Student Radicals Mistaken in Assault on Capitalism

Students and young people from Pitt and around the country have been planning protests against the G-20 Summit and, later this week, they’ll have a chance to prove their radical credentials and rail against capitalism in a public space.

            

At permitted and unpermitted protests throughout the city, radical students will, as one proclamation endorsed by Pitt’s Students for Justice in Palestine put it, “take to the streets of Pittsburgh to disrupt the summit and the institutions of capital that profit from its domination.”

            

At a meeting in David Lawrence, Students for Radical Change and Liberation even brought a speaker from Pittsburgh’s own anarchist group, the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, to teach them about participating in mass actions and managing their “arrest-risk” during the G-20 protests, PittBriefly reported.

            

Whether online or on campus, radical student groups at Pitt have assaulted capitalism as our great oppressor and planned to bring it to its knees during the G-20 Summit. But while students and other protesters will undoubtedly get lots of media and police attention during the G-20, the only thing they’re likely to disrupt is the lives of Pittsburghers.

            

The real assault on capitalism is being perpetrated by the heads of the G-20 themselves whose nations are less free market giants than bloated, planned economies. Remember, the list of G-20 states includes Communist China, the Oil State of Saudi Arabia and social-democratic Brazil whose current president, Lula da Silva, is the leader of something called the Workers’ Party.

            

If anything, the G-20 is an organization of major planned economies seeking to turn the world market into a safer, planned market devoid of the sort of risks and rewards inherent in capitalist economies.

            

In fact, the most capitalist nation on that list may well be the United States but President Obama, by proposing caps on wages at financial institutions and an expansion of federally funded health care benefits, is steadily moving our country toward a more statist economy.

            

But protesters would rather identify lack of health care, lack of jobs and global warfare as products of a global capitalist cabal than the result of their own inability to pay for health care, get a job or elect anti-war candidates to office.

            

Of course, the problem with scapegoating is that it’s an easily debunked charade perpetrated by those unable (or unwilling) to engage in serious debate about the facts.

            

The fact is that capitalism lifted this world out of the feudalism and perpetual warfare of the Middle Ages.

            

Capitalism popularized and funded the inventions that improved every American’s life from the steam engine to the telephone.

            

Capitalism made it possible for people to devote four years of their lives to studying Marx at a university.

            

Whether protesters like it or not, capitalism has done more to lift humanity out of bondage and poverty than any tent city in the history of man. Protest China’s human rights policies, Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women or the United States’ continued discrimination against the LGBT community but don’t build up a false enemy in capitalism as an excuse to disrupt businesses and communities in Pittsburgh.

For Your Awareness...

Politics on a college campus are a lot like an encyclopedia printed by the Kremlin in 1960: they’re 50 years out of date, founded on a general hatred of capitalism and totally out of touch with reality.

Channeling the public theater of Soviet show trials, much of campus politics are based on appearances rather than effect. One of my favorite public displays of useless self-righteousness was when Students Taking Action Now for Darfur (STAND) painted a tent on the lawn of the William Pitt Union to raise awareness about genocide.

Take note incoming freshmen, “awareness” is a word that dominates campus politics.

Why? Because raising awareness is a goal without tangible results. STAND couldn’t claim to stop genocide by painting a tent but they could claim to be informing people through a public spectacle that had no effect on the University of Pittsburgh let alone the nation of Sudan.

Such stunts are necessary because most campus political organizations are focused on major global issues that are impossible for them to affect.

Case in point: ONE at Pitt, a student group that says its purpose is “to help in the fight to end global poverty and fight global disease.” How will ONE at Pitt achieve such lofty goals?

They won’t. But they justify their existence by claiming to “help spread the word, make the population aware, distribute information, and have meetings.”

Similarly, the International Socialist Organization, International Students for Healthcare Reform and Immigrant Care, Campus Anti-War Network and the Students for Justice in Palestine all include language about raising awareness or educating the public as part of either their statement of purpose or list of activities.

Such organizations champion the causes of the hard-left using Student Government Board funds and tactics that could be called street theater at best. Painting tents, holding demonstrations on street corners and championing the cause of failed ideologies such as socialism makes these groups appear nothing more than a costly distraction.

But as ridiculous as the ideologies and tactics of many student groups are, it’s important to realize, as an incoming freshman or a graduating senior, that the image of the world they present is a distorted one.

In real life, governmental bodies don’t hand out money to people to host candle light vigils for Palestine.

In real life, genocides aren’t stopped with painted tents but with guns.

In real life, it’s what you do that matters far more than what you say and what awareness you raise.

Student organizations on the right and left at the University of Pittsburgh have created a fantasyland where moderates are marginalized and extremists are the norm. Not only does such a political atmosphere fail to prepare people for the actualities of American life, it creates a false environment where intention matters more than action.

In fact, the only aspect of the campus political atmosphere that is representative of the nation in general is party politics. Like their national counterpart, the College Republicans play a negligible role on Pitt’s campus.

After all, very few college students have any stake in the repeal of the estate tax.

Just as the College Republicans are in decline, the College Democrats are in ascent. 

During the election, Pitt was one sprawling campaign office for Barack Obama with his face and name plastered everywhere. Not much has changed on campus with his victory except that there’s a bit more self-righteousness in the air.

Importantly, the College Democrats are fairly well funded as student organizations go thanks to generous SGB allocations.

This brings up an important point: These groups are spending your (or your parents’) money. Every foolish publicity stunt, every speaker who comes to talk about the plight of a new brutalized minority in Africa and every fringe publication is paid for by an SGB allocation.

So remember, the political similarities between a college campus and the world at large are limited. Don’t take any group too seriously and keep in mind the fact that you’re funding their stunts. It’s not wasted money as long as you get a good laugh every time they do something ridiculous on the Union lawn.