Business Colleges

So I missed Marxism Monday. So sorry, folks! It was a combination of work kicking my ass and not having completed my research on the socialist value equation. It's coming. I swear. Anyway, I wanted to discuss something that every comrade should be aware of, and why it is a pernicious evil that propagates bourgeois sensibility among those that should be our allies but walk away with degrees declaring their status as enemies.

That, dear friends, is the Fisher College of Business, a recent addition to the Ohio State University which served as my alma mater (fucking Buckeyes....). Now, when I say it's recent, I mean it is one of the most recent additions to the University's curricula, not that it was added in the past ten years. Fisher has been in the business of doing business for some time, and paired with the football team, makes quite a bit of money for a University that no longer has education or academics as its core focus.

The presence of a Business College is a pernicious stain on any University campus. The terminology used by people who attend it are especially telling. Engineering, physics, linguistics, statistics, biology, anthropology, gender-studies, etc. are all academic disciplines. They are not something one can commoditize. With my degree in Russian, with a strong emphasis on culture (I like to think of myself as a linguist and anthropologist, but I digress), I cannot simply set up shop and sell my services in these areas to the general population. This is not a practical degree, nor was it ever intended to be. No University has ever concerned itself with practical application of its curricula. You go to a University to learn how to think critically in a particular field to further the sum total of human knowledge and understanding. This is not practical. This is all speculative and theoretical. Are there some degrees (Engineering, biochemistry, etc.) that have practical applications? Absolutely. But one is also providing a service to their academic field and future students in the same field.

The Business College is absolutely exempt from this reality. For centuries, one became a businessman by engaging in business and learning it as one would a trade--hands on. Today, the principles of business management remain very much the same as they always have. Ensure your supply is equal to your demand, pay a fair wage, ensure decent human resources access, and adapt your business model to changes in business climate to ensure you stay in business. This is a trade, not a speculative field of research. "Research" projects in Business Colleges amount to "how I would set up my business" and ensure one has read the material. They do not, however, offer valuable insights into the way one might do business in the future. And why is this the case if they are part of the family of highly speculative and forward-thinking curricula that make up the rest of the University syllabus? Because Business Colleges do not exist to promote freedom of thought, nor do they exist to contribute to the larger body of human knowledge. They exist to indoctrinate and propagandize those that walk their hallowed halls. They exist to shame the rest of the speculative fields being heavily invested in, and showing the University that THEY bring in business. THEY capitalize themselves. THEY are superior to all other fields of knowledge.

Remember what I said about how Business College attendees have a particular vocabulary? This is their vocabulary. They frame themselves in the context of the social construct that is the perceived prestige of attending an academic institution, but they themselves are not engaged in any way with academia outside academic requisites set by the University as terms of one's graduation.

But, here, also is a major issue with the decades-long legacy of the Business College. You do not attend a University and look at its job-placement rate. To engage in academia is the quiet acceptance that, while a practical job outside academia might exist for you, your ultimate career path is to remain in academia. Academics are people who never leave school. Business College graduates, however, have no choice. For them, the job-placement rate is tantamount to the academic's search for accreditation. So an already-large University like Ohio State can attract more money through more students by investing heavily in a Business College...and then watching as the social construct is reformed to glorify it and measure the rest of the University in the same terms.

The Business College is not an academic institution, so framing the debate on the humanities, arts and sciences, etc. in the terms of the Business College is disingenuous. A Business College has no place at an academic institution because it helps engender and indoctrinate people who do not even attend it. Academics ARE the vanguard of the revolution. Academics ARE the professional revolutionaries, because they have the time and energy to study and pursue further study. But the Business College prevents academics from joining the revolution because they become adherents to the propaganda of the Koch Brothers and McGraw Hill. Everyone, even in the Humanities, starts chasing that dollar sign and the entire premise of academia is undermined.

But when everyone is a business man and the economic collapses out from underneath them, where will their practical degree get them? Money can't really feed you, but I'm sure the embossing on your "university" degree will add some texture to that delicious business salad.

What Is an Anarcho Capitalist?

Ask anyone on the left what they think of Anarcho Capitalism and they'll give you various responses. Generally, the response refers one to a picture of a neckbeard:

You know, the Fedora-wearing "nice guy" who also has a penchant for shitting on women's rights, minority rights, LGBTQ rights, and supporting an unrelentingly de-regulated free market. Oh, he also screams "statist" all the time as a pejorative insult but has a flag.

Wikipedia explains it like this:

Anarcho-capitalism...is a political philosophy which advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty in a free market. In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be operated by privately funded competitors rather than centrally through compulsory taxation. Money, along with all other goods and services, would be privately and competitively provided in an open market. Therefore, personal and economic activities under anarcho-capitalism would be regulated by victim-based dispute resolution organizations under tort and contract law, rather than by statute through punishment and torture under political monopolies.

Word salad complete. And this is all fine and dandy, but anybody who has ever read a distopian novel knows what this kind of society inevitably looks like to the average imagination. So the question becomes not what an Anarcho-Capitalist is according to his beliefs (trust me...it's not a his/her thing here), or what he looks like based on stereotyping and meme-generation, but what he looks like based on raw numbers and data. Luckily, we have that. So, what is an Anarcho-Capitalist?

A survey done on the /r/Anarcho_Capitalism subreddit provided some interesting numbers. The results can easily be looked at here in easy-to-read pie chart format. The information provided does not provide what the total estimated census size would be, but the sample size of 688 respondents is pretty good, considering the type of sample sizes informal polling tends to generate on the internet in general. The survey broke down demographic information according to age, gender, country of origin, occupation, religious affiliation, and how long one considered himself to be an Anarcho-Capitalist. The rest of the questions were divided between philosophical concerns, strategic concerns, and miscellaneous concerns (like, what your operating system is). Now that we understand the data set we're dealing with, let's start breaking things down.

First question: How old are you?

Possible responses ranged from 0 to 66+ in predictable groupings. I would list them all but an overwhelming 86% fall between the ages of 15 and 30 (592 total). That's just old enough to be flirting with political ideology and just young enough to not have too much responsibility. (For reference, only 94 respondents answered in the 27-30 range) So we're looking at young people, the vast majority of which fall within an eleven-year range of 15-26. These include a) high schoolers who are eager to rebel and find something "different" that marks them as "special", b) college-aged students who have successfully taken their first steps in academic political discussion and found something "radical" to latch onto, and c) graduate-level or post-finals undergrads who have entered the work force and are seeing the problems faced by the world and are seeking some kind of answer. This "c" group also includes people who have never been to college but nevertheless are working and having to bear some responsibility for their own livelihoods. The numbers here shouldn't really be surprising, as this is the prime age range for political activism. Nothing really to see here, then. But we can say that Anarcho-Capitalism does seem to have a certain appeal to youth activists.

Second question: What's your gender?

Possible results: Male, Female, Other. This is an immediate red flag as modern gender theory lists Male, Female, Transgendered, Queer, and Intersex as five distinctly separate, yet inter-related genders. This all-encompassing "Other" category belies a prejudice in favor of the gender binary. And should we be surprised? 97% of respondents said they were Male. Four responded with "Other". The data set lists this as 1%, but it works out to be only slightly more than one half of one percent. It's an infinitesimally small number. Given the stereotype of Anarcho-Capitalists giving absolutely zero fucks about LGBTQ concerns, it's no wonder that it would have attracted the attention and praise of only 4 out of the "other" category. The remaining bundle? 17 women. So a total of three percent of the respondents fit somewhere other than male. Three. Obviously something isn't appealing to a non-male demographic, and it's appealing less than the GOP's war on women.

Third question: Where do you live?

Possible results include a long list of European countries and a range of geographical regions. Of all the respondents, 88% live in the United States, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, Australia, or Canada, all countries with exceptionally high standards of living. That means just 12% of respondents live elsewhere in the world. I understand reddit probably is not available in every country in the world, but many of the places hardest hit by Austerity, de-regulation, and the collapse of global capitalism including Portugal, Spain, Greece, Hungary, and Ireland had between 1 and 2 respondents, tops. South America, a region with a long and less-than-pleasant history with Capitalism, had a combined total of 5 respondents, and Central America, another Capitalist Imperialist playground, had 2. What we are seeing here is a pattern developing of a young, privileged male that probably had a very easy upbringing. Let's see if this demographic pattern holds up.

Fourth question: What is your occupation?

The results here kind of start moving around. We don't see the huge accumulation in one demographic range as we saw before, but there is some definite skewing. Knowing what we know about the current age demographic and what Anarcho-Capitalists believe, we can pick out a certain range of categories:

Student
Part-time student
Self-employed
Employed, I don't work directly or indirectly for the government
Student and employed in the private sector

These are all occupations that fulfill the Anarcho-Capitalist "acceptability" matrix (ie, what an honest Anarcho-Capitalist should seek in terms of employment versus what he should reject as possible avenues of employment). Because we are dealing with young, privileged males, I left out "retired" or "unemployed", as it can be assumed that they are probably of college age or eager, bright young people who can easily find work. Now, let's look at how large of a sample fits this profile we have created.

doo doo doo....doing math...aaaaaaand.....82%. Does anybody see a pattern emerging here? We have an overwhelming majority showing up in education settings and favoring private-sector or self-employment. This creates a bubble in this part of the occupational bubble where they can positively-reinforce their own viewpoints by being surrounded by their peer groups that already agree with them. I'm pretty sure we are developing a pattern that is holding strong and will be validated further the more we dig. But, let's continue.

Fifth question: How long have you considered yourself an Anarcho-Capitalist?

"I don't consider myself an anarcho capitalist" garnered 10% of respondents. So 90% do, and so far, we have a demographic population that fits within that self-identification. The fact that 10% didn't consider themselves part of that demographic should be enough to pause and wonder if the overall demographic picture applies to the Anarcho-Capitalist. In any other setting, this would tend to be the case. But the fact that our demographic fits within the 90th percentile almost even-handedly gives you a greater reason to think that there is a correlation here rather than a false causal relationship. So, for the benefit of this particular question, we're going to be dealing with totals of self-identified Anarcho-Capitalists rather than total respondents. What we find isn't too surprising.

78% of self-identified Anarcho-Capitalists say they have considered themselves as such for less than five years. All the numbers skew heavily to the six-month to two years range anyway, but overall the numbers skew heavily downward, with few to none reporting in the categories above two years. Again, due to the age-ranges we're dealing with, this shouldn't be too surprising. But when you look at the age-range of all respondents and compare it to the length of time Anarcho-Capitalists have considered themselves such, you see a disturbingly high turnover rate. This is not an ideology with staying power, or else you should see it skew a little closer to the 5-10 year range, given that most appear to have been exposed to this ideology in high school. So, obviously, education is partly involved in one's acceptance of Anarcho-Capitalism, but it looks like continued education and/or real-world applicability provides education enough to show that Anarcho-Capitalism has deeply inherent flaws and make people jettison this ideology fairly early on, which doesn't give a lot of time for Anarcho-Capitalists to really develop their theories the way Marxists have been able to develop theoretical approaches and applications over the course of a lifetime.

The sixth question involves religion. I'll let you infer what you will based on the (largely confirmed) stereotype what 71% of respondents gave as a single answer to "Do you consider yourself religious?"

In summation, what we are dealing with when we encounter the Anarcho-Capitalist is a young, privileged male, principally between the ages of 15-26, who lives in the First World, has had some education, and has a predilection for private-sector or self-employment. This is the epitome of the "I am special" spoiled suburban demographic. The fact that the overwhelming majority of self-identified Anarcho-Capitalists have been such for less than five years, with a large majority of those only having considered themselves Anarcho-Capitalists for less than two years, means that there is something happening to the Anarcho-Capitalist the longer they try and defend the ideology and underlying philosophies or else apply them. Some transformative element is causing them to jettison the ideology at around the time they should be developing a mature understanding of it. By contrast, I have been a self-identified Marxist since I was 14. Twelve years later, I am writing a blog about a United Left. In the time I have been studying Marxism, I could have earned a bachelor's degree and four post-graduate degrees. Most Anarcho-Capitalists have not been studying their ideology long enough to even be close to finishing a bachelor's degree.

The final line is that when we on the Left accuse Anarcho-Capitalists of being petulant children, we aren't exactly being unfair. And to add insult to injury, consider the fact that they represent everything we seek to overthrow and you realize they are ultimately the enemy. In a hypothetical revolutionary situation (violent, of course) their guns will be aimed at us. So when we call them petulant children, we get to do so with our tongues sticking out because we have demographic proof that what we say isn't name calling; it's an observable fact.