POLICY DOCUMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY 13 to 14 December 2008, Tor Vergata - Rome glad I return this document students' self-organized for circulation, given that the analysis and the proposal is entirely acceptable, I suggest an additional analysis necessary to attempt to give a blow to the reactionary and fascist to our Constitution, with the proposed presidential Advanced from "piduista business" that governs us, the parliamentary opposition party, and in an attempt to put the judiciary under its strict control of the Government (you know godsend for the crimes of the "white collar", ie for the corrupt and the corrupt), to persecute its pockets of resistance in this system.
13 and December 14, 2008 was held at the University Tor Vergata national assembly, of movement, born from a need widely shared by those individuals and political realities that have actively taken part in recent months, the protests against the law 133 and against all government measures relating to school, University and Research.
After an initial phase of mobilization, in which the spontaneous agitation was predominant, have in fact begun to define the claims and to build political platforms, entering into the merits of the many open questions from the movement. In this second phase, we realized that by sharing views and perspectives, it was necessary to socialize the paths of struggle and policy analysis developed in the last months and years earlier. Of course, this assembly did not represent a first step, necessary but not sufficient: the result is to work together to impact effectively on the social fabric and everyday life.
The two days of intense debate was divided into two comparison sull'autorganizzazione assembly, and two working groups and plenary that addressed the relationship between the School and University, Capital and Labor "and between" Universities and movements social. " The essential fact of the meeting was to take stock of the various experiences of mobilization, and to continue the theoretical analysis so as to structure their best practices.
It is no coincidence that the pivot of discussion in all meetings was the reading of the economic and financial crisis. Unlike all those who have wasted rivers of ink arguing that the "crisis" is only "financial crisis", we are convinced of the need to reiterate that these are indeed a crisis but a crisis of capital accumulation that we live by at least thirty 'years, and the recent financial explosion was the latest, violent turning point. The mechanisms of speculation and debt, we see today fall, are not in fact the product of some "bad apples", but one of beaten track from the 70s to meet the difficulties of exploitation of capital. Questioning capitalism means so first of all clarify that there can be no side 'good' for a system based on exploitation and oppression: finance and the real economy are two sides of the same mode of production. Order the rapacious capitalism of speculators and banks, implying that there is a good one to defend, or a "sustainable" means mystify reality, and dispose of its weapons critical to the enemy.
groped for out of this crisis of accumulation, capital has fielded several strategies: In addition to financial activities and the control of funds and monetary policies through transnational organizations, has also been made to the global war and the massive exploitation of the countries of the South (there is outsourcing production, is abusing the vast natural resources of those territories). Governments and entrepreneurs, with the help of fake political opposition and the active role of trade unions concert, then attached directly to the living conditions of the lower classes. They tried to redesign the whole society, changing some fundamental aspects of its organization: the role of the state, the labor market, the pension system, health, transport, promoting the environmental destruction and privatization of resources such as water and air. In this way, limited and weakened social conflict, constantly open new market opportunities, attracted to new art, cost effective needs.
In this wider process of insecurity and rampant commercialization, education and research have not been spared, but reformed in response to the need for building knowledge-based economy. It is to build a European Area of \u200b\u200bHigher Education and Research (functional, together with the European Army, the bitter competition on the world stage) that the governments of EU member countries are harmonizing their education systems, carrying out, almost everywhere, "reforms" neoliberal (think of France, Spain, Greece). Investigate the connections that exist between the education system, the general economic situation and restructuring taking place in Europe has allowed us to understand how the mechanisms of selection of class and discipline have evolved and are evolving, just from schools and universities.
From this point of view, the introduction of the 3 +2, internship and work experience required during the course of study, the system of educational credits (CFU), the new role of private universities in the life-long learning, the dismantling of what remains of the right to education (school meals, housing, scholarships) are just some of the evidence emerged during the debate.
The credit generally is one of the subtle problem of comparison: the position "suggested" by the report of Wisdom (November 15 workshop), or the abolition of the system of their credits through an "inflation" was sorely in discussion. Credit is defined as measuring the volume of learning work, including individual study, applied for a student with adequate preparation for the initial acquisition of knowledge and skill in training activities foreseen by the regulations of the educational curriculum (cf. . Ministerial Decree, November 3, 1999, n. 509). It is not more than a mathematical measurement of learning time (and knowledge) that has contributed to a further downgrading of teaching. It contains the amount of labor that goes from classroom teaching (formal), study at home, until the acquisition of practical skills and devices in the workplace (learning). No matter, therefore, the acquisition of a method, or a complex cultural and personal growth, but only filling time "empty" with a series of fragmented knowledge. If, then, on one hand the credit generally goes further forward in the process of commodification of knowledge (think also the shameful agreements with corporations of any kind that the University signed to make cash, made possible precisely by the introduction of credits), the other helps to create a common standard for access to the labor market in Europe.
So, the idea of \u200b\u200b"inflation" is a paradox of the credits and marks a retreat of our struggle is said to criticize the content, but do not touch the container. Rather, you can help and self credit system, gives him credibility with students, and lead, already in the training phase, logical baronial and cooptation through the development of privileged relations with the teachers and the academic authorities who must recognize the "controcorso" (And do not have too much trouble to do so, as part of a total subjugation of the paths to the curricular needs of the capital, is expected quest'irrisoria outlet: Ruberti already the law of 1990 provided for training self-managed by students, allows Zecchino then that a small percentage of the credits is reserved for educational activities chosen by students - see. same DM). The self-study credits is so perfectly compatible with the needs of academic and economic powers, does not detract, but rather reinforces them, performing the function of moderating the fights.
The only position that is possible and necessary unambiguously to fight for the repeal of the credit system, carrying out cultural activities, meetings, debates really self-managed and directed in opposition, not taking advantage of some "lesson" dropped from professors or researchers looking for visibility, but the horizontal comparison between subjects with and mobilized people outside the university, as workers, immigrants, the reality of movement. It is not short of locking themselves in classrooms inside "knowledge," but to make the University a place of transit for the struggles in cities and open territories. Why is not the university students, is, or should be, all in the service of community.
must therefore call into question all of those proposals to relieve the State from the burden of the education system. Think of the publicity to push the loans, which permit a student to buy their own "training package". It is strongly "suggested" the student to borrow, for the hope that with a degree find a well-paid job that can pay off the debt incurred in respect of the lender (which may be a bank, but also a company to which you alloy blindly). So it is the student who invests himself with good prospects of ending double blackmail the boss at work and the "lender" of loans. Such a system (just like the mortgage "doped") is in crisis even in those countries where it is rooted and has major consequences as social exclusion, the blackmail of the student, his forced indoctrination, the drive to a competition fierce with his companions.
Attempts to abolish the legal value of the qualification, supported by large corporations is not by chance, fall into this category. In general, the goal of capital is to build a university on the one hand mass properly disqualified, where workers churn out low-cost subject to volatile, forced to continue the training courses and pay (Masters, postgraduate courses, etc.), which may represent an "army of unemployed and in desperate competition with each other, and on the other side instead of creating a few places to train highly selective in which form the ruling class solidarity to its needs . From this point of view, '"emergency", the "waste" and "meritocracy" is the ideological screens with which you are trying to convey that reforms will actually strengthen their baronial and the downgrading of the public University.
For this reason another crucial point on which we focused the attention of the movement is the transformation of universities into private foundations private law. Such a possibility, which will become compulsory for many universities, will be a part of the entry of private departments will become increasingly stable, the other that those degree programs that do not meet the "criteria of productivity," inevitably will be cut by limiting the freedom of study and that of teaching and research. In general, the transformation of universities into private foundations, which is the end result of privatization (not more affected by curricular reforms or a general partnership with the private sector, but sharply cut the funds, and thus forcing universities to enter their inside the only reality capable to provide liquidity) will only increase the many contradictions in which the university is on. Contradictions on different levels: between logic and baronial political patronage, among the different strings of interest between the technical and administrative staff and academic leaderships; among the masses an increasing number of students excluded from higher levels of training mechanisms and more more stringent selection, suppression and control, between the professional expectations of students who will complete their studies and their increasing deskilling, among the funds themselves, compete for degree courses in favor and "favorable performance of works; between Departments, universities, research centers, in contrast, against common sense and sharing practices in use until a few years ago in public research, for the registration of a patent or to grab a larger slice of funding.
In this context, placements and internships are another aspect of the reorganization of education as a whole, depending on the market: to acquire knowledge through practice in the workplace, it is considered training for the students right from high school. Once again, is erased even the semblance of a culture critic and best companies without ties to logic: while we talk about work performance that allow free, in many cases, lower costs for staff of universities and companies are not hiring for the positions covered by interns, on the other the cost of training of persons in entry (before the full responsibility of individuals) is downloaded on the community.
Internships are delineated, so as to further blackmail the workers, in a phase where it increases day by day the number of unemployed, the speaker-integrated and redundant and that visibly worsened working conditions of the same staff in schools and universities: for example the outsourcing of services, canteens, libraries, which are entrusted to contractors or subcontractors which do not apply to workers even the few traditional safeguards, and where the public no longer has control (which increases the cost of services and a decrease in quality).
The issue of commodification of knowledge is closely related to how you configure the time and his teaching in our classrooms: the vote, the lecture, the fast pace of instruction, are tools that do not allow the use of a culture that they actually formed in such a critical, but also contribute to reproduce the dominant ideology that the university becomes a carrier. That is why we can not draw with a light heart to the Lisbon Treaty or the European Charter of Searching: These are plans for the construction of a search function to capitalist development and its subject, not for the development of a free knowledge.
From this point of view it is important to reiterate that "public research" is not a "generic research funded by the State and not by individuals, but research that benefit society. Such research involves a radical change in our society, its political and social organization. Today, even if the funds are public, the research took roads which must be challenged. Are indeed heavy responsibilities of the academic world in providing a service provider for the arms industry and ended up being a useful tool in the service of imperialist politics of war. And yet, teaching and research are now aimed at developing pharmaceutical products, chemical, computer, that will be patented by the same companies that derive a profit. In the humanities this is to develop analytical systems and control, advertising techniques, functional integration, spectacularly, the specification of large social sectors potentially conflicting. In the field of literary history to the constraints of national and European funds allow a rewriting of history and culture for the benefit of present needs of the ruling class.
As for the role in the struggle of students and researchers, subject implicated in the first person in this process of restructuring the University and the welfare state, it is natural for them, or should be, to find allies to students. Like the latter, they undergo a selection of class, which leaves few opportunities to go forward in their studies and to afford long "waiting" for most of them also suffer from the mechanisms of co-optation and barons that limit the freedom of research, even mined from the entrance of more private, with the possibility (not already present in some remote and science faculties) that direct research on the committee.
complex reasons for this is that you can not speak of "the centrality of cognitive capital" or guiding role in the struggles of the University. Do not be fooled by demagogic formulas: one must recognize that the so-called manual labor has not had the time nor the leisure to develop his theories on the centrality, indeed, was done away from information and cultural debate, with the complicity of his ruminations postfordist, on the other hand we must recognize that it has increasingly absorbed intellectual functions (see problem solving in the production process, in which workers participate in daily), while the work "cognitive" is often based on precise material functions (see administrative tasks undertaken by many PhD students and researchers). While respecting the specificity and the concrete conditions of life, it should be noted that employment figures are therefore integrated in the same production cycle both contribute to the promotion of goods, both processes are exposed to insecurity, both of which are private contracts and collective national rights social (such as housing, pension etc). The answers that the capital has taken on his thirty years of crisis have tried in every way to break up the class, opposing the work artificially "cognitive" work "manual", often blurring the boundaries that circumscribe the two unstable areas, and co-opting the first privileged caste and providing him with a certain status. Therefore, even if the world of research there are some people waiting for "insert" or that they can always find a paid job in business, you must raise a large joint struggle among the many that this decomposition of proletarianization and class are suffering the consequences.
This situation resulted in a wider reflection on the connection that must be established between the various areas of social conflict. The presence of territorial leaders of the movement was the key to finding the link with the struggle against environmental devastation and the destruction area. It is no coincidence that the same law 133/08 are low, in addition to the cuts at the university, the measures of water privatization and funding for nuclear energy. It is clear the link between education and the dismantling of the welfare state and territories to attack the environment, especially if we consider, once again, the role that research plays (by the will of the public or private) in environmental devastation and exploitation, and the role played by parties and by the unions (in keeping with the well-known mechanisms of patronage, and often even in collusion with mafia and camorra) in carrying out the logic of profit.
face of the crisis and the carnage that is producing, working on contradictions, starting to make a speech from our universities that aims to build a political work that is a student or corporate, but has the power to connect the struggles of all other sectors that pay for this economic and social organization is therefore a necessity. The goal of all participants in the meeting is therefore to work in the prospect of a stable comparison between workers and students (who are employees in training, the workers of today and tomorrow), absolutely free from the concerted practices of some unions and parties . For this reason, it was considered essential to propose the construction of self-organized meetings with other students not to try to generalize really struggles with time and tend to expand more and more nodes in the conflict.
As a result, starting from our local circumstances, we decided to create a network of students who actually have a national scope, but also look at the protests that are developed against the same reforms and attacks on an international level. We intend to effectively coordinate our struggles and to give a political solution to the shared analysis, dotandoci of the most appropriate and effective. Among these, we have found a website that functions as a link portal as well as a means of political communication, a reference point for those who daily struggle in our own perspective. The self-organization, in this sense has been the subject has emerged as a central and key feature to build a horizontal structure that is able to really put the political practice and class conflict. To open now, and in the coming years, a long cycle of social struggles. For daring to fight, and dare to win.
Rome, December 14, 2008
NETWORK REALITY OF STUDENTS 'self-organized
