Date:    Sat, 04 Jul 98 18:25 CDT
From: YLPSLL0@cpua.it.luc.edu
To: psn@CSF.COLORADO.EDU
Subject: The New Feudalism
Thanks to Brian Klocke for the blurb on academia.  Most of us are
well aware of it-esp the itinerant scholars on this list.  Those of
us who are products of the "Golden Age", like with tenure, mortgages
and today, BBQ's  (Comments of 4th for other posts) know the reluctance
we have of telling bright  students-often our own kids-AVOID THE
ACADEMIC WORLD.  This semester I had a summa cum laude, Phi Beta Shmeta
 far brighter than I, and yet I warned her-she an academic brat- Not
 to go for grad in arts/sciences. Let me make 2 points.
1) The decline of the academy is not general...but much focused on LAS,
which do not train for jobs per se.  Look at growth in Computer Science
and Business Administration programs.  A recent blurb said that grads
of Northwestern/U of Chicago were starting at 120,000/year.  How many of
us make half this????  In his critique of American culture, Paul Fussell
profession curmudgeon has found that giving computer dweebs and business
men the garb and title of academics represents a new bottom in taste,
equating  Java with a spoken language or marketing deodorants as equal
to study of the Enlightenment.   But LAS, does teach people to think,
and how many of us have taught how political economy operates and had
several students say...gee I never thought about that. (And how many of
us were once students and when we learned how capitalism required
domination, exploitation and immiseration-while mystifying its reality
said to that communist prof...gee I never though about that.
2) WARNING SELF PROMOTION-YOU MIGHT WANT TO DEL AT THIS POINT
As I have noted on this list, in presenatations and hopefully some day
a book, we are moving› to what I call cyber-feudalism, an new version
of the inequality typical of the dark ages, but this time around, the
elites control not land, but information/knowledge.  They live in
castles, while masses live in hovels-or are expendables, the new home
less.  At the same time, as Bahktin argued, the carnival culture of
inversion and cultural resistance-serves to stablize these relationships
of inequality. Today, the carnival culture is provided by these elites
and comes in many forms from rock to Bay Watch to Internet porn. Just
as in 1500 there were 1500 local States in Europe, today we see  a
similar localization/fragmentation, but not by geography, but culture
so that not only do we not know our nieghbor, but typically don't want
to.  (I live in a former bohemian/poor nieghborhood turned yuppie). So
there are now scores, if not hundreds of life style/culture segments
that break down cohesion/solidarity.  Hey, Bellah/Etzioni say the same
thing but advocate a soft fascism as a solution.
3) What can be done.  I am not optimistic, but we can begin with recog
nition of the problem and attempt to develop frameworks of understand-
ing appropriate to what Toffler calls the third wave. Marxism must be
seen as the critique of industrial capitalism and as the material
basis changes, so too must our critiques and analyses change.  That
said, we can still learn from union struggles and organize.  Many in
the academy think that intellectuals are too good to do what blue collar
workers do.  But given growing wage stagnation-for us, and  increasing
assaults on the tenure system, I would conclude by paraphrasing the
minister who stood by while the Holocaust proceeded and then said,
and when they came for me, noone protested.  Have a cheery 4th of
July and kindly rembember the bourgoisie who gave their lives to create
a rational, prosperous class that took direct control of the State
to mark the death knell of feudalism.......or did they after all.
Lauren Langman, the perpetual Frankfurt School pessimist  :)  :)  :)