Re: marxism-digest V1 #1811

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

Philip,

    Let me try to comment on your theses seriously, although my INITIAL
reaction was that surely you must be joking, hence my facetious post.

    It seems to me that your post is based on a LaSallean-type notion that
the workers should receive the undiminished value produced by their labor.
M&E explain in the critique of the Gotha Program, what is wrong with this
idea in general.

    In terms of Marxist economics, however, the student's demand in no way
hurts the working class.

    The workers are paid the FULL VALUE of the commodity they sell -- labor
power.

    In a sense, what the bourgeoisie does with the surplus value is quite
irrelevant to the workers in terms of the rate of exploitation, whether they
use it to build more plants, put bets on dot-com issues in the stock market,
hire more cops, or hire more college professors.

    Without knowing more about the structure of New Zealand society this is
only a guess but I'll hazard it anyways. I suspect the big majority of
people going to College in New Zealand come from relative privileged layers
of the working people, NOT from the bourgeoisie. That because a modern
society needs more than a couple of percent university graduates to
function, but if university admission were limited to the sons & daughters
of owners of capital and their top managers (who I think CAN be considered
part of the bourgeoisie, even if they are not large shareholders, although
mostly they are) a couple of percent is all you'd have. I even suspect that
it is entirely possible that (especially)  the sons of the truly rich don't
even attend the same universities everyone else does. I suspect that they go
to Oxbridge or their U.S. equivalents.

    The attempt to raise the proportion of the cost of university paid by
students and their families represents an attempt by the capitalists as a
class to recover part of the surplus value they had been forced to devote to
other purposes so it can once again become profit. Although to some people
it may seem counter-intuitive, it should not seem so to Marxists to say that
the more profits the bourgeoisie has, the worse off the working class is.
Because that means the capitalists have more resources with which to resist
demands by the workers, buy off sectors of the class with concessions, and
so on.

    So from that side of things, what the students are demanding is
perfectly okay by me.

    Also, it seems to me that it might well be true that lurking in the
background of this whole struggle are two additional things. First, that the
more expensive it gets to go to College, the more restricted access is to a
thin, hereditary "upper crust" of children of intellectual workers, and the
less access there is for people from less privileged backgrounds. Second,
that what's driving the fight is not just a question of money but a question
of control, they're wrestling over who controls the ability to set "filters"
(in this case economic) for getting into the university, which will, in
turn, affect a lot of other things about it.

    I seriously and truly believe that you've somehow contracted a really
virulent case of sectarianism. Your INSTINCTIVE reaction when you saw the
mass movement was to look for reasons it should NOT be supported. That led
you to this very vulgar, economist idea that somehow the students are trying
to partake of the exploitation of the working class or even increase it. But
in terms of economics, the exploitation of the working class resides
precisely in this: the capitalist pays for one thing (labor power) and ends
up owning something else (the goods produced by that labor power).

    I think you really need to read and re-read Lenin's pamphlet on
ultraleftism, and a look at Marx's Value Price and Profit might prove useful
too.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Philip L Ferguson" <PLF13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 5:06 PM
Subject: Re: marxism-digest V1 #1811


> >>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
>
>
>
> Thanks for your helpful comment, Ken.  Yes, I am aware that it is somewhat
> one-sided.  It is deliberately so, in the sense that I have bent the stick
> back because the situation here is one in which students have *no
> consciousness whatsoever* of how their education is financed through
> surplus-value.  They think they are being 'overcharged'.
>
> I have recently been reading a number of books from the 60s, featuring
> student radicals of that time - a 21-year-old Fred Halliday, a 25-year-old
> Gareth Steadman Jones, a 29-year-old Robin Blackburn etc, and the level of
> awareness about how the exploitation of the working class made the
> existence of universities possible was very, very clear to them.
>
> 21-year-old students in NZ today have no idea whatsoever of this.
>
> At some point in the piece I mention the way in which capitalism has an
> historic tendency to bring mental labour down to the same level as manual
> labour, which is linked to the point you make about the sons and daughters
> of doctors and lawyers being trained to be teachers and social workers.
>
> The downward mobility and the proletarianisation of intellectual labour is
> extremely important, obviously.  It opens up the prospect for the
> transformation of student consciousness into a much more class conscious
> position.
>
> The reason I didn't spend much time on this, is that I intend to deal with
> it later.  My first emphasis is actually a challenge to students today who
> demand free education - and in NZ these are overwhelmingly middle class
> youth.  They need to know who is paying for them to be at university.
>
>
>
> >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.
> >
> >JosÈ
>
>
> I am rather sad that Jose finds this, and apparently the rest of my
> original post, to be so funny.  It's also odd, because I don't think
anyone
> in Cuba would be unable to recognise what I'm talking about, since one of
> the things they have tried to do there is precisely break down the
> manual/mental labour division.  You can't do this if you don't recognise
it
> in the first place.
>
> A perspective which explains the workings of capitalism, how surplus-value
> pays for the tertiary education of NZ students, argues for the end of the
> manual/mental labour division and points out that this requires a new
> society, is clearly not 'narrow, reformist economism'.
>
> As Lenin noted, economism is a form of spontaneism, it tails behind the
> existing level of consciousness rather than seeking to raise it.
> Supporting student demands on their existing basis is thus a classic case
> of "narrow reformist eocnomism".
>
>
> Carroll writes:
> >I am at an utter loss as to how it might be possible to respond to this
> >post. I cannot see in it any point of agreement which would provide
> >the basis for a critique of points of disagreement.
>
> I would assume there is much in it that you would agree with Carroll.  Do
> you not agree, for example, that universities (certainly in NZ) are
> underwritten by surplus-value?  And that it is the working class which
> creates surplus-value?  And that it is the working class which is least
> likely to be found at university (except as cleaners, cafe workers,
> secretaries etc)?
>
> I would assume that you would agree with all these points.  And that you
> would agree the division between manual and mental labour is an absolutely
> pernicious one, which Marxists wish to transcend.
>
>
>
> >I am shocked and
> >saddened at such depths of disagreement between me and a person
> >with whom I had found myself in such agreement on many recent
> >threads on this list. I wouldn't know where to begin to respond to
> >it.
>
> I would be surprised if you really disagree with the main points I am
> making, although I would understand if you thought this was not the most
> diplomatic way of approaching students.  I readily admit I have 'bent the
> stick back' somewhat - this is because you sometimes need to shout to wake
> people up.  And the political level of protesting students in NZ is one of
> being politically deeply asleep.
>
>
> >It adds up if looked at in terms of reality to the claim that in advanced
> >capitalist countries the working class is disappearing and that Marx
> >was profoundly wrong in his basic analysis of capitalism.
>
> Since one of the main points in the post is that universities in a
> capitalist society can only exist thanks to the exploitation of the
working
> class, I am rather shocked that you can suggest I am saying the working
> class is disappearing.  I am clearly NOT saying any such thing.
>
> The post also clearly reiterates the key points of Marx's analysis of
> capitalism - eg that in a capitalist society it is the exploitation of the
> working class which allows the world to go round.
>
> I am also clearly saying that the doors of higher education should be open
> to the working class and that this is only possible when the division
> between manual and mental labour is overcome, which - of course - only a
> socialist society could achieve.
>
> Cheers,
> Phil
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


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