Re: Students, free education, manual and mental labour

["Jose G. Perez" <jose_g_perez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>So university education is underwritten by the exploitation of the working
class.  Thus the demand for *free education* is a demand by students that
they be given  a greater share of surplus-value.  Now we also know that the
majority of students are neither members, nor the sons and daughters, of the
class that creates surplus-value.  They are predominantly the offspring of
the middle class and the bourgeoisie.  In this sense, the demand for free
tertiary education is a demand by young(ish) members of the middle and
upper classes that the grown-up members of these classes share with them
more of the spoils extracted through the exploitation of the working
class.<<

Phillip,

    Thanks for the laugh. This is one of the funniest parodies of the
narrow, reformist economism of incurable seectarians that I've seen in the
longest time.

José


----- Original Message -----
From: "Philip L Ferguson" <PLF13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 2:11 AM
Subject: Students, free education, manual and mental labour


> Late last year there was an upsurge in student protest in NZ, which had
> been in the doldrums for much of the 1990s.  Unfortunately, it takes place
> in the absence of any notable level of working class struggle - days lost
> through strikes have declined by 95 percent in NZ in the past decade.
This
> not only deprives students of a powerful ally but also conditions the way
> they see their struggle.  In the absence of working class struggle, the
> narrowest kind of 'me' politics tend to dominate student 'radicalism' and
> threaten to turn it into a defence of middle class privilege rather than
> anything socially radical.
>
> Below is a very rough draft of something I'm working on, in relation to
> this issue.  I would really appreciate feedback.  What am I not
> considering?  Am I being unfair to students?  Could the arguments be
better
> put?  Are they
> sufficient arguments anyway?  Is anything factually incorrect?  Etc etc.
> Cheers,
> Phil
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>
>
> In late 1999, a new wave of student protests emerged on campuses around
the
> country, most notably at Canterbury University in Christchurch.  This
> campus saw several mass rallies involving a couple of thousand thousand
> students at each (on a campus with about 11-12,000 students) and a mass
> occupation of the administration building for two days and nights.
> Smaller-scale protests took place at campuses in other parts of the
> country.
>
> The political level of the protests remains extremely low, although some
> people on the left, rushing as per usual to draw inappropriate historical
> parallels, seem to think it's some kind of 1968 Down Under.
>
> The demands have basically been directed against fee increases, although
> most of those involved in organising the protests would go further and
want
> the abolition of fees and what they would see as a 'return' to 'free
> education'.
>
> The radical left, anxious for any signs of discontent in society at all
and
> for a few recruits at any cost, unreflectively and uncritically support
> these protests.  They merely throw in some tactical advice about how
> students could more effectively network and suggest that occupations of
> university administration buildings are better than mass demonstrations.
>
> But students' demands are actually rather more complicated and
problematic.
> For instance, while most students seem to believe they are being
> 'exploited' or at least ripped off by rising fees, this is simply not the
> case at all.  Students in humanities who are NZ citizens are paying around
> $NZ3,400 - $3,500 in fees this year at Canterbury (ie about $US1700),
> slightly more in science departments; this is only a fraction of what it
> costs to educate them at university each year.  Overseas students, for
> instance, now pay around $NZ15,000 for a standard course in areas like the
> humanities, which is roughly the total cost of what it takes to educate
> each student (NZ citizen or overseas student).  In other words, NZ
students
> probably pay a quarter of what it costs to have them at university each
> year.
>
> The rest basically comes out of surplus-value, the origin of which is in
> the exploitation of the working class.  Workers' labour-power produces a
> much greater value than the value of their own labour-power (whose value
is
> paid to them in wages).  This surplus-value is in the hands of the
> capitalist class since this class owns the means of production and thus
the
> labour-power of workers.  Some of it is invested in expanding production
> (new
> machines, technology, more workers etc), some of it is consumed personally
> by capitalists (big yachts, flash cars, big houses, partying up etc), some
> of it is taken by the government through the mechanism of taxation - not
> just tax on
> company profits, but also tax on capitalists' and workers' personal
> incomes.  For instance, the tax that workers pay is usually a deduction
> from surplus-value, not from the value of labour-power.
>
> So university education is underwritten by the exploitation of the working
> class.  Thus the demand for *free education* is a demand by students that
> they be given  a greater share of surplus-value.  Now we also know that
the
> majority of students are neither members, nor the sons and daughters, of
the
> class that creates surplus-value.  They are predominantly the offspring of
> the middle class and the bourgeoisie.  In this sense, the demand for free
> tertiary education is a demand by young(ish) members of the middle and
> upper classes that the grown-up members of these classes share with them
> more of the spoils extracted through the exploitation of the working
class.
>
> In other words, when taken as a single issue - which is exactly how the
> student protesters, and the left groups hanging on their coat-tails,
> currently raise it - it is a demand for *middle class privilege*.
>
> After all, the students who would get free education are not going to put
> their education to the service of the working class whose exploitation
> financed it.  Many students are going to take on jobs in the state
> apparatus and
> private business in which they will basically be the administrators, the
> managerial caste, for the ruling class.  They are not going to go to
> Wainoni or Porirua or Otara and share their educational benefits with the
> masses.
>
> Of course, others, mainly students in engineering and science
> departments, will certainly be involved in increasing surplus-value,
> through their role in developing and even inventing new production
> techniques and machines.  But while they will be relatively well
> remunerated for
> these developments, both the developments themselves and the working of
the
> technology is only possible thanks to the utilisation of workers'
> labour-power.  And, in the context of capitalism, it will also be workers
> who will be the main people laid off when new labour-saving technology is
> invented.  (As an aside I
> should point out that I am not against the introduction of new technology,
> but all for it since it helps lay the material basis for socialism.  The
> appropriate answer is not to oppose new, more efficient and time-saving
> technology but to demand shorter work weeks with pay increases.)
>
> Clearly the demand for free education is not as simple as most of the
> student 'radicals' and the far left pretends.  It may well be a demand
that
> is directed against current *government policy* - which is about the only
> criterion the 'radical left' use these days to decide whether something is
> supportable - but it is hardly a demand that is directed *against
> capitalism* or which, taken alone, even points in an anti-capitalist
> direction.
>
> The fact that the far left just tells students to try some more radical
> tactics means that the far left, far from introducing anti-capitalist
> politics to student rebels, is simply advising them to fight more
> militantly for the expansion of middle class privilege.
>
> While facile comparisons have been made with the 1960s, most notably (and
> typically) by the Socialist Workers Organisation, it is interesting to
look
> at the *differences* between student 'radicals' today and in the 1960s,
and
> also to consider the subsequent political evolution of the student rebels
> of the 1960s and what that might say about students as a social layer and
> how revolutionaries should relate to them.
>
> The most outstanding difference is that the North American, European and
> Third World students of the 1960s demanded *opposite things* to the NZ
> students of today.  In the 1960s radical students abroad recognised that
> they were privileged members of society and the university was a site of
> privilege whose very existence under capitalism was only made possible by
> the exploitation of the working class.  This understanding, although it
may
> have often been confused, nevertheless permeated the radical sections of
> students.  Their critique of the academy, and their militant rebellion
> against it, was thus twofold: that it was an undemocratic structure which
> ground down students and forced them into conformity, and that it was a
> site of privilege based on the exploitation of a class that had no chance
> of entering its hallowed portals.
>
> Students demanded not only the abolition of the vast array of rules that
> controlled their behaviour and denied them any say in the institution,
they
> also demanded that the resources of the university be made available to
the
> oppressed and exploited in struggles for a better world.  For instance,
> students widely demanded that university resources be made freely
available
> to social movements protesting the US invasion of Vietnam, movements for
> civil rights for people of colour, movements for women's liberation, and
> struggles by workers.
>
> Far from trying to keep the university walled off as a site of privilege,
> they demanded the integration of the university into society and that
there
> be a pay-back for the working class.  Many radical students, even in North
> America, got involved in working class organising.  In the Third World,
> students from privileged backgrounds analysed the class relations of their
> countries and became militant activists with the working class and
> oppressed peasants.  To the protesting students in NZ today, however, the
> working class is of no concern.
>
> Even at the most basic level there are major differences between 60s
> student radicalism and student 'radicals' today.  For instance, whereas
> '60s students fought to take power away from university authorities, in
> particular the power to regulate student behaviour, students today are
more
> likely to argue for the expansion of the powers of academic authorities
and
> for the regulating of student behaviour - for instance, witness the
> plethora of 'anti-harassment' and 'safety' campaigns and committees.
>
> Even the apparently more radical demand for 'free education', certainly as
> it is currently posed, points in the opposite direction from the
radicalism
> of '60s students.  For, rather than demanding the university, as a site of
> privilege, put its resources at the disposal of society, in particular of
> the exploited class and oppressed social sectors, student demands today
are
> that society put more of its resources into universities and maintain the
> academy as a site of class privilege.  There is absolutely no recognition
> on the part of student 'radicals', or supposedly 'Marxist' groups like the
> SWO, of where the social surplus that underwrites this comes from - let
> alone what students might give back in return.  In other words, this could
> be seen as the ultimate form of 80s 'me generation' demand.
>
> It is often raised by student politicians and 'radicals' that rising fees
> are making university the preserve of the rich.  This has got to be one of
> the silliest arguments of all time.  Universities have never been
> distinguished by having large numbers of children of the poor in
> attendance.  Throughout their existence, universities have been dominated
> by the middle and upper classes.  When university education in NZ was
> 'free', it was never really free for the working class in any sense.
>
> For a start, and most critically, the children of the working class were
> (and still are) trained in high school for wage-work, not to go to
> university.   This is not a dastardly capitalist plot, but reflects the
> material requirements of the capitalist mode of production.  Under
> capitalism, manual and mental labour are divided by a Chinese Wall and the
> entire socio-economic system is predicated on the existence of a mass
class
> of wage-labourers.  Thus universities simply cannot, under capitalism,
open
> their doors to working class youth in the way they can to middle class
> youth.
>
> Secondly, tertiary education was only free (or almost free) if you had
> University Entrance (UE).  Anyone over 18 was 'free' to go to university,
> but if you had UE you only paid ten percent of fees; if you did not have
> UE, you paid the full amount, ie ten times as much.  Of course, middle
> class children were the ones most likely to have this qualification, so
> even the small number of working class kids who might decide later in
their
> teens, or at some point even further on, that they might like to go to
> university would have paid ten times as much in fees as middle class
> children.
>
> Thirdly, there seems to be no evidence that the numbers, or percentages,
of
> people from working class backgrounds attending university is falling.
Nor
> is the enrolment of women and Maori.  Indeed, there are far more women and
> Maori - both in absolute numbers and as percentages of total student
> population -
> attending university today than there were in the days of 'free'
education.
> This is a reflection of the fact that middle class women exist as a group
> in their own right now and not as mere appendages of husbands and fathers,
> as was often the case before, and that the Treaty industry has, as it was
> intended to, spawned a Maori section of the previously almost exclusively
> pakeha middle class.
>
> Fourthly, people from working class backgrounds who wish to train for a
> trade or similar job have to pay fees which, without having any details to
> hand, I would suspect are far more than student fees.  My niece, who was
> unemployed for a year after leaving Aranui High, had to borrow $15,000 to
> do a several month course in the travel/hospitality industry.  When young
> working class people have to borrow amounts like this for training anyway,
> whatever training they do, it hardly seems tenable to argue that the
> current level of fees keeps them out of university.
>
> And, while student 'radicals' are demanding free training for
> themselves as future management personnel and intellectual ideologues for
> the capitalist system, I have not noticed them demanding free training for
> working class youth who are learning to be plumbers, mechanics,
> electricians, hairdressers, tourist industry workers and so on.
>
> During the elections, I think during one of the leaders' debates, Jenny
> Shipley made the point that working class kids don't get free training, so
> why should her kids get free tertiary education.  It was one of the few
> times I have seen Jim Anderton, leader of the leftish of centre Alliance,
> momentarily stumped.  Of course, he did not come back at her and say that
> all education - tertiary and trade training - should be free.  Instead he
> fell back on the argument which the middle class, including middle class
> students, always raise: that tertiary education is 'different' and should
> be a special case.
>
> The middle class argue this because they are the chief beneficiaries of
> tertiary education.  It is ironic, or rather a telling comment on the
> philistine intellectual state of the radical left in this country, that
the
> left repeats this elitist rubbish about university education being
> 'different' and deserving of special - ie even more privileged -
treatment.
>
> Understanding the nature of universities, their role in capitalist
society,
> and that student demands *as student demands* for *more resources* are not
> radical, but conservative, also allows us to understand what happened to
> all the student 'radicals' of the past few decades.  They simply grew up
> and their *me* demands as adolescent students naturally progressed into
> their *me* demands as yuppies and other sections of the middle class in
the
> 1980s.  The demand for free education, when raised by middle class youth
as
> a single-issue, is a demand that the vicissitudes of capitalism -
> viccisitudes which rain down on workers' lives every single day - not
> intrude into the little comfort bubble in which the middle class expect to
> live their entire lives.
>
> Economic restructuring was fine as long as it was manufacturing and other
> blue-collar workers who were made unemployed and suffered huge declines in
> income and living standards; but now the capitalist class expect middle
> class youth to pay a quarter of what it costs to keep them in tertiary
> education, there is outrage.  Well, I don't think this is good enough!
>
> Now, having said all this, does this mean that Marxists don't support free
> tertiary education?  Well, I would say that we support it with
> qualification: the first qualification is that students are challenged
with the
> question of what they are going to do with this education and what they
are
> going to give to the exploited class in return for their demand that the
> exploited class finance their tertiary education.  Personally, and as
> someone who had to pay these fees this year, I am not going to fight for
> free education for any middle class youth until they give me an answer on
> this one, and a believable answer.
>
> So far, however, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the
> current layer of student 'radicals' are going to be any different from
> those that have gone before in New Zealand (where the tradition of student
> radicalism was always rather more primitive than abroad) - people like
> Helen Clark and Phil Goff, for instance!  These are people who played with
> left-wing ideas in their carefree bourgeois youth, a carefree youth paid
> for by the sweat of the working class, and then grew up to get on with the
> serious business of
> running the system which exploits this class.  The link here is that
> in both their 'radical' youth and their reactionary middle-age, Clark,
Goff
> and their ilk lived through the exploitation of others.
>
> I might add that it is a rather telling comment on the political outlook
of
> protesting students at Canterbury that they invited and fawned all over
> Helen Clark at the height of the student protests late last year.  Not
> exactly an encouraging sign that they mean any serious radical business.
>
> In ancient Athens Socrates and his circle pontificated on all kinds of
> aspects of the human condition - with the notable exception of the system
> of slavery which was all around them.  This lack of discussion of slavery
> was not because they were bad or unfeeling people.  It was because they
> took it for granted since their very ability to be freed from manual
labour
> and thus discuss the meaning of life was predicated on slavery.  Similarly
> today, students (and the vast majority of lecturers) will discuss every
> nook and cranny of human existence, except the one aspect of society which
> allows them to exist as students and lecturers in the first place - the
> creation of a social surplus through the exploitation of the working class
> in the sphere of production.
>
> Universities will happily embrace 'respect for difference' and other
> liberal forms of capitalist ideology, institute feminist and Maori studies
> departments and so on, because all of these too are predicated on, and
help
> obscure, the class exploitation which makes the university as an
institution
> possible.  Equally, the capitalists require Maori and women managers, and
> these will be expected to have some training in feminist studies and Maori
> studies in order to be effective managers for capital.  Similarly, student
> conferences, including supposedly 'radical' student conferences, will have
> special caucuses for women, Maori and 'queer' students - ie for
> sub-sections of the middle class - none of whom are oppressed or exploited
> in any meaningful sense of the term but who, every bit as much as
> white/male/heterosexual students, are able to be students thanks to the
> exploitation of the working class.
>
> After all, it is not women *as women*, Maori *as Maori* or gays *as gays*
> who create surplus-value.  The surplus is created by workers *as
workers* -
> male and female, Maori and pakeha, gay and straight, members of the
> exploited class.  And as I noted above, the days in which women, Maori and
> gays were shut out of the middle class are gone.  The prime minister and
> the leader of the Opposition are women, the head of the largest government
> department (WINZ) is a woman, the CEO of the largest private company in
the
> country (Telecom) is a woman, the last Governor-General was a woman.
> Middle class women have advanced in leaps and bounds, as have middle class
> Maori.  At the same time these groups have advanced, working class women
> and working class Maori, along with working class pakeha males, have
> suffered declining incomes and living standards.  Yet no student
'radicals'
> have thought to include a discussion of this in any of their gatherings.
> The only women and Maori and gays they appear to be interested in are
> middle class people like themselves.
>
> This brings me, finally, to the question of what a radical response might
be to
> tertiary education, and how this should be presented to students.
>
> The first aspect of a radical response has got to be that the reality of
> who pays for tertiary education must be drummed into students' heads.  It
> is not them.  It is not the parents of most of them, since their parents'
> incomes are also paid for, by and large, out of surplus-value.  It is the
> working
> class, the class which the everyday operations of capitalism - not high
> tertiary fees - exclude from higher education, higher culture and much
else
> of the best
> things in life.
>
> Students who demand free education must be asked why they should have it
> and what they are prepared to give back to the class whose work finances
> their already massively-subsidised education.
>
> Students need to be challenged to answer these questions and to take up a
> political fight which recognises the debt they owe the working class. Such
> a political fight involves, at the very least, demanding that all training
> - whether it be carried out in universities or polytechnics or on special
> training
> programmes for trades - be free.  More significantly, it involves a
> political approach which does not treat students as a separate and
> 'special' group but which strives to unite them with the working class in
a
> struggle for a new society.
>
> A crucial part of this involves the breaking down of the walls which class
> society erects between manual and mental labour.  In order for people not
> to be walled off in exclusively manual labour, but have the opportunity
for
> higher education, and for mental labour to cease being a kind of special
> caste privilege walled off from the experiences of manual workers, it is
> necessary to reconceptualise both the university and the workplace.
>
> Every student who expects their education to be funded through the social
> surplus created by manual labour should have to do manual labour
> themselves.  And this should be done not simply for a few weeks in their
> holidays, as at present under capitlaism, but as part of their everyday
> existence.  Manual and mental labour should be integrated.
>
> Of course, there is no way that this can be done under capitalism, even
> though the system does have an historic tendency to reduce much mental
> labour to the same degraded state as manual labour.  But the solution to
> this is not to try to maintain the separation, which is impossible without
> maintaining the privileges of mental labour, but to integrate the two
forms
> of labour.  Every intellectual, a worker as well; every worker, an
> intellectual as well.  This itself requires the abolition of capitalist
> social relations and the creation of a new, more efficient and more
> equitable society.  A society in which everyone contributes to, and draws
> from, the social surplus, a surplus which would itself be substantially
> expanded over that available under capitalism.
>
> Philip Ferguson,
> rough draft, Feb 3, 2000
>
>
>
>
>
>


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