Exploitation of academics (was reparations)

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Wed Mar 21 04:28:14 PST 2001


Chuck Grimes:
> ...
> So much for the same old bad news. What of the good news. As long as
> an intellectual class and its social function as a critique of the
> bourgeois order is continually alienated, starved, and ignored it
> remains a possibility that this class can re-constitute both itself
> and the means to economic, social, political, and cultural change,
> outside the public institutions that were theoretically created for
> that purpose. That they might also live working class lives as a
> matter of necessity only adds to that eventual likelihood.

Apparently the lower layers of academic employment are being proletarianized anyway.

According to what I read here, I've had a really easy life compared to those in academia, mostly employed as a computer programmer -- a job where I sold nothing but my labor power, having neither credentials nor a material product, so I guess it's working class. While other trades, like the construction trades or auto mechanics, are more rigidly structured and harder to get into, they certainly appear to be less physically and mentally onerous, and more lucrative, than most academic jobs, at least for those who figure out how to work their way into the better situations. No one cares what you think; employers or clients are interested only in what gets done and sometimes how you look while you do it. I imagine that's because these jobs are more in the capitalist than the feudal world.

It strikes me as odd, though, that the ruling class would be blowing off its most disciplined intellectual-worker class at a time when intellectual goods and services are becoming more and more important. Or is that merely an appearance?



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