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Abstract
In this article, we see the month-long graduate student and contract faculty strike at York University (Toronto, 2015) through a lens informed by Herbert Marcuse’s thought. In the context of widespread student protests across North America against neoliberal austerity, we draw on our picket line experiences to argue that Marcuse’s work provides insights into how students and faculty can engage in critical praxis within the neoliberal university. We argue that CUPE 3903, the union of TAs and contract faculty at York, is a kind of counter-institution that Marcuse argued was necessary for liberation. Marcuse strategically urged students to take advantage of gaps or cracks in a disintegrating system. Our analysis revolves around the complex experience of the graduate student picket lines – a “gap” – as a site of rupture for the liberation of aesthetic experience, “organized spontaneity,” open, democratic organization, as well as conflict.
Notes
We would like to thank the anonymous New Political Science reviewers for their helpful comments.
1 See discussions by Francis Dupuis-Déri, “Herbert Marcuse and the ‘Anti-Globalization’ Movement: Thinking Through Radical Opposition to Neoliberal Globalization,” Radical Philosophical Review 16:2 (2013), pp. 529–47; Mark Coté, Richard Day, and Greig de Peuter, “Utopian Pedagogy: Creating Radical Alternatives in the Neoliberal Age,” The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 29 (2007), pp. 317–336; Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright, Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2013); Marianne Maeckelbergh, “Horizontal Democracy Now: From Alter-globalization to Occupation,” Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements 4:1 (May 2012), pp. 207–34.
2 See the special volume of New Political Science (36–4) 2014 on the Future of Higher Education and Democracy in the US. Sanford Schram, guest editor, provides an excellent overview of the neoliberalization of higher education in the US and its insidious relation to democracy. We look at similar issues through a Marcusean lens, from the picket line, and add the Canadian context.
3 We use the term praxis as it was used by Marcuse and his fellow “first generation” critical theorists, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, who adapted it from Marx.
4 See the recent edition of Academic Matters: OCUFAs Journal of Higher Education, Spring/Summer, 2016. OCUFA is the lobby group for all faculty associations in the province of Ontario, Canada. This edition is titled, “Whose University is it Anyway,” and discusses neoliberalism in Canadian universities today, from collegial governance to transparency, the silencing of dissent and the role of Boards of Governors. For the massive 2013–2014 student protests in Quebec, see the interview with one of the leaders, Jérémie Bédard-Wien, at: <http://www.dsausa.org/quebec_students_strike>.
5 Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, “The Neo-Liberal University,” New Labor Forum 6 (Spring–Summer, 2000), p. 73.
6 See David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Ch. 3, The State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
7 Sanford Schram, “The Future of Higher Education and American Democracy: Introduction,” New Political Science 36: 4 (2014), pp. 425–437. Also see Schram’s excellent discussion in, The Return to Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
8 Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, “The Neo-Liberal University,” New Labor Forum, 6 (Spring–Summer, 2000), p. 74.
9 Jennifer Washburn, University, Inc: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (New York: Basic Books, 2005), p. 217.
10 Richard R. Nelson (ed), The Limits of Market Organization (New York: Russell Sage, 2005), p. 233.
11 Roger L Geiger, Knowledge and Money: Research Universities and the Paradox of the Marketplace (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 265.
12 Frank Donoghue, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), p. 12.
13 See Claire Poster and Janice Newsom, A Penny for Your Thoughts: How Corporatization Devalues Teaching, Research and Public Service in Canada’s Universities (Ottawa: Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, 2015), and Jamie Brownlee, Academia Inc.: How Corporatization is Transforming Canadian Universities (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2015).
14 Wesley Shumar, College for Sale: A Critique of the Commodification of Higher Education (London: Falmer Press), p. 186.
15 See Justin Podur’s excellent analysis, “York strikers show the way – now let’s build a truly public university,” Ricochet, 30 March 2015, available online at: <https://ricochet.media/en/373/york-strikers-show-the-way-now-lets-build-a-truly-public-university>.
16 See Max Weber’s famous lecture, “Science as a Vocation,” in David Owen and Tracy B. Strong (eds), Rodney Livingstone (trans), The Vocation Lectures: Science as a Vocation and Politics as a Vocation (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2004), and Thorstein Veblen’s 1918, Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). As Scott McLemee points out in his review of the new edition of Higher Learning, Veblen’s initial subtitle for the book was, “A Study in Total Depravity,” which referred to the appointment of entrepreneurial university presidents who were more concerned with “salesmanship” than the public good. See Scott McLemee, “The Professor’s Literature of Protest,” Inside Higher Ed, April 2015, available online at: <https://insidehighered.com/review-thorstein-veblen-higher-learning-America>.
17 For the transformation of the post-WWII labor relations regime in Canada, see Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz, The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms: From Wage Controls to Social Contract (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1993) and Daniel Drache and Harry Glasbeek, The Changing Workplace: Reshaping Canada’s Industrial Relations System (Toronto: Lorimer, 1992).
18 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1972), p. xxv.
19 Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), p. 39.
20 Herbert Marcuse, “Re-examination of the Concept of Revolution,” New Left Review, 56 (1969), p. 32.
21 Three of the four co-authors are PhD students/TAs. One is a tenured faculty member at York.
22 Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1972), pp. 6, 29. In this regard, Marcuse has also been seen as an anti-authoritarian, libertarian socialist.
23 Herbert Marcuse, “The End of Utopia,” Five Lectures (Boston, MA: Beacon Press 1970), p. 77.
24 Herbert Marcuse, “The Historical Fate of Bourgeois Democracy,” in Douglas Kellner (ed), Toward A Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, v. 2 (New York: Routledge, 1972/2001), p. 184. Kellner also notes, in his excellent introduction to the collected edition of Marcuse’s New Left works, that Marcuse did not believe in “the inevitability of capitalist crisis.” Thus, the disintegration of capitalist liberal-democracies would not bring about radical change on its own. It required a change in consciousness, as well as organization. The emphasis on small groups indicates Marcuse’s sense that change may take the form of a “libertarian socialism,” not led by a vanguard party. See Douglas Kellner, “Introduction: Radical Politics, Marcuse and the New Left,” in Douglas Kellner (ed), The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, v. 3 (New York: Routledge, 2004) pp. 5, 27. Kellner is right to note that, “it is mistake to reduce Marcuse’s contributions … to his writings on the New Left” (p. 7). We are aware of this and agree but, given our project here, cannot go further into the philosophical background of Marcuse’s work.
25 Herbert Marcuse, “Re-examination of the Concept of Revolution,” New Left Review 56 (1969), p. 32.
26 Herbert Marcuse, “The End of Utopia,” Five Lectures (Boston, MA: Beacon Press 1970), p. 77.
27 See the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Union Member Survey, January 2016.
28 See Statistics Canada, The Daily, available online at: <www.statcan.gc.ca/Home/TheDaily/CanadianMegatrends,2016-03-31>.
29 See Stephanie Ross “Business Unionism and Social Unionism in Theory and in Practice,” in S. Ross and L. Savage (eds), Rethinking the Politics of Labor in Canada (Halifax: Fernwood, 2012), pp. 33–46. Business unions have traditionally engaged in collective bargaining for better workplace conditions, better wages, benefits, pensions.
30 See David Ludwig, “Why Graduate Students of America are Uniting,” The Atlantic, April 2015.
32 Article 17, under “Process”: “(c) In the event of a strike, the Bargaining Team shall provide written bargaining updates daily to the General Membership.” <http://3903.cupe.ca/files/2012/01/L3903-Bylaws-June-2015-Version-1.pdf>.
34 The local also has a very strong, anti-oppression Equality Statement that exemplifies its social unionism and acknowledges that York is on the occupied Indigenous territory of the Mississauga and New Credit First Nations. It is read before every 3903 General Meeting.
35 See <http://3903.cupe.ca/tfac-2/committees/>.
36 As Podur put it: “Indexation means that if the university wants to make more (i.e. raising tuition – our addition) from TAs and GAs, it also has to pay TAs and GAs more money so that they can pay the university.” See Justin Podur, “York strikers show the way – now let’s build a truly public university,” Ricochet, March 30, 2015, available online at: <https://ricochet.media/en/373/york-strikers-show-the-way-now-lets-build-a-truly-public-university>.
37 See Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1972), p. 55.
38 See Francis Dupuis-Déri, “Herbert Marcuse and the ‘Anti-Globalization’ Movement: Thinking Through Radical Opposition to Neoliberal Globalization,” Radical Philosophical Review 16:2 (2013), pp. 529–47, for an excellent discussion of important differences between, and affinities with, radical social (and student) movements in the 1960s and today.
39 Herbert Marcuse, “Herbert Marcuse: The New Society,” in A. T. Ferguson (ed), Michael Aylward and A. T. Ferguson (trans), Revolution or Reform? A Confrontation: Herbert Marcuse and Karl Popper (Chicago: Precedent Publishing, 1976), p. 72.
40 Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 191.
41 We cannot go into the detail that such a discussion would normally require. Our account is thus shorthand for Marcuse’s more extensive critique of Freud in E&C.
42 See Gad Horowitz, Repression: Basic and Surplus Repression in Psychoanalytic Theory, Freud, Reich and Marcuse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977).
43 Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 19.
44 We recognize, in this part of the discussion, that our critical use of “institutional memory” achieved a lessening of the surplus repression in the neoliberal university, not its more fundamental elimination. The university still exists in a capitalist society.
45 We are aware of the limitations of our application of Marcuse’s aesthetic dimension to our experience of the strike. Because we want to set the context of CUPE 3903, the strike and labor relations in the neoliberal university more fully, we do not go into the philosophical underpinnings of his aesthetic critique further. See Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977).
46 The rich tradition of union and protest songs, from Solidarity Forever to Union Maid, was for many learned for the first time on the line and at support rallies.
47 Competitive performances expected of graduate students and faculty, such as publications and external grant funding.
48 Supportive undergraduate students had to do a lot of organizing to present a five thousand signature petition to the York Senate and Board of Governors.
49 Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt, p. 54.
50 Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt, pp. 8–9.
51 As one example, the Mathematics and Statistics graduate program at York prides itself as being “dedicated to … fostering the understanding … and utility of new ideas in mathematics and statistics.” Future students are informed they can combine their degree with a graduate diploma in Financial Engineering. (See York University, “Mathematics and Statistics Graduate Program at York University,” accessed September 16, 2015, available online at: <http://futurestudents.yorku.ca/graduate/programs/mathematics-and-statistics>. Emphasis added.
52 Herbert Marcuse, “Protosocialism and Late Capitalism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis Based on Bahro’s Analysis,” in Douglas Kellner and Clayton Pierce (eds), Marxism, Revolution and Utopia: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, vol. 6 (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 401.
53 For now the system continues to deliver the goods but in no way is it a guarantee. Under neoliberalism and various recent crises of global capitalism, science and technology students have also found their prospects diminishing.
54 Marcuse, “Protosocialism and Late Capitalism,” p. 401.
55 Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt, p. 54.
56 Herbert Marcuse, “Lecture on Education, Brooklyn College,” in Douglas Kellner, Tyson Lewis, Clayton Pierce, and K. Daniel Cho (eds), Marcuse’s Challenge to Education (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1968/2009), p. 35.
57 See the fascinating discussion of councils in Marcuse, a neglected aspect of his work, in Chris Holman (ed), Politics as a Radical Creation: Herbert Marcuse and Hannah Arendt on Political Performativity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).
58 Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1977), p. 73.
59 Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt, p. 133–4.
60 Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 147.