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 Philosophy 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 utilitarianism, 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 metaphysics, it is argued, can genuine democracy and Australia’s public institutions, be defended. Keywords—Australia, Democracy, education, Universities, Idealism, 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 being 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 knowledge 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 New Right 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, Concrescence 2006 Vol.7 pp. 20-40 ISSN 1445-4297 © Arran Gare, 2006. ARRAN GARE 22 Incredulous of grand narratives, particularly grand It has become a major undertaking