Schools and universities blockaded: young people learn the strike by doing it

According to franceinfo, 51 higher-education institutions out of 184 were disrupted during the school and student mobilisation, according to the ministry. The Union étudiante, for its part, speaks of "one university in two disrupted" and "more than 50 campuses blocked". Youth organisations are calling for a new day of massive blockades, ahead of Thursday's strike. That is what we know. The rest of this piece is our reading.

We can first smile at this squabble over arithmetic. The ministry counts 51 out of 184, roughly a quarter; the students count one university in two. Each chooses his thermometer according to the fever he wants to diagnose. But an administration that takes the trouble to count precisely what it deems "disrupted" admits, without meaning to, that something is happening. Nobody counts what does not disturb.

What the news report does not say, however, is precious: we do not yet know how these blockades are decided. Are there open general assemblies, votes, strike committees that are elected and recallable, or simply a few organisational offices handing down the slogan? The available sources do not say, and we will not invent it. Yet that is where everything is decided.

Luxemburg saw in mass movements a living school: one learns more in a week than in ten years of congresses, because one discovers one's strength by exercising it. A pupil who votes to block his school, writes a leaflet, negotiates with a head teacher, learns politics in the concrete, the kind that cannot be delegated. Opposite her, Lenin insisted on the need for a disciplined organisation so that anger does not evaporate. The debate is old, and here it poses itself in very simple terms: will this energy turn into lasting structures, or will it subside after Thursday like a wave on sand?

The state's response also deserves watching. The ministry communicates figures; it says nothing, in what we have before us, about what it intends to concede. Yet a reform wrested from power is never a definitive gain: the same hand that releases it takes it back when the balance of forces shifts. The only question that matters is whether a measure strengthens the confidence and collective power of those who fight, or sends them home, placated and disorganised. A concession that demobilises is a trap politely gift-wrapped.

Young people, as we know, are always accused of disorder by those who make a profession of order. But order, here, has little to boast about. It invites patience, going through the proper channels, waiting for the election. The street, for its part, replies that no one ever learned to swim by reading the pool rules.

The question remains whether, behind the barricades of chairs and bins, someone is keeping a notebook of collective decisions. If so, assemblies are being born. If not, it is just one more procession. And the difference between the two is the whole story.