"By definition", our "reason

"By definition", our "reason for attending is to advance up the capitalist ladder"? That says much more about you than it does about us. I, personally, came to college to learn, to practice the academic, and to participate in an autonomous student movement. I have no illusions about advancing up any ladder, nor do I intend to do so.

And if you're paying any attention to the occupation movement, you'll see that our entire goal is to create our own institutions within the belly of the beast, where the capitalists have already done the work of filling our buildings with people eager to teach and people eager to learn. That these same capitalists built a profit machine around it, which is increasingly becoming the main, immediate focus of the endeavor, is our beef with the system in the first place; and our greatest opportunity to smash it is from within its halls, because the critical nature of academia means that we can take unique learning roles within it without pledging allegiance to its capital-accumulation goals. The public university is not just a tool of state and capital, it is a means for education, demanded by the greater public. Any public demand for education represents a wedge in the social order, however small. Filling the wedge and pushing it open wider from within is a means of direct conflict with the social order itself.

Still, if you want to sit on the sidelines and whine about it instead of taking action and standing in solidarity with those who act, well, I hear the Democrats are looking for new members.

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