> The problem I have (and on this I am in complete agreement with
> autonomists) with this orientation is that it looks at capitalism
> just from the point of the view of the captialist. Capitalists did
> not just GIVE free public education because they needed skilled
> workers.
I agree with you. Free education in public schools was a working- class demand, even a communist demand (it was one of the demands in the Communist Manifesto). Those who collapse the distinction between productive and unproductive labor and argue that all labor -- in the private sector, the public sector, at home -- is productive labor that produces or helps produce surplus value forget that a lot of work done in the public sector was and in many ways still is at odds with the imperative of profit making.
That said, once the working class win something -- for instance, free education in public schools -- the ruling class try to turn it to its ends (when they don't privatize it altogether). Truancy laws, drug tests, exams, grades, etc. are tools of the ruling class in this instance. Hence the struggle in the social factory.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>