NATIONAL MEETING'S POLITICAL DOCUMENT

DECEMBRER THE 13TH AND 14TH 2008, TOR VERGATA - ROME

The national meeting of movement took place on December the 13th and the 14th at University of Tor Vergata in Rome. A need shared by individuals and political groups, who actively took part to the protests against the Law 133 as well as against all the measures concerning school, university and research made by this government, gave birth to this.

After the mobilization’s first stage, in which the spontaneous action was predominant, the claims were defined and the political platforms established, by going deeply into the various matters faced by the whole movement. In the second stage, we noticed that socializing the struggles and the political analysis which were debated during the last months and in the past years, is a necessity, since we share the same point of view and the same outlook. This meeting is indeed only the first and necessary step, but it’s not enough: the next step is to work together with the aim to leave a mark on society and on everyday life.

The two days of intense debates were constructed in two moments of dialogue on self determination and two plenary workshops which dealt with the relation between “School and University, Capital and Work” and between “University and social movements”. The meeting’s first task was to examine the several mobilizations and to accomplish the theoretical analysis in order to better set out the practices. It’s not a sheer chance that all of the assemblies focused on the readings of the economic crisis, as main discussion. Unlike all those who wrote reams claiming that this is just a “financial crisis”, we strongly need to restate that this is but a capital accumulation crisis, which we have been experiencing for 30 years. The recent financial burst is only the last, violent, turning point. The speculation and debt mechanisms, which are failing nowadays, aren’t the product of some “rotten apples”, but are one of the many paths which were stamped since the 70’s in order to respond to the capital’s valorization difficulties. Questioning capitalism means to clarify that there can’t be no “good” side in a system based on oppression and exploitation: finance and real economy are two sides of the same manner of production. Condemning the speculators and banks rapacious capitalism, suggesting that there is a good one or a sustainable one to defend, means to distort reality and give up your own critical weapons to the enemy.

In order to overcome this accumulation crisis, the capital used different strategies: besides the control of public funds and monetary policy, which were brought under the finance’s control, through transnational organizations, it also recurred to global wars and to a massive exploitation of the South of the World (capital did this in two ways: by bringing the production in these countries and by abusing their natural resources). Governments and businessmen directly attacked the life conditions of subordinated classes, with the collaboration of fake political oppositions and the main trade union’s active role. They tried to redesign the whole society modifying some of its fundamental characteristics: the role of the State, labour market, retirement system, sanity, transportations, propelling environment destruction and making water and air private. So they limited and weakened social conflict, opened new markets and instilled new profitable needs.

This wide process where everything is made precarious and there is a wild commercialization, didn't save education and research. They were simply reformed to satisfy the need of creating an economic system based on knowledge. The members of the EU (for example Spain, France and Greece)are harmonizing their education systems under neoliberal reforms in order to build a European space for Superior Education and Research (this would be functional to worldwide competition, just like the European army). We know how the class selection and discipline mechanisms evolved and how they are evolving, starting from schools and universities, thanks to the researches on the relations between the formative system, the general economic situation and the reorganizations which happen in the EU.

From this point of view, the introduction of the famous “3+2” (the new setting of the university system which provides three years plus two more master years), of stages and compulsory probationers during a student’s career, of formative credits (CFU), the new role of privates in universities, life-long learning, the dismantling of what remains of the right to study (refectories, houses, scholarships), are only some of the elements which have appeared during the assembly.

Formative credit has been one of the most discussed points: the position “suggested” by other wings of the Italian students movement, particularly by the reports of “La Sapienza”, i.e. the abolition of the credit system by inflating the credits was strongly criticized. One credit is defined as the measure of the volume of learning, including individual learning, which is required to every student in order to acquire knowledge and abilities during formative activities provided from the didactic ordinance. This is only a material measurement of the learning time (and not of the knowledge time) which has contributed to the disqualification of the education system. The formative credit contains the sum of work that ranges from frontal lessons, to homeworks, until skills and practical abilities are acquired. The acquisition of a method or the total cultural and personal growth are not important: the only thing that matters is the replenishment of “spare” time with a series of divided notions. So, if on one hand the formative credit pushes further the process of knowledge commercialization (for example the shameful conventions, which have been possible thanks to the introduction of the credits, that universities subscribe with any type of corporation to gain more money), on the other hand this creates a common average level to enter the European work market.

So, the hypothesis of increasing the value of the credits is paradoxical and it marks a withdrawal of our struggles: the content is said to be criticized but the container is left untouched. One collaborates instead and legitimates the credit system - it acquires importance among the students - and brings, even in the education phase, baronial and cooptation logics through the development of privileged relations with professors and academic authorities who must recognize the “anti- course”(and they don’t have too many problems in doing this since in the sight of total submission of curricular paths to the capital’s demands there is this ridiculous relief valve: the law Ruberti of 1990 already scheduled self managed education activities; law Zecchino, later, allows a very small percentage of formative credits to be reserved to activities which the student has autonomously chosen). “Self education” with credits is therefore perfectly compatible with the demands of the academic and economic powers; this doesn’t even question them, but it rather reinforces them. This only weakens the struggle. The only plausible position is to struggle without any ambiguities for the repeal of the credit system, accomplishing truly self managed debates and cultural events and to overlook them in an antagonist way. It’s important to understand that the struggle doesn’t consist in understanding some lessons dropped down from some professor or assistant, but in the horizontal comparison among subjects in struggle and people who don’t attend university, such as workers, immigrants, political entities. It’s not a matter of closing ourselves in the privileged classrooms of “knowledge”: the real aim is to make University a place where all the struggles of the city or of small town have to pass by. Because university does not belong to students: it belongs, or it should belong, to everybody, in attendance of the whole community.

It’s necessary to discuss about all those proposes which aim to relieve the State of the burdens of the formative system. For example the honor loans advertisements, which bring the students to buy their own “formative pack”. These advertisements warmly propose the students to fall into debt, in order to have the hope that with their degree they will find a well paid job and that they could extinguish the debt they contracted with the backer (who could be a bank or a business firm). In this way the students invest on themselves but they will probably end up being blackmailed twice: from their boss at work and from the backer in the honor loan. This system is in crisis even in the countries where it’s more entrenched and its main consequences are social exclusion, students’ forced indoctrination, competition among classmates and the higher percentage of students who can be threatened.

The attempts of abolishment of the legal value of qualifications, supported by very important multinational companies, follow this direction. On the one hand, the capital’s aim is to build on one side a suitably disqualified mass university where low cost workers are trained; workers who are exposed to precarious work, forced to follow continuous and education cycles (masters, specialization courses etc. which aren’t free) and who represent a desperate ”army of unemployed” in competition with one another. On the other hand, the capital wants to create few highly selective education places, where managers, in agreement with the capital’s needs, are formed. From this point of view the “emergency”, the “waste”, “meritocracy” are the ideological screens these reforms are spread through. These reforms do nothing but reinforce the baronial system and the State university’s disqualification.