Capitalism and Your University Education
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • September 1993 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 3, No. 1 (pp. 10-11) | ||
| • September 20, 2000 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.3) from original. | ||
In order to understand the purpose and structure of any social institution, it is necessary to understand the society which produces and supports it. The purposes served by an institution, that is, are not merely its own, but are also broader social purposes; furthermore, the structure of any institution tends to reflect the structure of social relations in society as a whole. In order to understand the university within capitalist society, then, we must understand capitalism, as an economic and social system. In this article, we will outline the general features of the capitalist system, and then show how they are connected to the institution of the university.
There are three main aspects of the capitalist economic system. First, capitalism is characterized by generalized commodity production. That is, the social division of labor has become so extensive under capitalism that the vast majority of the products of human labor are produced not to be used by the producer, but instead for the purpose of being exchanged for other products (and ultimately for money). Second, capitalism is characterized by the class division between capitalists and workers. In other words, the means of production in capitalist society (the factories, technology, scientific knowledge, etc. required for production) are owned and controlled by a small minority of people who also appropriate the profits which result from the operation of these means. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the population in capitalist society consists of those who own no private property, and therefore have no way to earn a living but by selling their capacity to labor to some member of the capitalist class. Third, capitalism is characterized by reproduction on an increasingly expanded scale; to put it another way, capitalism must continue constantly to grow. It must constantly find more labor power to exploit, and it must constantly find more human needs that can be transformed into needs met by commodity production and exchange. Finally, the political relations in capitalist society follow from its economic structure. The capitalist state exists to protect private property relations: first, by preventing the masses of people exploited and oppressed by them from challenging them; second, by protecting capitalists from the consequences of their own actions and of the system itself, through the maintenance of a monetary and credit system, and through a system of government spending that “stabilizes” the system in the interests of profit for the corporations.
The history of capitalism is, furthermore, characterized by the uneven, combined, and contradictory nature of the capitalist mode of production. What this means is that, due to the anarchic and competitive structure of capitalist market relations, the drive for profit necessarily sets one company, one region, one part of the world in opposition to others. One section (i.e., the “advanced” or “developed” one) of the global capitalist economy gains, that is, precisely through its contrast with and advantage over other (less “advanced” and “developed”) sections. Thus, the “First” and “Third” worlds are not merely “developed” and “underdeveloped” countries which happen to be contiguous in space and contemporaneous. Rather, the “First World” is the “First World” because of the “underdevelopment” of the “Third World,” and the advantageous conditions for trade, the exploitation of cheap labor, and the extraction of raw materials and agricultural products this situation provides for the “First World.” The contradictory nature of this situation, meanwhile, is demonstrated by the fact of “overproduction” in the First World (for example, of food) alongside of “underconsumption” (i.e., hunger and starvation) in the “Third World.”
This unevenness also applies to the fields of knowledge and ideology production. It is not a coincidence, for example, that while scientists in the academy debate the origins, physical structure, and possible future development of the universe, a substantial number of Americans continue to believe in “creationism,” flatly rejecting the same work going on in the academy. This situation is a result of the relative isolation of the academy, its alienation and separation from other areas of material life. This separation and alienation is itself a consequence of the university’s function as the site at which the resources and labor necessary for the production of knowledge have been concentrated, placed under the control of a small elite, and subordinated to the economic and political ends of the capitalist class. In other words, as we indicated earlier, the university reflects the structure of capitalist society. It produces the advanced scientific and technological knowledges required for late capitalist production, as well as the skilled labor power and managerial functionaries needed to run the production apparatus. It also, as we shall see in a little while, produces the kind of ideological domination required for the maintenance of class rule. In addition, the very separation of knowledge production from other sites in culture aids capitalist domination. To the extent that the academic scientist and creationist meet, they meet as adversaries, with each having something at stake which is threatened by the other. This “struggle” prevents them from perceiving interests which they might have in common: for example, those resulting from their common exploitation by, and subordination to, capitalist and imperialist interests.
The political significance of the unevenness of the capitalist system is enormous. First of all, the contradictions of the capitalist system are more intense, concentrated and visible at some social sites than at others, and it is therefore at such sites that political eruptions are most likely to take place. It was according to this logic that Lenin could claim for Russia in 1917 the status of being the “weakest link” in the “chain” of global imperialism. Today, such sites as the American semi-colonies in Central America and the South Pacific, due to the immense investment by Western (especially American) capital, an extremely unequal social structure (in terms of class polarization), and the political bankruptcy of American backed governments there, might claim a similar status. Second, it means that within the global order, and within particular countries, political opposition is not only more likely to exist, but to be more informed and effective at some social sites than at others. We think that the university is such a site, as we will now try to demonstrate.
The university has become, almost exclusively, the predominant site of knowledge production in advanced capitalist countries today. The “independent” inventor, social critic, radical intellectual, novelist, and so on hardly exist today. All of these functions have become almost entirely dependent upon the academy for any kind of economic, institutional, and intellectual support. To put it another way, the university exercises a virtual monopoly on theoretical and scientific knowledges.
This situation has the effect, on the one hand, of making the production of these knowledges far easier to regulate and control; it also, as we suggested above, serves to “cordon off” and isolate intellectual work from society, i.e., from any democratic function. However, at the same time, it serves to transform the university itself into an extremely heterogeneous and contradictory arena— a place where the greatest demands for conformity (for the production of good subjects who accept the authoritarian relations inherent in capitalist institutions and do not inquire into the implications of their knowledges and practices) compete with the most powerful emancipatory discourses, such as those of feminism, Marxism, gay and lesbian and black liberation.
The university, then, rather than an “ivory tower,” or place of escape, speculation and personal “growth,” is in fact more of a microcosm, intensified, as it were, for “effect,” and given theoretical articulation, of social struggles in which the entire society is implicated. It is in fact the contradiction between the dominant ideology of the academy as a “neutral” institution and its real functioning which lies behind the current “controversy” over so- called “political correctness” — that is, what disturbs conservatives and dominant interests is that intellectuals committed to challenging the power relations systematically embedded in the university uncover the mendacity and contradictoriness of the university’s claims to be serving the “common good” rather than some “special interests.” Such revelations are potentially dangerous to those interests which actually depend upon the work done in the academy for the perpetuation of their rule.
It is in relation to this particular situatedness of the university, and intellectual work, in capitalist culture, that we urge students and instructors to take upon themselves the responsibility of political and intellectual leadership in struggles for social change at this point in time. For students, especially at the moment at which the “finishing touches” are being completed in the manufacturing of them as “productive” obedient subjects, this should be a time not merely to be “exposed to” radical and oppositional modes of knowledge, but rather to learn how to participate, and to enable others to participate, in the construction and dissemination of emancipatory forms of theory and practice, to intervene effectively in the (re)production of ideology, culture, and social relations.
We would now like to elaborate upon this argument, especially in relation to the specificity of the university, as a site of knowledge production. One available mode of political intervention is, of course, through oppositional organizations, such as socialist, feminist, gay, lesbian and black liberationist groups struggling for change. Such work is absolutely necessary, and students should be encouraged to dedicate their time and energy on such worthwhile efforts. However, such work by itself is not enough. No less indispensable is the work of theoretical activity and ideological struggle, of contesting dominant modes of thought and interpretative models which serve to reproduce the “common sense” of culture upon which bourgeois ideological domination rests.
Bourgeois thought is dominated by what the Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács termed “reification.” What this means is that objects, rather than being grasped as part of a broader process which unites and interrelates them all, are viewed as separate, autonomous and isolated “things,” with no necessary or discernible connection between them. Furthermore, these “things” — including “knowledges” — are understood as inert, static, and alienated from human activity, rather than as the product of human practice and the realization of human purposes.
Lukács saw the division of labor within the factory, with its absolute differentiation of tasks, and the subordination of each individual worker to a broader process over which she has no control and of which she has no comprehension, as both the model and one of the main determinants of reification. The factory division of labor, of course, only reflects the conditions of life in capitalist society as a whole — our existence under such conditions is “distributed” among a wide variety of institutions and activities which seem to have no connection and which appear to stand “above us,” and to be irrelevant to our needs and our capacities. This whole division of labor is reproduced, then, in the ideological world of capitalism.
The division of labor, and intellectual activity in general, within the university corresponds precisely to the logic of reification. Thus, “economics,” “political science,” ”literature,” etc., are seen as inherently separate and autonomous disciplines — no need is felt to integrate them within an understanding of society as a whole. Furthermore, the objects of study which correspond to these disciplines are treated mechanistically and reductively. Thus, sociologists can speak about “deviance” without having to question the “norms” which are being “deviated” from; psychologists can speak about “learning” as if it were detached from whatever material is actually being learned; and political scientists can theorize ”power” and “interests” without inquiring into those material and historical relations which ground these categories.
There are two main effects of reification. The first is the absolute separation between theoretical knowledge and actual practice. Last year, in an interview with Newsweek, Milovan Djilas argued that with the “death of Communism,” Marxist theory will in the future be relegated to the university, along with all other political theories. For a bourgeois thinker such as Djilas, it seems only “natural” that “politics” can be practiced without any political theory. American leaders, with their emphasis on “pragmatic” politics and “competence” (without “ideology”), are, of course, in full agreement with this conception: rarely, if ever, do they find it necessary to account for their actions theoretically. However, in the vacuum left open by this eclectic “anti-ideological” stance, there rushes the actual correspondence between the needs of dominant interest groups and political practice. In other words, the emphasis on running “things” well excludes the question — which is necessarily an ideological one — of in whose interests these things are being “run” in the first place.
Second, reification serves to reproduce, in individuals, a highly fragmented consciousness. Systematic thinking is made impossible. The division of labor in the university is reflected in the inability of the majority of citizens to make connections between different spheres of activity. So, the “drug problem” can be isolated and thought of separately from the “crime problem,” the “S & L problem,” the “race problem,” the “urban problem,” and other neatly categorized problems. Only the most local and limited change or intervention can therefore be imagined, and this only on the condition that the foundation of the whole not be questioned. As Lukács observed, a partial rationality (the conscientious and detailed “analysis” of “problems”) coexists with and reproduces an irrationality of the whole, which appears uncontrollable and incomprehensible.
The bourgeois academy is grounded in this contradiction. On the one hand, it is predicated upon the commitment to rational discussion and debate. On the other hand, what the majority of those located within the academy rarely comprehend is the irrationality of the university’s basis in class exploitation and domination and in commodity production and exchange (the material roots of reification), which subject knowledge no less than other products of labor to the logic of exploitation and the market. In other words, the rationality practiced by academics is almost invariably of a partial kind; a kind that is interested in its own sphere of “problems,” but does not ask how these problems get formulated or whose interests the “solutions” which are found are going to serve.
It is not difficult to understand the reason for this blindness. In order to fulfill their commitment to rationality—of a general, not a partial and contradictory type — those who work in the academy would have to foresee and work towards its abolition, and the abolition of those conditions on which it depends. That is, with the elimination of class exploitation, the generalized division between intellectual and manual labor is also eliminated, and so is the independence of the academy. In other words, the self-interest of the academic intellectual, as a “middle class” “manager” in capitalist society, is in contradiction with the ideological premises which legitimate that self-interest. Of course, the highly hierarchical and authoritarian structure of the university supports this self-interest of the academic (while contradicting it at points as well) — the academic has a “right” to “academic freedom” as long as he/she doesn’t ask too many questions about the anti- democratic and autocratic mode of decision making (who has elected the board of trustees, for example?) In this way, the struggle which results from this contradiction, between two modes of rationality—one partial and idealist, the other general, materialist and emancipatory — is concealed and made invisible, not the least through academic claims to “impartiality.”
It does not follow from this critique that the university, or the commitment to rational discourse, should be abandoned. This could hardly be the case for those of us committed not merely to rational discourse, but to the possibility of a rational society — that is, one in which human means correspond to human ends, and human needs to human capacities, and in which social relations are subject to collective, democratic, and conscious determination. What does follow, though, is that the putative function of the university must be transformed, in actuality, into the general social function. This is what we mean by the abolition of the university — its integration into “society” as a whole, along with the elimination of one of the most pernicious forms of the division of labor: that between intellectual and manual labor.
Such a result can only be the result of a protracted political struggle: both practical struggle, to transform social conditions, and ideological struggle, to transform consciousness. Ideological struggle is necessary in order to contest the effects of reification, both in “advanced” theory and in the consciousness of oppressed and exploited groups. It is this latter function which constitutes the primary responsibility of academic intellectuals: it involves a critique of reified forms of thought through a theoretical grounding of social practices and forms of consciousness in the totality of social relations, social struggle, and historical transformation. To put it in other words, academic intellectuals must ask (and students must learn to insist that they ask) questions about the purposes towards which the knowledges they are producing are being put. Which type of social arrangements is being advanced by a particular kind of understanding, and what type is being blocked?
Finally, ideological struggle must be united with practical struggles at all sites and levels of the social order. This becomes possible given two conditions: first, that intellectuals take struggles for social transformation as their starting point in theory; second, that intellectuals make use of the academy to produce the most powerful theoretical discourses, those which can usefully and effectively transform practical struggles. As Marx once said, the educator must him/herself be educated; however, as long as we live in a society in which some people have access to education at the expense of others, it remains the responsibility of those who are educated to transform their knowledge into something useful and enabling for those by whose labor and deprivation such education has become possible. That is, the “educated” must become “educators,” and help to make it possible for all people, some day, to participate in the production of knowledge, and the work of constructing social relations.
For students, there is one excellent place to begin. Challenge your instructors to account for, to take responsibility for the knowledges they are providing you. Challenge them to account for how they are using their position as teachers: are they using this position to critique capitalist social relations, or to “instruct” students in the art of submitting to these relations? If they claim to be “neutral” about “politics,” or to consider these questions irrelevant, you might also challenge them to explain how, in such a sharply divided society, any one can claim to be “neutral” — especially someone in such a position of authority and responsibility. Whose interests are served by this “neutrality”? If you are told that these questions are “interesting,” but “outside” of the topic of discussion, you should demand a reasonable accounting of how they understand the relations between “inside” and “outside” — that is, some things must always be excluded, but this should be determined according to the general aims of the course, including its social and political aims. So, if the instructor considers one thing more important than another, it is necessary to ask, more important for what purpose? in whose interests? Try not to allow yourself to be intimidated, either by the instructor or other students, who might “complain” that you are “wasting their time”: your time is important too, but more important than any of this is the way in which social institutions are used, whether they are used to oppress or emancipate. Also, such “complaints” are common tactics used by those in authority to prevent their authority from being questioned, to silence and marginalize opposition. Question both the general aims of the course and more specific details — for example, in a political science class, ask whether the instructor considers politics to be connected to economics? If so, how — in particular, how can there be political democracy with class domination? What implications follow from this conclusion — how does this course take these conclusions into account? If there is no connection, how is that possible, how did they get separated? And so on. If these kinds of questions are urgent, in your opinion, you must be patient and keep trying — political intervention in the classroom, like any other activity, takes practice; especially for those raised in a society which goes out of its way to encourage conformity and discourage independent and critical thinking.
| ♦ ♦ ♦ |
