Re: Students, free education, manual and mental labour

[Apsken@xxxxxxxxxxx]

>>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.<<

    This is one-sided, though it contains a lot of truth. During the
insurgent 1960s, universities in the United States were centers of downward
social mobility, where the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers studied
to become teachers and social workers, who in turn urged the previous outcast
of the oppressed and exploited masses to enroll. That was accompanied by mass
demands from the insurgent Black movement for free education at every level.
In fact, the liberal strategy for undermining SNCC militancy was to refocus
the mass demand away from a concentration on Freedom Schools, Head Start
programs, control of primary and secondary schools, and free access to
universities, and toward a narrow focus on voter registration and the
Democratic Party.

Ken Lawrence