It is the function of the university to produce the true ideas of the false society. For this reason, all ideas generated as research products of university departments extend the dominion of the state over the objects of consciousness. By definition, nothing that is authored within the academy as a capitalised object of research contradicts the relation of class domination which the university both expresses and facilitates. The university’s radical ideas are falsely radical, its arguments for social transformation, mere representations. Even that research which might theorise the abolition of the university system remains within the constraints of ideology - the state’s anticipatory wargaming around the scenarios of its own demise (thus para-academic seeming communist journals such as Aufheban, Endnotes, Commune). The bourgeoisie has taken everything, now it desires to expropriate as ideology the possibility of its own overthrow - the state makes arguments through its university departments for taking possession of what comes after the state.
Then, what is to be made of the continuing advance of academic discourse into the proletariat’s immanent critique of its conditions? At the point where the possibility of consciousness is perpetually interrupted by the academy’s diversionary stratagems, how are working class communists to respond to those who make a living from expropriating communist ideas as objects of research, the professorial mediators, these class antagonists and indirect exploiters, who make a living from metabolising class conflict into their own careers - how should we, yes at last a we, respond to supposed radicals who function as state sanctioned oppositionists and bumbling recuperators? Every radical academic is structured as dissembler for the apparat, at best they present back to the working class what has already happened, positions and arguments that are already dead but at worst, ‘communism’ begins to function as a representation and feeds back into the logic of instrumentalisation (as with ‘accelerationism’). And yet, and even so, for those outside the academy, and for those who are sufficiently dexterous with a toothpick, it is still possible to extract nourishing, if decomposing, fleshy tissue from the fangy maws of such ravenous crocodiles. Here is a basic ok/not ok heuristic for processing that enemy discourse posing as friendly:
1. Anonymous academic employed to produce radical course content but also publishing radical opinion in accord with studies. OK.
Then, what is to be made of the continuing advance of academic discourse into the proletariat’s immanent critique of its conditions? At the point where the possibility of consciousness is perpetually interrupted by the academy’s diversionary stratagems, how are working class communists to respond to those who make a living from expropriating communist ideas as objects of research, the professorial mediators, these class antagonists and indirect exploiters, who make a living from metabolising class conflict into their own careers - how should we, yes at last a we, respond to supposed radicals who function as state sanctioned oppositionists and bumbling recuperators? Every radical academic is structured as dissembler for the apparat, at best they present back to the working class what has already happened, positions and arguments that are already dead but at worst, ‘communism’ begins to function as a representation and feeds back into the logic of instrumentalisation (as with ‘accelerationism’). And yet, and even so, for those outside the academy, and for those who are sufficiently dexterous with a toothpick, it is still possible to extract nourishing, if decomposing, fleshy tissue from the fangy maws of such ravenous crocodiles. Here is a basic ok/not ok heuristic for processing that enemy discourse posing as friendly:
1. Anonymous academic employed to produce radical course content but also publishing radical opinion in accord with studies. OK.
2. Named academic employed to produce standard academic content and publishing radical opinion. OK.
3. Named academic employed to produce radical academic content and publishing radical opinion attacking content. OK.
4. Anonymous or named academic employed to produce standard academic content and publishing non-radical opinion on academic content. OK.
5. Named academic employed to produce radical academic content but publishing non-radical opinion on non-radical matters (what they had for dinner, their cute pet). OK.
6. Named academic paid to produce radical course content and expressing opinion in line with course content. NOT OK.
7. Named academic paid to produce radical course content and calling for the cancellation/de-platforming or expulsion of other named individuals from the space of the academy. COP!!
8. In all cases where it is judged that the communication falls into the set of OK, feel free to recirculate, attribute and enjoy message content. Every idea expressed by an academic is false but that’s okay as long as it’s acknowledged as such. Falsity has its uses.
9. For banal radical contents belonging to the set of NOT OK, do not validate or circulate. If you agree with the content or think it important, rewrite it and claim it as your own.
10. For interesting contents falling within the NOT OK set, steal it, pass it off as your own, and no regrets.
11. At the end of the day, social managers such as academics, when considered as a subject formation rather than as a collection of nice enough individuals, are class antagonists - their job is to manipulate and direct consciousness in the interest of the productive apparatus. Their seeming controversies disguise turf wars over departmental funding and publication schedules.
12. If you are a radical academic employed to produce radical content, your only radical contribution to radical consciousness is to sabotage, pirate or withhold your research - this begins by anonymising your social media presence as a first step in separating your self from your career.
I think the bigger point in all this(I agree with 12 points of course) is the undermining of education. Education is to the left what work is to the right. The rawest of radicals are autodidacts not academics.
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