Very brief comments I posted on facebook defending student occupation of Tory HQ during November 2010 two days after it happend!

What Wednesday’s unrest showed was the anger of middle class youth which could influence potentially millions of workers threatened with pauperization. Trotsky argued during the 1930s that the Capitalist class is only a tiny 1% of the population and needs middle class support to control the workers. Due to their position between Capital and labour the middle class vacillate. When the middle class becomes pauperized whole layers (particularly the lower middle class) move leftwards by beginning to identify with the workers problems and look for them to fight for their cause. The lessons of the 1920s and 1930s is the middle class first move leftwards but if the workers are not sufficiently resolute due to opportunists dominating the workers movement they go into despair and Capital through the middle class plebeian Fascist demagogues win them over to carrying out Capital's agenda of destroying the organized working class.

In Italy the Italian Socialist Party won an electoral landslide after the end of World War 1 including among while middle class layers. By 1920 the workers came so close to making revolutions, with the Italian Capitalists surrendering power, believing they had lost the factories to the workers who were occupying them. After Social Democracy handed power back to the Capitalists, whole layers of the middle class move rightwards with Fascism becoming a mass movement almost overnight among the middle class. During 1923 within Germany when hyper-inflation destroyed the middle class incomes they first turned to the German Communist Party with the majority of workers and sizeable middle class elements wanted them to lead a revolution. Due to the beginning of Stalinisation of the 3rd International the German Communist Party leadership had an opportunist line of waiting for Social Democracy to lead the Socialist revolution. This led to a situation when the next major crisis after the Wall Street crash of October 1929 there was a situation where the middle class out of despair hated the working class which led to a major counter-revolutionary move through Fascism.

The occupation of Tory HQ mainly by middle class elements, with reports of working class students also being involved could strengthen the confidence of workers whose social benefits and jobs are threatened, with the middle class being driven down to that level. It was due to these layers of workers and middle class supporting and even joining such occupations it was mainly a correct tactic. The ruling class are trying to divide the workers from the middle class.