[PEN-L:2005] Re: lass position of professors

[Blair Sandler <blairs@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 8:33 AM 12/15/95, Terrence  Mc Donough wrote:
>Reluctant as I am to step between Jerry and Louis:  College
>professors are employed within a mode of production which is
>articulated with capitalism but outside of it.  Academia retains
a
>guild structure and ... is
>one of the few relatively uncontaminated feudal institutions
still
>viable within the twentieth century capitalist social
formation....
>guild members themselves decide on admission and the criteria is
>highly restrictive centering first on the production of a
>"masterpiece" which is judged acceptable by senior members of the
>guild, but further winnowing takes place in the hiring and tenure
>decision processes.  The guild has arrogated to itself certain
>credentialling functions, certain ideological reproduction
functions,
>and certain knowledge production functions from which other
producers
>are excluded.  The relative importance of these functions varies
over
>time and they are subject to a division of labor within the
guild.
>On foot of performing these functions the guild is allocated a
cut of
>the social surplus coming primarily from state funds, endowment
>income, R&D funds, and part of the surplus contained in
professional parental
>salaries.  How that surplus is divided within the guild is
>complicated and also subject to outside influences.
Relationships
>within the guild are hierarchical and based on mutual and
reciprocal
>obligations.
>
>Thus at the economic level college professors do not occupy any
of
>the capitalist class positions....

I think Terry has contributed some interesting and useful ideas
about college professors as members of a guild, but the analogy --
or analysis -- does not quite work. Feudal guild members (masters)
were self-employed. College professors are wage laborers who
produce commodities (educational services) sold by their employers
(educational institutions) to students. Thus, while Terry has well
described some of the social processes that determine membership
in the (non-Marxian sense) class of professors, and accurately
noted the ways in which these resemble guild processes, the
fundamental point, for Marxian analysis, should be that professors
(or even more so, adjunct faculty such as myself) perform
necessary and surplus labor, and that the latter is appropriated
by the trustees of the college/university where they teach.
Different forms of the fundamental class process (or mode of
production) may well have similar conditions of existence. It
should not surprise us, given that capitalism indeed grew out of
feudalism, that occupations at one time (under feudalism)
associated with one class process (the ancient class process)
should at another time (under capitalism) be associated with
exploitive appropriation of surplus value, even while certain
cultural and political conditions of existence of that
exploitation remain the same or similar.

Blair Sandler