Sussex University protests, March 2013
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The Guardian Reports here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/gallery/2013/mar/26/studentpolitics-students
Quote:Windows were smashed, documents burned, and police hemmed in by demonstrators when over a thousand protesters from across the country descended on Sussex University on Monday to demonstrate against plans to outsource 235 campus jobs.The "Sussex against privatisation" campaign began in May 2012 and the ongoing occupation of Bramber House has seen support from the likes of Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and Peter Capaldi
Protesters marched under a banner that said: "Omnia Sunt Communia", or "all things are in common", a quote attributed to the 15th century German rebel leader Thomas Müntzer.The heavy police presence throughout the day was criticised by the protest organisers, who said: "The decision to call scores of riot police on to campus to inhibit the action by staff, students, faculty and guests is further evidence that management are on the back foot, and that the community is set to win. Police lines were attacking students prior to the occupation of Sussex House. All plans for today’s demonstration were peaceful. The police force made no arrests today, a telling sign."
Official protest bloghttp://sussexagainstprivatization.wordpress.com/Badger Sussex Student Mediahttp://www.badgeronline.co.uk/ This banner (pic from Badger student media) just reads Communism, not sure if it is the reverse of the banner that reads "Omnia Sunt Communia"
They have a zine here toohttp://issuu.com/occupy_sussex/docs/anti_privazine_ed_1_onlineTheir symbol is the yellow square
OMNIA SUNT COMMUNIA sounds like a slogan we could use, though I see it is also been used by the free software movement.. According to this blogger:
Quote:It was their article of belief and they wanted to establish this principle, ‘All property should be held in common’ (Omnia sunt communia) and should be distributed each according to their needs as the occasion required. Any prince, count, or lord who did not want to do this, after first being warned about it, should be beheaded or hanged.” – Thomas Müntzer (1488 to 27 May 1525), a leader of the German Peasants’ War of 1524 to 1526, his Eighth Article of Confession, Confessed Under Torture Before Execution.I wonder who, or which group, in Sussex was behind the choice of this slogan.
http://www.walkingbutterfly.com/2011/03/14/muntzer-omnia-sunt-communia/Along with the revolutionary watchword 'Abolition of the Wages System' we should use OMNIA SUNT COMMUNIA – All property should be held in commonRequired reading Engels The Peasant War in Germany,Required film viewing – I got this from Germany – DVD of 1956 DDR film 'Thomas Munzer' in German, unfortunately no English subtitles – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230875/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M%C3%BCntzer_%28film%29
I'm not sure how useful "omnia sunt communia" would be as a slogan for us. Surely the point is to try to make ourselves more accessible. Not require workers to have a basic knowledge of latin to be able to read it.
Despite the rather nice sounding slogan one thing is fairly certain. Those involved in the anti-privatisation protests at Sussex University do a grave disservice to Müntzer's belief that all things should be held in common. With their opposition to the outsourcing of services or functions to private firms the concern is not that the wages system should be abolished but that it should not operate under different management. Nothing we should get too excited about then.
All property should be held in common, ie common ownership, is really what the "true Socialist movement" is all about. In Latin, it's English translation, or whatever, the Socialist movement should use it! Regardless of the demurement of individuals, it's "good".# Steve.
By coincidence i have a draft of a blog post on the German Peasant war based on extracts from Belfort Bax articlehttp://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1899/peasants-war/index.htmA missed opportunity for SOYMB of linking the two events. I'll try to do it retrospectively
A late report from Occupy Sussexhttp://revsocs.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/occupy-sussex-experiences-occupying-a-bourgeois-space/
Nice to see that not everybody likes so-called "consensus decision-making":
Quote:I can’t say I enjoyed the meetings much though. Consensus decision making makes me want to vomit at the best of times, so I was more than unimpressed when I heard that’s how the occupation did their meetings. I understand it as a way to stretch decisions out painfully and bicker about details until everyone agrees with a proposal, or at least until all dissenters have given up and left the room. To be fair, it really depends on the group of people involved and how it’s executed, so seeing as most of the people there were really politically on point, it wasn’t quite as awful as it could have been, and we did actually manage to reach some decisions.
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