Critical Analysis

László Molnárfi This year proves that united as students, we can pressure the authorities and win on important issues. We stopped fee increases, rent hikes, …

Totalising Politicisation: Voluntary Associationism in Student Unions for Progressive Ends

By László Molnárfi 

Sunday 27 October 2024

The closed-shop student union model has paradoxically led to an all-encompassing, yet strikingly unrepresentative model of democracy.  It is a mirage of liberal philosophy, presupposing a magical, homogenous and apolitical unity between students. It does the bidding of university managers and the state to ensure that student unions are devoid of radical politics and to turn them into organisations invisibly occupied by the liberal mainstream. In this article, I will make the case from a left-wing perspective to abolish mandatory membership and replace it with voluntary association.

This piece will address an increasingly problematic narrative I have been seeing in news media and discussions in apparent “left-wing” outlets in the West, there is also a huge conglomerate of leftist content creators who promote these same narratives some examples to keep an eye out for are Richard Medhurst, ”SaveSheikhjarrahnow”, Max Blumenthal. They all share the following views that I write about in the following sentences. I am referring to the common misrepresentation of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a bulwark against imperialism and Western hegemony.

According to Guy Debord, organiser of the Situationist International (SI) anti-capitalist movement, “in a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false”. What appears as true is false; what is false is true. We, students, see this everywhere, including in our universities and student unions.