Louis Proyect wrote: "Why couldn't Bard have stayed a nice little liberal arts school of 500 students? Why is Columbia created a huge expansion in Manhattanville? I can understand the logic behind Apple Inc. and General Motors but what kind of Marxist economic principles explain the transformation of American colleges and universities into such behemoths?"
………. Before you go looking for "Marxist Principles" to explain X, you have to ask what is the relationship of X to capitalism, which is a bit complicated, because much of the activity in a capitalist society is NOT capitalist activity. (Sleeping for example, which is radically _different_ in capitalist and non-capitalist societies but is not itself a cpapitalist activity. Moreover, even in those 'parts' of capitalist society which are capitalist only a part is explained by "Marxist principle," much being grounded in contingency, which remains at least as powerful as "eoomic" principle, Marixst or otherwise, as a source of social practice. You could learn something by reading "The Erosion of Non-Capitalist Institutions and the Reproduction of Capitalism," by David M Kotz, in _ Political Economy and Global Capitalism: The 21st Century, Present and Future_, edited by Robert Albritton, Robert Jessop and Richard Westra. Education is precisely one of those "non-capitalist institutions" which are so vital to capitalism but are under constant attack by capitalists and capitalists politicians. (Charter schools are an effort to turn schools into capitalist "institutions" and teachers into workers who produce surplus value.) But Bard remains a non-capitalist institution responding to the pressures of capitalism but not explicable solely in terms of that pressure. Carrol This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
