Internationalist Society at City St.George's, University of London

What we are not supporters of:

(a) Capitalism in all its forms (From America to China, Sweden to Australia, every country is capitalist). Private property, commodity production and wage labour must be abolished.
(b) Activism and Electoralism.
(c) Nationalism and the existence of nations.

(d) and subsequent support for either side in imperialist wars between nation-states.

Our opposition to the first is self-explanatory. We regard the second as fruitless and performative. The last two are recurring historical patterns of the working class being sent to die for the benefit of the ruling class. Aimed at the self-interest of both university staff and students, IntSoc at City therefore holds, as a principle, that the struggle of proletarian students is inseparable from that of the broader working class, if the two groups can even be seen as heterogeneous. Some students are already workers; most will be in the immediate future.

The Crisis

Capitalism now faces a crisis, not just of overproduction but of profitability globally. As the rate of profit steadily declines, the ruling class tightens the screws, forcing ever more brutal exploitation onto workers. This systemic rot is felt even within our universities: at City University and across the UK, 40% of universities are now running at a loss. To add salt to the wound of post-Brexit stagnation, the Labour Party has pathetically tried to reinvent itself as the Reform Party by throwing migrants under the bus through harsher immigration restrictions. As a result, fewer international students are coming to the UK. Because why would they? It is much harder to work here after graduating than in other Western countries. Fewer international students mean less revenue, as universities have long treated them as cash cows, charging them double or more than home students' fees. Each home student now represents a £250 deficit, an intolerable burden in the eyes of university managers and investors. University bureaucrats and stakeholders, however, have several options:

Redundancies and pay cuts to cut costs,
Overworking staff to compensate for shortages,
Outsourcing essential services to profit-driven contractors,
Downgrading facilities,
Rent increases in university-owned halls,
Lobbying for a national tuition fee hike.

All these options are now being used, and every single one is an attack on the working class. Redundancies mean staff lose their livelihoods, with a hellish job market awaiting them. Staff who remain will be overworked, and academics will have a heavier work burden for the same pay. Cleaners have already been outsourced, lacking proper sick pay (getting harassment instead if they are ill). Many of them are scheduled for unsociable hours at no extra compensation and receive none of the support mechanisms other staff have access to (because technically they are not employees of the university!). The same also applies to catering staff at the university, with their bonus being left unemployed for a third of the year, with ZERO compensation. As for the downgrading of services, an example would be the closure of City Bar, first outsourced to the catering company, which failed to make it profitable and is thus now just another place to sit in.

Even after doing all this, universities may still lobby with the government for a home student tuition fee hike, reminiscent of 2010 when the tuition fee was doubled from £3000 to £6000. The students will suffer even if tuition fees are pegged to the inflation rate. For graduates, it is getting harder and harder to find employment and on top of that, wages have fallen far behind productivity in the last 20 years.

The Struggle

The question raised by the information thus far, then, is what is to be done? To adequately address this, the City Student-Worker Action Group (henceforth SWAG) must be introduced. The SWAG is a currently acephalous agitation group, established by the IntSoc to become a predecessor to a future strike committee/mass assembly. It is organised around the struggle of both workers and students to advance our own interests in our respective institutions. Armed with this definition, we can go on to elaborate on the utility of IntSoc (and thus SWAG also).

First, both the IntSoc and SWAG can be seen as opponents of institutionalisation, exemplified by the recognised trade unions. The squabbles and territorial disputes between unions overshadow their solidarity with workers, their structures fragment the working class even within a single workplace - workers at City have already been cleaved by four unions- and their bureaucrats straitjacket the movement by cementing their place as permanent negotiators of their members’ wage labour. IntSoc and SWAG aim against the institutionalisation of this kind. Wherein groups such as the SWP and RCP appear at picket lines to chant marketable slogans and funnel new volunteers into their newspaper businesses, IntSoc aims to intervene in the struggle proper as opposed to partaking in vague, performative and dead-end activism. Both IntSoc and SWAG serve to unify these struggles: the lecturer and the lectured, the service provider and the customer; in a word, the worker and the student.

Of the questions that may arise in response to this information, no doubt one will be the question of spontaneity. IntSoc and SWAG are no doubt organisations that, to some extent, must act spontaneously if they are to act effectively. But this shouldn’t be confused with disorganisation; IntSoc aims to encourage the growth of student-worker self-activity/self-organisation over time, not just City St. George’s but beyond, will assist in the creation of further SWAGs, which can hopefully transform into strike committees and mass assemblies in the future.

The relationship between IntSoc and SWAG must be clearly defined. While members of IntSoc will naturally participate in SWAG, the two should not be conflated, nor should SWAG be seen as subordinate to IntSoc.

1. IntSoc and SWAG are distinct in purpose and function. SWAG exists as a space for uniting students and workers in the defence of their own class interests. IntSoc, by contrast, promotes such self-activity but is not itself the direct vehicle for it. This distinction is underscored by IntSoc’s defined political orientation, whereas SWAG serves as a broader organ open to all members of our class within educational institutions.
2. Although there may be overlapping membership and shared influence, SWAG is not a mere extension of IntSoc. It must be understood as an independent body, free to determine its direction based on the interests of its members.
3. SWAG is open to any student or worker who wishes to organise in pursuit of their collective self-interest. While ties between the two groups exist, SWAG’s autonomy in action and inclusivity in membership ensure it remains distinct from and not controlled by IntSoc.

We also vehemently oppose activism as it channels working-class anger into safer, non-threatening forms such as petitions or lobbying, which leave capitalist social relations untouched. This disease of activism becomes a lifestyle for the activists who work from a framework of moralism, crying all day about the Les Damnés de la Terre, and this results in the class struggle being reduced to numerous isolated single issues. This undoubtedly and inevitably pushes activists (and the workers swayed by them) to be, in turn, swayed by NGOs and electoralist parties.

Our Internationalism

From the invasion of Ukraine and the genocide in Palestine to the foreign-backed proxy wars in Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere, capitalism is at the root of today's global conflicts. In the imperialist phase of capitalism, every nation is drawn into the struggle for profit, whether through direct conquest or the use of proxies. We reject any attempt to divide the world neatly into imperialist powers and oppressed nations. Imperialism is not just a policy of particular states; it is a global system. Alliances shift, powers rise and fall, but all modern wars between nations ultimately serve the interests of capital. We do not support the invader or the defender. We support the working class of all countries.

The world is now entering a phase of general rearmament. Even nations (e.g. UK, Germany) that once reduced military spending to low levels are now borrowing heavily to stockpile weapons, enriching arms manufacturers and fuelling war fever. Faced with the threat of a generalised imperialist war, economic collapse, pandemics, and climate disaster, national solutions are not enough. A national liberation movement (when it manages to succeed) simply shifts the identity of the oppressor without ending exploitation or imperialist domination. The working class resistance to imperialist war has to start from home.

We see internationalism as a key part of class consciousness, to overcome the barriers to working-class unity placed by nations (and the resultant racism, xenophobia, etc). For this end, IntSoc at City also aims to work towards the task of promoting the internationalist message to counter war propaganda and to work towards the creation of a network of genuine internationalist workers in London and beyond to form a No War But Class War group (NWBCW) .