On the Tasks of the Student Movement in the Anti-Imperialist Struggle

It is Right To Rebel!

For the first time in decades, the smokescreen raised by the ideologues of the genocidal Zionist state project (directly in the interests of u.s.a. imperialism) has begun to dissipate, blown away by the brave armed resistance of the Palestinian masses and their anti-imperialist allies around the world. In the u.s., the spear-tip of this struggle has been the student movement, mobilizing thousands of courageous activists in support of Palestinian national liberation, while facing down the entire weight of the disciplinary and repressive apparatuses of the university institutions and capitalist state.

This bravery has perhaps been most clearly demonstrated in the response to the repression of the Columbia Encampment, which has prompted the formation of dozen#s of new encampments at campuses around the country in a full-throated rejection of this attempt to silence student protest.

All militant students should take up this struggle and carry the fight forward, not under the banner of a “ceasefire” – the demand of Biden and his cronies, to absorb public outrage and cover for the continuation of the occupation by other means – but that of support for the liberation of the Palestinian nation, from the river to the sea. Yet we know that the imperialists will never give up their outpost in Israel peacefully: it serves as a bastion for u.s. finance capitalist regional interests, and a symbol of the military might of the u.s. empire. They will bring that might to bear in support of the Zionist occupation until we make it impossible for them to do so. It is therefore the duty of anti-imperialists and all those in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle in the belly of the imperialist beast to take up the cause of revolution here and now.

The student movement has a role to play in that struggle, but it will remain circumscribed politically as long as its objectives remain dictated merely by the immediate questions of the day. To be sure, our tactics for mass action must correspond to the actual conditions we’re facing, not what we wish might be the case. It is not enough to say, “we need a revolution!” and leave the conversation there, as though the desire for social change is enough to make it so. But neither is it enough to liquidate the question of long term aims in favor of just focusing on immediate tactics, limiting ourselves to responding to enemy counter-attacks as they happen without a clear understanding of how to defeat them once and for all.

Only a scientific understanding of the nature of the nature of u.s.a. imperialism, and the place of the university system within the capitalist mode of production, can provide us with a path to transforming the student movement of today into a vehicle for real social change, in service to the revolution. Today, the name of that scientific understanding is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the accumulated knowledge of two centuries of experimentation and revolutionary social practice by the working class, the only class whose real interest is the abolition of capitalism and all oppression of man by man. We refuse to shy away from that outlook, which sums up the struggles of the Paris Commune, the October Revolution, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which imposed itself in the armed struggles of the Indian peasants, in the Peruvian countryside, in the jungles of the Philippines, and the righteous struggles of millions of oppressed people around the world.

It is only by taking up the ideological weapon of Marxism, of revolutionary communism, that the student movement can overcome its theoretical weakness and link up with the working class struggle. Only then can we transform our rebellions – justified, courageous and militant rebellions – into a revolution that can root out every form of oppression, break the chains of imperialism, and bring an end to exploitation once and for all.

To take up the weapon of Marxism means to break decisively with the reformists and opportunists within our ranks who tell us to abandon our optimism and pursue dead-end electoralism or take jobs with the sellout NGOs. It means to take up the study of the lessons of all those struggles which came before us, to learn communism, and begin to build a revolutionary nucleus in the heart of the mass movements erupting against capital every day.

For the student movement, that especially means to learn from the revolutionary students of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – the greatest experiment in revolutionary democracy in history, where millions of students and workers rebelled in order to continue the revolution against the socialist state itself, in an ultimately defeated attempt to overcome the split in the working class between the capitalist reformers and those still fighting for communism. Unleash the weapons of mass criticism, unrelenting struggle against reformism, militant confrontation with the university administration and their lackeys, and the refusal to submit to any authority demanding conciliation with our enemies, from the trade union bureaucrats to the revisionists who peddle the lie of “peaceful protest.” Such agents are the representatives of the ruling class within our movement itself, whether or not they see themselves as such; against their attempts to deescalate our struggle, we remember the fundamental teaching of Mao Zedong:

“Marxism comprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence: it is right to rebel against the reactionaries.”

LONG LIVE THE CAMPUS OCCUPATIONS!

BUILD THE COMMUNIST STUDENT MOVEMENT IN SERVICE OF WORKING CLASS REVOLUTION!

IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL AGAINST THE REACTIONARIES!

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!