>
> oh get some boudreaux's butt paste for your chapped ass for fuck's sake.
> geez.
>
> i wasn't saying that. i was just noting that there was a time when
> people in academia felt the discpline of the market much more directly.
Shag, it's the context. Public space and public workers are under increasing attack in the U.S. There is nothing more important for leftists to do than to resist that attack. Under _other_ circumstances, sure, play around with the difference between the cornere elemetary school and Plato's academy. Not in the U.S. just now. The working class has been in retreat for over 35 years -- AND NOT THROUGH ANY FAULT OF ITS OWN. By the very nature of capitalism working-class struggles are episodic and cannot last more than a few years. Then things ossify and the class becomes a mere collection of individuals. Teachers, including professors in grad schools, are first of all wage slaves, 'enjoying' the "dot-like isolation of the merely free worker in bourgeois society" (quoted from memory). This thread is not unrelated to the thread I started in my response to Joseph C. Alan's post is (a) a reprot from the Front and (b) not really focused on any one post here but on the drift of the discussion, the tone oit generates.
Carrol