CS CONFERENCE 2009 – The Bloomsbury Suite, University of London Union,

AGENDA:

9.30 onwards: REGISTRATION

10.00-10.15: Welcome and review of 2008: - Nicholas Jones

10.15-11.00: Communist Students and Capitalist Crisis – Chris Strafford

11.00-11.45: Gaza and the student occupations – Cat Rylance

11.45-12.30: LUNCH

12.30-13.15: ‘Organising School Students’ – Callum Williamson

13.15-14.00: ‘Marxism and the education we fight for’ – Dani Thomas

14.00-14.15: BREAK

14.15-16.15: MOTIONS

16.15 – 16.30: CS Executive Elections (Nominations also accepted on the day)

16.30 – 16.40: Closing Speech – Laurie Smith

After the conference, comrades will go for a meal in Central London – let us know if you are interested.

Motions:

Please submit amendments to info@communiststudents.org.uk – we have extended the deadline for amendments to 22.00, Saturday April 25

The Capitalist Crisis and the tasks of CS:

Conference notes that:

1.   Capitalism is in the midst of profound crisis, with which nothing is comparable since 1929. The human cost of this crisis is enormous and will get worse – more unemployment, more house reposessions, wage cuts and attacks on social security.

2.   The bailing out and nationalisation of banks and insurance giants seeing trillions of dollars, euros and pounds pumped into the system has brought the ideological collapse of neo-liberal economics. All the talk of how “you can’t buck the market” and “there is no alternative” has been exposed as the hollow rhetoric it always was. We are living through a turning point in the history of capitalism.

3.   The forced turn to Keynesian and protectionist policies visible everywhere internationally will exacerbate inter-imperialist rivalry and increase the likelihood of war and conflict. It will also undermine even the pretence of serious international co-operation to resolve the global problem of drastic climate change.

4.   The need for a radical overhaul of the system and its replacement with one based on the principle of need is more apparent and directly posed than ever.

Conference further notes that:

1.     The tasks of Marxists in such a period are enormous. Spontaneous resistance to the crisis will inevitably unfold – the outcome will be decided by class struggle, politics and organisation.

2.     An increasing number of youth and students are coming around to the idea that capitalism is a moribund system that has no positive role to play and must be consigned to the dustbin of history.

3.     On the student ‘Marxist’ left there are numerous campaigns and ‘broad fronts’ with little between them politically: Another Education is Possible (Socialist Workers Party); Education Not for Sale (Alliance for Workers’ Liberty) and the Campaign to Defeat Fees (Socialist Party) all peddle the same insufficient ‘student trade union’ demands in order to cynically recruit to this or that sect which tightly controls it. Such politics are not ‘signposts’ towards Marxism but actually reflect the politics of other classes.

4.      We do not think that this dishonest, politically watered-down approach is the way to achieve mass student involvement in politics. It creates apathy, cynicism and distrust of the organised left and its internal sect regimes.

5.     Our approach in Communist Students is simple: Marxism is powerful because it is true – not as some dogmatic schema, but the only consistent way of understanding the world in order to change it. That is why we argue for, stand on and agitate around these politics.

Conference resolves:

1. To continue to argue for and campaign for left unity on the basis of the political strategy of Marxism – working class independence, extreme democracy in opposition to the state and consistent internationalism

2. To mandate the CS executive to approach the other existing left organisations and networks with the view of achieving this aim

3. To mandate the CS executive to organise a day school in the new term entitled ‘Marxism on Campus’ to draw in sympathetic students, youth and academics.

4. To establish CS groups in every school, college and university where we have comrades and supporters and for the executive to help facilitate this work.

5. To strengthen the current national education programme, with a focus on grasping the dynamics of moribund capitalist society and the Marxist political strategy needed to overcome it.

5. To mandate the CS executive to draw up an educational programme for comrades entering the organisation in order to outline the politics CS fights for and also to provide comrades with help in being a CS activist

6. To organise an educational ‘Summer Camp’ in early August 2009 with both CS speakers and ‘external’ ones

7. To revamp our campaigning materials for stalls and interventions in time for the new term

8. To attend, support and build for Communist University in August – a week of debate and discussion sponsored by the CPGB in Central London

Submitted by the CS executive

CS organisation & communication

Conference notes:

1. That since our founding conference in 2006, we have punched well above our weight in the student movement, and attracted some of the best and brightest young comrades to our project. CS is also living proof that differences can exist openly within a political organisation without it tearing apart, the usual excuse for silencing debate on the left.
2. That the crisis of global capitalism makes our project -for left unity on the basis of Marxism, for genuine internationalism and radical democracy in all spheres of life- all the more vital, as discussed in the executive’s perspectives motion.
3. That organisationally we have been at times amateurish, and sometimes slow to respond to political developments.
4. Communication between our branches and the executive has often been lacking.
5. Our contact work has also been patchy.

Conference believes:

1. That to ensure the regularity of branch (and executive) meetings, improve communications and increase our political agility, a certain amount of division of labour and responsibility is required.

Conference resolves:

1. For branches to elect a secretary who is responsible for:

• Communication between the branch and the executive
• Ensuring rooms are booked for weekly meetings and drafting the agenda
• Ensuring minutes are taken at meetings and relayed to the executive list
• Compiling a monthly report of cell activities for the member’s area
• Sending monthly mailshots to branch contacts
• Keeping the branch page on the CS website up-to-date
• To delegate the task of contact work to one comrade, or rotate this between comrades

2. For the executive to:

• Elect a secretary who is responsible for setting the date and time of exec meetings, drafting the agenda and ensuring minutes are taken
• Meet weekly via online teleconferencing. This will improve the responsiveness and direction coming from the exec
• Set aside time at these weekly meetings for discussion of the activities of our branches and what is being done to involve our supporters distributed around the country.
• Ask the treasurer to produce an annual report at conference detailing our income and expenditure.
• Produce and distribute a document on how to build CS

Submitted by CS Sheffield

Communist Youth in Communist Students

Communist Students has grown modestly over the last year with many young people coming in to contact with our work off campus as well as on campus. It is important to clarify that CS is an organisation for communist youth as well as students.

Conference resolves to add to the constitution,

1. Membership

a) Membership of Communist Students (CS) is open to all students and youth based upon acceptance of its political platform and constitution as a framework within which to fight for communism.

b) Members are expected to work within the group at their university, school, college or locality and pay national membership dues.

Submitted by CS Manchester

Capitalist Production and Animal Rights

Our current treatment of animals is a product of capitalism and an anthropocentric view of the world in which every being and resource is exploited in order to benefit a minority of individuals.

Factory farming, mass production, intensive fishing etc are unsustainable methods of producing food that have disproportionately negative effects on the poor and cause long term environmental damage. Moreover the current abuse of animals is conducted under a mentality that the strong must dominate the weak and that intelligence, rather than the capacity to suffer, affords one freedom from abuse, the very same mentality that was once used to justify slavery and the oppression of indigenous or ‘uncivilized’ peoples.

Under a planned economy animals should not be treated purely as means, they should not be subject to the conditions of mass production and their ability to suffer should be considered at all times in our treatment of them.

Submitted by Cat Rylance

Support the ‘Smash the Sanctions’ campaign of Hands Off the People of Iran

Communist Students note that

1)    Despite all his talk about a serious political re-orientation towards Iran, US president Barack Obama supports not only the current sanctions against Iran, but is threatening to enforce a new round of sanctions on the country.

2)    Sanctions are not an alternative to war – in fact, they are an integral part of imperialism’s arsenal to deal with countries who are ‘out of line’.

3)    The rich and powerful can get around the sanctions – it is the poor, the working class and ordinary people who suffer most from them.

4)    The example of Iraq shows that democracy cannot be delivered from above (not that this was ever the real objective of the 2003 invasion). Real, lasting democracy can only come from below, from the people themselves. But the sanctions disorganise the working class as people squander their fighting energies on day-to-day struggles to simply survive. Sanctions undermine the work and efforts of many workers, students and women’s organisations who are fighting against the theocracy.

5)    In fact, the sanctions – and the ongoing threat of a military attack – have helped the theocratic regime whip the people into line. Martyr-like, Iranian president Ahmadinejad has been made stronger by the imperialists’ threats.

Communist Students resolve to

1)    Support, publicise and build the ‘Smash the Sanctions campaign’ of Hands Off the People of Iran. Hopi encourages direct international working class solidarity with the aim of building the fighting capacity of the movement in Iran.

2)    Support, publicise and build the forthcoming speaking tour and conference organised by Hopi.

Submitted by Tina Becker (Outgoing Exec member)

The National Union of Students (NUS):

Conference notes:

1.  The passing of the NUS governance review – which gutted the NUS of the bulk of its already pitifully cramped internal democracy.

2.  That the NUS has always been a bureaucratic machine acting as a conveyor belt for those wishing to make a ‘career’ in politics and the labour bureaucracy – whether of a ‘left’ or ‘right’ hue. We should not kid ourselves about the ‘golden age’ of NUS democracy. Whilst the left has been able to win some democratic space and influence at times, and it has been correct to try to do so, we must set our sights higher.

Further notes:

1.  That the calls for a new “federation” of ‘left student unions’ lack any serious forces and are an actual diversion from the overriding task of articulating the Marxist political alternative of radical democracy to force back and defeat the NUS bureaucracy. Setting up a new NUS on what is essentially the same basis as the old pre-governance review NUS is a bit like trying to solve the problem of the Labour party’s degeneration by setting up a new Labour party.

2.  That although we have correctly spoken of the need to articulate ‘fresh, radical thinking’ in our dealings with the NUS and have made some steps towards this, we have failed to draw up our alternative for the NUS

Resolves:

1.  To allocate one comrade from the executive to follow NUS developments more closely – in the local unions, in the liberation campaigns and nationally
2.  To mandate the executive to draw up a programme for the NUS – including a series of articles on the history of student unionism here and across the world
3.  To continue to stand on openly revolutionary programmes in student elections and to centralise campaigning materials for this purpose

Ben Lewis (CS Executive)