[WS:] I doubt. You seem to underestimate the sense of entitlement that comes from being anointed by elite universities and augmented by the neoliberal discourse of creativity, entrepreneurship and "the sky is the limit for smart people like us." Most of them will probably end up as corporate functionaries kissing the asses of their bosses or as consultants kissing the asses of their prospective clients, but they will nonetheless think of themselves as "new aristocracy" or rather "meritocrats" - smarter, more ambitious, more creative, more entrepreneurial than ordinary grunts. And they will cultivate their sense of superiority by comparing themselves to grunts below them in academic and corporate hierarchies, the clerical staff, the technical support, the security, the janitors, etc.
It is, in a way, like in the Old South - not that many whites actually owned slaves, but most believed they were entitled to such ownership, and thus identified themselves with plantation owners. When they lost that sense of entitlement after the Civil War, they became vile reactionaries, even though they did not lose much - far less than the plantation owners at least - in the material sense.
I suspect that most of the college-anointed "meritorcracy" will also turn into reactionaries rather than revolutionaries when the neoliberal myth of the "new economy" based on creativity and entrepreneurship will finally end up in the junkyard of history and unpaid student loan bills start piling up.
Wojtek
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 4:58 PM, Dennis Redmond <metalslorg at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 12:13 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
>
>> of class privilege and then saying, "but i'm not rich. i have 90k in
>> student debt! I have an authentic voice from which to speak. how dare
>> you say that I'm privileged. I am not!" blah blah blah.
>
> On a more serious note, it is true that the college-educated youth of
> America are serving a life sentence of $1 trillion in indentured debt
> servitude. Thirty years of neoliberalism in this country has created
> massive amounts of social dynamite which is about to explode.
>
> -- DRR
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