Svoboda wasn't right about a lot of things but they were right about student organizing.
When you put some thought into it, it's entirely true and reasonable. The students arrive from across the country, with little to no connection to the community the school resides in. They are "distracted" by study or work, and crucially, every year they all disappear for a quarter of the year. The students may have zeal but may lack experience in theory and definitely in practice. Even worse, every four years entirely new cadre must be trained anew. Thus, student organizing is inherently limited by scope and their ability to carry out both actions as well as campaigns.
But this doesn't mean student organizing is useless.
Student organizing is often the first battleground young organizers set foot on; a tutorial zone, so to speak, for you gamettes. The school political-economy is rigid, restrictive, and often leaves students powerless, yet it also provides a cushion. Mistakes are not punished by death and state oppression, instead they are by disciplinary review and suspension. Our new organizers can learn and recover from even the most glaring of mistakes.
In student organizing, our intrepid new organizers will learn the basics of agitation, education, propaganda, outreach, committee work, coalition work, how to run a campaign, and many more; all of them important basic tasks which carry over into innumerous other fields.
Student campaigns are limited in scope, yes, but we should not kid ourselves into thinking people who are barely not children should be the vanguard of the proletariat. Every victory a student organization gets is a strengthening of our students' abilities, confidence, and propaganda, drawing more people into the struggle.
Here, it is important that our next generation of organizers know the most important factors or any struggle: material analysis (what I'm xalling it!), summation, and criticism self-criticism (CSC).
Material analysis helps you pick campaigns, strategies, allies, and enemies. It can reveal potential pitfalls and potential gains. It lays a road map for your action.
Summations, and more importantly summation based on the Marxist theory of knowledge, allows you to take stock of the gains and losses you've made. What allies did you have before and now? Who was vascillating? Who was pushing a harder line? Did we isolate our enemies--was our choice of enemy correct? Properly analyzing your action allows you to continue to apply the correct action and correct theories to back up your organizing while showing you where to improve and where to change.
But to do both correctly, you must also struggle with yourself. Criticism can be errors, mistakes, or even discipline, but it can also be positive so you know what to keep doing. Yes, everyone makes mistakes, but stay humble. Listen to your comrades when they bring up concerns or issues. In return, always bring up potential errors and considerations in your comrades. Learning is a dialectical process and without this struggle with yourself and your comrades, the organization will slowly fail from the inside out.
Having these practices based on the marxist theory of knowledge will produce an organizer who's skills can be used to tackle any campaign in any area of work.
