education in capitalist societies

From pink scare:

"We have needs beyond the needs to consume and these aren't recognized by capitalism. We have a need, for example, to develop and exercise our talents. When our capacities lie unused, they don't enjoy the zest for life that comes from having one's capacities flourish. People are able to develop themselves only when they get good education. But in a capitalist society, the education of children is threatened by those who would contort education to fit the narrow demands of the labor market.

The ruling class wants education to be geared toward restoring profitability to the system. It's dangerous to educate the young too much, because they will become cultivated people who are likely to be less satisfied with the low-paying jobs the market offers them. This might create aspirations that capitalism can't match. This, for obvious reasons, is dangerous for the ruling class. People must be "educated to know their place".

The state is trying to fashion individuals who will be willing sellers of low-grade labor power. It is deliberately underdeveloping large sectors of the population. The elites think that it's dangerous to give the masses too much education. It's hard to imagine a more undemocratic approach to education. There's a lot of talent in almost every human being. But in a lot of cases that talent goes undeveloped, because people lack the time, energy, resources and facilities to develop it. Throughout history, only a leisured minority has enjoyed this fully on the backs of the toiling majority. This should no longer continue to be the case. We have superb technology to restrict toil. Capitalism doesn't use that technology in a liberating way; it uses it to confine people to largely unfulfilling work and it shrinks from providing the enriching education that the technology makes possible."

-G.A. Cohen, "Against Capitalism"

no, no, go back!

For more go HERE .

The Cocktail Party!

Are you nauseated and frightened by the growth of Tea Party organizing, and the zany old white people in funny hats at the center of the current media blitz? It’s time to fight back! Join The Cocktail Party, a barstool-roots movement for left wing urban homosexuals and the people who love us. The major planks of this new movement’s platform include:

*Nationalize the banks
*Soak the rich with high taxes
*Abolish the Senate
*Abolish the Electoral College
*Free public education through college for all
*Free day care for elders and children
*National health care
*Universal accessibility
*Abolish all student loan, credit card and mortgage debt
*Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, shift resources to the Arts, and to an independent Haiti
*Forgiveness of all debt of developing countries
*Outlaw invidious discrimination
*Abolish prisons for all non violent crime, prioritize community rehabilitation for all crime
*Decriminalize sex work and drugs
*Open borders
*Abolish marriage

This platform is a work in progress. We seek additional ideas from all leftist urban homosexuals and their comrades. We acknowledge that this platform will take some time to implement. We crafted this list of policy goals with the intention, minimally, of driving the Tea Partiers crazy with rage. Because we are exactly who they think we are–a motley crew of miscegenated sex crazed lushes who read Marx and Fanon, seeking to support our lifestyles by taking resources from the rich and powerful and redistributing them with abandon.

what I like about True Blood

Sita Sings the Blues

disaster meter

rose on writing

"[T]o satisfy the demand that one might write without ignorance would not only make writing impossible; it would also deny that encounter with the unknown that carries with it the possibility, however slim, of contributing to a difference" (Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, 14).