p The question to ask is what are the students in the 1970s really like? They are portrayed in so many different ways.

p Some see only their way of dress, their long hair and seemingly strange behaviour—all of which has made older people grumble about the outlandish ways of young people today.

p Others are amazed by the fact that students today have the prodigious task of assimilating much more information than the graduates of several decades ago.

p A third group wants to know why more and more young people with a higher education in some countries of Western Europe, America and capitalist Asia are unable to find the kind of jobs they are trained for and swell up the ranks of 31 the unemployed, not having worked a single day in their lives.

p However, everyone agrees that the student today is different from his counterpart of some 10-15 years ago. At the time, bourgeois propaganda declared clearly with more satisfaction than regret the mass of students "passive," a generation that "accepted things as they were." A West German newspaper said pointedly that the most the students were capable of demanding in the way of “social” needs was an auditorium to dance in all night and toilet paper for the student lavatories. This rude and clearly derogatory assessment indicated there was no fear that the young people would get mixed up in sharp conflicts.

p The ruling bourgeoisie got a rude shock, however. According to the United Nations, in the late 1960s, student riots raked 50 capitalist countries.  [31•1  The reactionary press had to change its tune about students, calling them “ psychopaths” with a mania for destruction, and " spiritual vandals." They were said to be possessed by the devil, and what they were doing to be sheer hell. In this way the university administration and their sponsors try. to castigate the students for their political action.

p However, the reasons behind the intensified political activity among students are in no way physiological. Indeed, students of today are no more intent on sowing wild oats than students in the 1950s.

p The reasons are socio-economic. After all, 32 students do not live in a vacuum, they are affected by the social environment and the changes and shifts taking place in society.

p It is the scientific and technological revolution that has forced students to ponder over the present and the future. The student today is no longer a potential member of the privileged sections of bourgeois society. At best, he faces the prospect of becoming an exploited wageworker like the low-paid producer of material goods.

p The scientific and technological revolution gives rise to a growing need for specialists in production and not armachair intellectuals. Whereas up to now a sizable portion of the students came from petty-bourgeois and middleclass families, many more now come from working class families. All these go to make up the student body which is aware of the economic hardships their families have had to suffer as a result of monopoly oppression.

p In seeking to take an ever more iactive part in their chosen way in life and to acquire the knowledge required by modern production, students have been demanding changes in the higher education system which took shape decades ago. Those who come from poor families also demand scholarships that would enable them to complete their course. Going beyond their immediate interests, the students have come out against the discriminatory aspects of the education system, insisting that all talented young men and women, regardless of the social status of their parents, should have access to university education.

p In some capitalist countries, students have been insisting that their academic institutions should have nothing to do with the military- industrial complex. They have opposed racist restrictions and the recruitment in the universities of “volunteers” for imperialist aggression. The students, representing the interests of their generation which refuses to become cannon fodder, have frequently been in the forefront of the fight against US aggression in South-East Asia.

p Consequently, the social conflict here has deep-rooted social causes. A large section of the students feel that "everything is their concern." Aside from matters pertaining to academic institutions they now protest about many things that have long since become incurable vices of capitalist society.

p Students are voicing their protests with greater insistence, if only because of their steadily increasing numbers. In some countries, the number of students has doubled and even trebled in the past ten years.

p Of course, the student body is far from being homogeneous, for it epitomizes the complex socio-class relations characteristic of capitalist society as a whole. Hence the great factionalism among students both ideologically and organizationlly.

p Alongside Communist youth groups, it contains adherents to “classical” capitalism, advocates of "capitalist reforms," and young people who are politically passive and sometimes seek a way out in drugs. Some groups believe that rioting is the answer, insisting on immediate direct 34 action which they are not ready for and, therefore, which amounts to sheer recklessness.

p For all its shortcomings, the student movement has established itself as an important factor of the anti-imperialist struggle. The growing political activity of the youth is evidence of the political bankruptcy of the capitalist system, and denotes an important change in the balance of class forces.

p The youth, at times unconscious of the importance of its acts, shows that capitalism is no longer the answer to present-day requirements. The material and moral alienation, the crime and the injustice, which capital gives rise to and legalizes, infuriate ever greater numbers of young men and women and impel them to take vigorous action.

p The ruling bourgeoisie has been steadily losing its hold on the young, and it is a well-known fact that no social formation, no class can expect to look confidently to the future unless it has a majority of the youth behind it.

p Young people possess a vast store of energy. Properly channelled, this energy will swell the global tide of revolutionary action led by the working class, and this will greatly strengthen the front of anti-imperialist struggle.

However, besides being the subject of class struggle, young people are also the object of diverse political intrigues. Amongst the youth one constantly comes across self-styled "friends of the youth" who, in fact, are no such thing. Very frequently they are motivated by self- seeking, egoistic interests. Of late, the Trotskyites have been making their presence felt among this ill-assorted lot.