academic life – living in academia – Pagina 25 – COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND

Arriving

15 ottobre 2012 da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, Peter's Log, works, projects, publications

Saying Good-Bye – again — This had been the title of a recent posting. And indeed, there is some deep truth in the formulation John used when he wrote the other day in his really nice mail

as you sadly report, your uprooting and once more wandering, as of course scholars and refugees have done for centuries.

It is about sadness, and it is about this close link between scholars and refugees. And there is also much reflection in the words with which he continues, wishing that I find

an academic refuge, a medieval monastery in which to pursue scholarship and teaching as you would like to do.

Not that I may finally reach the state of a monk, defined as

a member of a religious community of men typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

May be it is poverty that awaits me; chastity is not really something to talk about here – there enough other miseries to report on and there are enough wrong choices in life that one doesn’t have to go with all of them – and finally it is hopefully about ongoing disobedience as it had been such disobedience, some independence that told me that it is Time to Say Good-Bye.

From various feedbacks I learned a bit about my life: I thought I would have been more or less outgoing, vocal and I admittedly missed the affects of it. People not reacting, not listening … – and now learning that part of my life can be apparently seen as “background noise”. Those who read Niklas Luhmann’s later work will probably remember … – And being background noise may be as much a praise of a life as I read from a colleague who felt very pleased when he saw his name mentioned somewhere in footnote of a famous writer. Yes, there are always the two sides. The one is the bright fire, dominant and victorious and showing the way …, the other is the small flame, flickering in the background, not much seen but somewhat indispensable when the clear light fades away, turns to be a dazzling instrument: blinding and misguiding.

Nani gigantum humeris insidentes

– Indeed, there is always the gnome standing on the shoulders of the giant, thus claiming to be able to see further as there is the giant walking across the path of the ant, “shouting justice for all” and guillotining with every step so many of those on which he actually depends. Two sides – at least as long as we live in a society that is characterised by antagonisms they will be and they cannot really be harmonised.

There are also always two sides of Saying Good-Bye: the leaving of “places” and the arriving in “places”. Exciting undertakings. And perhaps all of them, if written down in a very subjective manner, are also allowing others to participate, better even: to make their own experience, to gain new perspectives in and for their life and living.

I tried the writing – impressions from roaming to and through different parts of the world. Kerstin Walsh, a former student and a present friend, contributed some lovely drawings (studying social policy doesn’t necessarily spoil life and the sense for its beauties) and to be honest: all of the people I met during this time, for short moments or for longer spells, played their specific roles – background noises, giants …, small flames and blazing fires ….

Again and again arrivals – Hellos!!!!

student accommodation, studying facilities ….

15 ottobre 2012 da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

or what is studying about?

Dear Students – here in Ireland and probably elsewhere.
Recently a mail had been sent to the staff at UCC – it originated from a Senior Lecturer in Science Education at the Department of Education, Uiversity College Cork and stated the following

I am writing to ask you to encourage your students to make use of the weekend study facilities now available in the Campus Kitchen. From now until next May the Campus Kitchen will be open on Saturdays, Sundays and bank holiday Mondays from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day. Feedback from recent talks on “Steps to ensure success in your study of science and engineering in UCC” that I gave to all first year science and first year engineering student students indicates that a significant number of students living in student apartment complexes find it difficult to study in this apartment environment.

Many thanks to Mr … and his security staff as well as … for making this facility available. The Students’ Union will be informing students of the study facilities available but a few words of encouragement from yourselves may help students to settle down to study and to start using the weekend study facilities to help them to keep up with their work. Recent statistics from the HEA (Mooney et al., 2010) on drop-out rates from universities in Ireland are cause for serious concern.

Now, I will be the least to complain about providing additional study facilities to students – when I had been studying, I had been in the privileged position that I could use the library 24 hours a day – there had been one exception throughout the year. though I do not remember exactly, I think it had been the 25th of December that the facilities had not been available.

Leaving various things aside that could be said in this context, I want to raise at least three points:
* is the provision of study-facilities really an appropriate answer on the lack of quality-accomodation for students? – This laves aside the fact that this accommodation is in many cases completely overpriced, pushes students out on the private market, thus contributing via a more or less long chain to problems on the housing markets. If landLORDS (are we still living in feudal times, or is it even meant as prayer?) are making easy money, this, of course, maintains high rents …
* is teaching, organisation of seminars and discussion opportunities so limited during the week that there is urgent need for facilitating additional studies during the week – especially: additional space for individual studies?
* finally, is the lack of space for studying a real and major problem for “high drop-out rates for universities”?
Perhaps such Higher Education Authorities should step down from their pedestals – having a look at the reality of all these supposed *****-universities, excellence universities may cure them. Though it is boring and we all know it it may be stated again: education is perverted to a commodity. It is “goal-oriented” and the sole goal is availing of a paper that states a degree. I do not want to write a plea for the humanist tradition in its traditional form: it had been highly idealist and elitist in its very foundation. Nevertheless, it surely had been more of an empowering spirit than much today’s skill-orientation. And surely had been more emancipatory, independent it is orientation than social scientists who state in a complaining, and even depressed mood:

This is the consequence of liberalism

Turning around after a deep sigh …., continuously walking the old ding-dong-trotten path, welcoming any success, any start gained or maintained, as a success – it is a little bit like Christmas:

Mai le campane risuonano più dolcemente

Isn’t it time to wake up? – Can be sweet too!

At least this colleague seems to have slept while he had been studying … and needs to improve skills, then justifying a position as Senior Lecturer in Science Education at the Department of Education

We Got IT – Update Your CV …

13 ottobre 2012 da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Dear Colleagues,
as it is now clear that EU had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2012, there is some rumour that every EU-citizen can claim to be winner of this prestigious accolade.
You may consider this when updating your IRIS and other information relevant for Quality Assurance.

Most of you know that I had been engaged for many years in EU-policy making – on different levels. From direct contact I know also – just to mention one tiny point – the the current president of the Commission (in my experience the least qualified during my “term in office” which reaches back into middle 1980s) appropriated the responsibility on “social services of general interest”, taking it away from Vladimír Špidla, then Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs …. – I mentioned this occasionally publicly and do it again although it may have been confidential information I obtained in a personal conversation from the Commissioner. Still, although I left that field of activity for different reasons (leaving some minor engagement aside) I am in principle very much a supporter of the European idea. And I am well aware of the ambiguity – what is today the EU surely being an institutional setting that succeeded on many issues we can relate to in positive ways. Nevertheless, I have my serious doubts that the awarding is in any way justified. An idea that is valuable, being set in a harsh structural setting, is as valuable as the chitchat of a smart society in an increasing “refeudalising” economic environment (having used this term, and having published in 2010 on this [the second of the “New Princedoms” just went to the printer] I am myself aware that much economic analysis is still needed to back this thesis).

Anyway, EU-staff and students may claim that they had been awarded. Colleagues from “Third Countries” (sorry, this is the official terminology) may possibly claim that they know Laureats (which is something, isn’t it).
The details on the award ceremony are not yet clear – so, refrain at this stage from buying flight tickets to Stockholm.
Some additional information for foreward looking people: There is some hope that The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel may be soon going to the EU too.

Irish Excellence – just a rant

10 ottobre 2012 da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia

Just received a job add – adverstising a job at UCD. It may be poiting out an interesting strategy of third level education: completely overpaid professorial positions (in an international comparison), probably reasonably well paid “core staff”, that has to work for the money, and a rather large number of jobs for people who are ready for self-exploitation, working in casual “contract” positions (you MAY TAKE IT as purely accidental that I did not say anything about the work of professorial positions in this country – you MAY …)
It is worth an additional remark. The president of UCC has an income that is shamefully high (I always say: arguing on the ground of morals is useless although some social work and social policy colleagues still don’t get this). And this shamefully high-earning individual suggests that working conditions, security of positions of researchers and lecturers should be more precarised (see the dispute on Tyndall) etc.
And another professor – of maths – claimed not long ago (in a personal conversation) that social science cannot claim the name science.
I am wondering if these people have anythinbg else to offer than a large bag for huge sums of money. But perhaps they don’t have even that and follow in one or another way the traditional way of carrying money: in envelopes.

Sure, you may read this also in a wider context, looking at the Irish crisis, the definition of excellence ….

Growth, Greek and Teaching

10 ottobre 2012 da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, social quality, works, projects, publications

A Change in my teaching program and implications for politics

Well, the title is a bit misleading – but fact is, for me: as abstract many things are when it comes to teaching economics there are so many things very much about daily lives and daily politics.

Some good news – had been asked to change my program for next years teaching in Budapest at the Corvinus University: A course on Development Economics.

A rather challenging task I think – and that is what I like: challenges.

Teaching about about this hugely contradictory issue of development in such a situation where we can see on the one hand that the traditional development model of capitalism failed – and we may add: failed completely – and at the same time it is strongly prevailing and orienting as matter that strongly guides policy makers. Of course, there is this global dimension – and since Rostow manifested his anticommunism in his pamphlet on on “Stages of Economic Growth” the traditional understanding of development is more or a simple translation of the paradigm of GDP-growth. More recent debates do not make major changes although they stepped slightly away from this tradition by including issues of sustainability and “well-being” – I engaged on some aspects and shortcoming of these debates in the contribution to the International Journal of Social Quality, titled

Economic Performance, Social Progress and Social Quality—Social Sustainability Waiting in the Wings

But there is more to it – some aspects I developed in earlier blog entries, looking at questions of growth and trying to link it to the fundamental issue of the structural fracture between use value and exchange value. These entries had been titled Sustainability, Non-Sustainability and Crime I, Sustainability, Non-Sustainability, Crime II and Growth and Development and finally the presentation during the recent Poznan-workshop of the EuroMemo-group, which I elaborated very much with Marica Frangakis (Nicos Polulantzas Institute, Athens), also reflected on these issues.

The new course now – teaching is learning, and not just students sitting down and listening bit developing together with the students the new issues – gives an opportunity to develop this further. One point is surely about the systematisation, or should I even say: the precise formulation of the question. Contrary to the mainstream approaches that tend to give first answers, and after that search for the question, there is some need in return to the drawing board …. But then there is another point, namely the systematic (dis)entanglement of the different layers of the analysis. This concerns especially a differentiated approach with respect to local and “societal” dimensions of development, as well as it requires to look at situations of individuals on the one side and collectivities on the other side. As a working thesis we may say that the separation of use and exchange value is very much complemented by a juxtaposition of different aggregate levels. In other words, we see tensional relationships between

different aggregate levels
individual and social dimensions
relevant proprieties.

A thorough approach to this multilayered perspective can help in two ways. It may open a way to approaches to the development that are predominantly based on normative settings. And furthermore it allows us to contribute to a sound debate on methodological individualism.

On some political implication of immediate interest. Greece – more than for instance Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland – is currently in the news. This is in various ways interesting.

One interesting fact is at least worth a side remark: The mass protests going on for a lengthy time now, and actually at least comparably strong in Spain and Portugal[1] did not nurture the same media spectacle as the visit of the German Prime-Minister (Kanzlerin) Merkel. This is very similar to the very old patterns: when the emperor comes, the streets have to be ready for the theatre. And so the protests had been countered with even more violence than there had been before. And a shocking photo had been circulated yesterday on facebook – not one of the many photos showing the brute force of security staff (though they surely had been shocking too), but the shocking photo that showed the decoration for the welcome of AM: blue-white—-black-red-gold—-blue-white—-black-red-gold—-blue-white—-black-red-gold—- – I did not count the flags, enough though to cover many of the victims of this war of the people. – And we should not refrain from saying what it is: a war against a people not just on the open battlefield but on the battlefield of an austerity strategy that is “killing softly” – making it nearly impossible for many children to go to school because they are starving, detaining necessary health services …. – and this happens in a country where only few people have sufficient resources to solve the monetary problems. IF they WOULD PAY taxes, the problem would basically not exist. IF they WOULD CONTRIBUTE to solving the national debt problem rather than contributing to the Swiss, Luxembourgian etc banking profits people could successfully claim what human rights declarations grant on paper but do not allow to be an issue in people’s real life. If politicians would people and their representatives serious solutions could be found – solutions meaning something different than huge programs that (simplified, admitted) shift money from the tax payer in Germany to the banks in Greece from the taxpayer in Greece to the banks in Germany (see also the interview I gave earlier in Athens).

This brings us to the second issue. As easy it is for the Greek government to listen to Merkel rather than to the Greek people it is also easy to speak the old prayer of growth. As important as it is to appreciate the need for a development that is rooted in growth, as important is to start thinking about what growth is about. Sure, as biologist Merkel could easily skip the lessons on Aristotle and Marx (admittedly GDR-education had not been perfect – AM is a showcase for failure) – and so she missed that it is necessary to move a bit further and look at the real meaning of development. Let us for instance refer to Aristotle. He contended that

if every tool, when summoned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it, just as the creations of Daedalus moved of themselves, or the tripods of Hephaestos went of their own accord to their sacred work, if the weavers‘ shuttles were to weave of themselves, then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers, or of slaves for the lords.

But indeed, Marx referred to this paragraph, writing in the first volume of The Capital (from which I took the previous quote):

Oh! those heathens! They understood, as the learned Bastiat, and before him the still wiser MacCulloch have discovered, nothing of Political Economy and Christianity. They did not, for example, comprehend that machinery is the surest means of lengthening the working day. They perhaps excused the slavery of one on the ground that it was a means to the full development of another. But to preach slavery of the masses, in order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus, might become ― eminent spinners, ― extensive sausage-makers, and ― influential shoe-black dealers, to do this, they lacked the bump of Christianity.

And this marks the point any debate on growth has to take as point of departure – the concrete situation of peoples lives rather than the abstract calculation of growth figures. A quick overview over developments shows at least two different things:

the growth, and in particular the extreme and rapid growth had been gong hand in hand with increasing inequalities;
the growth had been in many cases – and Greece is an exemple par excellence – only possible by diminishing indigenous potentials in favour of growth of national and international elites.

In this light, I surely could teach AM some basics in political economy and the course: That development is not about figures but about people in their societies. And the development of societies through and for the people.

Too late for her, I guess – though she should have enough money to pay the fees for the course – unfortunately Mr Orban and his FIDESZ easily succeeded with this program against democratic, accessible education. Still I hope: perhaps one or the other of my students will get into some kind of government position and show: ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE.

[1] The optimistic interpretation of the relative silence in Italy is that people may be afraid that Berlusconi could interpret protest as people calling him back into office (cannot find the article I read recently in some Italian paper); silence in Ireland is more due to the ongoing belief that god, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael freed the country from the British colonialists and thus god, will know when it is time to move towards a better world).

Time to Say Goodbye – Again

27 settembre 2012 da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, Peter's Log

Thank you, Auke, for publishing it: Time to say Goodbye. Again.
It links well to the first Time to say Good-bye.

I got several responses to it, to posting the text via e-mail, one speaking of

big decision [towards] more power … for being true to yourself

It is somewhat sad that ‘being oneself’ needs big decisions, and cannot be taken for granted everywhere and for everybody.

Beginnings – Going Astray

20 settembre 2012 da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, thoughts on life and its philosophy

It is the great time of the year again – at least I like it: the students are returning, or are just arriving at the university. For many a huge step, something like entering the ‘large world’, another step to adulthood.

The other day I had been standing with Michael and Paddy in the student centre, looking across campus where the freshers had been shown by their older mates how to get around. Well, somewhat oldish terms – and there is surely much of this in the mind: the freshers feeling like making a step towards independence, being a bit unsure about what all this about, the requirements and just …, well for many it will be the first time that they really leave the lap of their parent’s home …; the mates being proud that they can show a bit of what they learned already, showing a bit of their supremacy, and perhaps also a bit of their power: the abilities they achieved. And there the three of us are standing, talking about the way they and we actually go. Are we looking at students out there: the young people we have to teach – we the supervisors, feeling ‘super-wise’ …; are we looking at young colleagues with whom we will collaborate on this huge project which enlightenment failed to establish: a better world – a world which actually cannot be ‘established’ as such; rather a better world will always have to be a process, a movement of people coming together to make a world a common property (process of relational appropriation, as I define it – still grateful to Denisa: I brought this definition forward in class, elaborated it and … forgot the wording. She, at the time one of my Hungarian students, had all the notes from the classes …). Or are we looking at the future competitor on a market on which skills are traded, in societies and regions that aim on being

most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.

Although I am in general very much on the side of those who consider the glass being half-full, I am worried: I listened to last weeks negotiations in Kassel – the German Constitutional Court approving the ESM – in my opinion a decision strictly based on nationalist interests without offering any answer on the problem of Europe which faces the danger of falling apart; I listened to Barroso’s ‘State of the Union’ address at the same time, repeating shallow phrases from over the years, (leaving the bloomy phrases aside) calling for a stronger Europe – sure, I am not against a stronger Europe as such, though the question of the overall aims remains to be asked and answered; and I followed the elections in the Netherlands, the results of which came to many (and also to me) as a surprise, moving the country under the VVD towards a questionable Freedom and Democracy.

And I remember the other day colleagues talking about a high number of registrations for a course:

There are people out there who are interested. We just have to find a way to answer the demand ….

Well, there is definitely interest in education – and now I mean the education in the true sense: education as means of emancipation. And this is something we have to encourage, we have to fight for ways that allow this to happen: this kind of education and this kind of emancipation – not a matter of individuals’ demand but of societal necessity for which we have to create space.

For me, every new teaching period is such a challenge – not primarily a question of what to teach but more a question how we can learn together, how we can develop relevant research skills: brave openings.

May be I be it is an absurd idea. May be not.

Talking about absurdities: The other day a mail had been passed on to me, sent via the staff-exchange server – a former employee from UCC, now retired, talking about the fact needs must be met ‘even in retirement’ and offering the service of a Training and Development Company she set up. It is about More to Explore and Rethinking your Thinking. And courses are offered on the premises of UCC.

Well, it may be I should rethink my thinking, my optimism: A university that is claiming to be ‘Ireland’s first *****-university’, a university that leaves part of the work to be undertaken by retired staff, a university that is particularly proud of sports people as bearers of the academic torch, just recently Five sports people conferred with honorary doctorates. – Yes, well done lads.

I wish you all well in the current academic year!

Indeed – and I hope we can do better!!

Enigmas of Mastery – or Arts Challenges Academia

16 settembre 2012 da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log

A side remark – isn’t all this blog-epistle a side remark, personal reflections on various issues in which personal, social and societal issues conflate?

So then a short note on dialogue. There is perhaps a reason for talking about the master and bachelor in ARTS that we should not push aside without reflection – as social scientists in particular we are part of a complex social structure – its history in past, present and future. And though we are not independent, we are part of a process that we may consider as symphonic piece of war and peace (borrowing the title from Tolstoi). Monumental and complex, full of contradictions and thoroughly determined by our readiness to truly engage in looking for collective solutions. Yesterday I have had the opportunity to attend an exciting concert here in Munich – exciting not least as it presented a tensional line from Bach’s 5^th Brandenburgische Concert, passing Schubert’s 4^th Symphony (‘The Tragic’), leading to Strauss ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’. Being confronted with the latter, consequently with the highly problematic oeuvre by Wagner provoked to move further moving beyond the smooth integrity of the Court Society, overcoming the tragedy and crossing the borderline of nihilism – not by denying it but by looking for a synthesis, for instance offered in the magnificent masterpiece provided by Shostakovich in the Symphony No.12 in D minor, Op.112 ‘The Year 1917’ – Admittedly something one has to learn listening – Barenboim once had been teaching me to admire Shostakovich’s work. And admittedly revolutionary processes and ‘results of revolutions’ (which, of course, will always be processes themselves) have to be learned. And looking at processes of learning the words by Albert Schweitzer on Bach’s work gave to come to mind:

It is not about alternating between the Tutti and the Concertino. ; the different bodies are related to each other in an intrinsic tension, penetrate, differentiate and conflate for another time – and all this emerges from an unfathomable necessity, inherent in the art. … One gets the impression to really face what philosophy throughout all times presented as a higher occurrence, the unfolding of an idea, creating its contradiction in order to overcome it, creates from here a new contradiction, overcoming it again and so forth, until it returns to itself, after it went through all stages of life. It is the same impression of unfathomable necessity and enigmatic satisfaction while listening to these concerts, following the subject matter as it first presents itself in the Tutti, then being subject to enigmatic divisive powers, finally returning in the final Tutti again to its inner entity, coherence.

(quoted in Wolfgang Stähr, 2003: Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit – Konzerte von Arcangelo Corelli bis Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Berliner Philharmony Programmheft Nr. 25 zum 21.12.2003)

Wouldn’t this be a matter we should revive in academic culture? A Sunday visit in the Alte Pinakothek paradoxically confirmed this when I joined a new format of arts education: Cicerone. As much as it is about the utilisation of great speeches the visit showed so much that all this is about dialogue, with the paintings, even between the paintings, between the presenters and not least by including the visitors.

Yes, academic life, if it takes itself serious is about the mystery of mastery of arts.

Social Policy and Religion

31 agosto 2012 da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, works, projects, publications

There are things on this world we don’t know – and still we have an opinion, have our own approaches and …

… and much for the debate is either highly expert oriented and usually one-sided. Or it is informed by prejudices of one kind or another.

The present publication Social Policy and Religion, edited by Sibel Kalaycioglu and myself may serve to overcome the gap, giving some insight from very different stances on religion and also trying to contribute to a debate on the role of religion and religious organisations in the realm of social policy.

De Nieuwe Kerk and attac

29 luglio 2012 da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log

Can there be anything more appropriate than sitting in De Nieuwe Kerk, listening first to the smaller transeptorgel – while looking at the windows that depict the relationship between church, state and capital -, then the hoofdorgel – with this facing the established power, as later personalised by Napoleon Bonaparte, ruling between 1803 and 1813 The Netherlands – and preparing the SOAK-session on economic theories for next week, when going to the attac summer academy?
What is so often forgotten when discussing economic theories is the fact that they have to be seen in the historical context.
Karl Marx gives one example, writing in 1864 in the Inaugural Address
of the International Working Men’s Association:

This struggle about the legal restriction of the hours of labor raged the more fiercely since, apart from frightened avarice, it told indeed upon the great contest between the blind rule of the supply and demand laws which form the political economy of the middle class, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the working class. Hence the Ten Hours’ Bill was not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class.

This means not less that the solutions we are looking for today have to be the solutions for today …. – not simply claming moral behaviour within an amoral system, not looking for new Napoleonic leaders; but it is about solutions that are founded in and approproate to today’s development of the productive forces.

Why then de Nieuwe Kerk and attac? It is rather obvious: solutions that are founded in and approproate to today’s development of the productive forces means to look for ways ofdeveloping a new hegemony (or counter-hegemony). Is there any better place to think about it when looking at the old ones? Seeing where they had been successful and knowing where they failed? The bourgeoisie, surely, had been at some stage a progressive force – as Marx states in chapter 26 of the first volume of Capital:

Hence, the historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, …

He speaks of the chevaliers d’industrie and continues:

The industrial capitalists, these new potentates, had on their part not only to displace the guild masters of handicrafts, but also the feudal lords, the possessors of the sources of wealth. In this respect, their conquest of social power appears as the fruit of a victorious struggle both against feudal lordship and its revolting prerogatives, and against the guilds and the fetters they laid on the free development of production and the free exploitation of man by man.

And today we see not amoral hoarding etc., we see that the accumulation by dispossession (Harvey) – or accumulation by appropriation of all pores of life is again such a fetter of new developments – cum grano salis what Marx said in chapter 3:

The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

This is what we truly need today – and reflecting thoday’s hegemony.

Categoria: academic life – living in academia