A new generation of youth is radicalizing
dent way, without any relation to the slightest initiative, committee or call initiated by adults. It mobilized around immediate demands, even if very quickly discussions emerged about a new type of school and therefore a new society.
The struggles around the environment, peace and racism appear to have a broader social scope, but they are not necessarily more radical because of that. The mobilizations for concrete demands concerning the school system have been impelled by the democratic and egalitarian values that have come to the fore in these actions. But they can also favor the development of a clearer political consciousness when rise to new more united, massive and more democratic forms of organization, and when they lead to an immediate confrontation
Preparatory work by revolutionary youth organizations was not much of a factor in these struggles. All the far left currents working in this area had very small forces and a negligible influence. A very great spontaneity has marked these mobilizations, especially in Spain.
It is generally accepted that today's youth reject "official" policy and the "establishment," one of the first consequences of this being a rejection of the parties or even of the unions. When the "establishment" sought to impose its ideas, its schemes and its arrogance on them, this more or less confused rejection could turn into a militant consciousness. So, the schools became a battlefield. In fact, the educational system represents complex stakes for the bourgeoisie, at once economic, social and ideological. And for the young people, it is one of the main arenas, if not the main one, of social experience.
It was on the basis of these empirical facts that the existence of a "new generation" with its own cultural references, models, sensitivities and new forms of political action has been pointed up. Over and above the interpretation of "mentalities," the materialist explanation of this phenomenon rests on the patterns of change of our societies - growth of the proletariat, growth and crisis of the educational system, rebound effects of the capitalist crisis and so on. In other words, a very large part of the youth share a common situation and little by little are developing a solidarity based on recognizing this.
Although the term has a descriptive value, it cannot be used as a general principle for approaching all the problem's of today's youth.
The political and social behavior of young people are not independent of the changes underway in the 20 workers' movement. The slow and complex recomposition of the latter is reflected by a youth 'in transition," which expresses a break from the past but does not yet exhibit the forms that are to come. The youth of the 1980s reflect the sociological changes that have been occuring for 10 to 15 years in our societies, in the world of labor, in the family, in living patterns and so
While it is important to point up the specific features of youth, it is just as important to understand that these phenomena do not come from nowhere. This, however, is whạt bour geois politicians and sociologists have tried to do over recent years. Youth were portrayed as favorable to free enterprise and the individual adventure
"May '68, don't know anything about it," became the slogan of those who had the job of creating an image of the new generation. The experience of today's youth
A lot of people with very different motivations let themselves be taken in to some extent by this analy.
and came to lose hope in the youth, as if there had been a total break from the preceding "militant" generations. There was a very great temptation to look on this new generation in a detached way, merely as
Contradictory elements govern the experience and action of today's youth. In the first place, it reflects the political changes that have occurred within the workers' move. ment since the end of the 1960s -weakening of the grip of the reformist leaderships, social gains women, the prolonged existence far-left organizations. But at the same time it is not a direct heir of great of the 1970s in a number of countries there was a pronounced downturn of class struggles.
The austerity policies that were introduced in the 1975-1977 period and the first local defeats that they inthe workers represented failures for the generation of 1968-69. The heritage could longer be transmitted simply through a continuity of struggles and social action bridging the generations. There was no organizational heritage either. The big student unions - or their equivalent, depending on the country - disappeared at the beginning of the 1970s, or at least declined until they were no longer representative of the student population.
The acceleration of the crisis of the traditional parties, starting with the Spanish and French Communist Parties, or the "readjustments" of the democratic parties, cut these parties off from young people. (1) Many of them, with the exception of the Italian CP or the Christian workers' movement in Flanders, long ago dropped the attempt to build mass youth organizations in favor of noisy demagogic operations aimed at capturing the youth vote.
All this is not merely of the period. It is. the reflection of a deepgoing change in the social workers' movement is adapting badly. In a country like France, for example, the crisis of the textile industry, of steel, of mining and auto has brought about a lasting decline in the French Communist Party's base of support.
Some studies are starting to be account of these developments. In France, for example, before and especially after 1975, there has been a "low breakdown of the group in a whole section of the working class - a weakening of the bastions, opening up of education, changes in skills ... In many working. class families, the father's professional and technical experience is no longer being transmitted.... The forms of reproduction of the community have been hit by these shifts, material frameworks of collective memory as a whole have been shattered. This effect is increased by the fact that a new labor process is going hand in hand with new forms of urbanization, based on the breakup of segregated living patterns."
These changes affect political and trade-union traditions, thereby accentuating the break from past generations. The more the big cities grow to the detriment of the middle-sized working class community, tending to disappear. The youth are, emancipating themselves more quickly from experience, and this phenomenons is being reflected in the crisis of the
In France, the Socialist tried to capitalize on the December 1986 struggles, using small currents that came from the far left and which had decided to operate fundamentally as currents in the SP rather than as independent groups. These were the following: Convergence socialiste, which came from a split in the Internationalist Communist Party (PCI, the Trotskyist group led by Pierre Lam. bert); and Questions socialiste, including the leaders of the major anti-racist organization, SOS-racisme, who came from the Revolutionary Communist League (French section of the Fourth International).
Gerard Noiriel, "Les ouvriers dans la societe francaise", Editions du Seuil. Paris, 1986. International Viewpoint 4 May 1987
Demonstration during French December upsurge (DR)
traditional organizations of the working class.
Finally, today's young people are beginning their social lives and their political thinking without ever having known anything but crisis. They are par excellence the generation of the capitalist crisis, without any memory of what went before.
What we can call a "new generation" is therefore essentially the product of the social changes in progress. The youth ares reflecting in a special way, with or without spectacular struggles, the transformations of our time and the new adjustments, which sometimes create a clear desynchronization between the struggles of the older generation and theirs.
The environment of youth has changed gradually over recent years. Along with the schools and, even more so the family represents the first social experience for young people. In this sphere also there have been certain changes. The average size of households has declined, and certain relationships within the family have altered under the impact of the overall changes in the society. (3)
In particular, the position of young women has changed. Not only do they mostly expect to be workers in the future but their mothers already offer them a model of working women. In fact, since the middle or end of the 1970s, a majority of married women have become wage earners. In the same way, contraception is now an experience that can be trans-
International Viewpoint 4 May 1987 mitted by mothers, despite the family taboos that remain on these questions.
But relationships within the family have also begun to change under the impact of changes in education. The greater the access of young people to prolonged and general education, the less dependent they are on their knowledge. The evolution of education is thus graduthe family, to say nothing of the
Most of all, this new like that of 1968, is being by a growing number of students and an expansion ol general, non-specialized education. If you take the age group from 15 to 24 in France, in 1975 two million of them were highschools and universities, 1982 it was over four million. In seven years, the number of school students and 33% of 20 year olds are still in education.
France, in 1950 130,000 university students. In 1968, nearly a million. (4) In Belgium, 45.7% of youth under 25 years of age are still in school. (5)
This prodigious expansion of education is due first of all to demographic growth. But it also comes from the prolonging of the period of pulsory education and a desire to continue study in order to gain better qualifications. Despite the capitalist crisis that began in 1973 and despite the fact that it is trying to gradually the hurdles for university entrance, the bourgeoisie needs to raise the general level of qualifications.
These contradictions in educational have led to the present "reforms," but over ten or twelve years they have operated to expand educawas helped further by the fact a mobilization such as that of May 1968 in France was able to establish a certain kind of relationship of forces in this area. (6)
This massive growth and ing of education has given rise to a legitimate feeling that there is a right to knowledge. But today the ruling class wants to put this gain up for grabs, and as a result it is running into very strong resistance from youth
More numerous, youth in school are also more concentrated. Academic general highschools with more than a thousand students are now the
3. In France, thes average size families dropped from 3.33 1962 3.15 in 1982. But above all the numbers of families with four children has dropped sharply, falling from 17.2% to 7.6%i (INSEE Bulletin, November 1984, Paris).
"Problemes politiques et sociaux," No. 542, La Documentation francaise, Paris.
"Werkgroep Arbeid," 1985, Document d'etude de l'unversite de Louvain. These youth break down as follows: 75.3% in primary and secondary education, 14.3 din non-university higherseducation and 10.4% in university education.
The Edgar Faure Law, passed shortly after May 1968, opened up access to the universities, reflecting the momentary inability the bourgeoisie restrict entrance
21
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rule. School populations of two thousand more are not uncommon. The university campuses concentrate thouif not tens of thousands students. Most of the big cities have a university where a considerable number of people - students, and workers - live and work together.
Thousands of young people in a well defined institutional space cannot remain outside social conflicts for very long. If there periods of scholastic peace 1975 and 1985, varying according to country, that does not at all mean that the schools have ceased to be focuses of radicalization and struggle.
today's conditions, cannot but be arenas of confrontations between section of the youth and governments.
While there has been a numerical growth of the student population, that does not in itself mean that the daughters and sons of workers have easy access to education. Despite a slow growth of students from working-class and poor white-collar families, they still only total 12.6% of students in France, and 7% in Spain. In fact, it is the children of the middle classes who have benefited from the opening up of the universi. ties. (8) However, that does not mean that their relationship to educational institutions is the result of a "class
It has been known at least since composition students was more "petty bourgeois," that a certain number of other factors are involved that can bring a majority of the students into a political confrontation, either with an educational institution or with the state.
On the other hand, one of the big over the past 20 years concerns seconeducation, where the number of children of manual and clerical workers has increased considerably. Working-class families have sough: to adapt to the changes in the worid of work, and despite all family conservatism, many of them have tried to give their children, at least the boys, an education that would enable them to get out of the working class. But more generally the governments themselves have also sought to prolong general education. (9)
This has not changed much regard the class-conditioning of individuals' chances for scholastic success. The professional or social level of the parents remains an important factor of inequality. Likewise, despite important gains for women, men continue to hold a clear advantage. For first time in France in 1981, female students became a majority in the universities, but the further up 22 you go in higher education, the more their numbers decrease.
The most significant social changes have been registered, secondary education. The young highschool students going into the streets today represent a whole different spectrum than 20 years ago. A lot more of them are children of working- class families, They are from popular demands are more ambitious than
This explains why in Italy and. Spain, but also in gium, young people from the high. schools have occupied a more important place in student demonstrations than those from the universi. Closer links between students and workers
This fact has not failed to alter considerably social impact the mobilizations. Unlikes May 1968, link between school students and workers is being mades more easily in the framework of the family. Twenty years ago, it was necessary to go to the factory gates to explain the struggles of youth, because the children were in vocational schools were barely touched by the confrontation in education.
Today, the situation is totally different, as has been seen both in France and in Spain. In most working-class families, one or several children are attending academic high schools, and so the familys becomes a center of working-class solidarity with young prople. The linkup between the scruggles of youth and the working class can now be made more quickly.
In France, there was a strong desire for a big demonstration in the factories in common with the youth, and the union leaders had a hard time finding ways to divert it. The Chirac government made no mistake in withdrawing the Devaquet project on the eve of a united mobilization.
All these elements show the growing importance of the highand universities in the independent mobilizations of youth. The constant potential for struggle the question of mass form of organization, as well as that of an organization of highschool
The role of revolutionary organization among the youth will continue to be decided to a considerable extent within the schools, although that does not mean that they will be the only places young people will mobilize. Unemployment, but also struggles against racism and against the nuclear threat, will remain important factors in the coming struggles.
Today's youth are the youth of the capitalist economic crisis. Once they leave the school system, their main problem is not choosing a job but finding one. In the 12 principal countries of the OECD there are today 10 million unemployed youth. A section of the bourgeoisie is putting forward a policy of encouraging people to have more children in order to stave off a long-term ageing of the European population, but this society does not know what to do with its children! Unemployment is hitting young people much more than the rest of the economically active population. In the OECD as a whole, the unemployment on average three times higher than that for adults. (10)
Over the last 15 years, the number of economically active people under 25 has declined. Part-time work is very commonly the job status of youth. Precarious employment has become a very common situation for workers under 25.
Youth are being brought into productive life in an intermittant way and in low-skilled jobs. Companies now have the practice of giving steady jobs to people with qualifications much higher than those required for the positions to be filled. As a result of this trend, those less qualified and those who have interrupted their studies hardly have a hope of finding a job.
The labor market has become chaotic and anarchic. In France, among so-called unskilled workers, a third have a Certificate of Professional Aptitude (CAP) for a profession other than the one in which they work. In France, 60% of the youth in TUC (Travaux d'utilites collective
7. In downtown Paris, the Jussieu faculty of sciences concentrates more than 8,500 wage earners and 60,000 students! In Belgium, the Louvain La Neuves campus concentrates 17,000 students and Louvain itself, 22,000.
8. A distinction has to be made here for the case of Britain, where there has long been a strong social division among universities and deeply rooted elite character to some university curricula. In 1975, in France, only 5% of wage work ers had gone through higher education. In the United States, on the other hand, in 1982, 20% of wagesworkers had at least four years of higher education.
9. Ins France, if you add together the statistics for private and public educa. tion, in 1961 children working-class families ( represented 24.7% pupils in the second form of academic highschools (two years before the baccalaureat). In 1981, they represented 41.9% B. Charlot and M. Figeat, 'Histoire de la formation des ouuriers, • Editions Minerve, Paris. 1985.
10. Prospects for Employment, OECD, September 1985 and September 1986. International Viewpoint 4 May 1987
youth training schemes) have some sort of diploma - 9% have their baccalaureat, 37% have leaving certificates from short-term technical schools. (11)
All European governments have set up schemes for "fighting youth unemployment." This rather demagogic concern is intended to channel the discontent of youth in order to stave off revolt. In many cases, however, these plans are more gimmicks than real remedies. Moreover, they give plant managements an additional opportunity to reduce their social costs and provide them with cheap labor for a few weeks or a few
In Britain, there is the Youth Training Scheme; in Sweden, the. Youth
In Italy the government has contracts, as well as to aid cooperathat claim to create jobs for young people. The Italian government has also decided to hire 10,000 unemployed youth to "upgrade cultural monuments"! France has no less than seven kinds. of training course and on-the-job training. Youth and discrimination
Finally, whatever the formula of the job or training scheme they are put in, a lot of these youth go back to being unemployed after this inter-
All these measures change nothing in the structure of the job market, which is affected by many other needs and contingencies than these miserable governmental measures.
The wind of privatization that is blowing over the European Economic Community, considerable finance into stock-market operations, is unfavorable by its nature to productive investment. The highly speculative character of the financial markets indicates clearly that the ruling class has no short-term project for expanding employment. employment is an initial result of this.
In every country, the bosses claim that youth unemployment is a result of the fact that their education is out of line with the demands of the jobs available. The fact is that for millions of job seekers the companies offer only a pitiful number of positions. The type of professional training is only a secondary effect of the present crisis of the labor market. The main cause of this chaos is the fall in productive investment.
The number of workers under 25 has declined in France by 19% overall, and by 35% in industry alone. Most industries are closed to youth. Young people are being concentrated more
International Viewpoint 4 May 1987 and more in construction, services and commerce, where unsteady jobs and limited-term contract jobs are proliferating. In most industries, plants have concentrated their workforces in the 30 to 40 year old range.
This is why as consciousness is developing slowly of the need for linking the right to study to the right to a job. With respect to both of these demands, the youth are expressing first of all their rejection of discrimi. nation and forms of social exclusion.
Within youth unemployment itself discrimination against womem, immigrants and Blacks, youth of the more disadvantaged regions, and so on. In where youth unemployment is one of the highest in the OECD, there is a gaping difference between the situation in the north and the one in the south. The rate of unemployment for men over 29 in the north is 1.7%. The unemployment rate for women under 29 in the south is 50%. And in southern Italy, unemployed youth are a reservoir of easy recruitment for the Camora and the Mafia.
In Spain, differentiations of the same sort divide the youth of the various regions and nationalities.
parallel economy, which is economic life, is taking on the asp-
La real racket exploiting available young labor power. Internal immigration disadvantaged regions to industrial ones obviously subjects the young people involved to another problem. France, 57% of those who apply for training and retraining courses are young women. Only 34% of them actually get into retraining projects. And only 27% actually get profession-
All this undoubtedly has reinforced the role of the family as the material support of young people. Youth, especially young women, tend to stay longer with their parents. A refuge at the start, the family is quickly revert. ing to a straitjacket. Young people who have to postpone their economic independence are finding themselves trapped in the institution of the family, which once again is serving as a crutch for a society incapable of meeting the needs of the working population.
In France, 40% of immigrant families have been affected by youth unemployment, as against 12% for the population as a whole. For these youth, the situation is all the more difficult because the family often represents an additional obstacle to their social integration in the broader
Confronted with a racist atmosphere outside it, within the family they are often subjected to the most oppressive effects of patri. archy. The violence of fathers and brothers against girls, taboos, religious prejudices and so on are the price that has to be paid by those unable to emancipate themselves econ. omically. "Second generation immigrants"
Youth has, therefore, been particularly hard hit by national and racial inequalities. The wave of immigration in the 1960s and 1970s is producing today what is being called a "second generation" in some coun tries. This is a false term because they cannot be considered "immigrants They are and feel themselves a stable community: "The former metro, boudodo ["subway, job, sleep"] immigrant was invisible in public. They were only labor power in its basic state. But the children have gone to school, they have sat alongside other children, and so quite naturally they have emerged onto the French public scene." (13)
Many European countries are now confronting arrival on the labor market of hundreds of thousands of youth born of immigrant parents. all the more precarious becausesthey also suffer from the effects of racism and the difficulties or social marginality of their parents. This instability and doubt are expressed. in the dilemma between the "right to be different" and the "right to equality," because this society is incapable of meeting both demands.
Within this "second generation," not all are in the same situation. This disparity, reflects the uneveness of the forms of imperialist domination over their countries of origin.
West Indian youth nationality is in a different position and has different rights from an Arab youth, who is considered a
Likewise, many young Blacks in
11. See "TUC: utiles pour qui?" 'Alternative economique', October 1985, Paris; "Jeunes sans travail dans la tourmente de la crise, " by Michel Rafoul in 'Le Monde diplomatique' of March 1987.
12. In Italy 60% of the unemployed are youth between 1.5 million people. Some 35% the ages of 14 and 25 are unemployed. Unlike other countries, those with diplomas have also been hit by unemployment. In 1985, 6.3% of the population without education were unemploy. diplomas with only a primary ed, while 13.2% of those withs secondary school diplomas were unemployed and 6.3% of university graduates. 'Etudes economiques (OECD, July 1986.)
13. Abdelkader Dieghloul, an Algeriar sociologist, in 'Revue M', February 1987 Paris.
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23
among in
(14)
of this the
24 ritish by nati very well. The composition of the onhighschool corteges during the Decthemselves denied of integration. The ember 1986 struggles reflected deepthe "second generation"
going unity and a deepgoing amalga-
Iked the olicy mation of French youth, to ilies"
immigrant youth from many origins.
adopted in various governments,
The crisis has favored a pronounced ageing of employed workers in many restrictive
Sweden, liberal in industries. Any important change in less easy in France, trend would involve massive the period.
These introduction of the new technology ecial bosses, that is investment, consequences development of a second to create not only new jobs but also they have in part to bring in young workers able to problems social adjust easily to the new organization of labor. We are far from that.
turn of 1973, acquiring limit for for great many
Young workers from immigrants atinent, shaped generation"
econd
The working class, therefore, the ring country not today have a strong contingent
5% gainst b
965).
in of young workers under the age of these immigrant chil
25, ready for a lot of battles, hich suggests that orkers grant sent
There are evidently still young workers heir families with in the plants, but the existence of a working-class youth as a "new proleof rtion po outh tarian generation" in many industries the immigrant population is something much more problemconsiderable:
and
21.8% of the
The question remains of the so-
15, while the ler called pre-worker youth, those being ulation whole trained for working-class jobs. It is as than
60,000 more hard to make generalizations about reach the for age their situation in Europe. Their place training without in the school system, their place in any the working class and therefore their consciouness depends on the specific of technical and vocawho
In West Germany, for example, we saw there is a long tradition of "dual education," with the bosses playing an important role in the education of young workers. In France, on the other hand, this task has long since been taken over by the state, involving the integration of technical training was that general educational system.
youth, it
It is for this there is a common curriculum for all pupils up until the fifth class, that is, up until the age of 12 to 14.
of on the country, this
Beurs, movement pre-worker youth will take part in different ways in the struggles that concern it exclusively. For the same reasons, it will integrate itself more or less directly in the struggles of had the rest of the school youth.
Finally, a not unimportant part of the youth is neither in the highschools nor in vocational education the highbut unemployed. Most studies point up the danger that a section of these of the unemployed youth as outcasts from society, inasmuch as most of them have no link with the traditional workers' movement. Is a movement of unemployed youth posthese conditions? For the moment, experience has shown that it is very difficult.
In Europe in general, there is little if any organization of the unemploy. ed, and the unemployed play little organized role in mobilizations. For the youth, the family often offers some security and partially dilutes the spirit of rebellion. It is likely, on the other hand, that groupings of unemployed youth will appear in various forms. But unless the trade-union movement takes on board this question, it will always be difficult to generalize and stabilize these local
This new political radicalization of future of the workers' One of the features of the new exresponds exactly to the big changes that are underway in the workers'
Two problems are going to arise. The first concerns the conditions in which the struggles of youth and of older workers can reinforce each other. Thessecond concerns the new activist layer that has arisen in the recent mobilizations and the far-left organizations that were built essentially on the generation of 1968.
The recomposition of the workers' movement will depend largely on the capacity of revolutionary organi. zations to attract this new activist layer. For many years in a number of countries, the average age of these organizations has beens rising. Any qualitative step forward in building the revolutionary movement in Europe would obviously involve the integration of hundreds or thousands of youth who will not have experienced the defeats and confusion of the past and will be all the more ready for political struggle to the extent that they believe that they are contributing something new to the experiences of the preceding generations.
It is important, of course, to observe the recent struggles very care. fully. They have not, for the moment, matched the great wave of 1968-69. But they are not a passing storm
14. Karen Schober, "The minority that grew: Problems of training and employment for the second generation,' 'Gewerkschaftliche Monatschefte', Cologne, July 1982. Young Toreign born under represent about 42% of the foreign popula tion in nine European countries (France, West Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg), 4.7 million out of 11.2 million This is in a general context declining birth rate and ageing of national populations, where the proportion of those under 25 amounts to only about 35% ('Economic and social problems, 'La Documentation Francaise', No. 530, 1986). International Viewpoint 4 May 1987