Marxism and Education

Marxism and Education Series Editor Anthony Green Institute of Education University of London London, UK “This book is a Marxist tour de force in the analysis of higher education, a field subsumed under the imperative of accumulation and self-valorization of capital. Hall’s illuminating and erudite intervention invites us to a walk on the political path that goes in, against and beyond the capitalist university. The humanist approach to academic alienation that guides reflections in the book stripes any fetishistic appearances off the reality of academic labour so that a foun- dation for solidarity across struggles is laid out against the precarization, acceleration, competi- tion, exploitation and atomization constituting the capitalist reality at large. Unlike other recent Marxist works in the field of education, Alienated Academic is a systematic proposition, an organic whole that integrates rigorous critique with political passion, methodological creativity with communist imagination, quasi-universalism with decolonial sensitivity. This timely scholarly work is a resolute answer to the capitalist misery that has gripped the academy, and Hall convincingly explains that the only way to break the vicious cycle of alienation is to mobilize our forces of intellect and creativity in mass rebellion against capital. The kingdom of (not only academic) freedom and autonomy starts just round the corner of our indignation!” —Dr Krystian Szadkowski, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland “There have been many attempts to heal the diseased Westernized university. Movements to rei- magine, reclaim, occupy and decolonise higher education are in full swing around the world; new fields of critique and resistance have emerged to advance them. Yet change is slow and we wonder why. The Alienated Academic makes a bold intervention into this debate by pulling the veil back from the privileged promise of academic life to reveal its festering infection. The crisis of the modern university, Hall argues, harbours in the very nature of academic labour itself: alienation. Guiding us through a compelling Marxist analysis, he shows not only how being-academic repro- duces ‘flows of oppression and domination’ in capitalist society – leading to separation, injustice and ‘Weltschmerz’ – but how ‘waking up’ to the non-necessity of alienation creates possibilities for abolishing knowledge-as-labour and rediscovering ourselves, each other and the untested feasibili- ties of learning in common. This incisive critique lays ground for an ‘alternative political economy for intellectual activities’ and, more than ever, Hall models revolutionary knowledge by making it.” —Dr Sarah Amsler, University of Nottingham, UK This series assumes the ongoing relevance of Marx’s contributions to critical social analysis and aims to encourage continuation of the development of the legacy of Marxist traditions in and for education. The remit for the substan- tive focus of scholarship and analysis appearing in the series extends from the global to the local in relation to dynamics of capitalism and encompasses historical and contemporary developments in political economy of education as well as forms of critique and resistances to capitalist social relations. The series announces a new beginning and proceeds in a spirit of openness and dialogue within and between Marxism and education, and between Marxism and its various critics. The essential feature of the work of the series is that Marxism and Marxist frameworks are to be taken seriously, not as formulaic knowledge and unassailable methodology but critically as inspirational resources for renewal of research and understanding, and as support for action in and upon structures and processes of education and their relations to society. The series is dedicated to the realization of positive human poten- tialities as education and thus, with Marx, to our education as educators. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14811 “A brilliant critique of the academic’s number one fetish: their own world-historical impor- tance, its role in their enslavement to a work ethic built on alienation, and their participation in wider flows of capitalist destruction. Though many in the academy may think otherwise: another world is not possible, at least not a world that issues from the labour of the current academic, however radically inclined.” —Dr Ansgar Allen, University of Sheffield, UK “The Alienated Academic presents its analysis and critique of higher education with clarity and confidence. Its conclusion are drawn firmly from both evidence and the lived experience. The conclusions it comes to – of self-evaluation and analysis as well as resistance – are chal- lenging but the hope it offers, of an autonomy and eventual freedom, are skilfully argued and worth striving for.” —Dr Nick Allsopp, Assistant Director of Academic Practice, Loughborough University, UK Richard Hall The Alienated Academic The Struggle for Autonomy Inside the University Richard Hall De Montfort University Leicester, UK Marxism and Education ISBN 978-3-319-94303-9 ISBN 978-3-319-94304-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94304-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953724 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans- mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Front cover image © skyframes / Getty This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland This book is dedicated to Jo, Elsie and Tracey. For holding the light, whilst I found my way. Marxism and Education Series Editor’s Foreword I do not know with what weapons the next war will be fought, but I know that the one after that will be fought with sticks and stones. (Albert Einstein 1949) Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. (Jameson 2003) Writing, during May 2018, at the bicentenary of Marx’s birth, the 150th anniversary of the publication of Das Kapital and half-century since 1968 the year of ‘events’ (not least Paris, May and the Tet offensive, January– September), it remains clear both, that the dire ramifications of Einstein’s prediction and the enigmatic challenges of Jameson’s observations, are unavoidable while realistic pursuit of progressive democratic empowerment is as complex and as necessary as ever. And, engaging with the contributions of Marx and Engels for understanding our unfolding pres- ent as systemic social realities is as imperative as ever, too. These times are interesting, frightening perhaps, and Marx’s theme that all that is solid melts into air (Marx and Engels 1848) remains apt with global digitalised finance capitalism moving into full throttle, undeterred by modifications emergent in innumerable social, cultural and political structures and processes of drag and inertia. Simultaneously, uncertainty reasserts itself in variable and uneven non-linear economic vii viii Marxism and Education Series Editor’s Foreword development and while significant sections of populations are being lifted out of poverty and marking economic growth, not least, relatively, across China, for most working people in the West (particularly USA, Europe and UK) incomes continue to barely flat-line or worse, despite a contin- ual stream of pathetic confidence enhancing official messages to the con- trary.1 Thus while global wealth and income inequality has been growing steadily, there is little real prospect of remission from austerity for the chronic condition of in-work poverty, and the un-and under-employed. In the meantime, corporate philanthropy is as lucrative a growth industry as ever for the expanding and reinforcing the powers of the capitalist class (Bloom and Rhodes 2018). Looking in almost any direction moments in crisis emerge. Ecological fragility is increasingly evident; integrity of scientific and professional expertise radically challenged; resurgent bleak undersides to democracy increasingly in play and fascism lurks masquerading as populist democratic empowerment. Brilliant inventive products of digital communica- tions technologies too are themselves unreliable on many fronts, expressing negativities of fake news, alternative facts and disinformation. They pro-

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