Talking Points: Public Education or Capitalist Schooling?Rich Gibson, February 2011
While
I prefer not to adopt the forms of quick “Talking Points,” I can understand why
they are created. For the sake of
brevity I offer a few of my own, understanding that my friends and I have been
wrong about important things in the past, but from time to time we’ve been
right too.
Five
Key Talking Points with sub-sets:
1.
Our social context is:
A.
Capitalism--meaning ruthless exploitation.
B.
Imperialism: capital’s birth-twin on a relentless search for cheap labor, raw
materials, regional control, etc.
C.
The real promise of perpetual war and its corollary, rising inequality, often
color-coded, usually hitting women and kids first and worst. Many real
capitalist crises: financial and failed warfare with rising anti-imperialist
movements, potentially, going beyond nationalism.
D.
Developing corporate states, an imperfect merger of government and key
capitalists (especially finance and industrial, but others as well) in which
ruling classes settle their internal issues, then turn on the mass of people as
a class, using government as an executive committee and armed weapon.
E.
The ascendence of fascism (the corporate state and more) as a popular,
multi-tentacled, movement. No specific tentacle makes much sense in itself
(T-partyites, evangelicals, Anti-immigrant movements, racists, bankster
thieves, the complete militarization of imperial countries, etc) but taken as a
whole they merge into activist forms of protection for capitalism.
2.
The core issue of our time is the potential of mass, class-conscious, direct
action met by the reality of rising fascism. The crux of this is class war,
often deflected into race/national/religious/opportunistic wars.
A.
To not name the capital/imperialist twins is to fail to build class
consciousness which, over time, will only lead to recreating oppression in new
ways, typically using the oppressed to become instruments of their own
domination—as we shall see in Egypt, saw in the Ukraine, see today in the
US union movement especially, etc. Pandering to the lowest common denominator
of acceptable language, that is, to reject naming the twin beasts, upends
reality. Fox News, PBS, NBC, all say “Capitalism,” and “Empire” now. Why hide?
3.
The demand to “Defend Public Education,” is to make a fetish of what is in fact
capitalist schooling, to defend a myth which has never been educational
(leading out) nor public (always segregated, always promoting lies like nationalism,
now militarism).
A.
It is to champion what occurs inside capitalist schooling: from the division of
labor in forms of knowledge to the regulation of what is known (regimented
curricula) and how people come to know it (racist, anti-working class high
stakes exams, etc) and militarism in poor and working class areas in order to
maintain the corporate state. Defending the indefensible is to suspend
critique.
B.
It is not only to defend the capitalist state, the corporate state, but also to
demand to make it more powerful. Moreover, capitalist schools are schools of
the empire, teaching nationalism and militarism relentlessly while relying on
the imperial rent, the fruits of imperialism, to stock the schools, pay the
workers, and, especially, reward the school union bosses whose exorbitant pay
comes largely from their enforcing the empire’s projects in theory and
practice.
C.
The demand to “Defend Public Education” represents a shift in focus. The shift
from a demand to “Emancipate Education” (much of Europe and early on in the US
last year) or “Rescue Education from the Ruling Classes”, to “Defend Public
Education,” is no accident.
D.
This change of focus is in part a product of the sects, liberals, and
unionists: the latter seeking to defend dues income—which they exchange
for labor peace in their collective bargaining contracts. This is the
historical exchange. Labor mis-leaders trade the work of their members and
no-strike clauses for dues check-off.
E.
The unionists confuse unionism with today’s counterfeit unions. Not a single
major labor leader in the US supports the reason people think they join unions:
contradictory interests of workers and bosses. Rather, the union bosses openly
believe in corporate state company unionism: the unity of big business, big
labor, and government, “in the national interest.” Whatever these entities are, they are not unions in the
traditional sense. Indeed, the “unions,” do far more to divide people (by job,
public/private sector, etc), than to unite them.
F.
This is partially why union tops fight so hard against class conscious action.
They don’t believe in it. Instead, they back all-class unity, a central prop to
the corporate state. This is why we witnessed 40 years of concessions from
unions when it is clear that concessions do not save jobs; only make bosses
want more. But, for example, the United Auto Workers leadership essentially
killed the union, lost more than a million members, in order to “Save the US Auto Industry,” while GM, Ford, and
Chrysler all invested abroad. UAW leaders’ pensions are, however, intact, while
their former members pensions, and current members wages, are gutted.
In
k-12 schools, it is why the union bosses participated in the creation of the No
Child Left Behind Act and, now, Race to the Top, both bi-partisan, ruling class
projects to guarantee hegemony over knowledge and action. It is why the union
mis-leaders do nothing but organize retreats, decay, in community colleges,
universities, and colleges. It is why they hug Democrats who, in turn, hug
Republicans.
G.
But why not represent the real interest of union members, as a class?
H.
Labor bosses bulging salaries ($686,949 for one year for ex-NEA president Reg
Weaver) come from using deception, law (“cannot break the contract”), and in
some instances violence, to be sure the rank and file is well under control
(selling labor peace) and, importantly, assisting to crush indigenous social
movements outside the US, backing imperialism. This action follows the same
thinking that created the American Federation of Labor, a craft union which
sought to gain power by limiting access to the crafts, typically using racism
and sexism–and family ties. That thinking goes like this: If other people
will do worse, we will do better.
I.
One form of deception is to herd union members into voting booths, away from
direct action on the job and in communities. In this electoral world, people
choose who will oppress them best: the parties equivalent to a two-headed
poisonous snake. Capitalism trumps democracy at every turn (unpopular wars,
bailouts, etc.) Electoral work serves as a useful diversion, made especially
successful by the incessant propaganda of capitalist schooling, when, as one
top NEA staffer said, “If voting mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
J. Another deception: both school union
conventions in 2010 saw floor struggles in which the union mis-leaders, and a
large majority of the rank and file behind them, openly voted not to discuss either the bailouts or the wars, rather following the most opportunistic
paths: what about just us in schools, which becomes, over time, the base of
capital’s values: What about me? Because of their ties to capitalism and
imperialism, in their ideas and wallets, union bosses want nothing to do with
showing people their realities: exploitation/inequality, war–all rooted
in class.
4.
The demand to “Defend Public Education,” aims at “privatization,” when, in
fact, privatization is at best a second-tier issue. The dominant question is
the corporate state (again, bank bailouts, wars). Appeals to rescue the public
sector seek to bolster that state.
A.
The more school workers, students, and others trust the electoral sector, trust
the law (designed to protect property, not people), the more we believe we must
sacrifice for a fabricated “common good,” the more we target the “bigger evil”
privatizers distinct from the corporate state, the more we guarantee the rule
of capitalists in all forms and their government’s ability to attack us.
5.
We know now that people who are positioned to have no choice but to fight back,
will: California grocery strikers, nurses, in the recent past; now students and
school workers. At issue is whether they will grasp why they must fight back
(class war) and, perhaps, win, or they will misread and surely lose (grocery
strikers).
A.
The culture that served as a vital pillar of what once was a labor movement,
class solidarity, is largely evaporated–because of 40 years and more of
union, liberal, and sect betrayals. Evidence: most young people (and plenty of
seniors) don’t know what a scab is, nor grasp the significance of a picket
line, and have never seen a real strike. More evidence: the prospect of a
National City (Southern California) strike in early February, 2011, drew harsh
preparations by regional bosses (working as a class) to ensure a large pool of
scabs (“substitutes”). It followed that local union leaders faced a context,
which top union leaders forged, in which they had some community support, but
not enough to mount a real battle–for which they were unprepared–so
they, like so many others, caved.
B.
Resurrection of a culture of class solidarity, which “Defend Public Education,”
or some cooked up “public sector,” inherently deflects, is key in the period ahead, in the streets and in
minds as well.
6.
This is a long struggle involving daily battles. Many, perhaps most, of us,
would agree on Grand Strategy, the far-off goal where we fix our sights: a
reasonably free and equitable world in which people can be creative in the
absence of tyranny and war. Union tops reject this out of hand in theory and
practice.
A.
It may be we can agree on Strategy, or perhaps not. Part of strategy means that
all rise with all-- with common understandings of what, and why, the strategy
is. Strategy involves longer term action, but theory too: teaching class
consciousness. Union tops, some sects, and many liberals, want nothing to do
with this, preferring the vending machine approach: pay your money and we think
and act for you–like church. Another part of strategy is recognizing the
severe reality of top-down class war; then determining how to respond with
tactics that unite Grand Strategy and Strategy.
B.
In the absence of coherent Grand Strategy and Strategy, all devolves into
disjointed tactics which will invariably lead to one defeat after the next.
Tactics, for example identifying critical choke points in cities, on campuses,
etc, and discovering ways to make good use of them, need to begin with “all
rise with all,” understandings as well.
7.
Last, we now see that when more or less spontaneous movements arise in response
to various forms of oppression (tuition/fee hikes, k-12 cuts, etc.) that elements
within or outside those movements will arrive and work hard to be sure that the
social context of our time, and class-consciousness, will be, at best,
obscured, and at worst, demolished.
A.
Some of the carriers of this opposition will invariably be honest, and wrong,
while others will have an interest (high pay, status, etc) in warding off
critical analysis. Telling one from another can be difficult.
B.
Nevertheless, it appears that the kinds of close personal ties, even among
people who have very real differences, which make united action possible—ties
across the usual boundaries of, for example, race and sex—are absolutely
vital to any social movement that can make real sacrifices, win reform
victories, sustain them, and target more radical change as well.
Sources
offered on request. These are talking points, not a dissertation.
Good
luck to us, every one.
R
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