#Science/#Society/#Academia:
“The process of #rationalization central to #capitalism has required the creation of an intermediate stratum comprising the specialists of this rationalization, as #administrators, #technicians, #scientists, #educators. The very complexity of not...
“The process of #rationalization central to #capitalism has required the creation of an intermediate stratum comprising the specialists of this rationalization, as #administrators, #technicians, #scientists, #educators. The very complexity of not...
... only the #technology but the social system has made it essential that this stratum be large and, over time, expanding.The funds that have been used to support it have been drawn from the global surplus, as extracted through entrepreneurs and states. In this elementary but ...
... fundamental sense these #cadres have therefore been part of the #bourgeoisie whose claim to participation in the sharing-out of the surplus has been given precise ideological form in the twentieth-century concept of #HumanCapital. Having relatively little real capital to ...
... transmit as the heritage of their household, such #cadres have sought to guarantee succession by securing preferential access for their children to the educational channels which guarantee position. This preferential access has been conveniently presented as #achievement, ...
... supposedly legitimated by a narrowly-defined ‘#equality of #opportunity’. #Scientific #culture thus became the fraternal #code of the world’s accumulators of #capital. It served first of all to justify both their own activities and the differential rewards from which they ...
... benefited. It promoted technological innovation. It legitimated the harsh elimination of barriers to the expansion of productive efficiencies. It generated a form of #progress that would be of benefit to all—if not immediately then eventually. #Scientific #culture was more...
... however than a mere #rationalization. It was a form of #socialization of the diverse elements that were the #cadres of all the institutional structures that were needed. As a language common to #cadres but not directly to the labour-force, it became also a means of class ...
... cohesion for the upper stratum, limiting the prospects or extent of rebellious activity on the part of #cadres who might be so tempted. Furthermore, it was a flexible mechanism for the reproduction of these cadres. It lent itself to the concept known today as ...
... ‘#meritocracy’, previously ‘la carrière ouverte aux talents’. #Scientific #culture created a framework within which individual mobility was possible without threatening hierarchical work-force allocation. On the contrary, #meritocracy reinforced #hierarchy. Finally, ...
... meritocracy as an operation and #scientific #culture as an #ideology created #veils that hindered perception of the underlying operations of historical #capitalism. ...
... The great emphasis on the #rationality of scientific activity was the mask of the #irrationality of endless #accumulation.”
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