Lessons from the Defeat of the Student Struggle

For weeks last semester, the student struggle for Palestine dominated political life in this country and captured attention throughout the world. Gaza solidarity encampments, building occupations, walkouts and commencement protests swept campuses. Almost as quickly, riot cops—acting on orders from school administrations and Democratic Party politicians—stormed in to stamp out protest against the genocide.

Today, the pro-Palestine movement is isolated and beaten down: the state is pursuing charges against activists; universities are banning pro-Palestine groups and trashing democratic rights; and the atrocities in Palestine continue. The Democrats’ replacement of Genocide Joe with Kamala the Cop has reinvigorated the incumbent party of carnage. They have consolidated a layer of youth, sown racial divisions between black liberals and pro-Palestine activists, and recovered a chance to keep the White House.

Many students were eager to stop the Israeli slaughter and courageously risked arrest, injury and suspension or expulsion from school. But despite millions taking to the streets in October, an explosion in campus activity and various union resolutions begging Biden to broker a ceasefire, the struggle has proved unable to slow, much less stop, the massacre.

If we are to advance, it is essential to understand the cause of the failure so far. No good will come from imbibing in the delusional optimism that we are “winning.” The Palestinian people face annihilation, and the movement is at an impasse. The problem is not merely a lack of numbers, visibility or militant tactics. The fundamental obstacle is the political program on which the pro-Palestine struggle is being waged.

The Nature of the Pro-Palestine Struggle in the U.S.

The existence of the Zionist state is premised on the brutal oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people, and it must be destroyed to achieve Palestinian liberation^*. This is difficult because the Israeli state is backed by the U.S. imperialist behemoth that seeks to keep its boot firmly planted in the region. The imperialist outpost serves as a weapons depot and a bulwark against hostile forces and regimes in the Middle East. As the U.S. ruling class tries to maintain its slipping global dominance, these are no minor matters. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are clear that support to Israel is “ironclad” because it is objectively in the interests of the whole ruling class.

The U.S. imperialists will not abandon Israel unless their position is seriously threatened. Therefore, to advance, the movement for Palestine must deal a significant blow to the imperialists. This will not be done by winning over their agents in the universities (the administrations) or their political representatives. It will require a major class confrontation, but this was not the orientation of the student encampment movement.

Whether students are conscious of it or not, the issue at the heart of the Palestinian struggle is not a battle of “good vs evil,” but a conflict between the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the workers and oppressed of the world. It is not just the Palestinian people who have an objective material interest in thwarting the imperialists’ genocidal machinations in the region. All the victims of the imperialists in the belly of the beast—workers, black people, etc.—will objectively benefit from weakening the position of their common oppressor. To deal the type of blow necessary will require mobilizing more than a selection of students to demand colleges shuffle off stocks. It calls for a program, strategy and leadership that can unite the mass of workers and the oppressed based on their common interest to defeat the enemy—it requires a communist movement.

However, the pro-Palestine movement is not headed in this direction. There has not been a break with and fight against the forces of imperialism. Instead, the pro-Palestine movement in general—and student activists in particular—overwhelmingly looks to the institutions and parties of U.S. imperialism. While many student activists subjectively consider themselves to be “anti-imperialist,” the movement has not moved toward bringing about a crisis for imperialism. Rather, in practice, it has worked to restore imperialism’s decaying liberal facade.

The Poison of Liberal Idealism

Many young students witnessing the atrocities in Gaza are, for the first time, being confronted with the fact that the U.S. government does not actually stand for freedom and democracy as it claims. They are driven to rebel and desperately want the bombs to stop. Lacking a Marxist pole to direct struggle toward a major class conflict, the most natural path for the movement is to try to convince the imperialists and their agents to make good on their promises and embrace liberal ideals of peace and justice. This is not only ineffective, but counterproductive.

The ruling class—especially the Democratic Party—commits its crimes while professing to be a force for progress. It oversees the immiseration of black people while proclaiming “Black Lives Matter.” It oversees the erosion of abortion access while proclaiming “#MeToo.” It extols high-minded liberal virtues to justify its rule and maintain its ideological grip. The same is true on the international stage. It presents the UN and international law as a democratic cover for its political domination and economic plunder, which it justifies as “spreading peace and democracy.” This is all a swindle and must be fought, not embraced.

Mass movements embracing variants of “progressive” liberalism come and go but are incapable of improving anything because they accept the capitalist rule responsible for the masses’ misery. Defining the struggle in moral rather than class terms inevitably puts these movements under the leadership of liberals who say nice words while blaming “deplorable” workers who don’t line up with them. These are the wrong divisions.

The supporters of genocide are able just as well to use the liberal principles embraced by students and the left to attack the pro-Palestine movement. Accusations of anti-Semitism and racism are hurled at anyone who opposes Zionism. Criticism of Israel is silenced so that we may “listen to Jewish voices.” Hate speech laws are used to censor dissent. Zionists heckle protesters about “believing rape survivors,” “protecting democracy” and gay rights in the Middle East. With no class axis, it is trivial to spin “progressive” ideals in service of the imperialists—this is not new.

Meanwhile, attempts to build a “morally righteous” alliance with the “left wing” of the Democratic Party alienate workers who have only been screwed and blamed by these con artists. Workers are increasingly repulsed by liberal moralism and some look to the right-wing demagogues as an alternative. The moralist current of the pro-Palestine movement ensures its impotence by uniting with the liberal representatives of imperialism, who work to minimize disruption. And it repels the working class, the only force that can throw a wrench in the works.

The working class objectively has every interest in dealing a blow against the U.S. imperialists who oppress them at home and whose machinations abroad are responsible for their worsening conditions. Workers have the social power to completely destabilize things for the imperialists by blocking the production and shipment of arms to Israel and cutting off the flow of profits to the capitalist masters. The pro-Palestine movement must move the working class to action, but this will only happen based on workers’ material interest in anti-imperialist struggle, not liberal pacifist drivel.

Instead, at the core of the student movement is the strategy of “Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS), which relies on consumers’ purchasing power, public opinion and the institutions of U.S. imperialism. While the encampments were met with violent repression, leading to a brief uptick in militancy, their aim was to reform the universities and other institutions of U.S. imperialism into instruments of BDS. They did not seek to shut down campuses and cause a crisis to trigger working-class action. They sought to bear moral witness in hopes of compelling Israel to “respect international law” and obtaining token investment concessions from campus administrations. They sought to transform the tools of U.S. imperialism into a force for “good.”

The student movement—lacking a class-struggle perspective—is necessarily limited to impotent reformist schemes premised on moral suasion, even while sometimes employing militant direct-action tactics. The encampments sought to act as the moral conscience of the bourgeoisie, trying to embarrass them with appeals to humanity and disobedience. The reality is that these moral appeals did not even resonate with students, particularly working-class ones. Most students did not participate in the encampments. The largest were confined to elite institutions, and there were none at historically black colleges and universities. Where the encampments did take hold, the strategy only isolated militants—both from other students and from workers off campus—and the program proved a dead end again and again.

Many administrations just unleashed the cops on protesters and stated plainly that students have no business telling them what to do with their money. Encampments were crushed, and the genocide continues. Brown University and some others simply promised to hold discussions about their investments. The students were demobilized, and the genocide continues. The UN—which carved out the state of Israel from the living body of Palestine—has passed countless resolutions against Israel. The genocide continues. Plenty of the world’s capitalist rulers, university administrators and captains of industry can cry crocodile tears about the “humanitarian crisis”…yet the genocide continues.

Student activists want the government and their colleges to “change policy.” Short of that, they don’t want to be personally “complicit” in the atrocities. If the U.S. government is going to support genocide, at least it’s “not in my name” and “not with my money,” hence the popularity of the calls for boycott and divestment. This liberal moralist conception of the problem is no way forward.

Imperialist oppression is not a “policy” to be cleaned up by adjusting investments and purchasing decisions. The horrors wrought by the ruling class to maintain their political power will not subside because “good” people only buy from “ethical” capitalists. No amount of shame or stock selling will transform the imperialists and their agents into a force for “good” against their better interests.

Most activists know that the reason Palestinian people face extermination is not because ivory tower coffers are invested in Israeli interests. But they think “divestment” is something they can get. What is perhaps harder to understand is how the class content of their “minimum” program and their methods contradict their desire for Palestinian liberation. The reality is that without a revolutionary Marxist compass, there is simply no way to find a road forward, only convoluted paths back to imperialist traps, specifically the Democratic Party.

Democratic Party Traps

Swapping Biden out for Harris just changed the face of the Democratic Party, but has been surprisingly effective in bolstering their electoral prospects. Although the Democrats have conceded nothing to Palestine and only doubled down on anti-Trump hysteria, elements of the pro-Palestine movement are still seduced and strung along by illusive promises of a “ceasefire for hostages” deal.

Other elements of the movement are not so easily duped, and “progressives” like Bernie Sanders and AOC have lost appeal as they bend over backward to avoid calling the genocide a genocide. But rejecting outright Zionists like Harris, Sanders, and AOC is not a break with imperialist forces. Here, Rashida Tlaib plays an invaluable role. She is able to attract youth back to the imperialist party and promote the illusion that the Democrats might do right by Palestine. She is very effective because many activists view Palestinian and Muslim Democrats like Tlaib and Ilhan Omar as allies against their openly Zionist colleagues. But these figures are all simply part of the chain that binds the movement to the imperialist camp—a chain that extends well into the organizations that built the encampment movement.

When Jamaal Bowman, questionable member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), lost favor with pro-Palestine activists over his support to Israel and endorsement of Biden, Tlaib did her best to mitigate. Just like AOC and Sanders, she campaigned for and endorsed him while exaggerating differences between Bowman and his AIPAC-backed opponent. Outfits like Jewish Voice for Peace, which helped organize the Columbia encampment, and of course the DSA, endorsed him as well.

Nerdeen Kiswani, chair of Within Our Lifetime (WOL), then tiptoed into tepid criticism of Tlaib for backing “progressives” who endorsed Genocide Joe. When the DSA sponsored a rally for Bowman featuring his fellow genocide endorsers AOC and Sanders, WOL dared to call a protest. Kiswani was met with a cacophony of right-wing DSA members preaching the practical necessity of supporting these enemies of the Palestinian people. Belying any pretense to “anti-imperialism,” Kiswani immediately backed down, tweeting, “We aren’t telling people not to vote for him,” and assuring the howling liberals that the rally was only meant to improve the campaigns of all these imperialists.

Without a definitive break toward class-independent politics, liberals will continue to subordinate dissent to the Democrats. Many in the movement would flat out deny that they are in the camp of Genocide Joe’s party. But as Kiswani painfully illustrated, the reality is that without a break with the liberal political perspective dominating the pro-Palestine movement, there is nowhere else to end up. This is why revolutionaries must fight to put the movement on an entirely different track.

The Fight for an Anti-Imperialist Student Movement

As the encampments spread, the Spartacist League/U.S. and the Spartacus Youth Clubs intervened, focusing on the need for independence from the ruling class—particularly the left wing of the Democratic Party. Early in the movement, the SL called for a national student strike not only to escalate the struggle, but also to exacerbate the contradiction between students’ desires to fight for Palestine and the limits of their liberal program.

While our leaflet and calls to “shut it down” were popular, they were shot down repeatedly by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and DSA, who feared such action might jeopardize negotiations with the administration. In addition to liberal leadership on the ground, a student strike would have exposed the “left-wing” Democratic Party figures canonized by the movement and the left. The likes of Tlaib and Shawn Fain can posture in support of marches and campsites, but would stand unmasked for opposing measures to advance toward a crisis for the ruling class.

A key tool in our fight to further drive a wedge between the parties of capital and the protesters was pushing a working-class alternative in the form of the Party of Socialism and Liberation’s (PSL) presidential campaign. We explained that to advance the cause, revolutionaries must fight to polarize the country along class lines. The fact is that, despite the PSL’s bankrupt program for Palestinian liberation, using their campaign as a rallying point for opposition to the capitalist parties has the potential to strengthen the movements for Palestine, black people, women, etc., by cohering them around class politics.

As one would expect, the most militant students were not exactly espousing support for Biden and the Democrats at the time. However, the liberal politics of the imperialist party were rampant. Many believe that the movement just needs to “lift up voices” and show the world that genocide is bad. Many defended ruling-class representatives, like Tlaib, based on ethnicity. The corrosive effect of identity politics is overwhelming. The desire to compartmentalize struggle against the common enemy along demographic lines mirrors how the Democratic Party manipulates and panders to its constituencies.

Identity politics are wielded to keep the movement wedded to its liberal course. Sacred among many is the notion that one must not criticize the leadership of the oppressed. Supposedly, this is “the Palestinians’ fight,” and any Palestinian leadership must be followed—class, politics, and program be damned. The “uncommitted” movement is a prime example of “Palestinian leadership” leading folks into the Democratic Party and must be fought. The suppression of communist intervention is often premised on this divisive nonsense. It is not “co-optation” or “distraction” to fight for a break with the imperialist Democratic Party or to link the movement to the broader struggle. It is a fight to arm the Palestinian movement with the only program that can win—an authentically anti-imperialist one.

The Abdication of the Left

The explosion of the student movement provided an opportunity. A small, militant, but liberal vanguard was driven to act with the subjective desire to fight for Palestine. It was the duty of revolutionaries to clear the obstacles and fight to lead students down an anti-imperialist path. Instead, the supposed communists—again—tailed the liberal movement.

Plenty of groups like the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Left Voice (LV), and Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA), wrote articles assessing the student movement and claim to point a way forward. They all entirely miss the mark. To draw appropriate lessons and advance, the movement needs much more than debates over tactics and decision-making structures. It must confront the political obstacles, but these groups reinforce them.

The RCA just bombastically proclaims the imminence of communism. The PSL cheers nearly every manifestation of liberalism from the “uncommitted” swindle to UN resolutions. Meanwhile, they scandalously platformed Tlaib at their Palestine conference in Detroit in May, and their own presidential candidates didn’t even take the stage. LV makes some valid criticisms of PSL, but does nothing to directly confront the liberalism and leaders that derail the struggle. They regularly find themselves pulled along by left-talking, Biden-supporting trade-union bureaucrats, like Shawn Fain, and liberal movements from BLM to ceasefire. And of course, no one dares say anything against the most effective imperialist agent, Tlaib.

In the broad view, abdicating the fight for communist leadership of the pro-Palestine movement means resigning the Palestinians to death and defeat. In the context of the student movement, the most militant elements have limited options: some will be demoralized and repelled from politics as they are confronted with the impotence of their program; others will double down on their liberal trajectory and integrate into the establishment, as is the birthright of many; or some may find their way to revolutionary Marxism. Only the latter does not produce more obstacles, but that will require the intervention of communists directly confronting the widespread liberalism in the movement.