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Be realistic. Demand Marxism.

Forty years after the student riots and mass strike of 1968 in France, the need for a democratic student movement armed with cutting edge marxist politics, and a serious political strategy has hardly lessened.

The ‘Reclaim the Campus’ conference this weekend 17th-18th May initiated by ENS looks set to endorse the vague, simplistic leftiness which has been ENS’s trademark so far, encouraged by the Marxist organisation the Alliance for Worker’s Liberty. This approach is not just deceitful. It has failed and is going to fail. Communist Students are putting forward a Marxist programme as the platform for any new organisation that comes out of this conference. This is not maximalist or ultra-leftist. It is simply because

as Marxists, we believe Marxism is what is necessary for the working class to independently fight for it’s interests on all fronts, and to have any chance of taking power and instituting socialism. We do not disparage taking part in broad campaigns, but we do not think Marxists should be setting them up and cloaking their politics, as Worker’s Liberty comrades have done with ENS.

Wide-ranging: report of CU North

Around 30 people attended the annual Communist University North - an event jointly sponsored by Communist Students and the CPGB. Ben Klein and Carey Davies report

Comrade Yassamine Mather from Hands Off the People of Iran
kicked off the school with a session on ‘Imperialism and Iran’. Giving a brief sketch of the history of Iran in the 20th century, she underlined how Iran had always been a plaything of the imperialist powers - particularly Britain and Russia. It had never been a colony, but its destiny was dictated by these powers.

She argued that the mullahs’ rise to power has highlighted the bankruptcy of political islam as any kind of solution - far from challenging the logic of capital, they continued the process of integrating Iran into the global system, while accruing for themselves enormous wealth. Despite the anti-western rhetoric, the regime has also been more than willing to enforce the neoliberal agenda of the International Monetary Fund.

Click here to read the rest of the report.

Issue 5 of Communist Student out now!

Contents online —- Download PDF