anti-intellectualism and the potentials of students

I totally agree. I think it's important to understand that the role of 'intellectuals' in society has radically changed since the 19th century, when almost all intellectuals were bourgeois or aristocratic members of the ruling classes, living off their income while indulging in their studies. Now, intellectuals are often little different from other workers, not that they often see it that way.

~J.

in western countries such as australia, uk, usa etc these layers you refer to often have little experience of the class struggle, and are drawn into all manner of "oppression mongering" and the bogus "bourgeois identity politics" and via their experience of student politics and union bureaucracies are heavily informed by the stalinist/trotskyist legacy (and associated hostility to rational and scientific processes and go along with manipulative and underhanded practices) and you must also take account of the current down turn in the class struggle - so they do present a serious problem for those serious about the revolutionary project - they are the type of people who get "recruited" into the various minute leftist groupings in these countries which wave the red and black flag and the hammer and sickle - ensuring these groups remain sects - groupings which are just an end in themselves and alienate any militant worker outsite the tiny leftist fringe who comes across them - an example of the bizarre antics they get upto was the navel gazing and associated "mad minutes" (reminiscent of communist party congresses in their stalinist heydays) at the plenary session of the so called anarchist conference in London this year. For a discussion of the role of these layers in the existing leftist milieux in australia see "Report on the Workers Control Conference" in the archive section of our website www.rebelworker.org

I work at a provincial university in the UK. While I'm a lecturer and not a postgraduate student and while conditions here may not always be quite as bleak as those you're describing in Turkey, the picture you paint of working conditions and wages, as well as the ideological perspective of 'academics', is very recognisable. In the UK real terms wages have fallen since the 1970s and staff routinely teach long hours requiring a lot of preparation. Undergraduate students work as well as study and are therefore 'full-time students' in name only. Apathy towards study is the norm - and to be honest, I can well understand why. Postgraduate students also often work and/or are super-exploited as teaching assistants.

The majority of students come to us - and graduate - with minimal literacy, an issue there's never adequate resources to address. HE now registers the full impact of capitalist decline; basically, the system can't cope and as you say exists largely to process/discipline students and lower the unemployment statistics; there's been a big spike in admissions across 'our' university this year.

A few portraits of the 'intellectuals': I have many colleagues across the university from working class backgrounds; but regardless of their sociological origins, almost all of them have bourgeois politics. I know one lecturer who owns a limited company to handle the massive proceeds of his policy research conducted for the government and the police. I know several fully-fledged Zionists (and of course their campus antagonists, the Trots). I know 'feminists' who talk about the challenges of getting a reliable au pair. Try to bring an internationalist/communist perspective to any intellectual arena and you will most likely face dire consequences.

It's being so cheery that keeps me going.

The only good aspect of this miserable situation is that more and more, lecturers with illusions will be forced to confront the reality of their proletarian status, something a lot of them can't bring themselves to conceive as they desperately try to climb the greasy poles of the research or administration hierarchies. Students will play a much bigger role in any coming struggles, of course. There's little sign of a will to fight yet in the sector, but the conditions for struggle are building.

the link to our web site www.rebelworker.org is fixed now - so try it

in regard to your point about these layers eg students being part of the working class - a more accurate analysis would be as a transitional layer - they can either become part of the working class or the middle class and in certain cases the ruling class when they finish their studies and get jobs
- in australia uk usa - there is very much a strong employer offensive going on - and in australia not much workers resistance - and in uk and usa nothing like in the 60's 70's or 80's
- in the case of students in regard to their role in various political groups - their orientation stems from their lack of workplace experience particularly the "lash of the bosses" , historical legacies -eg the predominance of mass stalinism in the mid 20th century for 3-4 decades and its hegemony in the subsequent leftist milieu and the influence of bourgeois ideology - eg identity politics - so they are drawn to the phenomena of leftist sects and give birth to them and due to the low level of the class struggle relative to other eras eg 60's 70's and the effects of social democracy and mass stalinist parties in regard to workers self confidence and self organisation - revolutionary workers groups or networks are few and far between in western countries

Students are dispossessed of the means of social production. Although possible future class interests play a major role in the consciousness of most students, in material terms we are of the working class.

~J.

Yes, students have to be seen as part of the working class, I think. As for the impact of their future class status (real of imagined) on their current consciousness, it's much less valid to see students today as the bourgeoisie-in-waiting than it was even 20 years ago. Although some students will become managers, go into business, etc., very many will not find jobs after graduation.

In what way are students different than other consumers of a product, in this case, "education"?

In no particular way. What was your point?

~J.

That perhaps the fact that they are all students might not be a unifying characteristic making them particularly relevant to a class analysis as an entire group.
(in response to

I probably should have quoted it to begin with)
I don't think a working-class student goes through the same experience as a bourgeois one, whether it is the kind of work they have or don't have to do to sustain themselves, their access to specific institutions and majors, their choice of majors, their future job prospects, etc. To take extreme cases, someone like Richard Feynman vs. a Business major being groomed to replace his Dad at the latter's law firm. Does the fact that they may both be students in the same institution have any bearing?

I suppose I was generalising when I said "in material terms we are working class", since there are students, a tiny minority, who do actually own capital. But most of us, in any case, are basically proletarian. Some students definitely have more privileges than others, just like waged workers, but that doesn't make us 'bourgeois' students, as such.

~J.

Yeah of course students (obv with the exception BLJ mentions) are in material terms working class.
It's also worth noting that academia, certainly postgrad and postdoc (even beyond) is one of the most precarious 'white collar' jobs I can think of. Even lecturers are more often than not doing a series of fixed-term contracts, and programs like the RAE make sure that they are milked for every drop of labour they can be during their fixed terms, in order to get renewals or extensions.

Tree, yes, sure there are exceptions, but the generalisation that students are working class status holds nonetheless. As BLJ says, there are plenty of differences among wage workers, too, but that doesn't preclude solidarity based on our common interests as workers.

As Choccy's comments suggest, the whole sector - including students and lecturers - is becoming proletarianised and 'precarised' (I've been looking for an excuse to use that verb) and if anything, I'd say the proportion of students in the UK that could be in any way described as 'bourgeois' is probably lower than ever.

I agree that in general both students and academics are working class, (although with students this of course depends, a bit like school children as well). I think the resentment to them you sometimes see is because they are generally (particularly academics) in the upper sections of the proletariat, in terms of social status at least.

A general question - is the bourgoise politics of many academics a result of Universities wanting 'research' and 'ideas' promoted that are in supportof its own interests i.e that of the state and big business (like a similar process to the media with journalists) or is it that academics just tend (for whatever reason) to have shit politics

do academics on here feel they have a lot of freedom as to what they teach/research or not?

I imagine all but a tiny minority of the English are proletarians, but the whole theme of this website is that taking English as having a combined interest is reactionary. I think that it is the same with students. In practice, you see most student struggles around here, in Israel, going very badly for most proletarian students exactly for this reason: the students who can afford to just skip classes and be active in the student unions which initiate strikes mostly represent the interests of bourgeois students, leaving the rest out in the cold when it comes to them trying to somehow find employment during and in the aftermath of yet another strike.
The situation is different for graduate students, it seems to me, because there the organizations are centered around the people who actually have to TA and RA inside the school for a living, while those with outside financial support would simply not give a toss. I could be wrong, and I'll get back to you on that in the next few years when I get back in graduate school, but it seems to me that treating "students" as a group, at least in terms of undergraduates, is rife with class-collaborationist consequences.

While I see where you're coming form, and I agree, I think you're confusing bourgeois students with students who are just better off than others. Yeah, students with more money, who don't have to hold down a job while they study, who have certain privileges and so on, will tend to dominate student struggles. But these aren't usually bourgeois students. Most of the time they just have rich parents.

~J.

as a public college student in nyc i had a couple of professors who taught history from a generally trot position. they were able to do this quite openly. however, the one who was non-tenured seems to be permanently stuck in an adjunct position. i don't know how much of that has to do with his politics.

now as a part-time professor for the state college i have a good degree of freedom. i'm not a good example though because the program is a partnership with a local, relatively militant trade union and members of my administration are openly marxist.

I think I tend to agree with Tree of Judas here. Some people here want to make the generalization that university students are working class. But would they also want to make the generalization that the population as a whole is working class? Of course, in highly economically developed countries, the vast majority of the population is working class, but we don't say that it is working class period. I would assume that the proportion of ruling class (i.e. not just 'bourgeois', cf. thread on "bourgeoisie") students within universities is at least as high as the proportion of ruling class people within the overall population. Is there any reason not see it that way? After all, it is far easier for the average ruling class person to attend university than it is for the average working class person to do so, is it not? And I think most ruling class young people want to, and their parents expect them to, attend university. Further, as the ruling class is not just the bourgeoisie, the proportion of ruling class students in general is not going to be miniscule, like say 5%. It would be well over that, I think.

However, I think an important point here is that there are 'special', privileged universities that cater to the ruling class and the rich. Ivy league schools in the U.S. (and not just the ten or so 'official' ones, but others too, such as, say, Stanford), Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, McGill, Queens and the U. of Toronto in Canada, etc. (Note these are usually the oldest, original universities in their respective countries.) At these universities, I think, the proportion of ruling class students (defined first of all by their families, but there are others who may well come from the middle class but are just known by all to be destined for the ruling class) is quite significant. Then of course, there are the more recent universities (especially those that were founded after WWII), which have clearly been tailored for the modern working class, and whose student composition is almost entirely working class. Perhaps it is these latter that most people on this thread are more familiar with and thus speaking about first and foremost.

Part of the disagreement here may revolve around the question of the ruling class: how big is it, who's in it, etc. Also interesting that nobody is talking here about the 'middle class' (except me) so far. I can remember a time, not that long ago, when a lot of people thought that most university students were 'middle class'. Of course, I agree that much of what is called 'middle class' is really just well-payed and perhaps slightly 'privileged' sectors of the working class.

While I kind of agree that I was wrong to generalise, I have to take issue with this. This is a picture of class in purely sociological terms.

There is no way in hell that 5% of students, at least in the UK, are functioning capitalists. I'd imagine that a small number, certainly less than 1%, own some capital. The vast, vast majority, even those with rich dads, don't.

Also, I think it's an important point that while there are a tiny, tiny number of students who are effectively part of the bourgeoisie, they aren't bourgeois in relation to other students: there aren't student bosses and student employees. So the analogy to the general population is somewhat flawed.

~J.

Tbh I think he was talking about people going on to be upper level managers, stockbrokers, bankers etc. They may well not own capital but I think it would be pretty far fetched to label these people as part of the working class

You are saying that a student who is becoming a boss has a unity of interests with a student who is becoming a proletarian?
I think a better analogy is to other consumer products, such as bread. Do you think a bread advocacy group could be anything but a bourgeois foil, despite most bread consumers being working class and there not being "bread bosses"? Why is being a consumer of educations any different?

I'm saying they have interests in common, yes. Granted, the student who's assured of a high-flying position when he graduates is likely to look at his future interests as being more important than his immediate position, at least most of the time. In times of widespread class struggle, this might not be the case.

Counter-example: what about groups opposing rent hikes or public service charges? Would you characterise them as bourgeois foils? I think not, at least not by definition. There's more to workers organising than workplace organising. Even a campaign based around bread could be a radical thing in some circumstances. If bread was a staple food somewhere then access to it could well be a site of class conflict.

~J.

It's certainly easier obviously, but I don't think it's far easier; I for one already owe a small fortune to the state for keeping me in school, but at least I got to escape the drudgery of a shitty office job by being here, so "fair enough."
Also, I think working class people want to and expect their children to attend university just as much as rich people, if not more so (esp. true of immigrant parents). McGill does seem to produce a good amount of fresh stock for the managerial class, which is probably what accounts for its inclusion on the "famous schools" list, but from my experience, the majority of students here, esp. those not in elite programs like Law or Medicine, are just like me: working-class and up to their necks in debt.
I agree that there is no one "class" of students with a common interest, but there is something about the student condition that can radicalize even the most apathetic middle-class slacker (I'm sure that some at least of the students currently involved in protests and occupations at UCLA, Berkley, and those Austrian unis are from relatively well-off backgrounds).

Seeing as how the primary role of universities is to produce workers and bosses, I think we need to recognize them as sites of reproduction of class society. They are also deeply tied to the capitalist state. In the US, at least, conflicts over reduced services and increased fees are widespread and growing. Additionally, they provide much of the research for innovation, especially in military technology.

The class antagonisms of the university are many: Two-tier pay structures of part-time lecturers, teaching/research assistants (increasingly proletarianized) vs. tenured professors (privileged 'guild' members). Public vs. private institutions. Barrier of access issues for the working class, especially people of color. Privatization campaigns against public education. Wage struggles amongst maintenance workers. Increased financialization, peonage and usury through student debt. There is more too, these are just off the top of my head.

Not in my experience.

Departments usually have to compete for grants, often from private companies. So if you work in say engineering or life sciences, very often the research grants come from private partnership allied to , for example, the arms industry (in the case of engineering) or big pharma (in the case of life sciences).

Proposals for research topics outside this area face less options for funding, and thus research is pushed in the direction that capital wants.

So from this onwards, the entire research interests of faculties and universities are shaped by the demands of capital.

This has resulted in the closure at many unis, of departments that aren't immediately profitable or that don't have an application that can some way down the line be exploited.

So an example I wrote about here was at Queens Univ in Belfast. In the last decade, the geology, classics and history of science departments have closed. German is to close soon, and many other departments have been forced to amalgamate to justify their existence.

A cop-out answer I know, but it depends.
Generally I would say there is some freedom of research (although perhaps less so in the applied sciences as Choccy points out), but that does not deny the fact that academics are forced into excessive competition with each other, which often leads to superflous and irrelevant material being produced only for the sake of justifying one's position. You basically have to publish, publish, publish if you want to be taken seriously by anyone (not to mention if you want a cushy job in academia); quantity over quality and all that.

I think that Waslax is on the right track here. The communist definition of class is based neither on a sociological definition or on income.

The fact that many students are poor has nothing to do with it. In many countries peasants have much lower living standards than industrial workers. It doesn't make them working class though. The whole idea can lead to some very dodgy conclusions.

The communist analysis of class is based on the relationship to the means of production, and as such the students relationship to the education sector seems to be as one of consumers, so that saying that students are working class is absurd as saying that people who go to football matches are working class, and people who go to the opera are middle or upper class. Though in many countries this may be true it is not connected to these activities.

In many ways students class basis must be looked at in the same way as that of children, dependent on their parents.

Waslax is also right when he says that the number of students from upper or middle class backgrounds in the student population, must be higher than that in the general population. As you tend not to meet people from the upper classes that often, and university is one place that people working class people do come into contact with them, and their numbers their are disproportionate to their numbers in society in general, it is not surprising that working class people have that impression of students.

Devrim