Tag: Politics

Robespierre on Property

“The first social law is therefore the one that guarantees all members of society the means to live; all others are subordinate to that one; property was only instituted and guaranteed to cement it.  It is in order to live that we have property in the first case. It is not true that property can ever be in opposition with men’s subsistence.

“The aliments necessary to man are as sacred as life itself.  Everything essential to conserve life is property common to the whole of society.  Only the surplus can be individual property and left subject to the enterprise of merchants.  Any mercantile speculation that I make at the cost of the life of my like is not a traffic, but brigandage and fratricide.”

Maximillien Robespierre “The Incorruptible”, December 2, 1792.

Pierre Bourdieu – The Left Hand and the Right Hand of the State

Link to an interview with Pierre Bourdieu:

“The Left Hand and the Right Hand of the State”

 

Bonus quote:

“Today, financial crisis is a permanent state of things the reference to which legitimizes the demands to cut social spending, health care, support of culture and scientific research, in short, the dismantling of the welfare state. Is, however, this permanent crisis really an objective feature of our socio-economic life? Is it not rather one of the effects of the shift of balance in the ‘class struggle’ towards Capital . . . ?  In other words, the crisis is an ‘objective fact’ if and only if one accepts in advance as an unquestionable premise the inherent logic of Capital . . . .”

Slavoj Žižek, “Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism”

Megan Erickson – Edutopia

Link to an article by Megan Erickson:

“Edutopia”

Bonus links: David F. Noble, “Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education,” Michael Margolis, “Brave New Universities,” Robert Abele, “The Capitalist Takeover of Higher Education,” John Dewey, Democracy and Education, Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America