EDITORIAL ... Student debt: Smash the bosses’ banks and state!

Amid a deepening recession, a sharp decline in U.S. dominance, a ruling class in turmoil, and an accelerating trend toward fascism and global war, President Joe Biden has finally unveiled his college loan forgiveness plan. Designed to erase $10,000 to $20,000 of student debt, the plan is being hailed as a big win for the working class. In reality, it’s a desperate effort to paper over the capitalist bosses’ broken college model.

In previous generations, a college education provided some workers with more financial security. Today, it both fails to deliver the elusive American middle-class dream and traps millions of students in capitalist debt slavery. Given Biden’s track record of opposing reforms to reduce debt or to make college free, the new plan is designed to buy young workers’ loyalty, encourage them to vote in dead-end elections, and hold them hostage to this miserable profit system. Though even partial debt forgiveness may be a temporary lifeline for many, the truth is that for young workers, capitalist education is a lifelong burden with a diminishing return.

We urge young workers to reject the Democratic Party’s liberal fascists and their bribes and to keep fighting back on the campuses and in the streets. Join Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and fight for communism, where education will be used to build the world our class deserves.

U.S. college crisis: symbol of capitalist disarray
The college crisis is a snapshot of the crisis of capitalism in the U.S. More than 45 million former students together owe $1.6 trillion, more than all other debts or private loans combined,excluding mortages (cfr.org, 04/13/21). In 2020, the average debt for private college students was $32,029; for those who went to public colleges, $26,627 (U.S. News, 6/8). Even worse off were graduates of often fraudulent for-profit colleges, who borrowed an average of nearly $40,000 (studentloanhero.com).

All in all, this is a big problem for Biden and the liberal Big Fascists, the imperialist main wing of the U.S. ruling class that controls global finance capital. Young workers shackled by student debt are unable to buy homes or start their own small businesses, a further drag on the bosses’ economy. Without more meaningful government interventions, ex-students will stay caught indefinitely in a spiral of debt. Moreover, Biden’s plan does nothing to slow the out-of-control escalation of college sticker prices. Nor does it compensate for the anti-worker, anti-student laws he pushed for during his long career as a U.S. senator. Jim Crow Joe was more than the architect of racist mass incarceration. He wrote legislation to block students from seeking bankruptcy protections after graduation, and championed a bill that made it impossible for student borrowers to reduce their debt burden (The Intercept, 1/7/2020).

In the heyday of U.S. imperialism, when the capitalists could afford to hand a few crumbs to the working class, the liberal rulers passed reforms like the racist G.I. Bill, the National Defense Education Act, and the Higher Education Act of 1965, which expanded college access for young workers at low cost. The bosses’ goal was to build U.S. patriotism by marketing the “American Dream.” By contrast, Biden’s forgiveness plan is a weak attempt to restore faith in a floundering system and win workers to sacrifice themselves to save a flailing empire.

Of course, if they so choose, the rulers could wipe out all college debt, a move that might prop up their struggling economy at least a little while longer. But to do so they’d have to raise taxes on corporations and the super-rich. The Big Fascists are too weak and divided to make that happen, an ominous sign for expensive war preparations against China and Russia.

The racist debt trap of higher ed
Though many students living below the poverty line will see their student loans vanish, Biden’s plan is a drop in the bucket for millions of Black students who on average owe $52,726 four years after graduation–almost double the amount owed on average by white students (Guardian, 2/19/21).

Compounding this racist disaster is the fact that Black and Latin students are more likely to get diminishing returns on their education, spending more time to complete a degree and earning less in wages or salaries after they graduate. They also are more likely to attend chronically underfunded schools with weak support services and poor living conditions, and to be taught by grossly underpaid and overworked adjuncts (Center for American Progress, 1/23/20). The enduring racist legacy of the capitalist education system is another major obstacle for the Big Fascists, who are desperately trying to pacify Black and Latin workers and buy their allegiance in the run-up to WWIII.

Communist education for true liberation
In the profit system rat race, education is a sorting machine for the capitalist hierarchy. Elite private institutions train the bosses of the future to exploit the working class. Other students are groomed to oppress our class as executives, lawyers, and politicians. Meanwhile, public institutions train middle managers, bureaucrats, teachers, and social workers—if they get the support they need to graduate. College degrees are held up as a prerequisite for escaping low-wage, dead-end jobs. But capitalist education will always be a racist failure, a lottery where young workers must make enormous financial sacrifices for a shot at a decent life. And if they  default on their loans or fail to land a good job, the bosses tell them they have only themselves to blame.

At the same time, colleges have been an arena for generations of international, working-class fightbacks, putting young workers on the front lines of militant class struggle. From the 1968 student rebellions in Mexico and France to the ‘70s-era strikes against the Vietnam War to the 2020 fightbacks against racist murders by the kkkops, young people have repeatedly taken to the streets while turning their campuses into schools for antiracism and anti-imperialism. In many cases, young people across the U.S. and globally have taken leadership from Black and Latin workers.

Under communism, education will be accessible to all, based on the needs of the international working class. Learning will not be confined to classrooms, nor will it pit students against one another in competition. Collectively we will study dialectical materialism, science, and medicine. Together we’ll learn the manual skills we need to build the communist world we wish to live in.

Contrary to the miseducation at capitalist colleges, history shows us what workers achieved under communist leadership. Early on, the Soviet Union made education free and accessible to all. Its universities waged struggles against racism and sexism and accomplished remarkable technological and scientific feats. The Chinese Cultural Revolution opened opportunities for higher education to the poorest families, and sent young urban workers to the countryside to teach and to learn from rural workers.

Progressive Labor Party’s message to Arab, Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latin, and white students is to unite with fellow workers of all trades and generations. Together we can apply the valuable lessons we learn from each fightback to ultimately smash this racist capitalist system, and to build a communist world where education will be free and liberating for all.