Wages for Students. Wages for Students
of this debacle school-work gets a new defender from what might seem to be a surprising quarter: the Left.
The “socialist” teacher and the “revolutionary” student have become the staunchest defenders of the public university against “budget cut-backs” and the like. Why? Their story goes something like this: education leads to the ability to make more and broader connections in your social situation, in a word, education makes you more conscious. Since the public universities open up the possibility of having a highly educated working class, these universities make it possible for the working class to become more class conscious; further, a more conscious working class will pay less attention to the merely “economistic” demands for more money and less work, and pay more attention to the political task of “building socialism.” This logic gives the Left both an explanation of the university crisis—capital is afraid of the highly conscious working class that the university was beginning to spawn—and a demand: more schoolwork and not less! So in the name of political consciousness and socialism these leftists intensify schoolwork (which is just wageless work) and frown upon student demands for less of it as capitalistic backsliding. At a time when all the usual defenses of the free work done at schools are being exposed, the Left now seizes the time as its chance to lead the working class out if its “materialistic” sleep to its higher mission: the making of socialistic society.
But the Left runs afoul of that old question posed to previous enlighteners of the working class: who shall educate the educators? Since the Left does not start from the obvious—schoolwork is unwaged work—all its efforts lead to more unwaged work for capital, to more exploitation. All its attempts to increase class consciousness remain oblivious to capital’s control on its own ground, and so the Left ends in consistently supporting capital’s efforts to intensify work, in rationalizing and disciplining the working class. So the “building of socialism” becomes just another device for getting more free work in the service of capital.
So capital’s and the Left’s defense of the wageless character of schoolwork just falls on its face.
Students are Unpaid Workers
Students belong to the working class. More specifically, we belong to that part of the working class that is unwaged (unpaid). Our wagelessness condemns us to lives of poverty, dependence, and overwork. But worst of all, not getting a wage means that we lack the power that the wage provides in dealing with capital.
Without the wage we are condemned to lives of bare existence. We are forced to survive on what others wouldn’t tolerate. The housing we can afford to rent is substandard and overcrowded. The food we eat, must eat, is cheap institutional food of the cheapest brands. Our clothing and entertainment are standardized and drab. We are a clear case of poverty.
Since we are mostly unwaged and since we do have to live, we have to get the money from somewhere else, by being dependent on someone who does receive a wage. For some students, subsistence and tuition are at least partially taken care of by a dear relative. As unwaged students, however, we are in a relationship of dependence upon our parents or other benefactors that leaves us powerless. Further, if a whole family sacrifices—the mother gets a second job and the father sweats to pay for our schooling, our parents are weakened in their struggle against work while we are blackmailed into accepting the school work. Even though we do as much work as the waged, we are made to be dependent upon them; for with the exception of those students who do receive wages (in the Armed Forces, in the “enlightened” Lompoc Jail in California, in private corporation training programs, in Manpower Training) most students get no wage at all for the schoolwork they do.
For those of us who do not receive such support, not getting a wage means having to work an additional job outside of school. And since the labor market is saturated with students looking for these jobs, capital imposes minimum wages and benefits on us. As a result, we work even more hours or even additional jobs. Since our schoolwork is unpaid, most of us work during the so-called summer vacation. Even if we take the time off we have no money with which to enjoy it. The absurdity of this is even further magnified by the very high productivity requirements which are constantly being imposed on us as students (exams, quizzes, papers, etc.) and by the way we are being programmed so that we impose further productivity requirements on ourselves (extra credit work, outside reading and thinking for our classes—not for ourselves, on-the-job training, student teaching, etc.) On the other hand, we are forced to work for nothing and on the other, we are forced to work for almost nothing.
Of course, we are told that it will all be made up to us in the future. They say that we will be given this meaningful, high-paying job with a secretary. Our free work will not be in vain. But, as we know even before we joyfully dance out of this factory, there is nothing to look forward to but a very depressing job as hotel clerk in the local Holiday Inn, or, at best, as a secretary at our old workplace within the university. The reality of the situation is one in which today students are already starting to get paid for schoolwork:
• Armed Forces; the ROTC pays $100 a month plus tuition for studying
• Some corporations pay their employees to attend night school or continue studying towards advanced degrees
• Jailors at the Lompoc Jail are paying some of their prisoners to do schoolwork at the University of California
• Social Security Benefits
• Scholarship recipients (BEOG)
• Vietnam Era veterans
Wages for Students
We are fed up with working for free.
We demand real money now for the school-work we do.
We must force capital, which profits from our work, to pay for our schoolwork. Only then can we stop depending on financial aid, our parents, working second and third jobs, or working during summer vacations for our existence. We already earn a wage; now we must be paid it. Only in this way can we seize more power to use in our dealings with capital.
We can do a lot with the money. First, we will have to work less as the “need to work” additional jobs disappears. Second, we will immediately enjoy a higher standard of living since we will have more to spend when we take time off from schoolwork. Third, we will raise the average wage in the entire area affected by the presence of us low-cost workers.
By taking time off from schoolwork to demand wages for students, we think and act against the work we are doing. It also puts us in a better position to get the money.
NO MORE UNPAID SCHOOLWORK!
The ‘Wages for Students’ Students
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