1. TO THE AUSTRIAN STUDENTS
We write to you to express our full solidarity with your struggle against the
commercialization and commodification of higher education in Austria.
Above all, we see in it the mirror image and continuation of our own
struggle – both in its goals and methods. It is one more reminder of the
fundamental lesson that there are no longer merely local struggles.
The order subordinating both human needs and rights gained in previous
periods of social struggle to the indiscriminative calculus of the profit
incentive operates beyond national borders and administrative
territorializations. The force and violence of its unfolding – relentless as it
is – obliges us to confront it at the level of universality it itself has chosen.
We have to oppose the universality of the ideal of social egality to the false
universality of capital's demands, together with the unrepenting defense of
fundemental social rights. This obliges us to no longer confine ourselves to
the parochial and shortsighted view of the world. This is a luxury we can
no longer afford! Therefore, your struggle is truly our own. May we
succeed in it together!
In solidarity,
The Plenum of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb
(Croatia)