ya'll are my heroes!

Class War.  It is pretty cool to see the words 'Class War' anywhere, let alone at a college campus in Boulder of all places.  Liberal voices dominate the so-called student movement, and student-workers are ever encouraged to look to their leaders, to pressure their representatives, anything except fighting directly for their interests and desires.

As for the idea of injecting things into the consciousness of one's community, besides the images of syringes interacting with brain tissue that the phrase conjures up, I wonder at the importance of raising consciousness of class war.  I guess Marx said something about class consciousness being a good thing, but in the case of this message, what class?  The proletariat is the class which will abolish class society--and itself--through struggle.  Those who are not struggling have little role in revolution, except to derail it.

Here in Denver a banner has been hung for weeks with the message to students, "Wake Up!", but to anyone who is blissfully sleeping I would not cruelly intrude.  Consciousness has never brought me much good.  Toward the dreamers my feelings vascillate between nostalgia and envy.  Anyway, everyone wakes up eventually, and everyone goes back to sleep.

One does not talk to sleeping people.  They'll mumble something about elephants, or let out a whine.  Waking, struggling people we can talk with.  This leads to a second series of questions about the banner in Boulder.  Parts of it read like demands, but to whom?  "Free the debt slaves."  Who can free debt slaves but themselves?  The appeal to usurp the profiteer is presumably made to workers, but then it smacks of some sort of dictatorship of the proletariat.  Big words are cool but that phrasing is somewhat harder to digest than "Kill the rich," or "Fire the bosses."  At least it's not trying to 'speak truth to power.'

In Denver some students' message to the politicians was "You cut, we bleed" (a reference to the budget cuts).  How pathetic.  If one is going to say anything to the rich and powerful, it should be "You cut, you bleed."  Better yet to say nothing and make it manifest in stealth.

Now.  We want class war now, but in saying so defer it a bit.  Actually, class war is as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen.  And in this world-without-end, we want a vortex to open up and swallow us.  We can call it class war, or whatever.  So we want class war soon, but in saying so we resign ourselves a bit.  In any case, there is no one to demand it of, at least not in an intelligible way in response to which they will make it appear as if from beneath a trenchcoat.  Oh well, what would we be resigning ourselves to?  Ordinary life, which is to say, capitalism, which is to say, class war.

Ah.

Thanks for your thoughts. Coming from the mindful and hardworking folks at "Til It Breaks," your critiques, for me, will always be respected and carefully reflected upon. Though this probably goes without saying, critique can be perceived from the outside as a bunch of anarchists skewering each other relentlessly over minute divisions, but it is important to recognize that critique is the fundamental ingredient of any conscious process.

I was somewhat concerned that the noticeable "dictatorship of the proletariat" connotation of usurpation would overshadow the intended meaning of forcefully diffusing wealth from those at the top of a contrived hierarchy. “Shoot the rich” would’ve undoubtedly cleared up the confusion, but alas, a message can only be as concise as the degree of agreement among its organizers allows it to be, and in this case compromises were made for sake of time and collective process.
 

Indeed, none can free the debt slaves but those enslaved by debt, just as none can free the wage slaves but those whose lives are delineated by wage slavery. It might be necessary first, however, for someone to point out that indebtedness is an enslaving force to those with simply no conceptual framework beyond the empty banalities of American “liberty”.
 

I guess the primary intent was to overcome the prominent reformist voices all over campus that write letters to oppose inevitable tuition raises and wage cuts, or even promote the notion of free education with no assertion as to what that really means, usually implying state or corporate funding. Free education can only truly come about upon a general liberation from the inherent constraints of capital, toward the construction of conscious processes based upon intrinsic value rather than that of the market, beginning with the forceful expropriation of wealth.
 

The class war, as always, is ongoing. Generally, it even has two sides of knowing and willing combatants. Among the privileged, however, such concepts rarely leak into the day’s thought processes (a very carefully engineered phenomenon, I might argue). If such an individual does stumble upon the admission of class war, it often takes on the context of a one sided and unconscious mechanical tyranny, that there is simply no example of a means to fight back. The fact is, people are fighting back all over the world, just as they always have. The war is on, and as more people realize it within the purported territory of the capitalist hegemon, we can begin to do more fighting back than talking, or at least just more fighting back.
 

Here, however, I am caught in a contradiction, likely upheld by immediate self preservation. Education is not a sufficient means of resistance, though perhaps a necessary component to establish context. But even then, actions will always do more to educate than a few words spattered across a banner. The Panthers understood this, as did the classic anarchist thinkers of “propaganda by the deed”. I will not excuse the circumstancial preference for words over bullets with the vein assertion that the time is not ripe for such actions. Waiting only teaches more waiting, action teaches action (the source for this escapes me). However, while action may not require ripe conditions, it certainly requires comrades. A sleeping student at CU (of which there are probably 29,000, leaving 1000 others) may pass by such a banner without a thought in their head.  A fellow reister might see the words "class war" with a big fat circle A, and know they have comrades.

As a student of the University of Montana, I was privledged to work at the University of Colorado in Boulder this last summer. For a college that feels they are being exploited and paying highly for education, it is shocking the luxury vehicles I saw everywhere on campus this summer. Every third car to drive by me on my walk to work from the campus townhouses belonged to Audi, BMW, or Mercedes. It just appears odd that a University with more luxury cars driven by its own students does not seem like a University that is lacking in personal funds. Just a thought.

The banner drop was an act of solidarity. Some of the students at Boulder are well-off, but they wanted to show solidarity with others, who are being forced out of colleges and universities, nationwide, due to tuition and fee hikes.  There are also K-12 students whose education is being virtually destroyed by cost-cutting to feed the tax-cuts and bail-outs for the parasite class.

I'm glad to see that these students care about someone other than themselves.

One does not talk to sleeping people. They'll mumble something about elephants, or let out a whine. Waking, struggling people we can talk with. This leads to a second series of questions about the banner in Boulder. Parts of it read like demands, but to whom? "Free the debt slaves." Who can free debt slaves but themselves? The appeal to usurp the profiteer is presumably made to workers, but then it smacks of some sort of dictatorship of the proletariat. Big words are cool but that phrasing is somewhat harder to digest than "Kill the rich," or "Fire the bosses." At least it's not trying to 'speak truth to power.' In Denver some students' message to the politicians was "You cut, we bleed" (a reference to the budget cuts). How pathetic. If one is going to say anything to the rich and powerful, it should be "You cut, you bleed." Better yet to say nothing and make it manifest in stealth. David Mayer
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I do think this is an exceptional cause, and we must need to wake up for this reality in our country. I think free college tuition must be a right in America. It shocked me to know one of these days that they have free university even in places like Brazil and Cuba.. So the question is what is wrong with our system? Specially after the that our economy passed through, I think it is time to look to the future and start to make a change, and make this happen in America!

Here is the unfortunately truth.  When college becomes free who will clean your toilets?  Who will pick up your garbage?  Who is going to choose one of these professions (which are just as necessary as doctors and lawyers) when they can say they have a degree in biochemistry or whatever they choose.  So it will then come down to whomever can hack it in higher education.  Or do you propose that we should do away with a grading system as well?  And when this happens who will pay the professors that are teaching these students?  Not the government, please don't say the government.  The truth is that the money has to come from somewhere to pay for the elecricity, the building expansions, the professor's paycheck, etc.  Anarchism is no different than Communism in that it hinges on the idea that human-kind is inherantly good.  We are not.  We will take advantage of anyone and everyone to better ourselves.  Anarchism is Utopian and unrealistic.  This is the ugly truth.