There is markedly different political-economic dimension when protestor takes the streets. For when roads and streets are seen as channels in which the raw labour power is transported into centralized zones of production, when you take the streets, you stop traffic, you stop the flow of labour into the commodity production sphere. You stop production.
MAY DAY 2012
Capital Vol. 1 : The Relative Form of Value
a) The nature and import of this form
A Contradiction within Capitalism:
Productivity is inversely related to Value - greater productivity -> more commodities -> commodities lose value. Capitalism is continually dependent on the expansion of productivity (i.e. growth).
Capitalism will inevitably diminish all value of the commodities within a society, making it socially and cheaply accessible? Contradictions within Capitalism that creates the trajectory toward Socialism?
The preservation of the small liberal arts colleges and perhaps even the Ivy League institutions required more than the provision of alternative channels for the less fortunate; it is precisely the low-tuition state universities which are threatening to drive the elite colleges out of business. Thus the Carnegie commitment to preserve the elite institutions involves more than the stratification of higher education; it necessitates a retreat from the principle of public education. The Carnegie Commission favors a ‘market model’ for higher education, and urges sharply increased tuition at public institutions to ‘…narrow the…tuition gap with private institutions.’ The financial recommendations of the Carnegie Commission recently have been enthusiastically supported and extended by an influential mouthpiece for the corporate capitalist class, the Committee on Economic Development. They propose fee increases which would result in a doubling of tuition at universities, an increase of two and a half times at four-year colleges, and a tripling of tuition at two-year colleges.
Schooling in Capitalist America (1976); pp. 213
READINGS AND SUCH ON THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
In light of the continuing struggle between the owners of the university and the underclass of workers, students, professors, I thought some articles will be necessary to examine the situation in more contemporary terms. The following are articles I have accumulated over the last 10 weeks that deals directly with the crisis of the university and the capital interest that influence such crisis.
Mind Factory : http://socialistworker.org/2012/04/04/austerity-in-the-mind-factory
Privatization of UC : http://www.scribd.com/doc/80822746/Privatization-Inequality
Agriculture and the State University : http://books.google.com/books?id=CGxLAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA437&lpg=PA437&dq=State+of+California%27s+Agricultural,+Mining,+and+Mechanical+Arts+College&source=bl&ots=yOBsdc2Q1p&sig=smOi9dfuInG16RVBQ2KCQFIljy8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=N2MLT-HqNubK2AWxyYD0DA&ved=0CFcQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=State%20of%20California%27s%20Agricultural%2C%20Mining%2C%20and%20Mechanical%20Arts%20College&f=false
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2012/01/26/MN0O1MUALA.DTL
http://www.alternet.org/story/153879/will_the_young_rise_up_and_fight_their_indentured_servitude_to_the_student_loan_industry
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/realestate/commercial/public-college-private-dorm.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=public%20college,%20private%20dorm&st=cse
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/obam-j28.shtml
http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/community-angered-over-santa-rosa-school-closure/nHLHC/
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-csun-20120128,0,1889893.story
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/education/international-students-pay-top-dollar-at-us-colleges.html?hp
http://blog.aflcio.org/2012/02/01/the-privatization-of-public-services-state-by-state/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/health/cancer-center-in-lawsuit-says-a-doctor-appropriated-a-discovery.html?scp=1&sq=a%20prominent%20cancer%20center&st=cse
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203686204577116374283814362.html
The following are books that are relevant to the topic. They provide a theoretical, analytical framework:
Schooling in Capitalist America by Samuel Bowels and Herbert Gintis (ed. 1976) : A Marxist based analysis of the role of the education system in producing a complacent working class, while maintaining the organizational structure of capitalist society.
Uses of the University by Clark Kerr : Written by former University President Clark Kerr, who embattled the students of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960’s, he writes of the role of the university in the context of the capitalist society, the production of technological innovations, and the university’s deep connection to the capitalist enterprise. Although he makes the argument such a relationship is necessary, he unknowingly set the premise for critiques on the social and economic relations, inherent in the capitalist university system.
The Mind of Clark Kerr by Hal Draper : Among those who critiqued Kerr is the librarian Hal Draper, who analyzed the role of the university in a Marxist framework. He argues that the University is a factory, and the role of the liberal establishment in maintaining such a structure.
Mario Savio Speech (1964) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhFvZRT7Ds0
I’ll be a Grandpa version like her one day…
Gun-toting granny of Melbourne, Ava Estelle, 81, was so ticked-off when two thugs raped her 18-year-old granddaughter that she tracked the unsuspecting ex-cons down… And shot off their testicles.“The old lady spent a week hunting those men down and, when she found them, she took revenge on them in her own special way,” said police investigator Evan Delp.
Then she took a taxi to the nearest police station, laid the gun on the sergeant’s desk and told him as calm as could be: “Those bastards will never rape anybody again, by God.”
Cops say convicted rapist and robber Davis Furth, 33, lost both his penis and his testicles when outraged Ava opened fire with a 9-mm pistol in the hotel room where he and former prison cell mate Stanley Thomas, 29, were holed up.
The wrinkled avenger also blew Thomas’ testicles to kingdom come, but doctors managed to save his mangled penis, police said. “The one guy, Thomas, didn’t lose his manhood, but the doctor I talked to said he won’t be using it the way he used to,” Detective Delp told reporters. “Both men are still in pretty bad shape, but I think they’re just happy to be alive after what they’ve been through.”
The Rambo Granny swung into action August 21 after her granddaughter Debbie was carjacked and raped in broad daylight by two knife-wielding creeps in a section of town bordering on skid row. “When I saw the look on my Debbie’s face that night in the hospital, I decided I was going to go out and get those bastards myself ‘cause I figured the Law would go easy on them,”’ recalled the retired library worker. ” And I wasn’t scared of them, either - because I’ve got me a gun and I’ve been shooting’ all my life. And I wasn’t dumb enough to turn it in when the law changed about owning one.”
So, using a police artist’s sketch of the suspects and Debbie’s description of the sickos, tough-as-nails Ava spent seven days prowling the wino-infested neighbourhood where the crime took place till she spotted the ill-fated rapists entering their flophouse hotel.
“I knew it was them the minute I saw ‘em, but I shot a picture of ‘em anyway and took it back to Debbie and she said sure as hell, it was them,” the oldster recalled…
“So I went back to that hotel and found their room and knocked on the door, and the minute the big one opened the door, I shot ‘em right square between the legs, right where it would really hurt ‘em most, you know. Then I went in and shot the other one as he backed up pleading to me to spare him. Then I went down to the police station and turned myself in.”
Now, baffled lawmen are trying to figure out exactly how to deal with the vigilante granny.. “What she did was wrong, and she broke the law, but it is difficult to throw an 81-year-old woman in prison,” Det. Delp said, “especially when 3 million people in the city want to nominate her for Mayor.”
(Source: creativehypocrisy)
Whether or not you support the Occupy movement, it’s stomach-turning to think about the NYPD ripping up camp sites, spraying mace and manhandling the disenfranchised, while the mayor dines with a Wall Street CEO who not only bet against U.S. homeowners in the mortgage meltdown but structured deals for his favorite billionaire clients, only to shaft investors on the other side of the deal.
“When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.” ~ President Dwight D Eisenhower
