Concrescence: The Australasian Journal of Process Thought

The Neo-Liberal Assault on Australian Universities and the Future of Democracy: The Philosophical Failure of a Nation

Arran Gare and Cultural Inquiry, Swinburne University [email protected]

Abstract—The transformation of universities from public institutions to transnational business enterprises has met with less resistance in Australia than elsewhere. Yet this transformation undermines the founding principles of Australian democracy. This democracy emerged in opposition to the classical form of free market liberalism that the neo-liberals have revived. The logical unfolding of social liberalism in Australia underpinned the development of both the system of wage fixing and the idea of public education as conditions for democracy. The lack of resistance to the destruction of democracy, as it was originally understood in Australia, by successive neo- liberal governments has been due largely to the decadent state of Australian universities. These had come to be dominated by a crude form of empiricist , making Australia peculiarly vulnerable to the ideologues of global free markets and the power of transnational corporations who have sought to transform language to equate the dominance of all facets of life by markets as a defence of democracy. Only through a recovery of the philosophical tradition upon which Australia was founded and the development of this tradition through process , it is argued, can genuine democracy and Australia’s public institutions, be defended. Keywords—Australia, Democracy, education, Universities, , T.H. Green, Deakin, Murdoch, John Anderson, globalization, Wilhelm von Humboldt, neo-liberalism, process metaphysics.

The Liberal Party Member of the Federal House of Australian Schools Commission and the Tertiary Representatives, Ian McPhee, was wrong when he Education Commission, have been abolished. More characterized the changes to Australian media laws broadly, the undermining of work conditions for in 1989, allowing more concentrated media employees, eliminating job security and demanding ownership, as ‘the last nail in the coffin of increasing work hours, have deprived most people democracy’. This was only part of a raft of changes of the economic security and time to participate in which have undermined democracy in Australia. political life. Perhaps the most insidious and There is no doubt that the change to media laws has corrosive change, however, has been the had dramatic effects. It has resulted in control by transformation of the education system. If there has the Murdoch Press of more than 70% of readership, been a last nail in the coffin of democracy, it has the almost complete elimination of investigative been this. journalism by newspapers and the taming of Justifying this claim, however, is no easy matter. journalists, whose employment positions have been People have come to accept that if we have two rendered precarious. At the same time the political parties contending for the emoluments of Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) has office by making slightly different promises at been neutered. Less commented upon but perhaps election time, we have a democracy. And freedom more significant, the professionalism of state and is now equated with having one’s life and property federal civil services has been undermined and their protected and free from governments to ability to function crippled by politicization, choose for oneself what to buy or sell on the downsizing, outsourcing and endless restructurings. market, including who to employ and who to work Statutory commissions which provided objective for. It is not difficult to expose the incoherence of to governments and the public, such as equating democracy with political parties the Resource Assessment Commission, the competing for votes to achieve office in a society of

Concrescence 2006 Vol.7 pp.20-40 ISSN 1445-4297 © Arran Gare, 2006. Published on-line by the Australasian Association for Process Thought, a member of the International Process Network. THE NEO-LIBERAL ASSAULT ON AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 21 unconstrained markets. Democracy means, universities to business enterprises, they have most minimally, power in the hands of the people. It reason to oppose such subversion. But academics implies equality of power. Unconstrained markets educated the politicians and other power brokers inevitably lead to the concentration of wealth. And who have embraced market deregulation, based wealth is power. In an inegalitarian society where government on the ‘user pays’ principle, debunked elections are themselves conceived as an extension traditional notions of education and reduced of the market, politics is controlled by those with education to a business. It is not only the economics wealth (in the present case, mostly transnational faculties which have been responsible for the new corporations). So the domination of society by free political directions. The core assumptions markets must undermine democracy, and with it, underlying neo-classical economics, that humans freedom. And it is not difficult to find empirical are nothing but complex machines moved by evidence of this. But few people now have the appetites and aversions, that life is nothing but a capacity to question this debased notion of struggle for survival and sensuous gratification, and democracy or to take seriously or even envisage the that progress occurs through the struggle for possibility of a more robust form of democracy or a survival, is part of the dominant world-view which more substantial form of freedom. The equation of has been inculcated into generations of Australian democracy with free markets now frames every students by its academics. Traditions of thought public debate so that even those opposing its rejecting these assumptions have only a small implications have come to accept it as the frame foothold in Australian universities. And academics within which they must argue.1 traditionally (although with some exceptions) have been strongly cosmopolitan and suspicious of the My contention is that this equation of democracy nation-state,2 the upholding of which is the basic with the free operation of the market, now condition for defending its public institutions. Some embraced by the dominant factions in the major academics have defended, and most have acceded political parties in Australia and accepted by the to, the neo-liberal characterization of democracy general population, is relatively new. It is an and freedom. In the face of this, conservative ideology, forged by right-wing intellectuals after academics, defending the role of the university as the Second World War, promoted by media barons cultivating ‘the life of the mind’, have been able to and successfully promulgated throughout the world be dismissed with ease. as part of a struggle by a new transnational class associated with transnational corporations and One might have expected a more effective response institutions to subvert real democracy and from radical academics; but particularly in undermine real freedom in order to extend their Australia, radical intellectuals have been in a state power. As in George Orwell’s dystopia, 1984, this of crisis for some time. Contemptuous of the class has learnt that power can be gained by achievements of social democracy and having lost inverting the meaning of words, so they have their faith in the proletariat as saviours, many redefined democracy to portray the subversion of former Marxists have been contentedly discontent democratic institutions as the advance of to exhibit their superiority by pointing out that the democracy and freedom. In few places has this new inexorable advance of capitalism must inevitably international ruling class been more successful than dissolve national communities and commodify in Australia, and to a considerable extent, this is due knowledge, rendering past ideas of the university to the successful subversion of the education untenable. An even more cynical attitude has system. But given the perversion of language, how emerged among academics in the humanities, the could such a contention be defended? area most threatened by the new business model of the university. For highly reflective The role of Australian academics in this ideological poststructuralists, ‘the envisaged reshaping of offensive against democracy highlights the universities is seen as part of the intrinsic problem. Academics, at least those in the momentum of structures to which all—actors, humanities and social sciences, should have the onlookers and victims—are equally subjected.’3 clearest understanding of what is happening, and suffering grievously from the reduction of

2 1 This is examined and combated by Robert Birrell, A Nation For an analysis of ‘frames’ and how the have of Our Own: Citizenship and Nation-building in Federation gained ideological dominance through controlling how political Australia, Melbourne: Longman, 1995. 3 debates are framed, see George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Bernd Hüppauf, ‘Universities and Postmodernism, The Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, Green Paper and Some Responses’, Scholars and Melbourne, Scribe Publications, 2005. Entrepreneurs: The Universities in Crisis, Simon Cooper,

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ARRAN GARE 22

Incredulous of grand narratives, particularly grand It has become a major undertaking to show that the narratives of emancipation, these academics have transformation of the education system is accepted as inevitable and even liberating the undermining democracy because people no longer dominance of the rules of economic exchange and understand the words needed to argue this. We live ‘deconstructed’ the language through which such in a culture where, as Ulrich Beck aptly put it: developments could be opposed.4 If there is no ‘Concepts are empty: they no longer grip, essence to a university, if a university is a structure illuminate or inflame. The greyness lying over the without a centre, there is no reason why its world […] may also come from a kind of verbal supplement, the money making activities of its mildew.’9 To free ourselves from this verbal senior managers, should not become its end. Since mildew and to reframe public debates on education the Second World War the importance of education (and almost every other significant issue), it is for democracy has barely been raised as an issue in necessary to recover the original meaning of Australia, although it is difficult to see how the idea democracy, to show what it was, why people fought that education should be publicly funded and be and died for it, how they extended it, transformed it anything more than training people so that they can in order to overcome its deficiencies and adapted it earn more income can be defended except on this to new conditions. It is necessary to revive a basis.5 The reason for this appears to be that most moribund tradition and a moribund language. How radical academics also have acceded to the neo- can this be done? It requires, as Paul Ricoeur liberal redefinition of democracy.6 Language has argued, historical narrative, that is, a re-emplotment been so successfully subverted and frames of debate of the stories through which we link our present so successfully controlled in Australia that many with the past and the future, to liberate ‘the radical intellectuals have quite literally ‘lost the unfulfilled future of the past.’ And as he noted: plot’.7 They remain masters of critique, but for the It is principally the founding events of a most part they only know how to oppose. They historical community which should be submitted have largely lost their capacity to uphold any to this critical reading in order to release the positive vision or to stand for anything, let alone 8 burden of expectation that the subsequent course inspire others to do so. Consequently, they can no of its history carried and then betrayed. The past longer defend even their own institutions. is a cemetery of promises which have not been kept. It is a matter of bringing them back to life like the dry bones of the valley described in the 10 John Hinkson and Geoff Sharp (eds), North Carlton, Arena prophecy of Ezekiel (Ch.37). Publications, 2002., p.13. 4 To extricate ourselves from verbal mildew and This has been shown brilliantly by Hüppauf, ‘Universities and Postmodernism’, pp.11-33. bring back to life the narratives which inspired the 5 The issue has been raised briefly by John Cain and John struggle for democracy, ‘democracy’ needs to be Hewitt in Off Course: From Public Place to Market Place at understood in relation to the founding events and Melbourne University, Melbourne, Scribe Publications, 2004, as part of the global struggle for p.123. 11 6 democracy. An honourable exception to this is Peter Vintila who influenced the present work. See his ‘Markets, Morals and Manifestos’ and ‘Democracy and the Politics of Counterfeit Nationhood’ in Markets, Morals & Manifestos, Peter Vintila, John Phillimore & Peter Newman (eds), Murdoch, Institute for THE PRESENT STATE OF EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA Science and Technology Policy, 1992. Vintila lost his academic position at after the Dawkins To begin with, though, we need to look at what has reforms and is now campaigning for a new university for the happened to education in Australia. On the surface poorer eastern suburbs of Perth. 7 of it, it would seem people are being better Implicit in the notion of ‘losing the plot’ is an appreciation that actions are lived stories and that stories consist of actions, and that it is these lived stories which constitute groups, political movements and communities. On this see 9 Arran Gare, ‘Narratives and Culture: The Role of Stories in Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization? trans. Patrick Camiller, Self-Creation’, Telos, 122, Winter, 2002, pp.80-100. Cambridge, Polity Press, 2000, p.8. 8 10 The Australian left does not have a monopoly on such self- Paul Ricoeur, ‘Reflections on a new ethos for Europe’, in defeating ideas. As Richard Rorty noted, the American left Paul Ricoeur: The of Action, London, , see themselves ‘as a saving remnant’ who ‘see through 1966, p.8f. 11 nationalist rhetoric to the ghastly of contemporary For a broader history of the struggle for democracy, America’ but ‘this insight does not move them to formulate a showing what democracy has meant at different times, see legislative program, to join a political movement, or to share in Arran Gare, ‘Democracy and Education: Defending the a national hope.’ (Richard Rorty, Achieving our Country: Humboldtian University and the Democratic Nation-State as Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America, Cambridge, Institutions of the Radical Enlightenment’, Concrescence: Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998, p.8). Australasian Journal of Process Thought, Vol.6, 2005.

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THE NEO-LIBERAL ASSAULT ON AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 23 educated than ever. Over the last thirty years we job security. They have been reduced to employees have moved from a situation in which only 10% of whose sole basis for employment is that they can school leavers undertook higher education and less generate a surplus of income to the universities over than 40% any form of tertiary education, to a their costs of employment. There has been a situation in which 40% of school leavers enter massive increase in the numbers and salaries of tertiary education and 80% of all people commence senior management, while much of the teaching is some form of tertiary education. However, during now done by ‘sessional’ staff employed as day this time real funding for higher education through labourers. In 2001, only 37.5 per cent of university taxation actually declined. It dropped 4.6% in real staff was engaged in teaching.15 terms in 22 years, from 1.43% of GDP in 1975-6 to All this has been associated with massive changes 0.89% of GDP in 1997-8.12 This meant a dramatic in what is taught.16 While overall there appear to be fall in spending per student. After having been more only minor changes in the number of academic staff than halved between 1975 and 1996, government employed, this hides the reductions in staff in what funding per student load (in 2000-01 prices) fell used to be the Science and Arts Faculties. While from $A10,467 in 1996 to $A7,797 in 2001, and it there has been a massive growth in business studies, has fallen further since then. Higher Education with the ‘discipline’ of marketing having grown Contribution Scheme (HECS) fees since 1989 have faster than any other,17 disciplines in Science and supplemented university income, but this only Arts Faculties have been severely cut back or even covered one-third of the gap between 1977-78 eliminated. Fifty per cent staff reductions in these funding and 1997-98 funding. Some of the shortfall disciplines have been common, and some literature, has been made up through Tertiary and Further classics and language departments have been closed Education (TAFE) charges and HECS and tertiary down. In the 1990s, Monash University reduced the institutions have also sought to generate money by teaching staff of its mathematics department from attracting fee paying foreign students, running fee 50 to 25 while its physics department lost an even paying diploma and post-graduate courses and higher proportion of its staff members. Philosophy attempting to attract research grants from business. staffing at Swinburne University was reduced by But this has not made up the shortfall. Student/staff 60% and politics was reduced by over 70%. ratios indicate the fall in real funding, increasing Generally, historical knowledge is being erased. from 14.2 students per academic staff member in The assault on these academic staff has often been 1993 to 20.4 in 2002.13 undertaken through a management strategy of The change in Australian universities, however, has divide and rule. Those staff who have been willing been far more dramatic than these figures reveal. As to collaborate with management in retrenching noted, universities are now run as business colleagues, eliminating subjects, employing enterprises selling services to clients.14 Rather than ‘sessionals’ (people employed on a day by day being public institutions, they are increasingly run basis) and lowering standards have been rewarded as transnational business corporations. Education with light teaching loads, extra study leave, grants for the most part is seen as investment by students for travel, and promotions, while those opposing in training, and more importantly, in getting a such policies if they have not been forced out of the certificate, with the hope of generating profits universities are frequently declared non-strategic, through higher incomes later in life. The rest is lumbered with extra teaching loads and declared mere entertainment. Providing education is no ineligible for sabbatical leave, almost eliminating longer the end for universities; it is a means to their capacity to undertake research. generate profits. Power has been concentrated in the Inevitably, there has been a collapse in standards. hands of management. Academics have been This became evident in the Senate inquiry into largely removed from the governing bodies of higher education of 2001: ‘Universities in Crisis: universities, the university councils, and have lost Report on Higher Education’. Professor Anthony Thomas of Adelaide University claimed that ‘To 12 Simon Marginson, ‘Towards a Politics of the Enterprise University’, Scholars and Entrepreneurs, p.114f. 13 15 Simon Marginson, ‘They make a desolation and they call it Marginson , ‘They make a desolation and they call it F.A. F.A. Hayek: Australian Universities on the Brink of the Nelson Hayek ‘, p.32. 16 Reforms’, Australian Book Review, 260, April, 2004, p.32. On this, see Stuart MacIntyre, ‘”Funny You Should Ask for 14 On the nature of the transformation, see Simon Marginson That”: Higher Education as a Market’, Scholars and and Mark Considine, The Enterprise University: Power, Entrepreneurs, pp.79-89. 17 Governance and Reinvention in Australia, Cambridge: Marginson, ‘Towards a Politics of the Enterprise Cambridge University Press, 2000. University’, p.121.

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ARRAN GARE 24 reveal to physicists at MIT or Berkeley the content knowledge, the kind of knowledge people need to of an Australian undergraduate physics course function as citizens of a democracy and to carry on would be to invite derision.’18 Huge falls in the project of nation-building. standards were noted in chemistry. Monash What this means is that despite the vastly greater University was using a textbook in third year amount of time people are spending enrolled in designed for first year undergraduates in Britain. education institutions, people generally are less well Quantum theory, once taught in first year educated and basically less cognitively developed chemistry, is now regarded as too difficult for than they were in the 1960s.21 Given the fall in students in third year. It seems, however, that it is teaching standards and the loss of interest in and the subjects that are more difficult to benchmark erosion of facilities for adult self-education, that have suffered the greatest declines in standards. possibly, as in USA where illiteracy rates have The culture of universities has changed. A high soared, people are now are less well educated than proportion of students have successfully been they were in the 1930s.22 They are less able to think inculcated with and lost interest in abstractly and, more importantly, without historical education as such, and academic staff who take a knowledge or even the beginnings of an integrated stand against the fall in academic standards are world-view, they have no capacity to put anything likely to lose their jobs. The government is aware of in perspective and therefore little curiosity. this, and despite the rhetoric of autonomy for universities, is devoting more and more of the shrinking education budget to monitoring what universities are doing, further exacerbating the AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRACY problem.19 From the perspective of rational choice theorists This collapse of standards in universities is and neo-classical economists, there is nothing paralleled by a collapse of standards in schools wrong with this: this is how people are assumed to which have been subject to similar be for the market (including the political market) to deprofessionalisation of teaching staff and a similar function properly. This is all that is required for reorientation of education around training people democracy. So, what has been lost? To assess the for work. Some idea of how low standards now are situation it is necessary to look at the history of can be gained from what happens when high school Australian democracy. students educated in Austria or Singapore come to Australia federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia: they are put up two grades. Most Australia after a long campaign for democracy at a frightening is the interaction between secondary time when the struggle for democracy was in the and higher education. The Senate Inquiry 23 ascendant. One impetus for democracy, Committee identified one of the most serious particularly in Victoria, was the Chartist movement problems in education being ‘the downward spiral of the 1840s which had a major influence on the of quality standards that results from inadequate Eureka Stockade rebellion of 1854 and its school preparation, compounded by diminished standards at university, which are then fed back into 20 21 the schools.’ The effects of this have been In Britain an investigation of 10,000 11- and 12- year olds exacerbated by the reduced time parents spend with found that they are ‘now on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago” in cognitive and children as their hours of work have increased. conceptual development (Joseph Crace, ‘Children are less University staff almost universally are claiming a able than they used to be’, The Guardian, Tuesday, January massive drop in standards over the last four or five 24, 2006). This was attributed by Professor Michael Shayer, years, despite official figures claiming the contrary. the person who carried out the research, to more time spent watching television and playing computer games. With And what is most clearly evident is the collapse of parents in Australia forced to work longer hours and using the ability to think conceptually and a decline in television and computer games to mind their children, there is likely to have been a similar decline in intelligence. general knowledge, particularly historical 22 47 per cent of Americans do not know that the earth revolves around the sun in a year, and 17% think that the sun 18 revolves around the earth each day. In 1930, 80% of blacks Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and 98% of whites over 14 were literate in USA compared to and Education References Committee, Universities in Crisis: 56% of blacks and 83% of whites over 16 being literate in Report on Higher Education, September, 2001, p.150. 1992. See Regna Lee Wood, ‘The Dumbbell Curve’, SAT 19 See David Murray & Brian Dollery, ‘Institutional Backgrounder, 1996, p.14f. Breakdown? An Exploratory Taxonomy of Australian http://www.ocpathink.org/Education/dbellwww.htm. 23 University Failure’, Prometheus, 32: 4, December 2005: 385- See the lectures in The Distinctive Foundations of 398. Australian Democracy, Papers on Parliament Number 42, 20 Senate Committee, Universities in Crisis, p.155. Department of the Senate, Canberra, Dec. 2004.

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THE NEO-LIBERAL ASSAULT ON AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 25 aftermath.24 The first person to promote the idea of something worth doing or enjoying, and that, too, an Australian federation, however, was the something that we do or enjoy in common with Tasmanian anti-transportation-of-convicts cam- others.’ True freedom, Green argued, consists in paigner, John West (1809-1873). West published pursuing the common good which augments the seventeen essays on federation entitled ‘Union of freedom of all people. As Green continued: ‘When the Colonies’ in 1854 and continued writing we measure the progress of a society by its growth political essays for Fairfax newspapers to promote in freedom, we measure it by the increasing this end and develop his political ideas until he died development and exercise on the whole of those in 1873. In these he discussed the problems of other powers of contributing to social good with which nations: Britain, USA, Canada, the Dutch Republic we believe the members of the society to be after 1648, the Swiss federation and constitutional endowed; in short, by the greater power on the part experiments in New Zealand. In presenting his of the citizens as a body to make the most and best vision for Australia he argued for a hierarchy of of themselves.’29 The function of the State, elected authorities—voluntary organizations, local crystallizing in its institutions the for the government, state government and federal common good, is to provide the conditions for government. Ultimately, he called for a world people to develop their full potential as social federation. While upholding this, he called for as individuals.30 So, instead of being seen as a law much decentralization of power as possible, enforcer and upholder of contracts, the State was maintaining the principle that ‘No system of seen to have an ethical mission to nurture the government can or ought to be satisfactory which potential of its citizens. Developing this potential is does anything for the people which … takes out of only possible through participation in social life— the hands of a town, a district or a Colony, affairs doing things worth doing in common with others. which … may be properly left to the judgement or That is, Green argued for an active citizenship, that even the caprice of those concerned.’25 To ‘suppress is, for democracy, in opposition to the anti- lower order democratic institutions’, West believed, democratic philosophy of liberals in the tradition of ‘was to prevent training and acculturation in Locke. Liberty, for Green, meant full participation democratic principles and practice.’26 in the life of the community, and it was only when such ideas had displaced the earlier form of While these ideas provided a starting point, towards liberalism that liberalism came to be equated with the end of the nineteenth century Australian support for democracy. political thought was immensely enriched by first, the ideas of John Stuart Mill, then the new liberal or The social liberals inspired by Green’s philosophy ‘social’ liberal philosophy inspired by the British undertook a moral critique of the barriers to liberty Idealist philosopher, T.H. Green (1836-1882).27 posed by poverty and ignorance. They Following Hegel, Green had attacked the atomic demonstrated empirically that poverty was socially of economic theory and the equation produced and systemic in nature, not the fault of of liberty with freedom to make contracts.28 ‘When individuals. L.T. Hobhouse and J.A. Hobson31 we speak of freedom’ he wrote, ‘we mean a argued that wealth was created by society rather positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying than individuals, and that the State owed its citizens the means of maintaining a civilized life, a debt,

Hobhouse argued, ‘not adequately discharged by 24 See John Molony, ‘Eureka and the Prerogatives of the leaving him to secure such wages as he can in the People’, The Distinctive Foundations of Australian haggling of the market’.32 Hobhouse also called for Democracy, pp.59-70. 25 John West, Essay I: 29, cited by Patricia Fitzgerald Ratcliff OAM in ‘The Australians Are One: John West guiding colonial 29 Australia to nationhood’, The Distinctive Foundations of T.H. Green, ‘Lecture on “Liberal Legislation and Freedom Australian Democracy, p.109. of Contract”’ in T.H. Green: Lectures on the Principles of 26 Ratcliff, ‘The Australians Are One’, p.109. Political Obligation and Other Writings, ed. Paul Harris and 27 John Morrow, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, The extent of this influence has been shown by Marian p.199. Sawer in ‘The Ethical State: Social Liberalism and the Critique 30 of Contract’, Australian Historical Studies, April, 2000, Vol.31, Green developed his theory of the State in ‘Principles of Issue 115, 67-90, and Marian Sawer, The Ethical State? Political Obligation’, T.H. Green, pp.13-193. On the function of Social Liberalism in Australia, Melbourne, Melbourne the State, see esp. 106ff. 31 University Press, 2003, building on work of Craig Campbell, Hobhouse and Hobson distanced themselves from Green’s Tim Rowse, Michael Rose, Bill Brugger, Stuart Macintyre, Idealism, but retained his opposition to atomic individualism. Peter Beilharz and Gregory Melleuish. See Peter Clarke, Liberalism & Social , 28 Green was also strongly influenced by Kant, but his social Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p.56 & 193f. 32 and were Hegelian, enriched by his Cited Sawer, ‘The Ethical State’, p.72 from L.T. Hobhouse, knowledge of Fichte who had strongly influenced Hegel. Liberalism, London: Williams & Norgate, 1911, p.164.

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ARRAN GARE 26 wealth taxes to ‘quench the antisocial ardour for designated as ‘nurseries of practical and fearless unmeasured wealth, for social power and the vanity idealism’, and the British Idealists looked to of display.’33 The State is needed to redistribute Australia to confirm their beliefs.37 Consequently, income and wealth to liberate people from the the founders of Australia were scornful of the idea impediments to participation in community life and that freedom could be gained through the free to create a healthy community. The inequality and operation of the market. Freedom, they believed, poverty engendered by laissez-faire economics came through the development of a democratic were seen to be bad not on utilitarian grounds, but State. The State was seen to have a duty to remove because it made it impossible for people to develop the obstacles to the full development of the their potential and function effectively as citizens of potential of its citizens to freedom, most notably, a democracy. The older laissez-faire liberalism was poverty and ignorance. As David Boucher pointed deemed to be theoretically and practically obsolete. out, ‘The argument in Australia was not between and anti-socialism, but between different If people were to participate in political life, then it degrees of socialism.’38 was also necessary to overcome their ignorance. As David Boucher noted in his introduction to an It was in the service of freedom that they set up the anthology of the British Idealists, ‘the Idealists … system of conciliation and arbitration in labour explicitly and fervently linked democratic reforms contracts to ensure a ‘fair go’ for workers. Bernard with the need for reforms in education … Wise, the author of the New South Wales Industrial advocating that at all levels access to knowledge Arbitration Act 1901 who assisted in the drafting of was a concomitant on the extension of the federal Conciliation and Arbitration Bill, had democracy.’34 The reason was straightforward: been a student of Green at Oxford. He argued that ‘Only an educated and enfranchised electorate there could be no freedom of contract where people could exercise the duties of citizenship were unequal, and defended unions on the grounds responsibly.’35 Green had proposed a system of that ‘when a labourer came to make a bargain about scholarships that would enable working class or disposal of his labour, he was only “free” to do so middle class boys to take advantage of every level when he was active in combination with others.’39 of education, including university. John Caird, the The federal Bill was introduced by , brother of the neo-Hegelian philosopher Edward another social liberal. In the second reading, Deakin Caird, founded the Association for the Higher claimed: ‘No measures ever submitted to any Education of Women, while Edward waged another legislature offer greater prospects of the campaign to admit women to degrees when he establishment of social and of the removal of became Master of Balliol at Oxford. The social inequalities than do those which are based upon the liberals also called for free public libraries and principle of conciliation and arbitration.’40 The galleries and set up the Workers’ Educational defining of Australian social liberalism was Association (WEA) to educate, and to facilitate and the 1907 Harvester Judgement of Mr Justice promote the education of, the working class. The Higgins, also imbued with the philosophy of social WEA executive included representatives from liberalism (although he was also influenced by the universities, trade unions and the co-operative Fabians). This judgement set the principle of movement. Upholding the Humboldtian tradition of determining the basic wage by reference not to education, classes were based on tutorial what the market could bear, but the provision of a discussions in which university tutors learned from fair living standard required for ‘living in a the of the participants rather than civilized community’ for a worker and his family.41 lecturing to them. That is, it was the wage necessary not merely to survive but also to function as a citizen of a The leading figures involved in setting up Australia democracy with all the obligations to participate in as a federation (Australia was formed as a federation in 1901) were part of this movement of social liberalism, having been influenced directly or indirectly by Green.36 The Australian colonies were of Australia’, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.51, No.3, Jul.-Sep., 1990: 423-452. 37 Sawer, The Ethical State? p.31; Boucher, p.444f. 33 38 Cited ibid., p.73 from Hobhouse, p.201. Boucher, p.447. 34 39 David Boucher, ‘Introduction’, The British Idealists, Cited Sawer, ‘The Ethical State’, p.81 from NSW Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p.xxvii. Parliamentary Debates, 4 July, 1900, p.641. 35 40 Ibid., p.xxviii. Cited ibid., p.81 from Debates, Australia, House of 36 See ibid.; Sawer, The Ethical State? esp. Ch.2; and David Representatives, 1903, 15, p.2868. 41 Boucher, ‘Practical : Henry Jones’s Lecture Tour Cited ibid. p.82 .

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THE NEO-LIBERAL ASSAULT ON AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 27 the community entailed by this function. Endorsing The Australian social liberals campaigned for Green’s critique of the notion of contract among education generally as essential to democracy. In people of unequal power, Higgins averred that 1867 the Victorian Attorney General, George where the employee is concerned, the so called Higinbotham, had called for the provision of ‘freedom of contract’ is in reality ‘despotism in universal state education from elementary education contract’. He went on to proclaim that ‘this Court is through grammar schools to university in order to empowered to fix a minimum wage as a check on develop the capacity for democratic citizenship.48 the despotic power.’42 When freedom of contract The call was taken up by social liberal academics was referred to in the Harvester Case, he famously and acted upon by social liberal politicians. Francis interjected: ‘like the freedom of contract between Anderson (1858-1941), who absorbed Green’s the wolf and the lamb’.43 As Marian Sawer noted: ideas from his mentor at the University of Glasgow, ‘Those involved in the development of the Edward Caird, migrated to Australia in 1886. After arbitration system generally shared this contempt having been involved in various social-liberal for those who placed so-called economic laws reform projects, he took up a lectureship in above the social rights of the individual.’44 For philosophy at the University of Sydney in 1888, and Higgins, as for all the social liberals, ‘real freedom’ in 1890 became the Challis professor of and of the individual can only be achieved through mental philosophy, a position he held until 1921. participating in a collective will oriented to the Along with defending Green’s Idealist philosophy, common good. he promoted the new science of sociology and called for a chair in sociology at the University of Trade unions were promoted not merely as a way of Sydney. With his wife Maybanke who had been strengthening the bargaining position of workers, president of the Womanhood Suffrage League in but as ‘the most accessible forum for the active the 1890s, he worked in the Kindergarten Union citizenship of male wage-earners.’45 Unions and the WEA. The Andersons also campaigned for themselves were to provide a practical education for the proper training and certification of teachers, democracy, although this needed to be augmented resulting in the establishment of a chair of by other forms of education. Along with promoting education at the University of Sydney and of a unions, Higgins also supported the Australian teachers’ college and kindergarten training branch of the WEA, and social liberals campaigned college.49 Another social liberal, Alexander Mackie, to have public libraries and art galleries opened on became the first principal of the new teacher’s Sunday for those who were trying to educate college. themselves. The close association between education and unionism was noted in a WEA Social liberal ideas on education were promulgated textbook: ‘In the practical exercise of citizenship, vigorously by Walter Murdoch (1874-1970). the average worker has more opportunity of Murdoch taught at The College, Warrnambool developing his civic capacity than are members of before Professor of English (in 1912) at any other class. Through his trade union, friendly and later Chancellor of the University of Western society, co-operative store and political leagues, he Australia. Subsequently, Murdoch University was learns much that enriches his citizenship’.46 The named after him. Reviewing in the Argus J.H. second director of the WEA in New South Wales, Muirhead’s lectures on Green, Murdoch wrote that G.V. Portus, many years later summed up the aims soon even the man in the street would know who of adult education as ‘encouraging individual Green was and what his name stood for. Murdoch development’ and ‘educating for citizenship’. This set about expounding Green’s ideas about the State. involved developing in each individual ‘the will Attacking the false antithesis between state and and, if it can, the power to modify that society individual, he wrote in Loose Leaves: where change is necessary to secure the proper 47 A man can attain his supreme good only as the development of the individuals who live in it.’ citizen of a state; and the whole function of the state is to remove the obstacles which hinder a man from realizing himself. Men can realize 42 Loc.cit. 43 Loc.cit. 44 Loc.cit. 45 Ibid., p.84. 46 48 Cited ibid., p.84. Birrell, A Nation of Our Own, p.48. 47 49 Cited Sawer, ‘The Ethical State’, p.77 from G.V. Portus, His most influential address on education was published as Happy Highways, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, Francis Anderson, The Public School System of New South 1953, p.203. Wales, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1901.

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themselves only by attaining a good which is to him.’56 State intervention was defended as common to themselves and other men.50 necessary to increase people’s liberty, which In 1903 Murdoch published The Struggle for Murdoch argued, could be measured by their real opportunities, or as he put it: ‘not as freedom from, Freedom, a book written for schools, in which he 57 argued that such self-realization requires the liberty but as freedom to’. Again, he stressed the duty of of and democracy within one’s society. Now that the state to provide public education: ‘The supreme the struggles for liberty and democracy have need, for a self-governing state, is the need of a triumphed (struggles which began with the Norman body of enlightened and thoughtful citizens; men Conquest) ‘it is obviously our first duty as citizens and women trained to reflect, to reason and to 51 observe; trained also to be masters of themselves, to to learn to govern.’ In a representative democracy, 58 responsible government is ‘government by public control their passions, to do their duty.’ As Sawer opinion’, so, ‘a citizen’s first duty is to get into the noted, through Murdoch’s popular writings ‘a generation of Australians were to be inculcated with way of forming right opinions on matters that 59 concern the welfare of the State.’52 This is the prime Green’s views of the state.’ reason why the State must provide public If there was a single figure who was the founding education. As he continued, father of the Australian federation, it was Alfred If the people are to govern, it is necessary that the Deakin (1856-1919). Deakin was not only the main people be educated; therefore the State provides architect of the constitution but also the dominant the best education available, and insists that all its political figure in the first decade of the 60 citizens shall take advantage of the education Federation. Deakin, as noted, was a leading social provided. … Every boy or girl who puts whole- liberal and characterized himself as an ‘ultra- hearted diligence into school work is not only Radical’.61 To begin with, he was more closely learning to be a good citizen in the future, but is a aligned with the Labour Party, although later he good citizen already.53 was forced into an alliance with his erstwhile conservative opponents, the supporters of free This book went through many editions and was trade. Deakin only enunciated his political widely used in schools. In 1912, Murdoch philosophy briefly,62 but had a deep interest in published his best-selling civics textbook, The philosophy, and some idea of his philosophical Australian Citizen: An Elementary Account of Civic views can be ascertained from works he studied and Rights and Duties (which was also revised and from those he befriended.63 Most of his large library reprinted many times). Here he argued that liberty consisted of works in philosophy, from the Ancient ‘is an essential condition of the best kind of life; Greeks onwards. He befriended Walter Murdoch in that is the principle underlying democratic 1905, supporting his promotion of civics education, government.’54 Murdoch proclaimed ‘the aim of the lauding while offering some minor criticisms of his best government is to make the best kind of life book, The Australian Citizen, and offering crucial possible to all. It seeks the common good.’55 In support for his application for professorship to the dramatic contrast to the views of the former Federal University of Western Australia.64 When the neo- Minister for Education, Brendan Nelson, who claimed in a Four Corners television program that education should be seen as a privilege, Murdoch 56 argued that ‘the state is the means by which society Walter Murdoch, The Australian Citizen: An Elementary Account of Civic Rights and Duties, Melbourne: Whitcombe tries to help every individual member to realize his and Tombs, p.14. 57 highest possibilities—to lead the best life possible Ibid., p.208. 58 Ibid., p.75. 59 Sawer, ‘The Ethical State’, p.78. 60 For a biography of Deakin, see Walter Murdoch, Alfred Deakin: A Sketch, London: Constable & Co. Ltd, 1923. For a sketch of Deakin, see Stuart Macintyre, ‘Alfred Deakin: A 50 centenary tribute’, in The Distinctive Foundations of Australian Cited by Sawer, The Ethical State? p.44 from Walter Democracy, pp.1-11. On Deakin’s political policies, see Murdoch, Loose Leaves, Melbourne: George Robertson and Birrell, A Nation of Our Own, p.173ff. Co., 1910, p.64f. 61 51 See Murdoch, Alfred Deakin, p.124. Ibid., p.236. 62 52 Alfred Deakin, ‘What is Liberalism?’, Age, 19 March, 1895. Ibid., p.237f. 63 53 See Judith Hartley, ‘Alfred Deakin - My Grandfather’s Ibid., p.238f. Legacy’, The Alfred Deakin Lectures 2001, ABC Radio 54 Walter Murdoch, The Struggle for Freedom, rev. ed. National, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/deakin/. st 64 Melbourne: Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd, 1 ed. 1903, p.210. See Walter Murdoch and Alfred Deakin, Books and Men: 55 Ibid., p.209. Letters and Comments 1900-1910, ed. J.A. La Nauze and

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Hegelian philosopher Sir Henry Jones, the become meaningful. Kelley Parker summarized successor of Edward Caird in the chair of moral Royce’s conclusions: philosophy at the University of Glasgow, undertook To lead a morally significant life, one’s actions a lecture tour of Australia in 1908 to promote must express a self-consciously asserted will. Idealism, Deakin competed with Murdoch over who 65 They must contribute toward realizing a plan of should host him to lunch. Deakin later life, a plan that is itself unified by some freely corresponded with Murdoch about Green’s and chosen aim. Such an aim and its corresponding 66 Jones’ political . However, it was plan of life could not easily be created by an Deakin’s friendship with the more original individual out of the chaos of conflicting personal American neo-Hegelian philosopher, Josiah Royce, desires and impulses that we all encounter. which provides the best indication of Deakin’s Rather, such aims and plans are found already views. Deakin met Royce in 1888 in Melbourne and largely formed in social experience: we come to spent an intense week talking and walking with him consciousness in a world that proffers countless at a resort in the Blue Mountains. Walter Murdoch well-defined causes and programs for their wrote of the relationship which emerged from this accomplishment. These programs extend through chance meeting in his biography of Deakin: time and require the contributions of many individuals for their advancement. When one The two men were firm friends at once; and judges a cause to be worthwhile and fully though they were able to enjoy one another’s embraces such a program, several momentous companionship for a few days only, the things happen. The individual’s will is focused friendship endured. For years Professor Royce and defined in terms of the shared cause. The continued to send Deakin copies of his books as individual becomes allied with a community of they appeared, and for years Deakin continued to others who are also committed to the same cause. respond in letters of acknowledgement, criticism, Finally, a morally significant commitment to the and appreciation. (The last of these letters is cause and to the community develops. This dated so late as 1912, twenty-four years after commitment is what Royce calls ‘loyalty.’ The their meeting.) He liked and admired Royce as a moral life may be understood in terms of the man, and when he came to read Royce’s books multiple loyalties that a person exhibits.68 he found in them a philosophy which seemed exactly to fulfil the needs of his own soul. These For Royce, community precedes the individual. letters are …. proof of the seriousness of Responding to Nietzsche, Royce argued that my life Deakin’s interest in philosophy. They make it means nothing unless I am a member of a plain that the problems of philosophy are part of community. Community and the formation of a his mental outfit, and his intense interest in collective will does not involve the dissolution of Royce’s solutions shows how closely Royce’s individualism but is the condition of being an thought fitted his own intuitions, liberating them individual. It is through membership of 67 and facilitating their self-expression. communities that it becomes possible to harmonize In these letters, Deakin discussed not only Royce’s desires and integrate them into a self. And loyalty philosophy, but also the philosophies of Kant, requires that individuals scrutinize the aims and Hegel and Caird. actions of the communities of which they are part to reform their ‘disloyal’ aspects. A community is constituted by people accepting as part of their own individual lives the same past events and the same JOSIAH ROYCE AND NEO-HEGELIAN PHILOSOPHY expectations: they must be a community of memory Royce’s work was a further evolution of the neo- and a community of expectation or hope. Hegelian tradition of Idealist philosophy. His Not any loyalty makes actions morally valid, ethico-political ideas were grounded in an analysis however. Royce recognized that some of the most of the conditions necessary for an individual life to hideous acts in history have followed from loyalty to causes. To be morally valid the cause to which loyalty is given must be consistent with loyalty generally. The highest moral achievements involve Elizaberth Nurser, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1974. 65 Sawer, ‘The Ethical State’, p.77. 66 68 Murdoch and Deakin, Books and Men: Letters and Kelley A. Parker, ‘Josiah Royce’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Comments 1900-1910, p.43. At different times, Deakin also Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = discussed Nietzsche and David Ritchie’s study of Plato. . 67 Murdoch, Alfred Deakin: A Sketch, p.126f. p.6.

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ARRAN GARE 30 individuals’ loyalty to ideals that promote the individuals’ lives. It is these which generate the formation and expansion of communities of loyalty. highest hope and greatest moral commitment. As Royce put it: Chief among these ‘lost’ causes are the pursuit of A cause is good, not only for me, but for and the establishment of universal loyalty to mankind, in so far as it is essentially a loyalty to loyalty. This injunction allows us to appreciate the loyalty, that is, an aid and a furtherance of loyalty modern ‘Humboldtian’ university.70 Laying out the in my fellows. It is an evil cause in so far as, principles of the new University of Berlin, despite the loyalty that it arouses in me, it is Humboldt characterized the function of higher destructive of loyalty in the world of my 69 institutions as ‘places where learning in the deepest fellows. and widest sense of the word may be cultivated’. To For people to gain meaning in their lives by being attain their purpose, loyal to causes, they must first be free to make such … the inward organization of these institutions commitments and then free to be loyal. To be loyal must produce and maintain an uninterrupted to loyalty causes must be pursued in a way which cooperative spirit, one which again and again upholds the conditions of others to make such inspires its members, but inspires without forcing commitments. Other people, therefore, whether them and without specific intent to inspire. … It colleagues loyal to the same cause, or people is a further characteristic of higher institutions of pursuing other causes, must never be treated as learning that they treat all knowledge as a not yet mere instruments to be used or exploited for profit. wholly solved problem and are therefore never They must be recognized as free subjects and the done with investigation and research. This … causes which they have committed themselves to totally changes the relationship between teacher and by which they have given meaning to their lives and student from what is was when the student must also be recognized. still attended school. In the higher institutions, the teacher no longer exists for the sake of the With this principle it is possible to clarify the student; both exist for the sake of learning. Hegelian argument that to achieve concrete liberty Therefore the teacher’s occupation depends on it is necessary to maintain a plurality of the presence of his students. …71 autonomous institutions within society constraining each other to serve the common good. Recognizing The Humboldtian model of the university, the autonomy of institutions within a nation is to autonomous, combining teaching and research and recognize the causes their members have committed upholding above all else the quest for a themselves to and the significance of these causes, comprehensive understanding of the world and our whether the cause be raising a family, advancing place within it, was so successful compared to the one’s trade, craft or profession, defending the utilitarian model developed in France or the nation, maintaining and improving people’s health business model developed later in USA, even on or upholding and pursuing justice. Of central purely utilitarian or business criteria, that importance is the need to recognize the causes of universities everywhere were forced to embrace its public institutions, the institutions of government, central principles. The Arts and Science Faculties concerned with reproducing the whole, including became the core of universities, recognized as the institutions devoted to research and education. superior because these were the faculties most If the pursuit of each of these causes is conducted committed to free enquiry and the pursuit of the according to the principle of loyalty to loyalty, then truth and developing the full potential of their each institution will provide the conditions for students to participate in and uphold the cause of people in any of society’s institutions to take this pursuit, to producing an educated public, to responsibility for and be concerned to contribute to preserving, criticizing, developing and passing on the common good of the nation, and beyond that, to the national culture and to contributing to and the common good of ever broader communities developing the potential of students to contribute to characterized by loyalty to loyalty, embracing more the culture of the nation and of humanity. The cosmopolitan and inclusive communities. The 70 highest causes are ‘lost causes’, that is, causes the As Bill Readings argued, the modern university, now under scope and magnitude of which transcends attack globally, is based on the model that Humboldt instituted at the University of Berlin. See Bill Readings, The University in Ruins, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1996. For a defence of the Humboldtian University and the nation-State, see Gare, ‘Democracy and Education’, Concrescence, 2005. 69 71 Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty [1908] Nashville, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio, Detroit, Tennesee, Vandebilt University Press, 1995, p.56. Wayne State University Press, 1963, p.125f.

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THE NEO-LIBERAL ASSAULT ON AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 31 universities in turn influenced schools and technical tariff protection to high wages and reasonable institutes. As such, the university became a central working conditions so that Australia would be a pillar of democracy. When united in the cause of nation where no-one was “left-behind”.’73 It would education and the pursuit of truth, acknowledging be a community of memory and a community of each of its members as free agents who have hope in which all its members would be recognized embraced this cause, the university provides the as free agents. Along with other social liberals, he prototype of a community united by such loyalty to upheld the institutions and organizations through loyalty. Insofar as its members, including its which individuals were able to become members of students, are engaged in the pursuit of truth and communities committed to causes in such a way convey this sense of loyalty to the pursuit of truth that they augmented the loyalty to the causes of and loyalty to loyalty, insofar as the university others, in particular to becoming free members of a provides students with the means to participate self-governing national community. In so doing, within, appreciate, scrutinize and reformulate the Deakin set the trajectory for Australia to become a beliefs and the aims and actions of institutions and social democratic nation. communities, particularly those they will enter into The development of public education based on as mature adults, the university is essential to the humanistic principles was central to this trajectory. cause of democracy, nation building and As Alan Barcan described this education: civilization. Characteristic features of the humanistic education which developed in Western Europe after about 1780 were a concern with character, AUSTRALIA AND THE GLOBAL ADVANCE OF SOCIAL with the inculcation of certain moral values, and DEMOCRACY with mental training. This focused on the This neo-Hegelian idealism provided the basic individual but also embodied the transmission of philosophy on which Australia as a nation was a cultural heritage and the cultivation of thought founded. The notion of the ‘Commonwealth’ of and reason. It also managed to accommodate, Australia, literally, the ‘common well being’ or ultimately, scientific and commercial education. In Australia this culture was at a peak from the ‘common good’ of Australia, encapsulated the 74 commitment to being a free, democratic society 1880s to the 1960s. committed to the well being of all its members. All This was the form of education defended by the that Deakin and other social liberals strove for, influential Sydney philosopher, John Anderson including the provision of public education, (1893-1962). Anderson, who had been a student of becomes intelligible on the assumption that he saw Henry Jones in Glasgow, had taken up the himself from this perspective as a participant in the Professorship in Philosophy at Sydney University struggle for freedom striving to realize within in 1927 and remained politically active until his Australia a higher phase of freedom and death in 1962. While he rejected the Idealist democracy. Deakin conducted his life and foundations of social liberalism and joined the formulated his policies in accordance with the Communist Party, he still defended Idealist notion principle of loyalty to loyalty. The idea of loyalty of democracy as participation in social life.75 He explicated by Royce pervaded not only the life of later resigned from and opposed the Communist Deakin and the other social liberals, but had a Party because of its undemocratic proclivities. pervasive influence on Australia’s culture until the Examining the relationship between politics and 1980s (although utilitarianism was also a major education, he argued (soon after his appointment as force and the ‘greed is good’ philosophy existed as Professor): ‘A liberal education is one which an undercurrent, dominating in the 1920s).72 Deakin enables us to live freely. It is training, not in a and his allies ‘effectively institutionalized the particular job or service, but for a whole life.’76 For Australian ideal of the “fair go”, introducing a system he called “New Protection”, that linked 73 ‘Alfred Deakin Vision’, The Alfred Deakin Lectures 2001, 72 ABC Radio National, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/deakin/ Tim Rouse has described how the initial philosophy of 74 Alan Barcan, ‘The Disputed Curriculum’, Quadrant, social liberalism was undermined by various critics (which, Vol.XLIX, No.6, June 2005, p.37. after the final assault by postmodernists – an assault well 75 described by Boris Frankel - paved the way for the triumph of See A.J. Baker, Anderson’s : The Social neo-liberalism) in Australian Liberalism and National Thought & Political Life of Professor John Anderson, London, Character, Malmsbury, Kibble Books, 1978. For Frankel’s Angus & Robinson, 1979. 76 analysis of the impact of postmodernism, see From the John Anderson, Education and Politics: Essays, Sydney, Prophets Deserts Come, Melbourne: Arena, 1992. Angus & Robertson, 1931, p.55,

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Anderson, as A.J. Baker wrote in his study of gained power in Communist countries (despite the Anderson’s social philosophy, ‘conceptions of suppression of the ‘Prague Spring’) and social education as critical thinking and democracy as democrats gained strength in the West. active, aware citizenship coalesce. … Democracy The core aim of social democracy was to modify and education … are jointly involved in the the condition of wage-slavery and to gain freedom permanent struggle against forces conducive to through circumscribing and controlling the market political and intellectual regimentation and as such to enable people to participate in community life are very important manifestations of …. the and to embrace causes consistent with the principle activities that make history “the story of liberty”.’77 of loyalty to loyalty. This was achieved through the Australia’s development as a democracy was in development of nation-states supporting a plurality harmony with the general trend in the twentieth of institutions and cultural fields autonomous from century towards greater democracy, despite the the market, particularly the international market, growing power of corporations and associated able to act as centres of countervailing power to efforts to subvert democracy in USA,78 the defeat of market forces and to those with wealth, and by the democratic wing of the Bolsheviks in the early ‘professionalizing’ work, gaining respect, security years of the Russian revolution,79 the rise of fascism of employment and autonomy for employees. Such and then Nazism, and, after the second world war professionalization of work was associated with the replacement of colonialism by neo-colonialism. developing the means to distribute income on the The most important components of this advance basis of justice rather than market forces. In this were the growing acceptance of the principle that way, the conditions and rights of people without all nations should be self-determining and the property to participate in public life, to express and provision within countries of a humanist public assert themselves without fear of retribution while education for the entire population. The spread of ensuring that they could be heard, were secured. the principle that governments should be elected The next item on the agenda of social democracy with the franchise extended to all adults was also was the development of industrial democracy; that important, but only where people were provided is, democracy in the workplace, along with a with real choices and the education and knowledge greater devolution of power to local governments.80 to make these choices, and citizens were politically After having been at the cutting edge of social active. The Great Depression, vindicating the social reform at the beginning of the twentieth century, liberal claim that the free operation of the market however, Australia began to lag behind other for labour would lead to under-consumption and countries, particularly after the Second World War. recession, gave an impetus to social democratic To a considerable extent this can be explained by movements, the successors of social liberalism, the intellectual decline which set in with the with the lead in realizing the Hegelian model of abandonment of Idealism as a guiding philosophy society being taken by Sweden. The drive for and the rejection of its logical successor, process democracy gathered pace after the Second World philosophy. emerged with the War, with the United Nations being set up to appreciation that Idealism could not be defended uphold the right to self-determination of nations, against Darwinian evolutionary theory, but that the and the Bretton Woods agreement formulated to achievements of the Idealists could be defended on enable nations to achieve democratic control over naturalistic foundations by replacing scientific their markets. Sweden became a model for other with a conception of nature as a countries with Austria, Denmark, Finland and the process of creative becoming from within which Netherlands and Germany in particular attempting humanity had emerged with the characteristics to emulate Sweden’s achievements. By the 1970s, ascribed to it by the Idealists. The first philosopher with the defeat of USA in Vietnam, it appeared that in Britain to take this path was the Australian Third World countries would free themselves from neo-colonialism and there would be a convergence between East and West as democratic elements 80 On the goals, achievements and failures of social 77 democracy, see Michael Harrington, Socialism: Past and Baker, Anderson’s Social Philosophy, p.76. 78 Future, Little, Brown & Co., 1989, and Magnus Ryner, On this, see Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Capitalist Restructuring, Globalization and the Third Way: Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Lessons from the Swedish Model, London, Routledge, 2002. Liberty, Urbana, University of Chicago Press, 1997. For a critique of these works from a libertarian socialist 79 On this, see Arran Gare, 'Soviet Environmentalism: The perspective, see Robin Hahnel, ‘Social Democracy: Losing Path Not Taken', in The Greening of Marxism, Ted Benton the Faith’ in Economic Justice and Democracy, New York: (ed.), New York, Guilford Press, 1996. Routledge, 2005, Chap.5.

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THE NEO-LIBERAL ASSAULT ON AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 33 philosopher, Samuel Alexander (1859-1938).81 However, Australia was still on the trajectory that While John Anderson attended lectures by had been set for it by the Hegelian social liberals in Alexander and was influenced by him, he did not the first decades of century.85 As H.V. Evatt (1894- embrace process philosophy. Subsequently, 1965), a student of Francis Anderson, a third Australian philosophers abandoned the whole generation disciple of Green, and later federal heritage of and developed a leader of the , wrote in 1918: particularly sterile form of ‘Liberalism in Australia is the spirit of Liberalism known as ‘Australian materialism’. ‘Materialism’ taking its time to reveal itself, and teaching its was associated with contempt for ‘idealism’, both adherents in the rest of the world its new as a philosophy and as an outlook on life, and possibilities in practice.’86 After the Second World engendered a corrosive cynicism which came to War it was social democracy as this had been pervade Australian culture. Apart from this realized in Scandinavian countries and in Austria influence, philosophy as such was marginalized which provided the ideal against which the actual from cultural and political life. state of affairs in Australia was measured (although those committed to democracy, such as John The subsequent impoverishment of Australian Anderson, criticized the welfare State ‘for its culture is evident from reading Tim Rowse’s passive, servility-inducing conception of citizenship Australian Liberalism and National Character,82 a and for its promotion of covert managerial and history of ideological debates in Australia up to the bureaucratic interests’.87) Similarly, it was the 1970s, in conjunction with Murdoch’s The Struggle Humboldtian form of the university which, however for Freedom, first published in 1903. What imperfectly this was realized in Australian becomes immediately evident is the philosophical universities, was the ideal against which crudity of later thought and its historical universities were judged, at least by their more parochialism—effectively the abandonment of committed students (with their humanist high philosophical reflection built on two and a half school education) if not by their staff and thousand years of thought for what amounted to administrators.88 The reforms of the Whitlam Labor little more than haphazard observations and government which held power between 1972 and expressions of opinions, with a complete lack of 1975 were seen as catching up to what had already concern for the place of Australia in world history. been achieved by the social democracies in This crudity can be further highlighted by Northern Europe; that is, speeding up the contrasting it with the political thought of Ernst development of Australia on the trajectory that it Wigforss (a Marxist revisionist influenced by was already on. This involved a huge commitment British Idealism), the most influential theorist and to education in general and universities in architect of social democracy in Sweden.83 In place particular, with university education being made of the quest for freedom promulgated by the free. Idealists which inspired the Swedes, Australians regressed to a crude and unreflective and utilitarianism bordering on .84

81 In Britain, it was the Australian philosopher Samuel Alexander who founded the tradition of process philosophy. 85 Alexander studied at Merton College, Oxford when T.H. As Marian Sawer noted, social liberalism set up Green was at the peak of his influence, and Alexander’s first ‘longstanding patterns of social action reinforced by social work was an effort to reconcile Green’s and political understandings and expectations’, The Ethical State? p.31. 86 philosophy with Darwinian evolutionary theory. Alexander was H.V. Evatt, Liberalism in Australia, Sydney, Law Book Co. a major influence on John Anderson, who continued the work of Australasia, 1918, p.73, cited by Sawer, ‘The Ethical State’, of reformulating Idealist philosophy on realist foundations. p.79. 82 87 Time Rowse, Australian Liberalism and National Character, Ibid., p.145. Melbourne: Kibble Books, 1978. 88 83 While Readings argued that the modern university is For an account of the ideas of Ernst Wigforss, see Timothy essentially the Humboldtian University, Australian politicians A. Tilton, “A Swedish Road to Socialism: Wigforss and the and academics seemed to be far less committed to this model Ideological Foundations of Swedish Social Democracy”, The of the university than in other countries. On just how American Political Science Review, Vol. 73, 2 (Jun., 1979), imperfectly realized in Australia the Humboldtian University pp.505-520. was, see Stuart MacIntyre and Simon Marginson, ‘The 84 See Hugh Collins, ‘Political Ideology in Australia: The university and its public’, Why Universities Matter, ed. Tony Distinctiveness of a Benthamite Society, Daedalus, 114: 1, Coady, St Leonards, Australia, Allen & Unwin, 2000, pp.49- Winter, 1985, pp.147-170. 71.

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THE GLOBAL ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY AND THE as obsolete.93 This was the ideology of neo- ATTACK ON EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA liberalism (or more accurately, managerialist 94 For Royce, the highest kind of transgression in an market ). In reviving the Lockean ethics of loyalty is treason, the wilful betrayal of tradition they took up again the project that one’s own cause and of the community of people originated with Hobbes to transform language to who serve it.89 The traitor is someone who culpably make the whole project of achieving liberty, as it commits some act that undermines the cause and had been understood in Ancient Rome and in 95 the community. The embracing of ‘neo-liberalism’ Renaissance Italy, unintelligible. Along with by successive Labor and Liberal governments in reforming crucial notions such as justice, ‘rational Australia after 1984 was a betrayal of the founding choice’ theorists worked towards changing the principles of the Australian nation, a betrayal of the meaning of ‘’ so that it could only be 96 cause of social justice, a betrayal of the cause of applied to efforts to realize personal preferences. nation-building and a betrayal of the cause of Crucial to this was the work of Kenneth Arrow democracy both within Australia and globally.90 who, presupposing that people’s preferences are Efforts to undermine the various causes of the given and not amenable to rational deliberation, various institutions that made up the Australian constructed a model that showed that there is no nation, particularly educational institutions and decision procedure that could yield a unique their pursuit of truth, can best be understood as part optimum resolution of people’s conflicting of this betrayal. What were the conditions that preferences. This was taken to imply that it was brought this about? And how is it that such pointless to even look for the common good. betrayals are not seen as betrayals. Arrow’s results also showed that the market could not solve this problem of reconciling interests, but The advance of social democracy throughout the this did not affect reliance by economists on the world generated increasing resistance from the market because, as S.M. Amadae noted, ‘it has no super wealthy, and complacency and decadence pretensions to serving the “public good”.’97 91 among its beneficiaries —most importantly, Elections for political office were redefined as a among academics whose careers had flourished form of market in which politicians vie for the 92 with the rise of social democracy. Disaffected emoluments of office by offering different packages intellectuals hostile to social democracy had been of promises to the electorate, effectively working to focus opposition to its advance. Led by legitimating corruption. Then instead of attacking members of the Austro-Hungarian nobility who the quest for democracy as Hobbes and his were hostile to social democracy, most importantly, epigones had done, they claimed that only by Friedrich von Hayek and John von Neumann, and commodifying public goods, transforming public their American disciple, Milton Friedman, these institutions into business corporations, dissolving intellectuals attacked the core ideas on which communities into market relationships, applying the democracy was based. Looking back to Locke’s ‘user pays’ principle and placing public policy political philosophy, this intellectual movement formation in the hands of experts in economics, struggled to revive and advance neo-classical systems analysis and rational choice theory, do we economic theory and extend its assumptions into a general theory of choice, of politics and public 93 policy formation, reviving precisely those ideas that For the most influential statement of this doctrine, see the social liberals influenced by Green had regarded Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982. The core of Friedman’s doctrine is contained on page 13 where he identifies freedom and cooperation with market exchanges. For Hayek’s political views, see Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. On how 89 Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity, Vol. II, New economics was reformulated, see Philip Mirowski, Machine York, Macmillan, 1901, p.264. Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science, Cambridge, 90 Cambridge University Press, 2002. This betrayal has been well described by Michael Pusey, 94 Economic in Canberra: A Nation Building State For efforts to characterize this, see Neoliberalism, ed. Changes its Mind, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1991. Alfredo Saad-Filho and Deborah Johnston, London: Pluto 91 Press, 2005. This occurred even in Sweden. See David C. Korten, 95 When Corporations Rule the World, San Francisco, Berrett- On this, see Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, Koehler Publishers, 1996, p.95. See also Ryner, Capitalist Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, esp.p.85, and Restructuring, Globalization and the Third Way. Visions in Politics, Volume III: Hobbes and Civil Society, 92 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p.14f. For a characterization of the state of universities before the 96 neo-liberal assault upon them, see Arran Gare, See S.M. Amadae, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy, Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis, London, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2003. 97 Routledge, p.21ff. Amadae, p.132.

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THE NEO-LIBERAL ASSAULT ON AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 35 have freedom and democracy. They redefined forms.101 The success of such global organizations democracy as exercising choice through the market, has produced a new transnational ruling class effectively granting unlimited power to the wealthy (major fractions of which are the ‘coordinator class’ elites to control the world in their own interests. and ‘symbolic analysts’) with no loyalty to any These are the ideas which are now almost national community, although they often foster a universally accepted by the Australian public. pseudo-nationalism to suit their purposes.102 Armed with the ideology of neo-liberalism supplemented How was such a cultural revolution achieved? To on occasion by neo-, members of this begin with, the cultural weakness of Australia has new class have worked towards the establishment to be acknowledged, a weakness in considerable of a new global State (of which the IMF, the World part due to the acceptance by its academics of a Bank and the WTO are major components), totally crude empiricist utilitarianism which obliterated undemocratic, serving the interests of this class and any concern for maintaining the liberty of the augmenting the power of transnational nation. Australia was an easy target. It was targeted corporations.103 As William Robinson observed, to begin with by corporate propaganda. Corporate this global State usually does not compete with propaganda, as it emerged in USA under the banner nation-States but absorbs and transfigures the of ‘public relations’, has always worked against institutions of the nation-State into its instruments, democracy.98 Public relations intensified in the later using them to dissolve national control over half of the twentieth century as business leaders economies and to impose market relations on all sought to undermine what democratic control had facets of life.104 The institutions of the State are then been gained over the economies of nations by used to protect corporations from the general developing a new form of transnational business public. organization, the transnational corporation.99 After the defeat of USA and its allies in Vietnam and the To succeed, this new class has co-opted or growing threat posed by revived democratic corrupted its potential opposition—a strategy movements to their power, these corporations went associated with the lowest form of cultural on the ideological and political offensive.100 This hegemony (or organization of consent) where the offensive has been associated with the emergence ruling class their interests and aspirations and empowerment of a mass of transnational do not accord with those they seek to lead.105 The bureaucracies, unencumbered by notions of popular co-opted would be people prepared to abandon the sovereignty and political community. These cause of nation building and the quest for compete with each other to formulate international democracy within their own countries and, in the standards, replacing substantive or ‘means-ends’ terminology of the civic humanists, ‘enslave’, or notions of rationality through which social goals are accept the enslavement of their people to formulated and evaluated, with formal notions of transnational corporations and this new class.106 In accountability, transparency, value for money etc., Chile they found their man in Pinochet.107 In dehumanizing and obliterating the distinctive features of products, amenities, services and social 101 Winton Higgins, ‘How we are governed now: globalization, neo-liberal governmentality and the nullification of substantive politics’ Institute for International Studies, UTS research 98 See Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy: seminar, 5-7 December 2005. 102 Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty, ed. See Leslie Sklair, The Transnationalist Capitalist Class, Andrew Lohrey, Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Oxford, Blackwell, 2001. 99 103 The first person to recognize this development was On their success at this, see Korten, When Corporations Stephen Hymer writing in the 1960s. See Stephen Hymer, Rule the World. On how this class exercises power, see John 'Internationalization of capital and international politics: a Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, London: Verso, 2002. radical approach' in Edward J. Nell, Growth, Profits, & 104 See William I Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism, Property: Essays in the Revival of Political Economy, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2004, ch.3. Cambridge: C.U.P., 1980, pp. 189-203. Hymer’s work was 105 followed by Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Müller’s, Global On this form of hegemony, see Joseph V. Fermia, Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations, New Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and York: Simon and Schuster, 1974, and then by Korten’s When the Revolutionary Process, Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1987, Corporations Rule the World. On the manner of operation of p.47. 106 corporations, see Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The ‘Enslave’, in the technical sense deriving from Rome Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, London, Constable, meant for the civic humanists who recovered this language in 2004. the fifteenth century, putting people in a position of 100 This ideological offensive is well described by J. Tunstall, dependence on others who can then harm them. See Quentin Media Moguls, London: Routledge, 1991. As it was Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, Cambridge: Cambridge implemented in Australia, see Communications and the Media University Press, 1998, p.40. 107 in Australia, ed. Ted Wheelwright and Ken Buckley, Sydney, See David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Allen & Unwin., 1987. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Australia, they found the collaborators they needed conservatives within the Liberal Party over the in a new sub-class of university educated careerist social liberals upholding and developing Australia’s managers (the rapidly developing ‘coordinator founding principles. On gaining office in 1996 class’), most important among these being the these Liberal Party politicians further betrayed the careerist politicians who were taking control of the cause of freedom and democracy, privatizing more ALP and the economists who were taking control of public assets, further corporatizing public the Federal civil service.108 At the same time, with institutions (that is, transforming them into business the help of television advertising and enterprises), allowing more foreign takeovers of ‘postmodernist’ intellectuals, they were able to Australian companies and facilitating a massive cultivate a hedonistic consumerism among the rest growth of net national debt, which now stands at of the population, crippling any broad-based more than 50% of GDP. This has further enslaved resistance.109 After winning the 1983 election the the country and its citizens to the transnational ALP leadership decided that the best way to retain capitalist class and transnational corporations and office was to embrace the ideology of neo- further undermined Australian culture. Continued liberalism and effectively to identify with the undermining of employees’ economic security, transnational capitalist class and hand over power to allowing further concentration of media ownership transnational corporations, while promising the and neutering of the ABC, the continued general population higher levels of consumption in undermining of the professionalism of the civil compensation for their loss of liberty. They service, dissolving statutory commissions and, most destroyed the partial autonomy gained by Australia importantly, the further onslaught on the institutions from the global market, eliminated the autonomy of of education, have undermined loyalty to the the institutions of the State and undermined the pursuit of truth. Neo-liberal economic doctrines are economic security underpinning the freedom of its now accepted by politicians as a religion beyond citizens, thereby empowering transnational questioning to which all intellectual inquiry must be corporations to operate in Australia on their own subordinated, with the government making an terms. They massively redistributed wealth and unprecedented effort to control all research funding. income to the wealthy, and empowered the new This is part of a new round of attacks on managerial ‘coordinator’ class to universities which is being met with almost no ‘deprofessionalize’ work and reduce all employees resistance. Young people, betrayed and sold out by to ‘wage slaves’. Putting people in ‘obnoxious their governments, without historical memory and positions’ of dependence on the power of these therefore without hope, no longer have access to the managers for their livelihoods, they created an language required to appreciate truth, justice and environment conducive to the flourishing of democracy as worth fighting for. This is their, and ‘obnoxious characters’- to again use the language of Australia’s, ultimate enslavement. the civic humanists110 (otherwise known as

‘operators’ or ‘careerists’) willing to prostitute the causes of their institutions, crafts, trades and professions to ingratiate themselves to those who REVIVING DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION had gained management positions. Ultimate success In these circumstances, are there any prospects for for these careerists entailed becoming managers. reviving democracy and education? To begin to Those who did maintain their loyalty to causes and answer this question we first have to appreciate took their responsibilities as citizens of a what is at stake. In 2005, the distinguished democracy seriously were dismissed as ‘the American geographer Jared Diamond published a chattering class’. major study: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. This was an examination of In the terminology of Royce, the ALP was taken societies of the past: the Easter Islanders, the over by traitors, traitors who betrayed the central Anasazi, the Mayan Indians, the Greenland Vikings cause of freedom and democracy that the ALP and among others, to work out why they had collapsed. the Australian nation had stood for. This facilitated But it was not only about past societies. Drawing the triumph of the neo-liberals and neo- conclusions from these studies, Diamond went on to examine several modern societies in danger of 108 collapse. Included in these was Australia. Australia On this see Pusey, Economic Rationalism in Canberra. 109 is a country where, Diamond claimed, the On this, see Boris Frankel, From the Prophets Deserts Come, Melbourne: Arena, 1992. environmental destruction is accelerating 110 For these notions see Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, exponentially. Diamond analysed the mind-set of p.95f. Australians responsible for this situation. The mind- set is that of miners. Miners, when they discover an

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THE NEO-LIBERAL ASSAULT ON AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 37 ore body, mine it as fast as they can, since this is level. Government policies amount to a slow the most profitable strategy. In Australia, all genocide of its working population for short term resources have been treated in this way. Profitable increases in profitability of what are now mostly fish stocks, with the exception of the Western transnational corporations. This liquidation of Australian crayfish, have been fished to virtual accumulated social wealth, often with only a small extinction one after another ‘in short time, like a proportion of the wealth liquidated accruing to gold rush.’111 Forests and timber species have been Australians, makes it virtually impossible for and continue to be exploited unsustainably. Land is society to address the broader environmental crisis farmed to generate maximum short term profit, confronting it. resulting in massive land degradation. As he put it, What this means is that Australia is becoming an ‘Most of Australia’s … agriculture is in effect a almost purely ‘extractive’ economy, to use the mining operation that does not add to Australia’s terminology of Stephen Bunker, an economy that wealth but merely converts environmental capital of uses up its wealth (its minerals, the fertility of its soil and native vegetation irreversibly into cash’.112 land etc.) as it ‘develops’. While ‘productive’ The consequence of environmental destruction is economies as they develop become richer, more that small inland cities and towns are in decay or productive and more powerful, extractive disappearing. Diamond suggested the most likely economies become poorer and weaker. Bunker outcome for Australia will be ‘a declining standard examined the relationship between productive and of living in a steadily deteriorating environment.’113 extractive economies in the world-system. While Diamond saw some signs of hope in the Productive economies as they develop also develop environmental movement, he did not factor into his their power to control and exploit the extractive assessment the impact of neo-liberalism. The economies, preventing them developing into triumph of neo-liberalism has been associated with productive economies. While this leads over the the same mining mentality being applied to long term to impoverishment of people in the Australia’s accumulated social wealth. This has extractive economies (although such destructive involved allowing Australian companies to be exploitation is usually associated with the bought by foreign companies, privatizing mutual development of a small, wealthy comprador class), provident funds and selling off public assets. It has the problem is much more extensive than the also taken more subtle forms. The pressure on suffering it inflicts on people in extractive universities to finance themselves by attracting fee economies. The increasing power of the core zones, paying foreign students and to provide cheap Bunker argued, is leading to ‘hypercoherence’, the research to the private sector is itself a form of situation where those who dominate are so powerful mining as the accumulated prestige and research relative to those they dominate that they become abilities of Australian universities are dissipated for totally unresponsive to them, and so tend to destroy short term profits. The same mentality has been them. Applying this concept to the global system, taken towards Australia’s working population. Bunker argued: While successive Labor and Liberal governments Hypercoherence ultimately leads to ecological have claimed outstanding economic growth rates, and social collapse as increasingly stratified the reality is, as Professor Bob Gregory has shown, systems undermine their own resource base. ... that full-time working males have suffered dramatic 114 The exchange relations which bind this system reductions in life-time incomes. They also have together depend on locally dominant groups to drastically reduced job security and greatly reorganize local modes of production and increased hours of work. And these are the lucky extraction in response to world demand, but the ones. Many employees have been reduced to casual ultimate collapse will be global, not local. The work. Working people no longer have the economic continued impoverishment of peripheral regions conditions required to raise families, resulting in a finally damages the entire system.115 dramatic fall of fertility well below replacement The undermining of democracy in Australia is essentially the disempowerment of Australians as Australia comes under the control of the 111 Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail hypercoherent transnational capitalist class. If or Survive, Penguin: Allen Lane, 2005, p.406. 112 Diamond, Collapse, p.413. 113 Diamond, Collapse, p.409. 114 115 Bob Gregory, ‘Competing with dad: Changes in the Stephen G. Bunker, Underdeveloping the Amazon: distribution of male labour market income’. In CEDA Bulletin, Extraction, Unequal Exchange, and the Failure of the Modern March, 1999: 29-32. State, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976, p.253.

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ARRAN GARE 38 people living in an exploited region such as Given the crisis we are facing, the alternatives are Australia are not able to regain control over their the dissolution of democracy in Australia or economies and destinies, the future of humanity and defence of the notion of education as the formation most other forms of life is bleak. of people with the knowledge and necessary to achieve and sustain democracy and freedom, as Neither proponents of proletarian revolution still promulgated by the social liberals, and to promote called for by Marxists nor anarchic communities the revival of the Humboldtian ideal of a university provide plausible answers to global capitalism.116 as a largely autonomous community committed to The only solution that appears viable is the the quest for truth. Truth here should be understood development of precisely the form of multi-leveled not as an accumulation of facts but as the democratic federalism which can control the market ‘unattainable’ comprehensive, coherent for the public good called for by John West in the understanding of who we are, what is our place in nineteenth century, a federalism in which power is history and in the cosmos. The quest for truth is the decentralized as much as possible.117 This is what quest for a world-orientation through which people Benjamin Barber characterized as ‘Strong can define their ultimate ends and control their Democracy’.118 This is the strategy now being destinies. As Alfred North Whitehead proclaimed, pursued with outstanding success by Venezuela ‘The task of a university is the creation of the where direct democracy is being promoted through future, so far as rational thought, and civilized the State to provide a power base to free State modes of appreciation, can affect the issue.’120 institutions from corruption and make them serve the common good, while an extended Latin This does not mean going back to how universities American nationalism is being promoted to unite were before the neo-liberal attack upon their South America to free this whole region from privileges. It should now be clear that academics in domination by USA, thereby supporting democracy Australia did not have the virtues required to at more local levels.119 In this struggle against neo- uphold and sustain the integrity and autonomy of liberalism, the transnational capitalist class and their institutions, nor the virtues to support the transnational corporations, any success anywhere in broader institutional framework required to sustain the world aids every other struggle for democracy; this integrity and autonomy. As the influence of every failure will make it more difficult to achieve neo-Hegelian philosophy and social liberalism of democracy elsewhere. It is a matter of democracy Francis Anderson, Walter Murdoch and John or ecocide, and given the significance of Australia’s Anderson waned, academics in Australia became role in supporting the concentration of economic severely anti-intellectual and hostile to democracy, and political power globally against its own either upholding an almost medieval elitism interests, the struggle for democracy in Australia is (defending universities as institutions for ‘the life of as important as the struggle for democracy the mind’) or a corrosive cynicism and thwarting anywhere. the idealistic expectations of students, although some opponents of such views were able to gain a If it is incumbent upon any Australian concerned foothold in some universities.121 As Hugh Collins with the future of humanity to join the struggle to wrote of the universities in 1985, before the Neo- defend and advance democracy in Australia, it is liberal assault upon them had begun: also incumbent upon them to join the struggle against the degradation of the education system into The universities, which have codified and a commercial enterprise training people for jobs. certified knowledge, have been mostly post- The universities are central to the education system. Darwinian creations: the particular scientific paradigm they have enshrined has reinforced the tendencies of utilitarianism. Empiricism has been 116 a natural enemy of speculative thought; On this, see Arran Gare, ‘Beyond Social Democracy? ’ Vision of an Inclusive Democracy as a New has reigned, almost without challenge, Liberatory Project’, Democracy and Nature, Vol.9, No.4. 2003, in science, law, philosophy, history, economics, pp.345-358. and the social sciences. The secular 117 As I have argued in Arran Gare, ‘Process Philosophy, Democracy and the Environment: Defending Democracy 120 Against Neo-liberalism’, Concrescence: The Australasian Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought, New York, Journal for Process Thought: An Online Journal, Vol.5, 2004. The Free Press, 1938, p.171. 118 121 Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy, Berkeley: The As Pusey noted in Economic Rationalism in Canberra, University of California Press, 1986. see esp.p.232f. Anti-intellectualism in Australian universities 119 Richard Gott and Georges Bartoli, Hugo Chavez: The has taken a number of forms, the most potent being the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, London: Verso Books, promotion of logical empiricism and utilitarianism, vulgar 2005. Marxism and most recently, bowdlerized post-.

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“engineering” character of Australian tertiary into the closest possible connection, that classics, education is nowhere more evident than in the literature, history and science should be taught as professional separation from humanities and parts of a single culture’.127 More generally, social sciences achieved by law and economics. Anderson argued: The autonomy of law and economics faculties has been to the detriment of each and at the cost … it is by its cultivation of free inquiry that the of all, since they supply the graduates who University maintains its universal appeal. To chiefly govern the nation—the former in the think of it apart from the general system, not legislatures and the courts, the latter in the merely of education, but of public life, is to bureaucracies, private as well as public.122 neglect the social character of its work, to overlook the fact that it is only the criticism of Academics contributed significantly to undermining preconceived ideas and arbitrary standards that the founding principles of Australia, its democracy, public spirit can be fostered.128 and their own institutions. Universities were far from the Humboldtian ideal, although they had That is, the defence and revival of universities some of the outward form of the Humboldtian should be undertaken as part of a commitment to university and academics enjoyed the privileges of democracy, requiring that the full potential of this form. students to participate in the highest causes, consistent with the principle of loyalty to loyalty, be If universities are to be defended, the Humboldtian realized. ideal form of the university must be taken more seriously. The direction they should take was What is required is a university system where indicated by John Anderson in the late nineteen academics, along with their students, in their twenties when he appealed for public financial commitment to truth are involved in interrogating support for the University. Universities cannot be all received ideas, institutions and social projects defended as havens for those who would like to live while striving to develop a comprehensive a life of the mind, or as Anderson put it, to ‘be understanding of the world, revealing and cultured in the full sense of the term’, ‘implying developing its and their own potentialities and leisure and the gentlemanly outlook … opposed to orienting themselves and others to create the future. anything of the nature of a commercial or technical At the same time they must also understand the training’.123 Against such an elitist notion, value and underlying principles of the institutions Anderson contended ‘that culture is not a leisurely of their society, the struggles which underlay their affair, but is something that a man must put into his formation and what is required to maintain or work, and that liberality of thought is opposed to advance these principles. Of course there has to be every sort of exclusiveness and thus to the very specialization, but all specialization should be notion of the “gentleman” or of social rank in undertaken as part of the project of achieving such general.’124 But this does not mean that education comprehensive understanding, requiring a constant should be utilitarian. ‘The ordinary notions of movement between efforts to grasp the totality and utility and social service, propagated as they are by efforts to do justice to every particular, both within those who profit from them,’ Anderson proclaimed each area of specialization and within the totality of ‘presuppose a servile status.’125 In opposition to enquiry. Because of their commitment to truth and this, Anderson maintained ‘that all education must the virtues needed to sustain this commitment and be liberal, and that training of a “utilitarian” to preserving, questioning, developing and passing character, by being illiberal, is at the same time, on their cultural heritage, the Arts and Science uneducative.’126 Nor can universities be havens for Faculties must be defended as the core of nihilistic denizens of micro-disciplines uninterested universities, and access to the professions and in broader questions about the nature of the specialized education should be conditional on universe, of life, of humanity and its history and achieving a broader education through these unwilling to take responsibility for their institutions faculties. At the same time, universities should be and society. It is necessary to follow Anderson’s seen as cultural centres with a mission to uphold the injunction ‘that all the subjects studied be brought commitment to truth more generally and to educate and culturally enrich the broader community as an

essential condition for democracy. 122 Collins, ‘Political Ideology in Australia’, p.156. 123 Anderson, Education and Politics, p.53. 124 Loc. cit. 125 127 Ibid., p.54. Ibid., p.60. 126 128 Loc.cit. Ibid., p.11.

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However, it is unlikely that this will be achieved without overcoming the crude empiricist utilitarianism which lies at the root of the sickness of Australian culture and society and without providing a philosophy which can orient people in their lives and in their struggle for democracy. This means that if democracy and the Humboldtian model of the university are to be defended it is necessary to accord philosophy the central place within universities and in culture ascribed to it by Wilhelm von Humboldt. This does not mean supporting Australian philosophy in its current form. It is necessary for philosophy to rediscover its vocation as the discipline which must continually question the assumptions of society, of all other disciplines, and of philosophy itself, and in so doing struggle for a comprehensive understanding of life, humanity and the cosmos which can orient people to create the future. That is, it is necessary to revive philosophy as it was understood by and inspired the founding fathers of Australia.

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