AUT: universities & stuff

[andrew robinson <ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx>]

In my view, "traditional" universities have a lot in
common with "feudal"-era organisation of labour, but
this isn't always a bad thing.  The position of
academics is similar to that of traditional artisan
labourers prior to their real subsumption, where
workers had higher status due partly to worker control
over admission to a trade, internal discipline, etc.
Such models are far from ideal, but certainly better
for workers than being subordinate to the dictates of
the boss.  And many radical workers' struggles of the
nineteenth century and before arose precisely from
among this stratum of artisans, in resistance to
proletarianisation.

It's stupid and dogmatic to assume the present/future
is always better than the past - as if history really
were a linear progression towards a telos!!  Such
thinking is not so much a rejection of reaction as a
refusal to view social phenomena in terms of social
conflicts, instead implying the existence of a single
progressive driving-force.  When the bosses "win" for
contingent reasons, and manage to impose their agenda,
things get worse for workers, and restoring some of
what is lost can be a part of the struggle to upset
the bosses' hegemony.

Rather than insisting that all change is progress, the
point should be to defend or even restore what is best
about the "old" situation, while combining this with
new approaches when these are genuinely improvements
(e.g. replacing traditional education methods with
progressive education methods).  Marketisation is
simply an attempt to grab higher education by
capitalists and their state allies, and resistance
against this process is therefore to be applauded and
supported.

DON'T FORGET TO SUPPORT THE GREYLISTING/BOYCOTT OF
NOTTINGHAM UNIVERSITY BY THE WAY - Nottm is trying to
opt out of national pay bargaining which will SCREW
lecturers totally, as well as bringing in neoliberal
crap like performance related pay and more intense
management and surveillance of research - THIS SUCKS -
so AUT has called for greylisting, which means no
outside support for events at the university or
contributions to university activities by people on
the outside - let's give the bosses a black eye on
this one ;-)

Meanwhile, check out the paper I coauthored with Simon
Tormey on neo-liberal gleichschaltung BTW.
http://www.commoner.org.uk/07robinson&tormey.pdf

I'm at the "bad" end of the spectrum myself by the
way, currently doing temporary teaching at a uni
without having a contract.  Most of the people in this
position are either PhD students paying their way, or
are people in a kind of black-hole inbetween being a
PhD student and having some kind of academic post.
Most academics now go through this as a stage in their
career, whereas not all that long ago, people could
take many years to complete their PhD, while receiving
benefits and other support.

A recent snippet from On the Barricades worth checking
out re resistance by precarious university tutors:
www.livejournal.com/users/andy_ldxar1

Florida student-teachers succeed in getting paid with
protest
http://www.alligator.org/edit/news/issues/stories/040920gau.html

(I love the placard BTW - "will teach for food" - this
says it all really...)

Though by contrast, there have been events in Bolivia
suggesting that academics sometimes operate as a
reactionary caste:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/9092
http://resist.ca/story/2004/9/15/62451/3396
http://www.marxist.com/Latinam/university_revolt_in_oruro.html

Andy

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