that the Powell memo
demonstrates a strong desire within the ruling class to do more to control the
populace through greater control of universities. He believes that the period
after the 60s and 70s, referred to as the neoliberal age, has been one where
capitalist have conspired to promote what Chomsky calls the new spirit of the
age.

That new spirit is that everyone
should gain wealth, and forget all but
self. Whereas the post depression
era in the industrialized world was
marked by the building of a generous
welfare state and a heightened
24
sense of solidarity (not perfect, but progressive), the period between the late
70s till today has been tainted by growing public dedication to greed,
self-interest, low taxes, individualism, freedom, free trade, laissez-faire
capitalism, neoclassical economics, imperialism and other very unconscious
perceptions.

Of course, these attitudes have sadly always been embraced by the ruling
class (without which they would not maintain their desire to rule over others).
But it seems that in more recent times, the ruling class has been much more
able to persuade the oppressed to also adopt these attitudes. For example,
the desire for low taxes has always been a desire of the ruling class that
fought fiercely to prevent income taxes to be adopted in the first place (Wolff,
2012).

It was workers, realizing the great gap between the rich and poor and the need
to reallocate resources for jobs and social programs, that build a powerful
movement for taxes on the wealthy. Indeed, according to Professor and
economist Richard Wolff, during the Great Depression of the 30s, capitalists
and their political servants within the State were forced by powerful organized
25
workers movements to increase taxes in order to create millions of jobs, social
programs like unemployment insurance and retirement security, a minimum
wage, protections for unions, etc.

In recent times, due to a number of factors such as a declining labour
movement and the fall of the Soviet Union, capitalists have had the window of
opportunity to shift political attitudes and drive the new spirit of the age. With
regards to education, this meant slashing public funding to universities and
forcing them to rely increasingly on private money; a strategy which would
enable the wealthy to more effectively control campuses. Tuition fees
increased sharply. Tenureship and academic freedom was now under threat,
more part time instructors were hired, campus decision making became less
democratic, scholarship became more geared towards the interests of finance
capital and less on the public good, and progressive ideas increasingly became
unwelcomed on campuses.

26

As Powell explained in his memo, it would be difficult to go after academic
freedom because it is so ingrained into academia. Tenureship would be
respected to a certain extent, but the number of tenured positions would be
significantly reduced. Through manipulating how professors are evaluated and
promoted, capitalists figured out a way to ensure that reactionary professors
would be promoted and progressive professors would be isolated and given
less and less responsibilities (Newson, 2010). In doing so, they would send a
message that if you want to get ahead in academia, you have to teach subjects
and do research that are in line with the interests of capital. Professors would
now be measured and promoted based on how much money they bring in to
the university, how many articles get published; not their dedication to the public
good.

Through their control of governments, capitalists would also be able to ensure
that grants are only given to universities for research that leads to tradeable
goods for finance capital. Claire Polster, a Professor of sociology at the
University of Regina, writes The pressure to obtain grants increases the time,
energy, and other resources that academics spend seeking funding, thereby
27
reducing the resources we may devote to our core responsibilities of teaching,
public service, and research itself. It is also leading to many to modify, if not
abandon, their preferred research topics, approaches, and collaborators for
those that are more in line with the priorities of powerful research funders,
which may compromise the integrity and utility of academic knowledge and
undermine the quality, if not purpose, of our working lives. (Newson, 2010)

Digging Deeper

Essentially, the corporatization of post-secondary education is about controlling
what information gets produced and distributed. Surely, many of the
proponents of this process will
strongly disagree and claim that
this process will improve the
quality of education and benefit
the economy and society as a
whole. I have personally met a
few people who did hold this
belief, and I do believe that they
28
genuinely felt like this what the right thing to do for everyone, not just the elite.
Through love and compassion, one can get a better understanding of just why
proponents of corporatization believe what they believe. Members of the ruling
class, whoever they may be, are ultimately no different than anyone else who
seeks to control or manipulate someone else; theres a deep sense of fear
that causes them to suffer a great deal. This suffering, which we all hold within
to varying degrees, distorts reality and keeps us ignorant of the truth: that we
are spiritual beings of light and love.

Through fear, ignorance, darkness...we unconsciously seek to cause suffering
to others, control, dominate. We seek fame, power, lust, money, greedall the
things that cause all the problems that we are aware of like the corporatization
of universities. I mention this because if we are to truly democratize our
universities, we need to always remember to deal with the root causes. That
means in addition to organizing, building movements, changing government
policies; we need to also change ourselves by uprooting the suffering within
ourselves and becoming more loving, hopeful and optimistic in the words of
Jack Layton :)

29
Section II: The Cooperative Campus

For my ally is the Force, and what a powerful ally it is. - Yoda

We are living in revolutionary times. People everywhere, young and old, are
waking up to the truth. Its a beautiful thing. We see it with the Occupy
movement, which although now is not as active, is still very much alive and still
asking questions about our economic system. We see it with the student
movement in Quebec that courageously defeated fee increases and is now
demanding and organizing for free education and campus democracy. We see
it with Idle No More, which is still alive and pushing for recognition of aboriginal
rights. We see it with the movement to free Palestine; learning from South
Africa and calling for widespread boycotts of israeli goods and divestment
from companies that deal with Apartheid Israel, until Palestine is free. These
are signs that people have had enough of suffering and want fundamental
change.



30
Democracy Works

The movement for campus democracy is an integral part of that shift, that
transition to a new Earth. Universities can be seen as microcosms of the
greater society and indeed of the Universe. The term university is very well
suited in that sense. Through campuses, we learn about ourselves, society, the
planet and indeed the Universe. Campuses become vehicles of meaning, of
interpretation, of designing and redesigning realities. Building a cooperative
campus means building a community on campus that is founded on love,
kindness, community, sharing, cooperation, harmony, compassion, etc. All of
those high vibration feelings and principles that are needed to restore proper
order on campus and beyond.

Organizing a university like a cooperative, where workers and students
collectively make all the decisions is not new. Cooperatives indeed have been
around for a very long time (Wolff, 2012). My intuition tells me that they are
indeed a very natural way of organizing production. We know that many ancient
societies produced things communally, as a group, and consumed things the
same way, as a group. Communities would hunt together, gather and grow food
31
together, and share it based on need. This is what Marx and Engel referred to
as primitive communism; community focused production.

Even as more alien economic systems like slavery, feudalism and capitalism
developed, there have been groups of people throughout the ages who stayed
true to these cooperative principles. Many spiritual communities like the first
christians for example organized production in this way. Cooperating and
sharing things together seemed to naturally arise and align with their spiritual
practices.

Theres a growing cooperative movement as more people realize that there are
alternatives to capitalist enterprises. 2012 was designated the year of the
cooperative by the United Nations (Wolff, 2012) There are a number of
cooperative associations in Canada pushing for support and better laws to
encourage cooperatives to grow. According to Professor Richard Wolff, A
cooperative enterprise is the key, decisive alternative to a traditional capitalist
enterprise All the workers, whatever they do inside an enterprise, have to be
able to participate in collectively arriving at the decisions what, how, where to
produce, and what to do with the profits in a democratic way One person,
32
one vote in deciding how these things are done (Wolff, 2012) In his book,
Democracy at Work: a Cure for Capitalism, Wolff describes in detail why
capitalist enterprises have overgrown their usefulness and why cooperatives or
what he calls worker self-directed enterprises are now needed as the
dominant way of organizing production and distributing resources.

Universities are not capitalist enterprises just yet; they still get a lot of their
funding from government. They have been transforming themselves into such
enterprises through the corporatization process described above. Instead of
workers and students making all the decisions, only a small group of largely
unelected people, the board of directors, are making these decisions. In order
to truly have a campus that works for everyone, with a more equitable
distribution of resources and tasks, those affected by such decisions,
workers and students, need to be the ones making them democratically.

Such a level of cooperation could be worked out and could include a mix of
representative bodies and general assemblies working together to ensure the
fullest participation possible by all citizens on campus. University campuses
could be organized as communities of smaller cooperatives instead of one big
33
one. This may allow for a more direct level of democracy as many students
and workers would prefer.

Rise of the Student Movement

The situation facing Canadian students is challenging to say the least.
Positively, in recent years students across the country are getting up and
standing up for their right not only to reduced fees but to free education.
Nowhere is this struggle more remarkable and intensified then in Quebec. For
many years, Quebec students enjoyed lower fees than other provinces due to
having a more militant and organized student movement, including a
long-standing freeze in fees. However in 2010, the pro-capitalist Quebec Liberal
government of Jean Charest announced that tuition fees would soon rise.
Students in Quebec were outraged and demanded action. A major debate
developed about strategy out of which the students, learning from mistakes in
2005 and 2007, realized that the essential ingredients for a fight-back were
unity and militancy.

When Charest announced in 2011 that tuition would rise by a stunning 82% by
34
2018, students were beginning plans for a strike vote, with an agreement for
common action between three main student union centrals. The Quebec
student strike of 2012 became the largest strike and mass mobilization of
students in Canadian history. Some
of the rallies were also the largest
ever in Canadian history with 150 -
250,000 students in the streets. There
were many memorable and important
moments of the strike.

Very quickly the strike became a flashpoint for popular opposition to the
Charest government and austerity. From the beginning the students made
connections with other struggles, forming the Red Hand coalition with labour
and community groups, and organizing a massive action with environmentalists
on Earth Day.

In negotiations the student unions stayed united; the government eventually
admitted the decision to increase fees basically had little to do with finances
but was part of an ideological campaign to destroy social programmes starting
35
with post-secondary education. An all-campus referendum overwhelmingly
rejected the governments proposal at the negotiating table and showed broad
support for the struggle, including on non-striking campuses.

After failing to negotiate an end to the strike, Lise Beauchamp in May of 2012
resigned as Minister of Education. This was a sign that the Charest government
was weakening and that students were gaining the upper hand. A few days
later, the Charest government passed the now infamous Bill 78 which effectively
suspended the freedom of assembly in Quebec and further angered a very
broad section of civil society groups.

This lead to even more protests, now all illegal, as well as mass arrests. A
growing coalition formed between students, labour, progressive political parties
like the coalition Quebec Solidaire, civil liberties groups, lawyers and other
progressive alliances. The red square, worn by hundreds of thousands of
striking students and supporters across the country became a symbol of
solidarity in opposition of rising student fees. Despite unhelpful silence from
the NDP and Liberal opposition, solidarity actions quickly took place across the
country.
36

Later that summer, under growing pressure Jean Charest called an election and
was unsurprisingly defeated by the sovereigntist and pro-business Parti
Qubecois lead by Pauline Marois, running a populist and seemingly
anti-austerity campaign. This was seen as a clear rebuke of Charests position
during the strike and a victory for the student movement in Quebec. After
over eight months of campaigning, students returned to class with a
tremendous sense of empowerment and political consciousness, but divided
over how positive their achievements were.

Very quickly all of the more progressive demands, like reducing and eliminating
tuition fees, were rejected by the PQ who continued with an increase, less
rapidly than under the Charest plan but, dangerously, on a much longer-term
basis. Nevertheless, what made the student movement successful was their
extensive use of general assemblies to engage students directly, giving a
sense of democratic control over their movement.

The unity between the different student groups, including the tactic of the
most militant union forming a short-term expanded coalition of striking unions
37
(the CLASSE), was crucial. Militant strategies and tactics based on mass
mobilization also led to the successful efforts to link their movement to the
struggle to bring down the Charest government and its anti-people and
anti-environmental agenda.

The election also saw a surge of support for the left-wing coalition Quebec
Solidaire, it called for free tuition among other things, and elected two members.
The Quebec student strike of 2012 has therefore become a shining light for the
rest of the student movement in English Canada. There were other but less
intense student struggles across the country for accessible education. In Nova
Scotia, for example, the CFS and a few student unions took to the streets in
Halifax to demand an end to funding cuts by the NDP government.

Again, the debate about militancy, unity, democracy, and programme is critical.
On the one hand, the CFS has tended to avoid mass mobilization towards
flashy ad campaigns, lobbying, and waiting for elections to vote NDP. Outside
of Ontario and Nova Scotia which have been more progressive in recent years,
the CFS has approached bold ideas like free education with some caution,
although still calling for it on paper.
38

This strategy also hasnt helped stop right-wing attempts to break-up the CFS in
favor of either reactionary student unions which call for tuition increases (!) or
just political inactivity. Confusedly, some on the left have sided with these
demands to disorganize the student movement based on this or that structural
or strategic problem with the CFS. Many students in English-speaking Canada
are demanding a strong movement, more militant student unions and a much
more active Canadian Federation of Students, calling for it to break out of the
bunker and launch a counter offensive.

United we Stand

It remains to be seen exactly how such a movement will come to light; for the
Young Communist League, which I am a member of, it cannot be too soon. What
is clear though is that it is absolutely necessary that students across the
country organize and mobilize to demand significantly more funding to
universities; to link up with labour and community groups to take back
governments from the grip of finance capital and start building the kind of
accessible post-secondary education system that makes quality, universal,
39
public, accessible, and democratic education a fundamental right.














~ Transcendence ~

Such a strategy will require electing a peoples coalition government in Ontario
which will need to include progressive, socialists and/or communists MPPs.
40
Something similar to Quebec Solidaire could be formed in Ontario, other
provinces and perhaps federally as well. The NDP could join such a coalition if
they adopt a more progressive platform then what they currently have.
Increasing funding for universities and colleges, making education free and
democratizing campuses would reverse the corporatization process. These
reforms however, in order to be secured, would have to be accompanied by a
more fundamental restructuring of the economy; the democratization of
enterprises and the entire production and distribution process.

Such a transformation, as I mentioned above, is already well underway. Marx
believed that the economic system would need to change before human beings
could change fundamentally (Marx, 1848). Now, more and more revolutionaries
such as myself, understand as Gandhi did that we have to be the change we
want to see in the world. As people are awakening from the widespread
mindcontrol developed on this planet for eons, they are imagining and creating
new realities. A new human species is evolving ~ new cultures are developing ~
a movement for campus and economic democracy is building ~ and indeed, A
new Earth is being born ~ right here ~ right now ~

41















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