On applying to the department of History and Philosophy of Science I was asked to produce a "writing sample" and "a proposal of interests that are specific to [the HPS department] M.Phil. programme as detailed in the Graduate Student Handbook". In order to demonstrate my capacity for lateral thinking, and also to save time, I have decided to combine these two objectives. Thus, this essay also constitutes a statement of my interests and objectives with regard to the M.Phil. programme of the HPS department: to expose and thereby destroy the narrowness of bourgeois academia.

Arguably my essay is constitutive of this narrowness. But, this deserves qualification; my essay is self-aware of its ideological content. It is therefore not just an essay in itself; it is an essay for itself. I t is a form of meta-essay: by expressing the contradictory nature of late academia without stepping beyond the framework of academia it becomes a form of ideologiekritik. In that sense it is an obscurantist, dogmatic and essentially vacuous essay.

This emptiness is referred to by the abstract where it is shrouded in the winding-cloth of the haiku form: all the better to reveal it.

The function of academia must be understood historically. In order to destroy bourgeois notions of history it is first necessary to caricature the subject by presenting taxonomy. I would like to suggest the following categories fo r historical research programmes:

1. The Great Man View.
2. History as Progress.
3. The "Shit Happens" View.

 

According to position 1, history progresses according to the actions of great historical figures. These figures are usually dead white European males. These men are viewed as "Great" in the sense that they have shaped histor y. They can shape history because they are "Great".

 

Position 2 holds that humanity progresses from ignorance towards enlightenment. Although there may be temporary setbacks (the dark ages, the collapse of the Chinese Middle Kingdom, the first and second world wars) humans are essentiall y rational and therefore progress will always triumph over barbarism.

 

Finally we have the "one damn thing after another" view: position 3. This latter position on history is currently the most popular in humanities departments in the UK. In this context it is usually referred to as post-modern ism or post-structuralism (the hyphens are optional).

 

In this paper I reject views 1-3 in favour of:

 

4. Historical Materialism.

I do not intend to present here a full account of position 4. Essentially it states that humanity tends to provide for its material needs before being concerned with politics, religion or founding universities. In constructing histori cal materialism Marx made great epistemological use of Hegel’s dialectic, albeit in a demystified form. For Marx the scientific study of society involved "abstraction" to the most basic elements and the subsequent reconstruction of concrete rea lity as a rich totality of contradictory social structures and agencies.

Marx’s mature methodology is probably most evident in Capital. Here he starts by analysing the simplest element in Capitalist production: the single, abstract commodity. In order to perform a similar analysis of academia it is necessa ry to first consider the simplest element in intellectual production: the single, abstract idea.

Academia is most highly developed where it emerged earliest. Thus, in order to understand the modern university I will examine Cambridge University. In this institution more modern, redbrick establishments see merely their own future.

In considering the qualitative and quantitative factors common to ideas we find that they have two properties by which they may be measured. There is usefulness of an idea; however, this usefulness will depend on the context. An i dea that is very useful to a professor of the HPS department, say, may be of no use at all to the average toiling student. Similarly, the drunken imaginings of a student may be very useful to themselves, but they may be far beneath the attention of the l ofty professor. Leaving aside then the "use-value" of ideas we find one other property in common. Ideas are all the products of the "thought process".

The nature of the thought process will vary between individuals. However, the exchange of ideas, which is the most obvious feature of academia, is a social phenomena. Therefore it is necessary, in analysing this exchange, to consider the abstract "socially necessary thought time" required to produce an idea. We see that this socially determined substance (the thought process) is crystallised into ideas. It is the quantitative property common to all ideas and it forms the b asis for the exchange of ideas. I shall refer to the socially necessary thought time required to produce an idea as the "exchange-value" of that idea.

We now consider the personifications of ideas in academic society and the process of exchange. It is clear that the idea does not of itself come to the lecture theatre or seminar room, it must be borne there by its human embodiment : i.e. the lecturer. The ideas of the lecturer come into the world as use-values, however, their usefulness to the lecturer is not guaranteed merely by virtue of the energy expended in their production. Indeed exchange becomes necessary, in the first in stance, precisely because the lecturer has too many ideas for her own use. Thus by repeatedly thinking the same thoughts she has produced a superfluity of identical concepts. However, their uselessness to the lecturer does not mean her thoughts are with out social use-value. They may be very useful indeed to some person who does not have the idea, but does possess the means of procuring the idea.

The "barter" of ideas, a feature of primitive society, is performed with the purpose of mutual satisfaction and not of gain by one party at the expense of another. One thinker may alienate from herself an idea of which she ha s a small surplus. She does this in exchange for some different ideas which a second thinker, for whatever reason, seeks to alienate from himself. The relative quantities of these different ideas constituting a fair exchange is essentially a question of their relative exchange-values: i.e. the amount of socially necessary thought time they embody. This is clear within the context of primitive barter: if idea A had a value of 6 hours, I would not exchange it for idea B with a value of 3 hours. Rather, I would spend the 3 hours necessary in order to conceive of B and keep idea A for exchange on a subsequent occasion. Of course, this presupposes that I have access to the means of thinking B. This is likely to be true in pre-academic intellectual format ions.

I now consider the role of idea exchange within late academia. Academia is divided into two main castes: lecturers and students. It is claimed in bourgeois ideology that these two meet as equals in the lecture theatre, that both a re free to exchange their ideas. This is true, but the student is free in a double sense: free to exchange ideas but also free of all means of autonomous mental production. Academia reproduces itself by virtue of the monopoly that the academics hold ov er the instruments of thought production.

As the modern Tripos system emerged it was necessary for the new ruling caste to seize upon the means of primitive thought production. Earlier thought producing institutions were founded primarily as theological intellectual formations and so, in order to achieve hegemony, the Academics first had to cast the scholars out of these establishments. This was accomplished by a number of ruses, not least the so-called "reformation". In the reformation the existing monastery syste m was replaced by a modern system of religion in which monasteries were "enclosed", the monks being cast out of their places of worship and of domicile. The monks, thus dispossessed of all property gradually drifted towards the colleges of Camb ridge where they were forced, in order to survive, to sell their only intellectual commodity: their thought power.

Given that, as outlined above, all ideas exchange for their proper value and given that this is the "fair price" of an idea, in what sense is there exploitation in the Tripos system? This question has vexed the scholars of ac ademia for a long time. Even amongst the most progressive of these it is frequently claimed that the basis of the modern university system is the unfair exchange of ideas. This view is both mistaken and reactionary, in that it suggests that the modern u niversity system may be reformed by greater quantitative equality between student and lecturer. Below I demonstrate that a qualitative revolution of the relationships of intellectual production is the only means by which academic exp loitation may be ended.

The actual exploitation of students proceeds as follows. Consider 10 students, each working for 5 hours a day. They will produce a total mental product with the exchange-value of 50 hours. This they yield up to the academics controll ing the means of thought production. The secret of idea production under the Tripos system is this: the students are remunerated only with sufficient ideas for them to reproduce their mental labour. That is to say, the intellectual stimulation th ey receive, and which they require to return sufficiently refreshed day after day, is less than 5 hours of ideas per student. It might be 2.5 hours per student. Thus there is a total surplus over and above this of 2.5x10=25 hours. This I call "sur plus thought". In the case illustrated it is clear that the rate of intellectual exploitation is 25/25, i.e. a rate of 100%.

It is this hidden form of mental exploitation that characterises the modern Tripos system of intellectual production.

Clearly it is the aim of the lecturer to increase the surplus thought she receives each day. There are two ways that she might achieve this: by an increase in "absolute surplus" or by an increase in "relative surplus ".

The "necessary thought time", i.e. the time necessary for the student to produce the value of their own intellectual stimulation, is a fixed quantity. The length of the working day is variable up to 24 hours; it is obvious to the lecturer that they may increase their absolute surplus extraction by increasing the length of time the student spend thinking. However, there is a limit to the length of the working day (other than the period of 24 hours). On the one hand the attem pt to work students longer may meet with the resistance of those students. On the other hand it may be detrimental to the health of the students to make them work an ever longer day. This can, in the long term, diminish the amount of surplus extraction.

So it is that the tendency in recent years has been to concentrate on the ever greater extraction of relative surplus thought. Note how the working day is divided into two portions: the "necessary thought time" and the " surplus thought time". The basis of the extraction of relative surplus is to alter the ratio of these to increase the latter relative to the former. This is done not by the extensification of thinking (as in absolute surplus extraction), but rather its intensification. By making the student’s thought process more productive the necessary thought time may be reduced, increasing the time left for surplus extraction.

Simply making the student toil more furiously can meet with the same obstacles as the extension of the working day. Instead, the increase of relative surplus thought is best achieved by the revolutionisation of the means of mental prod uction.

The emergence of the modern Tripos system has seen a massive increase in the mental productive capacity of society. This has been accomplished in part by the immiseration of the student, but also by the development of the intellect ual means of production. Ever more powerful means of thinking are being conceived of in an attempt to extract greater surpluses from each student. This in turn has had consequences for the thought process itself and the mode in which its value is realis ed. Firstly, universities have made economies of scale by bringing together, or collectivising, students. This allows an ever greater number of students to use a single means of mental production. Secondly a rigid division of intellectual labour has be en enforced. This latter trend has had terrible consequences for the student caste. The drive to specialise has produced students who are intellectually deformed as they are forced to repeat the same thought process for hours on end. When their area of specialisation is eventually overtaken by the encroachment of still more advanced means of mental production they find themselves intellectually redundant and unsuited to other, more general tasks.

Increasingly the mental labourer finds herself alienated from the product of her labour. Gone is the satisfaction of the artisan, who sees the finished idea produced by her toil displayed before her. Instead she sees only the tiniest part of the final product of her thought.

In order to understand the tendency of the organic composition of academia to rise it is necessary for us to turn from our consideration of a single institution and examine the competition between universities.

The anarchic drive to maximise the surplus thought extraction in an institution leads to unregulated competition between institutions. Less surplus means less return on the investment of ideas. Thus it is that competing institutions w ill in see it in their short term interest to introduce a new means of mental production. This will decrease the "necessary thought time", maximising relative surplus especially in comparison to other institutions which lack this new means of t hought. However, as this improvement in the thought process becomes general to all universities we see another, contradictory trend assert itself. For, as the competitive advantage of one specific university fades into the background we see what we have accomplished for academia in general: namely an increase in the organic composition of academia. By this I mean that the total investment in "necessary thought time" has fallen relative to the investment in thought to improve the thought pr ocess. The "total thought investment" is given by the sum of total "necessary thought" and the thought gone into improving the thought process. We find that the ratio between the "surplus thought" and the "total th ought investment" has fallen across the system as a whole. I refer to this ratio as the "rate of academic profit".

Thus, the attempts of individual academias to increase their academic profitability in the short term leads to a long term tendency of the general rate of profitability to fall.

Accompanying this long term tendency, academia is periodically plagued by short term crises. These are initially caused by intellectual "over-production". As a particular area of thought shows itself to be producing extr aordinary returns, academics rush into that sector en masse in search of quick academic profits. Suddenly there is a glut of the same thought, reproduced more times than it can be consumed or assimilated. There is a sudden drop in the profitability of t hat sector. This extends to all related sectors of academia particularly those producing the means of thought for the overproducing sector. As students are laid off and the means of thinking are left unused the market for even unrelated thoughts dries u p. Thus it is that crises can generalise themselves across all sectors of academia.

It is the rising organic composition of academia, combined with the growing size of individual units of academia, that leads to the tendency for these crises to deepen and to become ever more intractable.

We are rapidly reaching the point where thought itself is no longer profitable. This can lead to one of two possible outcomes: the revolutionary overthrow of bourgeois academia, or the mutual ruination of the contending castes. By bri nging students together in ever greater numbers, by exploiting their minds and then throwing them onto the scrap heap, academia is creating its own gravediggers. It only remains for students to organise politically around the theoretical viewpoint expres sed in this essay.

These thoughts about thought, and thoughts about thinking about the thought process lead to a single conclusion: the inevitability of the collapse of academia. The fragmentary nature of the university, particularly those department s interested in thinking about thought, is a necessary feature of the academic system. In short this enforced narrowness of conception is an ideological project that seeks to make the total comprehension of thought inaccessible. Such a totalising view, coming from within academia itself would be self-undermining: it would show academia the image of its own demise.

As a revolutionary and a Marxist I believe it is necessary to expose the mendacity and the narrowness of academia and its complicity in maintaining the status quo, even to the detriment of academia itself.

I seek, therefore, to transcend the fickleness of scholastic pursuits by destroying the rigid straightjacket of specialisation forced upon academics, and by engaging in praxis aimed at the revolutionary overthrow of the university. Exi sting academic bodies must be replaced with casteless, communal learning institutions in which thought proceeds for the betterment of society at large and not just to satisfy the greed of the few.

I feel that the HPS department, with its emphasis on a critical study of thought, would be the ideal starting point for the project of social transformation that I have described.