Why students must join in the class struggle!

The recent struggles of Iranian students have shown again how students can be a catalyst for political and potentially revolutionary change. Tens of thousands of students in Tehran and in eleven other cities around Iran demonstrated against a brutally repressive Islamic regime. They risked (and some lost) their lives fighting for political democracy; for free speech for writers, imprisoned for criticising the regime; and for the emancipation of women subjugated by the Islamic regime. They put their lives on the line for freedom and democracy.

The Iranian students' fight inspired the working class and the unemployed to join the demonstrations. This was an important step forward, not only for the students but for the cause of human emancipation in Iran. This is because the force that has the power to emancipate the people of Iran - the workers, the unemployed and students - and destroy the repressive state once and for all is the working-class in Iran. Iranian socialists understand this and try to get the students' movement to link up with the working class. On a recent picket of the British Iranian Embassy, the Iranian socialists chanted "Down with Khamenei, Down with Khatami, Long live socialism". The message was: Khamenei, the known reactionary would not emancipate ordinary Iranian people; Khatami, the supposed "reformist" will also not bring emancipation - he will betray the demands of the Iranian students.

The only solution is, as Marx put it: "The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself".

Iran 1999 is by no means the first time students have acted as a catalyst for or brought to life working class struggles.

In May 1968 students played an important role in a movement which brought France to the precipice of a workers' revolution. It started with 500 students protesting outside the University of Nanterre, demanding the right to visit the rooms of members of the opposite sex after 11pm. The student protests had escalated in under two weeks into 9 million strong demonstrations and the biggest general strike in history. Weeks before this, bourgeois commentators had said France had no base for class struggle.

In the summer of 1989 in Tiananmen Square, students stood as strong as tanks as the Chinese riot police flooded in. In the same year in other Stalinist countries, of Eastern Europe, students played a crucial role in the "glorious revolutions" of 1989-90 which brought down bitterly anti-working class regimes. In these so-called "socialist" states any kind of working class organisation - trade unions, newspapers, political groups - was banned. In Czechoslovakia, students initiated the pro-democracy movement. They occupied their colleges and used them as co-ordination centres for the opposition movement. Everywhere, as one regime after another was forced out of power, students stood together with workers in the battle to put democracy and liberation back on the agenda.

In Britain too students have joined up with important class struggles - in particular they played an important role in the 1984-85 miners' strike. Thatcher's bitter fight with the miners was an attempt by the ruling class to defeat the whole of the working class. Students gave their active support to the miners - collecting money, setting up campus strike support groups, working with trade union activists and Labour Party members, standing on the picket line. This generation of students recognised that their fate was tied up with that of the working class. If the miners went down to defeat then Thatcher would be able to push through more cuts, including cuts in education.

Since the defeat of the miners, the Tories, and now New Labour, have used the low levels of struggle to dismantle the welfare state and curb the right of workers to organise, by backing a raft of anti-uion laws, as well as taking away benefit rights and grants from, and introducing fees for, students. The defeat of the working class in the 1980s was a defeat for students. Equally any victory in the future for the working class will help students to win their demands.

History shows us the revolutionary role students can play. This is a role recognised by Lenin, who led the only successful workers' revolution in history - the Russian Revolution. Because students had the time to think about ideas and the world their lived in, Lenin said, even middle class students could stand back from their own class upbringing and look at the world afresh; potentially they could see unprejudiced the glaring, barbaric and irrational truths of capitalism.

Since the beginning of the century when Lenin was writing there has been a huge growth of the student population world-wide. More students personally experience the naked truths of capitalism - a cut price education, the prospect of unemployment - more students today share a common interest with the working class. The victories and defeats of the working class are more and more linked to victories or defeats for students.

Why is the working class and class struggle important? In The Communist Manifesto, Marx's starting point is that "[the] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". He then goes on to explain this class struggle in terms of the relationship of different classes to the means of production.

Capitalism is based upon "simplified ... class antagonisms" due to a simplified relationship to the means of production. The capitalist owns the means of production and exploits the working class by purchasing its labour power and converting it into a profit which rests with the capitalist. The working class, forced to sell their labour power to get money to live is the oppressed class. This is as true today as it was in 1848 when Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto.

As capitalism develops and expands so too does the working class. But, as Marx says, the working-class is the bourgeoisie's gravedigger because the working class inevitably stands in conflict with the capitalists and as the working class has no interest in oppressing any other class when it overthrows the bourgeoisie it will emancipate not only itself but the whole of humanity.

For these reasons socialists cherish and fight for the maximum democratic self-organisation of the working class. Socialists always try to look at politics from the point of view of the ultimate interests of the working class. We always ask ourselves the question "What will help the workers take power in the long-run"

The relationship of students towards the class struggle can only be conditioned by their world view: they must decide "Which side am I on", "do I want to see the liberation of humanity?". If they do decide to join the class struggle, on the side of the working class or against the bourgoisie, this often results as we have seen in students playing an important and dynamic role.

To be able to think about politics Marxists need to adopt an honest, non-sectarian view of reality. Because reality is often not what you want to see.

At the beginning of this century Marxists predicted international socialism would be born before the end of this century. At the end of the 20th century socialism is in retreat. Stalinism has played a big part in that reality by keeping down the working class in large parts of the world and by perverting and desecrating the rich and profound meanings of socialist ideas.

Other defeats impinge on our immediate reality. In Britain, the defeat of the miners' strike in 1984-5 led to 15 years of retreat for the British labour movement. In such a political climate many people, tragically many young people, are put off all politics.

Bourgeois commentators leap to tell us that this means that socialism is dead, and capitalism is triumphant. This is a false conclusion.

Class struggle has not disappeared. After all, we have seen it taking place in the last months in mass strike waves in South Korea, South Africa and Columbia. But the important point is that class struggle cannot disappear as long as the working class exists and until the working class has raised itself up and destroyed the class society.

Bourgeois commentators may assert that capitalism is here to stay or that the working class's attempts to overthrow it have been decisively smashed but their view of reality is warped, is based on their short-term triumphalism of the moment. Leon Trotsky said that the ruling class' way of viewing the world was like a still picture. Yet reality is like a rolling film. In the context of history, capitalism is one act; the low levels of struggle we currently see is one small scene.

By understanding where we are now we can have a huge effect on where we go next. And students can play a big part in ensuring we roll the film of history forward towards a better, fairer world.

And at the moment there are great opportunities for students to challenge the capitalist-friendly New Labour government. Thousands of students around the UK still haven't paid their fees and hundreds more are organising for the non-payment of fees in their colleges. This is being co-ordinated into a national campaign by the National Non-Payment Collective. We can make fees unworkable and force the Government to deliver free education. This itself would raise a banner for a decent welfare state for all. Every student should get involved in this fight.

If you are a student you need to decide which side you are on. You need to see the need to link your fate to the fate of the labour movement. A big student non-payment campaign is not enough. It needs to help create another link in the chain. It needs to make links with the grass-roots labour movement and to campaign for such things as the rebuilding of the whole of the welfare state and to fight for trade union rights.

Students should bring their activity, solidarity and understanding of history to the class struggle: Down with capitalism, long live international socialism!