Letter of support to the students of Austria

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