By Sean Healy
With preparations for the May 8 joint staff-student national day of action well under way, indications are very positive for a considerable student campaign against the implementation of fees and cuts on campus.
In the four weeks since the March 26 national day of action, the University of Technology in Sydney's administration has been occupied, militant demonstrations have taken place outside university council meetings around the country, and some small victories have even been won — with Newcastle University agreeing to "review" a decision to close one of its two libraries.
The government is also feeling the heat — with minister for employment, education, training and youth affairs Amanda Vanstone trying desperately to justify the government's higher education agenda in the media, and government MPs leaping to her defence on the basis that critics are victimising her for her weight.
Yet in spite of this, the student movement is unresolved on the central issue: can we actually win? can we force a government retreat?
Some of the defeatism comes from the sources you'd expect it to: Labor students who have no interest in the campaign and whose party, after all, got the fees and cuts rolling. Labor students are generally on a "go-slow".
But there's also defeatism emanating from certain Â鶹´«Ã½ of the left as well, from those who seem to believe that the Coalition is unbeatable.
In NSW, Left Alliance students argued against the demand "Reverse the education funding cuts" on the basis that it was "weak", that it implied that all the movement wants is a return to how education was under Labor. They said that it was more important to put forward a "vision" for education which would counter right-wing ideology and develop student consciousness.
In Canberra, International Socialist Organisation students went further, arguing against a march on Liberal Senator Margaret Reid's office on the basis: "Why are we demanding anything of the Liberals? They won't give it to us anyway."
These arguments are wrong on two counts.
Firstly, they confuse the purpose of having demands at all. Demands aren't the same as slogans or as manifestoes of everything we believe in.
Demands are aimed specifically at mobilising people in struggle — because they are a clear statement of what we want and what we're fighting for. Which demands we put forward depends on an assessment of what issues students are confronting and are most concerned about.
The demand "reverse the education funding cuts" is not the totality of our goals, nor is it supposed to be. It is aimed at something very specific — tapping into student anger against the cuts, and directing it at a clear target: the federal government.
"Developing student consciousness" happens in struggle. Having and articulating a "vision" for higher education is necessary, but it isn't a substitute for what people learn in the heat of the campaign.
In struggle, student demands to reverse the cuts can very quickly become a fight against the whole of higher education policy. And it's only in struggle that we'll be able to win large numbers of students to broader, left-wing politics.
The second reason these arguments are wrong is because their basic assumption is that we can't affect the government or force it to change its policy. If we aren't even putting clear demands on them, if all we're doing is raising general slogans, then what we're left with is unfocused rhetoric, which lets the government off the hook.
The strategy put forward by some is that we should concentrate only on those institutions we presumably can affect: university administrations.
There is no question that campaigns against individual administrations are necessary — they're already happening and will continue to happen.
But this doesn't mean that we can't and shouldn't also take the fight up to the federal Coalition. The individual campus struggles should serve as a starting point for such a fight, not a replacement for it or an easy way out.
In fact, not to raise demands on the government, to limit the struggle to the vice-chancellors, is to admit defeat on fees, on funding cuts and on the whole restructuring of higher education. It's to content ourselves with marginal arguments about how the cuts are to be implemented and not to try to reverse them.
It's also ignoring the reality — we are already having an impact on the federal government; it is already squirming.
To overturn its policy will take far larger mobilisations and far greater student protest. It will need broader and stronger public support, a united struggle with academics and other university workers. It won't be easy, that's certainly true. But isn't this what we should be committed to?
[Sean Healy is the national coordinator of the socialist youth organisation Resistance.]