Re: [AUT] Looking for Thoughts on Solidarity, Organizing, and Academic Freedom (and Beyond)

["Andy Robinson" <ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Apologies for the delay in replying - only just coming to terms with an
email backlog after a few busy months.

Yeah - disappointing that with so many people on this list apparently
located in universities, nobody has risen to this post with suggestions or
ideas, except to attack one of the background links.

I'm increasingly of the view that the attacks on academics are part of a
broader process - what one might call the enclosure of the academy, or a
neoliberal transformation.  Basically, "traditional" universities have been
functional to capitalism but in an indirect way; their own mode of
production was either pre-capitalist or early capitalist - pre-capitalist in
the sense of being similar to the organisation of a guild of artisans, with
internal standards of expertise determining acceptance and status in the
"trade" (even to the point of the production of a "masterpiece", the PhD) -
early (or earlier) capitalist in the sense of being linked to the
elite-based kinds of capitalism and later, to welfare state education
expansion goals.  Universities have performed roles for capitalism but are
not yet fully made-capitalist.  They have been formally but not really
subsumed in capitalism.  Actually the functions performed by universities
were/are indirect.  One of the most important functions for capitalism is
(meritocratic or elite-reproducing) social stratification - the selection of
layers of people for entry into certain social strata.  In relation to this
function, the activities of academics and the specifics of what is taught
and how are actually not very important to capitalism.

Thus, many of the kinds of things people like Chomsky criticise, are not
necessarily aspects of capitalism itself.  They're ways in which academic
research is functional or profitable for capitalism, or oppressive
structures specific to the kind of oppressive structure pertaining to early
or pre-capitalist forms.  Academic freedom etc. are usually in fact veiled
references to the self-regulation or internal disciplining of academics as a
professional group - a reproduction of the structure of artisan guilds.
This self-regulation is dependent on the autonomy and freedom OF THE GROUP
from external limitations and requirements.  At the same time, it is not
necessarily freedom for each worker, since the profession may be structured
hierarchically or involve conservative/neophobe pressures from the
established professionals.  (Apart from academics, the only professions
structured this way in the west today are lawyers and doctors).  Others of
the things critics point to are signs of the early stages of capitalist
real-subsumption of the universities (for instance, direct corporate and
military-industrial-complex involvement in scientific research).

(NOTE:  real subsumption also means axiomatisation - arrangement as part of
a system of equivalence based on commodity exchange.  Formal subsumption
also means overcoding - rendering functional, or rendering symbolically part
of an overarching system, without reconstructing the practices which are
overcoded).

The present period of capitalism seems to be typified by pervasive
neoliberal attacks on any sectors which appear decommodified or are not
fully integrated into capitalism.  In many ways this is a desperate attack
by capitalism, similar to what Gramsci calls the "economic-corporate" kind
of politics (rather than hegemonic) - by imposing the logic of "the market"
everywhere, capitalism destroys other logics which are necessary for its own
functioning and stability.  In universities, the attack takes the following
forms, among others:
- Pay-to-learn - fee-based access
- Mathematised performance measurement (rather than self-regulation of the
profession)
- Switch from education and research to "skill training"
- Attempt to form DIRECT link between taught materials and capitalist
functioning

Actually there is an ambiguity here, because the "reforms" weaken
functionality for capitalism - pay-to-learn eliminates the small
meritocratic element which existed before and makes elite reproduction both
mechanical and explicit; performance measurement creates pressures for
quantity (over quality) and acceptance (over originality) which impede
research; and the whole process makes capitalist control explicit.  It's
likely to become harder for the social system to legitimate itself as its
mechanisms are less obscured and as legitimatory institutions and secondary
mediations are eliminated.

As regards critical academics, the "traditional" situation is that, because
the functionality of universities for capitalism was not dependent on WHAT
academics teach or research but rather, on the elite-selecting function and
the legitimatory effects (with academic freedom, which is also a byword for
self-regulation of the profession, being necessary to the latter),
universities are something of a niche for radicals who meet the criteria of
the profession but not those of capitalism; and there is a space for
engaging in critical writing as recognised "work".  This
openness/self-regulation is under attack, with basically an attempt to
proletarianise academics along the lines previously seen in the case of
artisans and craft-workers (the switch to "skill-training" and the attempt
to impose course content eliminating professional self-regulation in
determining course content, the performance indicators limiting what counts
as "research" and the amount and type to be produced, pay-to-learn
restricting access into the profession of people from working-class and
so-called "non-traditional" backgrounds).  There is still some leeway left,
mainly because the performance indicators are impersonal and leave some room
for continued self-regulation of the profession (e.g. if critical journals
are accepted as "top" journals in a field, critical scholarship will
continue to be valorised).

My own view is that this obviously needs to be resisted.  This is because I
operate with a political approach based on the affirmation of openness of
space.  What is happening here, is first of all the conversion of a
relatively open space into a relatively more closed one, and secondly an
extension of a general closure of social space around very rigid and
specific requirements.  Also, I have a fairly positive assessment of the
pre/early-capitalist guild model over later arrangements of work - authors
such as Calhoun demonstrate that guild-based workers were often more "class
conscious" than atomised workers and that the most militant expressions of
worker unrest were fused with a "conservative" defence of guild organisation
against capitalist proletarianisation.  Kropotkin refers to guilds as an
example of mutual aid.  At the same time, there is a need to be conscious of
oppressive structures operating within universities and within the guild
model.  These have to do with the internal structure of the profession, and
the criteria of self-regulation it uses.  Basically, the model is most
emancipatory when the self-regulating function is used to create and defend
an open space; it is least emancipatory when a specific model is imposed by
the profession or by an elite within it.  Thus, a struggle against
neoliberal decimation of the universities, and thus against the attacks on
academic self-regulation, needs to be combined with a critique of the ways
in which this professional autonomy is used.  The "line of flight" to be
sought here, is one which takes the aspect of "traditional" universities
which is peripheral to capitalism (academic autonomy) and take it on a line
leading away from functionality for capitalism and away from hierarchic
organisation.  The eventual destination of this line in my view would be
something akin to the "deschooled" universities proposed by Paul Goodman,
where those who see the point in carrying on a particular line of research
or study have the resources and opportunities to do so, with holders of
knowledge available to help on a networked and gift-economical basis.

Those who follow the "passage through capitalism instead of resisting it"
line a la recent Hardt/Negri, Zizek etc., should (if they are consistent)
take the position of supporting the neoliberal "restructuring" of higher
education.  Though I don't see how this process of neoliberal imposition
helps create the potential for later resistance or overcoming.  But then
again, I don't see this in terms of most other applications of this
particular dogma either.  Obviously a defence of welfare state institutions
etc. can be viewed as "reactionary" if capitalism is taken as definitive of
progress - but this is precisely the identification to reject.  It can also
be criticised as "reformist", and certainly in the first instance it is a
defence of discourses and arrangements of space which are functional to
capitalism, and which are only relatively autonomous so to speak.  But this
isn't really "reformist" so much as transitional, as long as the goal of
reconstructing capitalism on a less neoliberal basis is not affirmed.  The
transition is through the most peripheral elements into the possibility of a
beyond irreducible to capitalism.

This said, many of those involved in the struggle at the present stage will
not share the transformative goal.  And a defence of relatively autonomous
(but functional) university spaces is itself better than a neoliberal
reconstruction.  And it is possible to rally to this defence, not only
critical academics, but also conservative academics concerned about
"standards", liberal academics concerned about academic freedom and
tolerance, and social-democratic academics concerned about the social role
of education.  Basically, academics as a social group are threatened by
these measures, pretty much regardless of their political affiliations and
preferences (albeit that the measures impact worst on critical academics).
There is thus the potential - and it is at present only a potential - for
profession-wide resistance to the "restructuring" measures.  I would suggest
a resistance strategy based on refusal to implement, organised across the
profession as a whole.  Basically, because the academic profession is
largely self-regulated, the imposition of neoliberalism is being attempted
through the medium of the profession itself, and depends at many points on
the labour of academics - as quality auditors, as assessors for funding
bodies, as people involved in deciding appointments, as journal editors and
referees, as course designers, as members of committees deciding on course
design and "performance" and other issues, etc.  A withdrawal or syncretic
appropriation of this function would effectively neutralise the imposition
of neoliberalism.  (In fact such a resistance is already ongoing - as in the
case of the attempts to impose gradings on departments in the UK - those
academic "disciplines" such as philosophy which only had departments in
"old" universities, tended to all return very high results for all
departments - thus sabotaging the grading/differentiation process).

An additional source of pressure would be a mobilisation "from below", at
the level of student activism.  Influence of students could displace
influence of capitalists and politicians.  Obviously this goes beyond the
scope of Stevphen's question, since it's not usually in the power of
critical academics to alter the factors which give rise to student revolt.
However, there are some ways to increase student awareness in ways which
could connect any possible student unrest to the issues of university
"restructuring".  One way to encourage this would be to involve students in
the processes of course construction - to interpret issues of life-relevance
etc. DIRECTLY as referring to students' preferences, rather than (the
preferred approach today) taking such issues as matters of "preparing
students for work".  (See the analysis of the dual grammar of the British
government's HE funding paper, in which "business" receives direct agency
through consultations, involvement in decision-making, etc., whereas
students' needs and desires are constantly invoked - but always mediated by
their "interests", conceived in Stalinist fashion as always-already known in
advance).  Academics usually resist the idea of making higher education
"relevant", but I think this is one of the issues over which a defensive
action could be supplemented by a "passing-through" of capitalist
discourse - the idea of making education "relevant" is subversive, once
separated from the repressive construction of "relevance" as an issue of
neoliberal subordination to capital.  (Actually, the idea of "relevance",
along with the vocational emphasis and several other themes, are all
instances of the recuperation of the most recent, i.e. 60s/70s, wave of
critical education scholarship - the works of Illich, Reimer, Goodman,
Postman and Weingartner, Freire, etc. - which was formulated as a critique
of "traditional" education/schooling).  Another way is to emphasise the use
of student-centred learning methods.  Again, this has the advantage of
apparently meeting the criteria of "reform" while giving it a subversive
edge.

Andy