I'd be a bad Marxist if I didn't comment on the recent riots in France. They are a Good Thing, for two reasons. Firstly, they're resistance to the capitalist agenda of 'labour flexibilization' i.e. taking power from workers and giving it to employers. And the capitalist class knows it. Here's what Global Insight, which gathers stats for the bankers, has to say:

France finds itself politically weak, and struggling economically... Certainly, the prime minister was caught by surprise by the level of public resistance they have unleashed. On the other hand, France is surely heading for economic isolation if it continues to foster anti-competitive practices, once again in the face of domestic social resistance.

Every capitalist's worst nightmare

Politically weak = the government is too weak to push through attacks on organized labour
Economic isolation = the threat of capital flight, the idea that capitalists will go elsewhere if they can't get more bang for their buck from French workers
Anti-competitive practices = strong welfare state
Domestic social resistance = domestic social resistance. (At least we agree on something.)

When all the capitalists can do is shake their heads ruefully, and tut that the French don't understand their needs (i.e. to generate as much profit as possible, with the fewest restrictions), you know the French are doing something right.

Cops are pretty tough when they've got body armour, batons and greater numbers...

Secondly, the French demonstrations prove, once again, that the Left is not dead. Revolutionary organizing gets results: this is no more 'spontaneous' than May '68 was. Leftists have been organizing for years, and people are listening. Moreover, they're organizing on a correct basis: linking together everyone who's directly and indirectly affected by the cutbacks. The promise of last fall's riots was undercut by the vast distance between suburban, immigrant youth and the rest of French society. This time, the movements promise to bring together students, workers and youth. All of a sudden, those broad categories Marxists bang on about are relevant again. I suspect it's not because students actively reached out to other youth; rather, it sounds like the kids from les banlieues have decided to get a piece of the action.

... but not so tough now

To their credit, the students are welcoming them. Here we'd get middle-class hipshits bemoaning 'violence'; there the students understand the context:

A university student who had been at the protest and watched the violence erupt said: "It was both students and young people. But the police have arrested a hell of a lot of people who had nothing to do with it. They are fascists."

A town planning student, Viviane Mace, said: "Bands of young guys have been running past the protesters with baseball bats all afternoon. It is a small minority of people but I can totally understand what is going through their minds. They feel as desperate as we do and they have got no other way to express themselves. They feel violence is the only action to take.

The demonstrators see the police brutality, not the rioting, as extremist. It appears the French public agrees. I await the general strike this Tuesday with interest.

Check out libcom.org for more good reporting by anarcho-syndicalists abroad

I want to live, Marge! Oh, why won't you let me live?

Finally, I've received some good news. Maybe you've noticed my increasing alienation from my studies over the past few months, and perhaps drawn a link between the number of poststructuralist texts I have to shovel through and the bitterness of my invective. I can now say I have the chance to study somewhere better, where there are more likeminded thinkers and less smug, liberal complacency masquerading as sophistication. This doesn't answer the more general question of whether school is the right place for a Marxist (or anyone) to be, or how it affects my medium-term plans to win the lottery, drop out of wage labour and fund a revolutionary party. But it can't be worse than what I'm doing now - and may, in fact, be a little better.