Lars Iyer's Blog, page 43

My general argument is that the traditional leftist narra...

My general argument is that the traditional leftist narrative, which was quite serviceable in its day as a critique of education as exploitation, is simply a Kantian critique, which is that education was treating people as means and not ends, so is an affront to human dignity — not to mention it’s bad for you physically and has these deleterious effects on all levels of the person, like what Marx talked about in terms of factory work. The great Marxist critiques of education in the English speaking world — Bowles and Gintis, Daniel Liston, a lot of the critical pedagogy school — is that education is exploitation, it’s excessively vocational and narrowed down in an artificial way to service the needs of capital accumulation and not to service a broader conception of human needs.

My argument is that this critique was serviceable for its day, but I think capitalism has moved beyond that and made that critique almost quaint. Anyone of a certain age in the US and Western Europe realizes that being exploited may even be good, “please, find a capitalist to exploit me, at least that means I have a job.” If I could boil it down to one quote that inspired me to think about this it would be from Joan Robinson, who is an English economist, and she said something to the effect that for the worker “there’s only one thing worse than the capitalist exploiting you, and that is not being exploited by the capitalist within a capitalist economy.” So you are placed outside the loop of production in this precarious, disposable position, and I think that’s because capitalism itself has shifted.

In the book I say that that traditional leftist critique of education was appropriate for what I call the “all hands on deck” phase of capitalism, which coincides with the advent of universal schooling. [...]

Due to an intensification of automation, technology, etc., I think that capitalism has advanced beyond that and it’s not the case that quantitatively more and more workers are functional and useful for profit accumulation, for the system. We’ve reached a point where we’ve out-produced ourselves, where productivity has increased so that simply not as many workers are needed. From the cold logic of capitalist accumulation, this increasingly youthful, educated group is kind of just surplus, they are more of a management and political stability problem — which we see inklings of in the Arab spring, or occupy movements, or London, or Greece, where there are huge levels of youth under-employment, or here where people with massive student debt are working for minimum wage at Starbucks.

David Blacker, interviewed

Rough Diamond reviews Wittgenstein Jr at Amazon.

Rough Diamond reviews Wittgenstein Jr at Amazon.

A saying from the Zohar: On the sixth day, having created...

A saying from the Zohar: On the sixth day, having created man, God said to him: I have worked heretofore, now you shall continue.

A saying: Cain's true punishment? He unlearned the meaning of Shabbat.

The return of the scouts, discouraged and discouraging, provoked such distress among the tribes that Moses decided to commmemorate it every year. At every anniversary Moses ordered the Jews to dig graves for themselves and to lie in them overnight. The next morning heralds ran between the trenches, shouting: Let the living separate from the dead, let the living detach themselves from the dead!  On the fortieth anniversary all rose, for by that time all of them belonged to the new generation; they were worthy of entering the Promised Land, for to them, bondage was no longer a temptation.

Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God

Jacob Knowles-Smith reviews Wittgenstein Jr for The Liter...

Jacob Knowles-Smith reviews Wittgenstein Jr for The Literateur.

New 30 minute audio interview with Raj Persaud.Culture ...

New 30 minute audio interview with Raj Persaud.

Culture Whisper list me as one of the 'best new British writers for books that challenge and experiment'.

Randy Metcalfe reviews Wittgenstein Jr at Transformative ...

Randy Metcalfe reviews Wittgenstein Jr at Transformative Explications.

A piece I wrote on music and Wittgenstein Jr for Largehea...

A piece I wrote on music and Wittgenstein Jr for Largehearted Boy.

I'll be discussing Wittgenstein Jr in Cambridge on 30th O...

I'll be discussing Wittgenstein Jr in Cambridge on 30th October at Heffers Bookshop, from 6.30 to 8.00. Tickets here.

I'll be doing the same thing at the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts on 6th November, from 7.15 onwards. I'll be reading with Evie Wyld. Tickets here.

More news to come on an event in London at the Serpentine Gallery on 1st November.

Drew Smith reviews Wittgenstein Jr at The Daily Beast.

Drew Smith reviews Wittgenstein Jr at The Daily Beast.

Anna Aslanyan reviews Wittgenstein Jr in the Independent.

Anna Aslanyan reviews Wittgenstein Jr in the Independent.