Gregory Geboski:
> No, I find revolution quite a serious topic and a goal I hope I share with
> some on this list. And I will work for it even if that revolution does not
> meet some ahistorical ideal, e.g., a civilization somehow free of all forms
> of coercion, which I rather doubt will be attainable under any historical
> conditions.
>
> As for your dismissal of any progressive reform under capitalism as
> essentially useless or counterproductive--you know, merely "the soft cop" at
> work--well, yes, I was putting in a note of (sardonic) humor. I am not one
> to dismiss centuries of struggle by many largely forgotten heroes just
> because they did not establish a socialist world. Even though I dream that a
> post-revolutionary society could do away with what we call schooling (a more
> concrete distinction than your education-learning opposition, IMO), I don't
> think that the historical evidence shows that the development of mass
> schooling is a net loss for human progress. Nor that it should be abandoned
> to the forces of capital. To say the least.
>
> People in struggle, always, everywhere, have recognized the importance of
> expanding educational opportunities to themselves. Ruling classes, always,
> everywhere, have recognized the importance of restricting the fruits of
> education to themselves. Both higher education and near-universal
> elementary-secondary education are right now under concerted attack by the
> Right. I will not cheer them on through blanket dismissals of the existing
> system.
At some point, however, unless your energies are infinite, you're going to have to decide how to allocate them. I believe that, however sanctified the fruits of liberalism and social democracy are by struggle and sacrifice, at some point one must admit that they have reached a limit -- the limit where the bourgeoisie (or its local fascist proconsuls) think that their powers and interests are threatened. In view of the fairly consistent rescission of Welfare since the days of Carter and the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union, we can guess that we have passed the apex of ruling-class largesse for the foreseeable future.
In the realm of education, this probably that the academic system will increasingly revert to its old role as class filter, rather than continue to be also a sop and diversion for the lower orders. In any case it is inconceivable that any ruling class will knowingly, voluntarily support any serious challenge to its domination by its educational organs, although it may tolerate mock challenges as a form of immunization against wrongthink. Therefore, the disputes between segments of the ruling class about the education of the masses cannot be considered as revolution versus reaction, but quarrels between two strategies of conservatism.
The class nature of education (as opposed to learning) is reflected in the form which it has taken, almost entirely unquestioned by the ruling classes of the West however humane, social-democratic and reformist. As Ivan Illich points out, what matters is not competence but pedigree; not activity or work but place occupied and time put in. Coupled with the right admissions policies and local culture, these are measures of class position and class attachment. If this were not the case, the corporate, institutional and governmental agents of the ruling class would not ask for degrees but certificates given upon the satisfaction of tests available to anyone regardless of how they acquired the tested ability, and it would be as illegal to discriminate against people based solely on their mode and locale of learning as it is to discriminate based on sex, race or age. But instead, selected members of the lower orders are encouraged to compete for entry and minority status in institutions devoted to upper-class culture and interests, where they can be properly trained in the arts of submission.
It should be obvious that the abolition of class and the class war necessary to maintain it strongly implies the abolition of education and, in its place, the availability of learning and information everywhere all the time to anyone who wants it, and the complete absence of class barriers, economic, social or political.
That being the case, while I wouldn't spend any time actively opposing those who still have faith in soc-dem, I don't have the energy to actively support them, either, since after all what they're aiming for is a kinder, gentler species of subjugation. Kinder and gentler is probably better than meaner and harsher, but the essence remains the same: the coercive power of one person over another, one group over another. I will have to await discovery of this truth among social democrats, doing my best to encourage it by manifesting my beliefs in as consistent and uncompromised a way as I can manage.
However, if it's Welfare you're interested in, including Welfare education, then consider that the (re)appearance of any _seriously_ radical leftist politics, if it couldn't be promptly stamped out by force or fraud, would lead to a cornucopia of goodies for the working class and the poor. If you want Welfare, then, the effective thing to do is to vote Communist, not Democrat, if we go by the evidence of history. Or go into the streets with the anarchists. Threaten revolution; if you ask nicely for second-rate schools, medical care and housing, you'll get the back of the Invisible Hand.
<< When I began
> working in the craft of computer programming in the mid-60s,
> no one knew what a computer programmer was or how to create
> one ...>>
> This may have been the case in your milieu, or at your level in whatever
> hierarchy you found yourself in, but by the mid-60s the military (the
> developer of the computer) and industry (with many companies, like IBM,
> depending on military contracts, although the expansion of computers to the
> civilian sector was well established) had already figured out the danger of
> craft autonomy developing among computer programmers. Both the military and
> industry leaders had established in-house training by this point, and, as
> with all such training, it had a clear ideological component. Although
> everyone may have still been muddling through what it meant to be “a
> programmer,” the need to establish control over the programmer was
> understood; the future was clear. The myth of that libertarian romantic
> hero, the hacker, has only tended to obscure this.
>
> Although computer programming was all but invented by women in the late
> 40s-early 50s—-because the US military at first ignorantly assumed that
> programming was mere technical mop-up work—-once its importance was
> established, new opportunities inevitably fell more often to men. In
> industry, the distinction between the programmer (relatively well-paid men)
> and the data processor (an archetypal “pink collar” job) was made early on.
> The top-down “IBM style” of professionalization that was later derided by
> the hacker culture was well established by the mid-60s.
>
> << As the academic system and its clients, noticing the
> money and power involved, gradually got control of the situation,
> that is, convinced employers that only "computer scientists"
> and "software engineers" with credentials could possibly be
> competent, >>
>
> This has it backwards, per above, although I will concede that there is a
> dialectic at work here. It was capital, not academe, that led the way.
> Higher ed, as usual, was a latecomer. Software engineering was not an
> academic field, I don’t believe, and certainly not a respected field, until
> much later, was it not? Mid-to-late 70s? Wasn’t it at first the field that
> “real” engineers could field snobby toward, much as “real” scientists could
> feel snobby toward engineers? It was the needs of capital (“society”) that
> legitimated the already-professionalizing field to academe.
I can only report on my personal experience, that is, the more the academic system became involved in my workplace, the more class, caste and conformity became effective determiners of status and reward, just as they were at the academic institutions I had previously attended. Regardless of what the secret wishes of Capital may have been, I was allowed into the trade as one of many ex-middle-class dropout/reject types in the mid-60's; ten or fifteen years later, I would have been rigorously excluded and so would have been a great many of my colleagues, being not male, White, middle-class, straight, and square enough for such a good job.
> << class war infects and pollutes
> everything it touches
>>
> Class struggle effects everything that we think and do. To me, this
> knowledge brings measured hope, not pessimism and disgust.
Class war was produced by the invention of slavery. Perhaps slavery was an inevitable development in human history due to some tragic accident of evolution, but I wish it hadn't happened, and the purpose of my politics is to abolish it in any case.