Before the summer, our comrades in Trinity college set about organising a Marxist society on campus. We collected signatures of interested students, and requested a meeting with the Central Society Committee (CSC) – a student body who apparently gets to decide what societies are or are not allowed to operate in Trinity.
Scandalously, after a meeting of only 10 minutes, they categorically rejected our application. Was this because they thought a Marxist society would be unpopular? Well not exactly. You see, first off, the amount of signatures we collected already proved otherwise. But then just a few months earlier, in a debate held on campus, the majority of students present voted in favour of the abolition of private property. Actually, it seems Marxism has never been as popular inside Trinity college as it is today!
Then what was the reason for the rejection? The CSC explained that if they allowed us to set up a Marxist society, then they would be forced to allow someone else to set up a fascist society! So, if you can follow their logic, there’s no reason to allow us, a group of students working to combat oppression, poverty and exploitation, from organising on campus that wouldn’t also justify a group looking to set up death camps from doing the same! It would almost be comical, if it didn’t involve the death of tens of millions of people and a war of destruction unparalleled in history.
Of course, these brave student ‘bureaucrats’ would do anything to prevent fascism from spreading around the campus… but only so long as they don’t receive pressures from actual party bureaucrats. Any party can set up their youth wing as a society, no questions asked. This means they would smilingly allow the far-right, Nazi-sympathising, gold-hoarding, migrant-bashing, LGBTQ-assaulting, National Party to set up a society in Trinity. To be sure, none of this is speculation on our part, the CSC secretary shamelessly admitted to this when we spoke with them!
One can’t help but wonder, what would the 5 thousand international students in Trinity – many from non-European backgrounds – think of such outrageous statements so mindlessly put forward by someone supposedly representing them and deciding what societies are allowed in college?
Society or not, Marxism is on the rise. If you’re a Trinity student and consider yourself a communist, join us and help us to build the forces of Marxism in college! And if you are studying somewhere else – better yet! Join the Irish Marxists and build a revolutionary cell in your college!
