The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame

by David Blacker

The current neoliberal mutation of capitalism has evolved beyond the days when the wholesale exploitation of labor underwrote the world system’s expansion. While “normal” business profits plummet and theft-by-finance rises, capitalism now shifts into a mode of elimination that targets most of us—along with our environment—as waste products awaiting managed disposal. The education system is caught in the throes of this eliminationism across a number of crushing student debt, impatience with student expression, the looting of vestigial public institutions and, finally, as coup de grâce, an abandonment of the historic ideal of universal education. “Education reform” is powerless against eliminationism and is at best a mirage that diverts oppositional energies. The very idea of education activism becomes a comforting fiction. Educational institutions are strapped into the eliminationist project—the neoliberal endgame—in a way that admits no escape, even despite the heroic gestures of a few. The school systems that capitalism has built and directed over the last two centuries are fated to go down with the ship. It is rational therefore for educators to cultivate a certain pessimism. Should we despair? Why, yes, we should—but cheerfully, as confronting elimination, mortality, is after all our common fate. There is nothing and everything to do in order to prepare.
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Genres: Economics, Education, Philosophy

319 pages, Paperback

First published December 7, 2013

Reviews

[Sam Wiscomb · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of yadda-yadda and good argument points but no true solution is offered other than some doomerism. The voice of the book felt all over the place.

[Shoon Teoh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the most accessible book, filled with academic jargon. However does make some compelling arguments regarding the trap of student debt and the changing nature of education due to marketization.

Blacker does go into interesting detail about how Ivy Leage universities in the US such as Harvard were historically tied to and reproduced particular class demographics. He highlights how ivy league institutions, in response to anti-discrimination regulations, introduced increasingly non-academic entrance requirements such as lacrosse that only male white privileged bourgeoisie would be able to indulge in, thus ensuring the universities still retained autonomy to discriminate. The point he does raise particularly well with this example however is that in fields that privileged networked individuals such as MBAs, universities roles are less in teaching and research but in developing social capital within a group of well-resourced students.

As someone studying in the UK, i found the book to be too focused on the structure of US education.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was gon be four stars til I got to the end. Started off with the tendency of the rate of profits to fall and ended in stoicism with "give up" in the middle. I loved it. Few poignant Will-ish data points of uncanny interest, too. Might as well be a Belle and Sebastian song. Might just be me, though. Only going to recommend to other Marxists.

[Andrew Ordover · Rating 3 out of 5]

The argument is grim and difficult for this more hopeful reader to try to weasel out of. It's a bit relentless in its reference and deference to Marx in all things, but again, that doesn't make it wrong. It's also rich in academic jargon, which can make it tough going for some. Whether or not you end up agreeing with the author's vision of where we are and where we're heading, the book is worth reading and thinking about.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The commodification of education serves among other things to aid the society organised around commodity production even when it brings untold immiseration on the our way to extinction.