eS anit + et —_ see AO » COntrolled > Negr {| wy aaucational system in English-Canada, BS Provincial” rights are presented to Viate the need for “national” rights. oe of the problems faced, such as ‘a crowded facilities, lack of hous- ng, shortage of instructors is caused Y buck-passing between Ottawa and Provincial governments in an attempt 0 deny sovereignty to Quebec. 8 far as Frye’s fuzzy notion of a roletarianization” is concerned, it is fact that the modern university has €come a\place where thousands of me bourgeois youth (or youth with Mlusions of being “individuals” and eee men”; i.e. petit bourgeois illu- cays are proletarianized. Concentra- 10n of capital in North America has i £0 on apace to such an extent that ln, Petit bourgeois class and even age Canadian capitalist enterprise ave been swallowed up by giant U.S. monopoly corporations. sree the need for a planned supply Skilled scientific and engineering Workers as well as bureaucrats, man- agers, ad men and apologists is de- Manded by these corporations. The re- Yulsion and nausea growing among asses of Canadian students is not What Frye calls a revulsion against the ork ethic,” but a revulsion against € capitalist work ethic. This ethic is €ar to every aspiring graduate; it Means to have a buttoned-down mind, tio do your war research without ques- Oning its ultimate use against man- ld, to rote off “facts” to another 8eneration of students, to inflict bour- €0is law on the working class, to fa U.S. corporations free from pay- & even their meagre taxes to the anadian state, etc., etc. While Frye ain be correct in suggesting the forms = this stage taken by students are an- Caistic, and even nihilistic (10 per- Nt of students take drugs says the real Star, Sept. 2), the objective eee of the malaise is the capitalist 8anization of the university as it pre- “ares our youth to serve imperialist {pPorations, owned and controlled in i U.S. against even our own national €pendence. a €refore Frye is absolutely wrong de Suggest “the analogy toward stu- Nt protest is not anything like the ly © movement or anything genuine- Tooted in long-standing social injus- Sl tices.”. As for the second half of this statement, Frye himself tells us. that the phenomenon of large proletarianiz- ing universities itself is new. The first half is wrong in that objectively the grievance of students is precisely the same as the grievance of the Negro people; both are used by a class of exploiters; both are denied control of their social-political lives; both have objective long-range interests in join- ing with the industrial proletariat to ‘replace the state power of monopoly capitalism with a profoundly more de- mocratic state of workers, farmers and _ intellectuals. This does not mean the extent of ex- ploitation, either in physical or psy- chological terms, is the same or that the consciousness for the necessity of revolutionary change is the same for Negro people and students. In any case the analogy of Farber was not in- tended as a scientific treatise. It serves well enough to point up the mental habits of North America students. And more important, the necessity of open rebellion for students to gain a sense of manhood. Frye then makes a slanderous attack on “professional agitators.” This is the description presented by Frye’s liberal confrere, UofT President Bis- sell, in an attempt to save “respon- sible” dissenters from “foreign” revo- lutionary ideas. Apparently, for all of Frye’s liberal humanism, it’s still un- patriotic to be a scientific socialist. “By the time we reach Columbia we have professional organizers brought in from outside, we have a very sharp division in the student body ,itself, an equally sharp division in the staff, and a number of social issues raised which are peripheral to university agairs.” The slander is Frye’s contention that “agitators” are responsible for Colum- bia. Fact is Columbia students bar- ricaded themselves to protest such “peripheral” issues aS war research on Columbia campus and expansion of the university at the expense of Negro housing. The more important and insidious lie is that somehow there is such a thing as a “university community” united around such metaphysical unre- alities as “search for truth” in an at- mosphere for “free inquiry.” The sharp NER IS ON FIRE division Frye refers to is the inevitable development of the essentially class struggle that is emerging on Canadian campuses. This struggle is not just limited to the ideological contest be- tween the values of corporatism and contesting values and analyses (in- cluding to an ever greater degree Marxist propositions). It also encom- passes economic demands such as more housing, more teachers, more money for students, more facilities etc. In other .words, the growing. crisis within each Canadian university is a reflection of an all-round struggle, the end of which will be a political alliance of students, workers, intellectuals and everyone else ‘whom the bourgeoisie oppresses and crushes.” This alliance will eventually challenge the political power of the class which now rules. Canada in its own nationally nihilistic self-interest. It will replace the pres- ent state with a democratic socialist state capable of integrating its univer- sity students into a meaningful humane role of builders of an independent Can- ada dedicated to eliminating the legacy of imperialism wherever it~ can by policies of peace and equitable trade. To say anything less underestimates the inter-relationship between today’s student demands for a voice in deci- sion-making and democratic solutions to university financing and tomorrow’s student demands which will develop as capitalism is unable to meet any of the needs of its captured people. Northrup Frye’s slanders only prolong the struggle. Toward the end of the Star rendi- tion of Frye’s speech, Frye touches on this question of power. He does so in such a way as to prejudice the discus- sion within the framework of the pre- sent system. He quotes an interview between Paul MacRae, editor of The Varsity and President Bissell. “ “What do you mean by Authority?’ and the student said ‘Authority is other people telling me what I have to do’.” This leads Frye to conclude “What he (MacRae) wanted, of course, was_sim- ply un-restrictive electives to study whatever interested him, and the an- swer to that is that interest is not enough for an educational process.” Again Frye slanders, MacRae, as can be learned from his editorials and con- tributions to student discussions, wants a non-exploitive society. True his liberal answer to Bissell is inade- quate. Authority at the University of ~ Toronto is state monopoly capital us- ing the university in its own interest. A counter-authority would be to use the university to help eliminate the social-economic-cultural problems faced by the overwhelming majority of citi- zens in Toronto and Canada. Frye on the other hand speaks of an “authority which is inherent in the subject being studied. The authority of the fruitful hypothesis as opnosed to the crack-pot notion.” Ail quite de- tached and sheltered from the reality of Canada no doubt. Knowledge inde- pendent of man and man’s social rela- tionships. Such philosophical objective ideal- ism can not deny the fact that the U of T facilitates the war in Vietnam through its corporate and even Pen- tagon financed research work. Nor can Frye deny that experts graduated from the schools of Business Adminis- tration are responsible for writing commission reports aimed at destroy- ing the organized working class. Or for training teachers who even Hall-Den- nis condemn as reactionary. Frye’s attachment to “scholarship” above and beyond the mere world of mortals, and especially those mortals who are profoundly disturbed by the increasing domination of universities by finance capital, may serve to balm the flayed collective conscience of his audience of trustees and school inspec- tors. It may even bedazzle a number of students who would like to think that the liberal bourgeois dream of the university is true. But it can’t stop the objective pro- cess of class struggle that is sharpen- ing in Canada and which is spilling over into the mass universities of this country. Nor can it stop students like Paul MacRae and thousands of others from extending their analysis to one of scientific socialism. Nor stop in the meantime the pressure of mass student action which prompted scholar Frye to step out of his cloister in the first place. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 4, 1968—Page 7 ~.