I am in higher level education in the public university system. I used to view academia as a source of hope in society, and perhaps a progressive institution in someways, or some kind of source of hope with their supposed focus on science and research. After some years here, this "image" I had of academia has been shattered.

What are your perceptions of academia and research institutions, as Marxists?

  • IzyaKatzmann [he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    It disappoints me to no end. My institution is not prestigious, when I attend seminars or lectures (typically only advertised for graduate students or faculty) the fawning over speakers from prestigious institutions I find a bit abhorrent.

    The questions asked by the audience are self-satisfying 'low-balls' more for hoping to please the speaker & be seen than genuine intellectual curiosity.

    As well, I understood I was mistaken when I thought academics were cool for being reserved in their statements.

    I still appreciate it, and even asking my own professors questions in smaller-sized classes, which are considered challenging are then skirted without engaging in any way.

    This as well as other interactions led me to understand much of 'reservedness' in answering question by academics has reputation in mind. Speaking from an adjacent field or attempting some synthesis in dialogue where the academic has less authority is met with resistance.

    As well, there seems to be no praxis of any kind. Not praxis as in protesting and organizing, simply making acknowledgements of historical events in the pursuit of academic integrity is discarded.

    Then, the kind of knowledge obtained and developed by academics is genuine, there is useful stuff there and it is toothless. It makes no considerations to the world outside, rather the ivory tower is front and centre.

    I think, "how can they ignore entire regions of the world or centuries of history?" In the case of natural sciences, incl. statistics. I keep thinking, if the context was given, which I have reason to believe some professors know, it would amend the confusion amongst my peers.

    tl;dr mao seems to be correct with his ideas about intelligentsia

      • IzyaKatzmann [he/him]
        ·
        8 months ago

        Some selected quotes, he mentioned himself thinking like a petty-bourgeois intellectual during his years of study. The following quotes are from Talks at the Yenan forum on literature and art on May 1942.

        Here I might mention the experience of how my own feelings changed. I began life as a student and at school acquired the ways of a student; I then used to feel it undignified to do even a little manual labour, such as carrying my own luggage in the presence of my fellow students, who were incapable of carrying anything, either on their shoulders or in their hands. At that time I felt that intellectuals were the only clean people in the world, while in comparison workers and peasants were dirty. I did not mind wearing the clothes of other intellectuals, believing them clean, but I would not put on clothes belonging to a worker or peasant, believing them dirty. But after I became a revolutionary and lived with workers and peasants and with soldiers of the revolutionary army, I gradually came to know them well, and they gradually came to know me well too. It was then, and only then, that I fundamentally changed the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois feelings implanted in me in the bourgeois schools.

        On the behaviour of petty-bourgeois intellectuals.

        The human nature boosted by certain petty-bourgeois intellectuals is also divorced from or opposed to the masses; what they call human nature is in essence nothing but bourgeois individualism, and so, in their eyes, proletarian human nature is contrary to human nature. "The theory of human nature" which some people in Yenan advocate as the basis of their so-called theory of literature and art puts the matter in just this way and is wholly wrong.

        On working with petty-bourgeois ideology, I think I was like this initially when I joined my org, I thought to prescribe the lessons I learned in academic institutions.

        An ideological struggle is already under way in literary and art circles in Yenan, and it is most necessary. Intellectuals of petty-sour dis ays, i elving tubbary y ta aristil ways, to project themselves and spread their views, and they want the Party and the world to be remoulded in their own image. In the circumstances it is our duty to jolt these "com-rades" and tell them sharply, "That won't work! The proletariat cannot accommodate itself to you; to yield to you would actually be to yield to the big landlord class and the big bourgeoisie and to run the risk of undermining our Party and our country." Whom then must we yield to? We can mould the Party and the world only in the image of the proletarian vanguard.

        This one is from his selected works. Here is a link.

        The intellectuals often tend to be subjective and individualistic, impractical in their thinking and irresolute in action until they have thrown themselves heart and soul into mass revolutionary struggles, or made up their minds to serve the interests of the masses and become one with them. Hence although the mass of revolutionary intellectuals in China can play a vanguard role or serve as a link with the masses, not all of them will remain revolutionaries to the end. Some will drop out of the revolutionary ranks at critical moments and become passive, while a few may even become enemies of the revolution. The intellectuals can overcome their shortcomings only in mass struggles over a long period.