<> <> 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.)
as much as I like your corrective to some of the bullshittery - coz let's face, someone here DID say last January or so, "Goshes, shag, where would you be without that education?" IOW, there are folks who still harbor the belief that education is great for putting the talented and meritorious into the upper middle class earning an income they so richly deserve. *snort* -- I think this is quite wrong.
ALL institutions in capitalist society must misrepresent themselves. Businesses always do. They talk about how they are job creators, pillars of the community, donors, places where people find family and can be a part of a team.
The family represents itself as this wonderful refuge from the harsh world of capitalist rationality and state discipline.
Religion....
I've forgotten the formulation, but Randall Collins once said of Max Weber that his analysis of society was a way of exposing how:
religion is really economics politics is really religion economics is really politics
for whatever that's worth... :)
but it's just a nitpick really. I think you are correct to detect the relic of dead religious beliefs in the passion lefties have for academia as somehow protected from the logic of the market and state, and a misguided notion that the great thing about it is that is allll about merit, a great and possibly lone equalizer in this shit society. which is a laff riot, iyam.
y <> <> 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?'). <> <> -- <> -- <> <> 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. <> ___________________________________ <> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk <>
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