> Of
> course universities, like every other institution in capitalist society,
> are structured to maintain order & subservience to capital. And like almost
> all institutions they are also double-edged. Everything that has been said
> on this list about faculty could also be said about hospiaal workers,
> migrant labor, and factory workers.
I'm quite content with the observation that the Unis are *just like* other capitalist institutions.
The reason I tend to harp on the subject is twofold:
1) I sense that a lot of us are still laboring under the illusion that the Unis are *not* just like every other capitalist institution -- that they're somehow more benign, more open, more intrinsically progressive or critical or something.
2) The hypocrisy of the Unis themselves. It is noteworthy that tire plants (to use Doug's example) don't need to represent themselves as anything but what they are. They are in business to sell tires and make a buck for their owners, and they make no bones about it. But there are institutions in capitalist society which *do* need to systematically misrepresent their function; conspicuous among them are the police ('law enforcement'), the prisons ('corrections'), the military ('defense'), and the Unis (lux et scientia, vitam-excolendam etc. ad naus.)
Carrrol's rebuke to us Uni-bashers has, to my ear, a certain resemblance to the old 'singling out' argument (as in 'Why single out Israel?').
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Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://www.cars-suck.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com
Any proposition that seems self-evident is almost certainly false.