[Editors note. The events discussed in this article arose out of two issues. Firstly, the building of a gymnasium in Harlem park by the University authorities. This, in effect, robbed residents of Harlem of the use of part of the already totally inadequate community facilities in that area. This had distinct racialist overtones, since the local residents were offered ‘separate but equal' use of the gym. Secondly, it was discovered that the University was working on projects for the Institute for Defence Analysis, and this was directly involved in the Vietnam war. Around these two issues there coalesced a student protest movement that led to direct action and the occupation of the university. As was to be expected the police eventually moved in and used the unrestrained brutality typical of the U.S. police against the students. We print this account because it comes from a participant, and also because we think that it points some very useful lessons,
The struggle at Columbia University, New York, April/June 1968, transformed middle class students into student revolutionaries. It revealed the archaic forms of non-education at Columbia, and it illuminated the whole political, economic, military relationships of American society. During the movement of revolt everything was revealed. It was an education, a liberation of minds and bodies. Student poets were inspired to write political verse.
In Marx's Park,
You can run.
People get married.
Into this Garden
No Cops come,
one poet wrote, expressing the sense of joy, the feeling of euphoria released by the revolt. The prolonged sense of joy was partially illusionary, but it was necessary for it gave renewed confidence that liberation was desireable, needed, and possible. In their little revolt, students felt the release of energy which whole classes and national groups feel during a revolution.
The poet calls Columbia campus "Marx's Park", and while it is true that Marx's portrait was displayed in one of the buildings controlled by the students, Marx was not the dominant or only political hero. Few of the students had a coherent ideology. Economically, they were homogeneous ,they come mostly from middle and upper-middle class families, but politically they take different roads, and the wall posters, for the blacks, flashed
the faces of Malcolm X, Stokley Carmichael, Rap Brown, and for the whites, Marx, Che', Fidel, and. Mao. The blacks have their own leaders, while the white students have only Chinese and Cuban leaders for their heros. Nor was Herbert Marcuse, who is often toted as the ideologue of the American student left, a noticable influence. Students were cautious and sceptical about leaders, about historical patterns, about relying on the lessons of other revolutions. The events of the Chinese and the Cuban revolutions are instructive for students, but for them it was a time of exploration for new theory, rather than reliance on old theory. What was discovered, above all, was that there is nothing like action, and that theory can often be inhibiting, that theory must flow from action. Not that students rejected a dialectical interchange between theory and action, but they felt that action, often anarchy, is primary. Working without an ideology, but within a framework of attitudes, the movement is adaptable, and attractive to diverse groups, but lacks a coherent hard centre to push forward at crucial moments. This situation also permitted flexibility between leaders and rank-and-file, allowed rank-and-file people to speak and exert their pressure on the leadership. The relationship between leaders and the masses was always tense, and the Students for a Democratic Society's theory - "participatory democracy" which they contrast with ‘democratic centralism" - is often by-passed by the leaders themselves, and it often confuses the situation.
That there is a need for leaders, as there is a need for ideology, is a feeling that students are beginning to learn. A month after the first building was seized, after the first arrests, after order returned, on the surface, to the campus, a building was seized again. In the vote on whether to stay and face arrest,or leave, those who were in favour of leaving were in the majorityby far, but the m#Mority included the SDS leaders, refused to be bound by the majority decision and convinced the bulk of the students to remain. Pressure of this sort was exerted continually, though it wasn't the major force. Mostly students held fast because they believ: ed in the integrity of their demands, although they were sometimes forced by social pressure to accede to the views of the minority.
During the Columbia revolt people made love, read poetry, ate communal meals, and got married. The significance of the marriage which took place in one of the liberated buildingsfas, first of all, that it indicated how peoples! lives were completely changed by the struggle, that students were willing to give themselves emotionally and physically to the revolt, and that they rejected, in large part, the mores of bourgeois society. For a week 1000 students controlled a campus; entertainment was provided, leaflets issued hourly,theoretical papers prepared, political discussions held continually, communications between allies and enemies maintained, One of the failures was that there was no daily paper. A newspaper could have focused discussion, provided needed information, and rallied the strikers. A second fault was that discussion in some of the buildings was devoid of nearly all political content. During the summer the Strike Committee has run a Liberation School offering courses, ranging from the Chinese Revolution to Karate, American literary Realism to \/omens liberation, but a Revolutionary University run by students would have helped the political struggle during the strike.
Instead of discussions and courses, the white students celebrated the marriage of two of their fellow students. The marriage was important for it indicated that people were willing to accept the rules of the revolutionary body. Life style is a concept as important as any for the Columbia rebels. It means, in its broadest sense, rejecting bourgeois conventions, and trying to live now as one would want to live in a liberated society. Of course, it can't be achieved, and the effect is to bring splits into individual lives (the couple married in the students' commune was also married by the bourgeois officials), but it means a daily resistance to the corroding power of American capitalism. To make revolution one has to live it, to accept it. To be a revolutionary is to live ones's daily life in the present in accord with one's future social expectations.
Not all students accept the concept of revolutionary 'life style' in equal measure. Nor do all accept the theory of 'counter institutions’. , For those who do the film "The Battle of Algiers" was important. It showed/ BRE Algerian rebels in the Casbah organised their own state within a state. The black movement has also been influential, for groups like the Black Panthers have created their own communities. Another group, rejecting the theory and practice of counter institutions, proposes that revolutionaries remain within the establishment but try to change it, without being changed by it. These views were embodied in a variety of slogans: "A Free University in a Free Society", was shouted by those who believe you can only have a good university in a socialist society, while others who believe one can have a better university in a capitalist society said, "A Freer University in an Unfree Society". At the moment no hard line separates groups: the students themselves attend both the Liberation School and Columbia University, they work within the establishment to change it, but also create their own organisations. For the time being it looks like there can be fruitful interchange between both groups.
The Columbia Campus was never a Utopia under student control, and the police unfortunately descended brutally upon their world. Liberty, equality, fraternity, were words chanted by all, but the campus was also split by factions, and conflicts. In contrast with the feeling of liberation, the actual political scene was fairly fixed, predictable patterns emerged groups played roles, forces remained inflexible. Students, faculty, administration, the State, lined up in all too predictable fashion. The student revolutionaries made the situation more fluid.
The major conflict was between the students and the administration. Columbia is run by a board of trustees, a self-perpetuating instithion. The trustees are bankers,industrialists; the President of the New York Times is on the board as is the President of the Columpia Broadcasting System.
Columbia receives nearly 50 per cent of its budget from the Federal Government, and along with the Catholic Church, is the largest owner of property in New York City. Since it is a non-profit making institution all its properties are tax-free. Its President Grayson Kirk was an influential Cold War ideologue, its former President was Dwight Eisenhower, who was given the post to tidy his image for the American Presidency. Columbia has long been an instrument in the running of monopoly capital. Hiding behind the mask of ‘progressive education', and behind the masks of liberal professors
like Lionel Trilling and Richard Hofstatder the University works hand in hand with imperialism at home and abroad. In its laboratories professors do secret research for the Government on chemical and biological warfare; in its committee rooms professors draw up schemes for defeating guerillas. Columbia helps American expansion abroad, and also expands on its own territory in New York, evicting poor black and Puerto Rican families from buildings , demolishing them and building new laboratories for secret research.
To the students it seems as if they can only get an education at the expense of the poor and oppressed, and they want none of it. Its a matter of conscience. Columbia's students are mostly from New York, many are Jewish many go on to become lawyers, doctors, university teachers, Most of their parents can afford to pay the annual tuition fee of 1800 dollars. These students, who belong to a privile ged social class, found their privileges removed. They were subject to the military draft, ready to be sent to Vietnam. Just as no aspect of the whole American scene is comprehensible withreference to Vietnam, so too is the Columbia situation inexplicable without rembering the Vietnam war. Pure scientists did work on napalm, political scientists studied ways of defeating guerilla movement, and students thenmselves were raw material for the war machine. The lie was revealed: the University was no pure, autotelic community, but part of the society at large, implicated in its exploitation, violence and corruption. The Columbia situation was neats the local and particular issues were directly linked with national and international conflicts.
There were also more narrowly academic problems, which were of more interest to the liberals than the radicals. University curriculum, matters of appointment and tenure, the whole university educational policy, was and is still in need of revision. Courses had little to do, intellectually and emotionally, with contemporary problems. The students were alienated from @ bureaucracy which served the Government, administration, and professors, but not themselves. For years students had put on pressure, by petition, investigation and reports of problems, but the administration never acknowledged that any difficulty, or need for change existed. Administration rules were strictly autocratic.
Students saw their professors in a different light too, during the struggle. The faculty, by and large, played a reactionary role; thinking of themselves as power holders, but in reality victimized by the administration, they attempted to divide, and confuse the student rebels. But it is the faculty, and the liberal students who will probably win most from the struggle: from the efforts of the radicals, the centre forces and moderates will gain and consolidate power. The crisis at Columbia has also meant clear victory at other schools, where there was far less direct confrontation. Parodying Che', the Columbia rebels shout, "Create 2-3, many Columbias", and University presidents have acted in fear and have often granted rights and powers to faculty and student groups. Also, many universities have severed connections with government agencies doing military research. What the overall effect of the struggle at Columbia will be, it is too early to say, but it is already clear that all across the country, it has sharpened the struggle, that the position of students everywhere has been strengthened.
For nearly eight years Columbia has had a well organised, and articulate radical movement. The present situation demonstrates that day to day efforts of small groups over a long period of time pays of, but also that nothing advances revolutionary causes more than a forceful, dynamic confrontation. In a real sense the Columbia struggle was spontaneous. Students had long talked of questioning the authority of the University, but had never known how to go about it. Just before the seizing of the buildings the power of SDS, it was agreed by all, was at its lowest. Calling a meeting * to protest at the expulsion of its leaders from Columbia, SDS found that the mass of the students were willing to seize and occupy buildings.
The most important, the most energizing split was between black and “ white students. Blacks occupied one building by themselves; they agreed with the basic demands, never double-crossed their white allies. Most important their militancy moved white students to take the radical position they did. Black and white students were suspicious of each other: the blacks often said that the whites were only middle class kids playing at revolution, the whites claimed that the blacks would be bought off, would become the black bourgeoisie. But despite the cunning attempts of the faculty, administration, and the news media to divide black and white students, they held firm through the struggle. They are going their separate ways now, quietly. If the struggle is to make any headway there needs to be an alliance based on equality between black and white students, along the broad lines sketched . by Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers.
The cops did finally come on the Columbia campus. They handled the 2 black students gingerly, while they beat the whites. New York's Mayor, John Lindsay, knew that if blacks were beaten by white cops, there would be rioting in Harlem. Many of the whites resented the fact that the blacks agreed to leave the building peacefully, while they had to be carried out brutally, for they saw it as a compromise with the establishment. But the arrests united students rather than divided them: they stood together against the power of the State.
What will students do in the autumn? It is likely that there will be more buildings seized, more violent action, more police. Radicals will probably again take a clear stance, be trounced by the cops, and will then be joined in sympathy, by the great mass of the students. The students are still demanding an end to Columbia's part in the war, an end to its racial policies in New York, still demanding that the 100 students who were expelled for their political activities be reinstated. They want a change in the framework of the University, an end to the trustees as they are presently constituted, and they demand that students have a share in the running of the University. What they discovered last spring was that they could disrupt the University, could prevent it from going about its normal business. = Some students thought that by occupying buildings they held power; that was an illusion. At present students can act as anarchists and break up the University machine, but they can not take power and run it. The events of s last April and May were a reheasal for a revolution; people began to learn their rules, their lines. The spirit of revolution was kept alive in a non-revolutionary period. Still, it is also important to change the institutions of learning now, to reform them, and while students must retain
their faith in revolution, they need also, to work here and now to change the rules and regulations of Columbia University. Struggle is sure to rage again in Sepetmber and October. The free-wheeling, anarchist SDS slogan "Up against the wall, Mother Fucker", is sure to echo again, to purify Columbia's prison-like atmosphere.
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DONOY.
by Tony Topham
There is a general assumption, encouraged by the Press and by orthodox writers on Industrial Relations, that the Donovan Commission on Trade Unions+ has, in its recomendations, followed the "traditional" British attitude by opting for the reform of industrial relations through voluntary methods, rather than through the strengthening of legal sanctions against trade unions. In fact the abstention of the law in dealing with trade unions is more apparent than real. A mass of labour legislation exists already, and the case law of the Courts and judges has often in the past imposed restrictions on trade union action. The legal profession in this country, quite simply, behaves as the guardian of bourgeois values and interests, in its interpretation of Statutes and Common Law.
Yet the Donovan Report has succeeded in throwing a certain arount of dust into trade union eyes by apparently concentrating upon the non-legal aspects of structural change in the field of collective bargaining. Its well-known thesis is that the trend of collective bargaining, - away from industry-wide national bargaining agreements, towards plant and company level bargaining, - should be encouraged and formalised . Donovan finds a conflict between the formal national agreements, and the post-war evolution to local bargains. He hopes that this conflict may be resolved by formalising the the local bargain, and raising its relative significance as against the national agreement. This reconmendationean be given a liberal appearance; the status and the role of the local trade union and its representatives, the shop stewards, would apparently be raised by such a development. In fact, the report is primarily concerned with the disorderly nature of the present situation. Some acute critics have suggested that a count of the number of times the words "order", "disorder","orderly", "disorderly", appeared in the Report would show that this concern amounts to an obsession. For example:
"The central defect. in British industrial relations is the disorder
in factory and workshop relations and pay structures promoted by
the conflict between the formal and the informal systems... To rem-
edy this, effective and orderly collective bargaining is required
over such issues as the control of incentive schemes, the regul-
ation of hours actually worked, the use of job evaluation, work
practices and the linking of changes in pay to changes in perfor-
mance, facilities for shop stewards and disciplinary rules and
appeals. In most industries such matters cannot be dealt with
effectively by means of industry-wide agreements. Factory agree-
ments can however provide the remedy." %