The Schools Movement

Over the past few years there has been a proliferation of unions, councils and groups among secondary students. These have been in general based in Dublin, with small pockets of support sprinkled throughout the country. They have tended to spring up as a result of militant upsurges among secondary teachers, which in the ‘67-71 period were an almost annual These upsurges always showed students just — how helpless a sector'they were, and as a result the tension-filled schools were.a ready made field for secondary student mobilisation. The resultant student unions usually issued demands for a more democratic schools system, freedom of dress, assembly, and of political and religious views. Due to the relative size, structure, and concentration of secondary schools, and because of the very — nature of secondary students, such unions of __ students never lasted very long—nor was their . influence very wide-ranging.

The latest in a long line of such unions is IUSS (Irish Union of School Students). This group is attached to the Government sponsored ‘National Youth Council’ and the USI (Union of Students in Ireland). It appears to model itself to a large extent on the British NUSS (National Union of School Students), the memberslfip of which has been estimated at 7000.

The IUSS was formed by members of the Official Sinn Fein, with the apparent assent of ‘the ‘Gardiner Place’ leadership. Since then its membership has remained virtually static, with exception of some contacts in the major tural centres. The aims of the union have been ambiguous at the best of times. They have ranged from: ‘the right to organise, the right of free speech and the right of assembly’, ‘education not examination’, ‘a proper say in schools for students’—right down to: ‘Democratic control of schools’, ‘abolition of all exams, streaming and the right of the dept. of Education’. The latter demands however have of late been covered over by the present leadership of Don Conlon, Tony Kinsella and Tomas McCiurnaigh (all members of Sinn Fein). Even on the issue of repression in the schools, Mr. Conlon tells ali.the union members in one of his numerous circulars: ‘unfortunately for those schools involved there is little we can do at the moment about the conditions in many Irish schools as we are waiting for a reply from the “Joint Managerial Board”.’

The three mini-bureaucrats mentioned above maintain hegemony over what is now only a ‘rump’ of an organisation, containing mainly ‘middle class trendies’ along with some school students who are genuinely interested in adopting a serious attituae towards the educational system.

While this has been the usual make-up of schools-unions in Ireland, the [USS has taken all the worst aspects of such associations and generalised them within its own setup. As can be seen from its. programme, its intention is to put forward reformist demands in the.hope of building a ‘mass movement’ among schools students, The 1USS, despite .all its massive pretensions, has degenerated into a complete. charade with members of Sinn Fein involved getting pretty ‘pissed-off’ with the careerist_ wranglings of its leadership.

That these people should be allowed to use the name of Sinn Fein as a cover for their exploits, without being answerable to the same organisation, is a very dangerous precedent which can do nothing but damage to Sinn Fein. It is, however, a price that any revolutionary organisation inevitably pays for not having a rigorously centralised method of intervention. Otherwise leeway is left open to all sorts of dilettantes to bungle whole sectors of intervention.

DEMOCRATIC DEMANDS The politically conscious members of the IUSS are still convinced that.they can build their. union on the basis of their present demands, which call for basic democratic rights for school students. But whilst these demands in themselves are quite correct they fail to come to grips with the two major problems that face any group that wishes to revolutionise the schools system. These are: (i) the nature of the Irish educational system . and its relationship to the present economic and political conjuncture in Ireland; and (ii) the nature of the secondary student mass and its present stage of physical and political development.

Obviously capitalism cannot at any time allow a fully democratic schools system, as this would_ necessarily entail students being able to change both the structure of the schools and the content of education itself. While the former is conceivably permissible according to the needs of capitalism, the latter-would mean that the schools would no longer serve e-ither the labour market or bourgeois society in general. At present certain reforms in the content and structure of Irish education are needed in order to bring us into line with projected economic and social development— but there can never be a free and democratic educational system until the hold of the labour market and of the class that imposes it on society is broken. pe - class or social interests—they are a very of Students.

All of the upsurges among secondary for secondary students.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE a objective needs, i.e, socialism.

phlet is insufficient initself.

CONTRADICTIONS Therefore the-goal of social revolution is necessarily an objective need of any movement that struggles for a free.and democratic schools system—indeed the struggle in the schools is thus inseparable from the struggle for socialism. If this link is to be forged, the school students themselves must be analysed. In general, school students cannot be organised successfully into a union structure. This is because they simply don’t have any cohesive transient layer which can only be mobilised in times of social or political crisis or for small periods-on issues that directly affect them. In the past, any mobilisation of secondary students in Ireland has been either on issues of political significance (e.g. Derry massacre, Offences Amendment Act) or on issues that directly affected them (e.g.the teachers’ strikes and the detention of Derry teachers.) Even the NUSS in Britain is presently suffering a decline in membership and interest due mainly to its lack of understanding of this fundamental point. It is also in debt for a considerable amount to the National Union students in Ireland have been short lived, with handfuls of politically conscious students along with small student groupings being thrown up in‘the process. In such circumstances any group of students with a perspective for ‘building a union’ is quite clearly ill-equipped to exploit the situation to their own advantage. They will simply either be disorientated themselves by it or the struggle will pass them by leaving those under their influence frustrated and confused. In times of relative calm, such a union simply degenerates into the shambles that IUSS is today, with nothing but a long term perspective for setting up holiday travel schemes There is however a clear alternative to such a strategy. From.a clear analysis of the development of the Irish education system, the weaknesses and futuifé crisis points can be discerned. From this any group of socialist students must put forward demands that will form a bridge between the present level of consciousness of secondary students and their These demands must be supplemented by. all basically democratic demands, e.g. the right to organise, freedom of political and religious beliefs, etc. The latter demands must always be fought for, because it is onitheir success that the basis will be built for more politically developed struggles. They are. however not enough by themselves. Only when they are combined with demands that make the link between The pamphlet is structured in two parts. The first part looks at some basic Marxist concepts, and studies in detail the roots of bureaucracy;

the dialectic of partial conquests; bureaucratic privileges; and the bureaucratisation of the workers’ states. Mandel raises a whole range of problems which will whet the reader’s appetite and if.the intention is to give us an indication of some future fuller text, then I await its publication with eagerness. However I hope the waiting will not be too long, as this pamFor example, the analysis of the emergence of a full time apparatus and the need for specialists, and of the contradictions which emerge from that process, is very illuminating, but some of the contradictions appear to remain unanswered. The dialectic that on the one hand the revolutionary movement would like to zmploy the best functionaries and therefore | must compete in a market wage structure, and that on the othey hand it must attempt to apply the rule of Marx — that full timers should be paid the same as a skilled worker — needs further investigation with some precise conclusions. Mandel deals very effectively with the conclusions drawn by various Marxists on the way to prevent bureaucratisation, for example the thesis developed by the ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie’ group, who argued that the © way to prevent bureaucratisationin the | -workers’ states was to abolish all wage/differentials. However I think he is on extremely dubious ground when hé goes on to conclude that the effect of eliminating wage differentials is to remove an incentive for workers to learn new skills!(p.10). Even in bourgeois society there is little evidence that workers who Part of London schools demonstra n last year—gave” f only a temporary boost to British NUSS. Ph CR Ses EAT aa AE roa EES Se the struggles and day-to-day experiences of students, and the struggle for socialism are they revolutionary. Demands must be formulated, for example on democracy in schools, not on the basis of the right of students to govern themselves but against the right of the capitalist class to interfere in the education of students. The former criterion can of course lead to a position where students and teachers actually form the governing board of a school, and become far more efficient disciplinarians for the bourgeoisie than the older ‘less democratic’ governing board.

Thus a clear concept of the respective needs of students and of the capitalist class is the only basis upon which the educational system can be effectively opposed. It is not enough just to realise the characteristic weaknesses of the educational system. It is also, of course, of primary importance that such a realisation be translated into an effective instrument to ex-ploit these weaknesses.

Such an instrument (as was explained above) is not a ‘student union’. Only a group of students who are politically conscious can initially perform such tasks, Only such a group can intervene _currectly and win over students on the basis of its programme and its actions, Only sucha group can effectively link the struggle in the schools to the struggle for the overall liberation of society. A group like [USS is incapable by its very nature of ever making any worthwhile gains either for itself or-for students in general. _ If the more conscious secondary students are intent upon channelling the fight in the schools into the broader struggle for socialism in_ Ireland they will have to learn the lessons of IUSS and its predecessors, draw the necessary conclusions, and transcend this particular conception of student organisation.

go into skilled jobs are primarily motivated by income expectations. | Where Mandel is really at his best isin the second part of the pamphlet; which deals with the bureaucracy in the workers’ States. There is also a section which deals with what are called the six phases of the bureaucratic phenomenon, in which he summarises problems identified by Marx, Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg in a yery precise and clear manner.

The section on the workers’ states is extremely -'good on the origins of bureaucratic degeneration, especially where it deals with the period of transition after 1917 in the Soviet Union, and the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party during the 1920s. Arguing that the errors made were not, tactical but ‘political and institutional’ he examines three in particular: (i) the ban on factions inside the party (I.S.

pléase note); (ii) the introduction of the single-party practice; and (iii) the failure to understand the :organic links between Soviet power, collective ownership and the need for ‘primitive socialist accumulation.’ Finally Other arguments taken up include the theory of ‘state capitalism’ as it applies to the bureau ‘cracy in the workers’ states (i.e. is it a class or a social layer?). If it is a class, what is its class relation in a society with a non-capitalist mode of production? Mandel effectively polishes off that particular problem. As Mandel states at the beginning, the pamphlet has an introductory purpose — I await with interest the full text!

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