The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control?
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
Fichte, who was considered one of the intellectual fathers of the Prussian mass schooling system, was also influential in the move toward a modern university system, and his goals were quite similar. Just as mass schooling was established to serve the state, Fichte felt that “the academics should be the new spiritual leaders of society.” The main difference between this Enlightenment model of the university and the medieval one was marked by the shift from city to nation. As the Enlightenment had different effects in different nations, the relationship that developed between the nation and the university was different in each case. In Germany, the university became the cultural center of the nation, while in France its focus was more on producing an actual core of civil servants. In each case, however, the aim of the university was to serve the nation in some capacity, whether functionally, ideologically, culturally, or all of the above.
John D. Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago in 1891, and the President of the University, “initiated a new disciplinary system, which was enormously influential.” Ultimately, it “led to the formation of the department structure of the American university, which was internationally unique,” and was later exported around the world “with the help of American foundations.”This disciplinary system consisted of separating politics from economics (rejecting the notion of ‘political economy’ and its ‘ideologies’), as ideology was “deemed unscientific and inappropriate in social sciences and political scientists have increasingly seen their function as service to the powerful, rather than providing leadership to populist or socialist movements.”
There was an obvious desire to “foster the teaching of practical knowledge and skills serving the development of commerce and industry, against the prevailing academic traditions.” However, it also allowed for “a way of diagnosing the social upheavals caused by the accelerated shift from a still largely agrarian society to an industrial mass society” of which they were the dominant class. In particular, the labor unrest of the 19th century was especially prevalent in the minds of the dominant class. Since “social reform was inevitable,” these industrialists “chose to invest in the definition and scientific treatment of the ‘social questions’ of their time,” and subsequently, they “promoted reformist solutions that did not threaten the capitalistic nature of the social order,” and instead constructed a “private alternative to socialism.”[27] In other words, it marked the construction of a highly corporatist society, merging state and corporate power through institutions, individuals, and ideology. Nicolas Guilhot, “Reforming the World: George Soros, Global Capitalism and the Philanthropic Management of the Social Sciences,” Critical Sociology, Vol. 33, 2007, page 452.
The Social Sciences and Social Control
The concept of ‘social control’ emerged from the developing field of sociology as a discipline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As sociologist Morris Janowitz wrote in the American Journal of Sociology, “in the emergence of sociology as an intellectual discipline, the idea of social control was a central concept for analyzing social organization and the development of industrial society.”[28] Social control is largely viewed as forms of control which reduce coercion, and thus, enhance consent to the system or organizations in question. Even a society with an effective system of social control would require a structure of coercion, but depending on how advanced the social control system is, the less need there would be for coercion. Hence, the societies which are the most advanced in social control would also be less dependent upon internal methods of coercion. Thus, it was within liberal democratic states that both the study and implementation of social control became most effective. In this sense, the question was “whether the processes of social control are able to maintain the social order [hierarchy] while transformation and social change take place.”
Sociology largely emerged from the University of Chicago (founded by John D. Rockefeller), with the world’s first department of sociology founded in 1892. The sociologists who rose within and out of the University of Chicago made up what was known as the ‘Chicago School of Sociology.’ The school developed the most influential sociologists in the nation, including George Herbert Mead and W.I. Thomas, two scholars who had profound influence on the development of the concept of ‘social control,’ and sociologists became “reform-oriented liberals, not radical revolutionaries or conservative cynics.”
The new industrial elite accumulated millions and even hundreds of millions by the end of the 19th century: Andrew Carnegie was worth roughly $300 million after he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan in 1901, and by 1913, John D. Rockefeller was estimated to have a personal worth of $900 million. It was with Rockefeller that we see the development of the scientific notion of philanthropy. Rockefeller had founded the Institute for Medical Research in 1901, the General Education Board (GEB) in 1903, and the Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm in 1909. Rockefeller, however, wanted to consolidate his philanthropic enterprise as he had his industrial oil enterprise, and so in 1909 he decided he wanted to establish one great foundation, which “would be a single central holding company which would finance any and all of the other benevolent organizations, and thus necessarily subject them to its general supervision.” In 1913, the Rockefeller Foundation received a charter of incorporation from the State of New York. Robert F. Arnove, ed., Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Indiana University Press, Bloomington: 1982), pages 26-28.
The Walsh Commission, as it was known (after its founder, Frank P. Walsh), was formed in 1914, and Walsh explained the inclusion of the foundations in the commission by postulating that:
the creation of the Rockefeller and other foundations was the beginning of an effort to perpetuate the present position of predatory wealth through the corruption of sources of public information… [and] that if not checked by legislation, these foundations will be used as instruments to change to form of government of the U.S. at a future date, and there is even a hint that there is a fear of a monarchy.[35]In 1916, the Walsh Commission produced its final report, the Manly Report (after the research director, Basil M. Manly), which concluded that the foundations were so “grave a menace” to society, that “it would be desirable to recommend their abolition.” No such actions were taken.[36]
David Nugent, an anthropologist at Emory University, wrote a rather lengthy article for the academic journal, Identities, on the role of foundations in shaping the social sciences. Nugent takes a look at the development of the social sciences in relation to the construction of an American Empire. As such, the shaping of the social sciences was designed, at least in part, with an aim to facilitate the emergence and maintenance of a large, globally expanding empire, but an empire unlike previous ones, with no official overseas colonies; rather, it was to be an informal global empire.
A Rockefeller Foundation report acknowledged that many people in the world had already been subjected to the “enormously damaging effects… of industrial activity,” and saw it as necessary to alter the “radically false views of life and radically false views of nature” by many of these people. To bring these people into the modern age, foundations agreed, they needed to effect “almost a social revolution,” and to offer these people “training in new forms of political and social organization.” John D. Rockefeller, Jr., articulating the purpose of the Rockefeller Foundation, explained that it would offer “the best of Western civilization, not only in… science but in mental development and spiritual culture.” Science, of course, was the basis upon which the foundations were created: to not only advance the sciences within their own fields, but to advance the principle of the “scientific management” of society. Wicliffe Rose, a professor who was involved in managing several different Rockefeller philanthropies, wrote in a memorandum for Rockefeller officials in 1923:
All important fields of activity… from the breeding of bees to the administration of an empire, call for an understanding of the spirit and technique of modern science… Science is the method of knowledge. It is the key to such dominion as man may ever exercise over his physical environment. Appreciation of its spirit and technique, moreover, determines the mental attitude of a people, affects the entire system of education, and carried with it the shaping of a civilization.In the 1920s, the Rockefeller interventions in the social sciences were almost exclusively undertaken by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (LSRM), named after John D. Rockefeller’s wife after her death... Edmund E. Day, director of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Social Sciences program from 1928-1937, explained in 1930 that the plan was to develop “within each country of any importance some center which would fructify the local situation and influence other institutions within the same sphere of scientific influence, then within the larger regional centers.” Focusing on the United States and Europe, the LSRM stated in 1926 that its main policy was directed at establishing 12 or 15 centers of social science research around the world, one specific center in each major European country, (University of Stockholm, Deutsche Hochscule für in Berlin, and the London School of Economics), and several in the United States. The LSRM was merged into the Rockefeller Foundation in 1929, which adopted the same agenda established by Ruml in seeking to cultivate through such institutions “a scientific approach to social problems.”
Between 1919 and 1940, the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and other major philanthropies provided roughly $3.2 million of support for the social sciences in British universities, and a further $1.7 million for “independent organizations which were closely tied to the universities.” The two major Rockefeller philanthropies at the time, the LSRM and the RF, provided roughly 95% of these expenditures. Thus, it was American philanthropy, and principally the Rockefeller foundations which were directly responsible for the development of British social sciences in this period. Only in the late 1930s did British philanthropy pick up the slack from the Rockefeller foundations.
Rockefeller money was also pivotal in the establishment of the London School of Economics (LSE), which “had become an important world centre of the social sciences,” in large part due to the involvement of Rockefeller philanthropies. The Rockefeller foundations selected the LSE specifically for support because in the early 1920s, it was the most advanced center of social sciences in Britain, and could thus serve as a model for the rest of British institutions. Further, the director of the LSE, Lord William Beveridge (also a member of the British Eugenics Society), “shared with Rockefeller philanthropy the same conception of the way in which the social sciences should develop,” specifically in terms of utilizing the “natural scientific approach” to social problems. Also important to note as to why the LSE was chosen, was its strategic location in London, at the heart of the world’s most powerful and globally expanded empire at the time.
Between 1923 and 1939, the LSRM and the Rockefeller Foundation provided the LSE with over $2 million, during which time the school expanded rapidly, becoming “the leading centre of research in the Social Sciences” in the British Empire. Building expansions, the establishment of the leading research library in Britain, acquisition of land, equipment, and a dramatic increase in full-time teachers from 26 in 1923 to 76 by 1937, was largely due to Rockefeller support. Rockefeller money in particular ensured the development of anthropology, international relations, and social biology, and student enrollment also dramatically increased with large grants from Rockefeller philanthropies for postgraduate research and teaching. Thus, by the end of the 1930s, the LSE had “become an international centre training many foreign students.” Grants also contributed to expanding and supporting publications by LSE faculty, with an enormous amount of books and articles emerging as a result of this support, and supported the creation of journals run out of the school as well.
andrewgavinmarshall.com/2012/04/08/the-purpose-of-education-social-uplift-or-social-control/
See also:
jayjaydoubleyoudoubleyou.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/education-dumbing-us-down.html
This history of the LSE is not mentioned at Wikipedia, or on the official website:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_School_of_Economics#Origins
www.lse.ac.uk/home.aspx
What we had above could be classed as 'non-academic' academic research - that is, the type of research normally carried out by the universities, but outside traditional academia.
Here is another example:
The Distorting Effects of Transportation Subsidies
OCTOBER 22, 2010 by KEVIN A. CARSON
This article won the 2011 Beth A. Hoffman Memorial Prize for Economic Writing.Although critics on the left are very astute in describing the evils of present-day society, they usually fail to understand either the root of those problems (government intervention) or their solution (the operation of a freed market). In Progressive commentary on energy, pollution, and so on—otherwise often quite insightful—calls for government intervention are quite common. George Monbiot, for instance, has written that “[t]he only rational response to both the impending end of the Oil Age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure.”
But this is precisely backward. Existing problems of excess energy consumption, pollution, big-box stores, the car culture, and suburban sprawl result from the “massive political pressure” that has already been applied, over the past several decades, to “redesign our cities, our farming, and our lives.” The root of all the problems Monbiot finds so objectionable is State intervention in the marketplace.
In particular, subsidies to transportation have probably done more than any other factor (with the possible exception of intellectual property law) to determine the present shape of the American corporate economy. Currently predominating firm sizes and market areas are the result of government subsidies to transportation.
Adam Smith argued over 200 years ago that the fairest way of funding transportation infrastructure was user fees rather than general revenues: “When the carriages which pass over a highway or a bridge, and the lighters which sail upon a navigable canal, pay toll in proportion to their weight or their tonnage, they pay for the maintenance of those public works exactly in proportion to the wear and tear which they occasion of them.”
This is not, however, how things were actually done. Powerful business interests have used their political influence since the beginning of American history to secure government funding for “internal improvements.” The real turning point was the government’s role in creating the railroad system from the mid-nineteenth century on. The national railroad system as we know it was almost entirely a creature of the State.
The federal railroad land grants included not only the rights-of-way for the actual railroads, but extended 15-mile tracts on both sides. As the lines were completed, this adjoining land became prime real estate and skyrocketed in value. As new communities sprang up along the routes, every house and business in town was built on land acquired from the railroads. The tracts also frequently included valuable timberland. The railroads, according to Matthew Josephson (The Robber Barons), were “land companies” whose directors “did a rushing land business in farm lands and town sites at rising prices.” For example, under the terms of the Pacific Railroad bill, the Union Pacific (which built from the Mississippi westward) was granted 12 million acres of land and $27 million worth of 30-year government bonds. The Central Pacific (built from the West Coast eastward) received nine million acres and $24 million worth of bonds. The total land grants to the railroads amounted to about six times the area of France.
Theodore Judah, chief engineer for what became the Central Pacific, assured potential investors “that it could be done—if government aid were obtained. For the cost would be terrible.” Collis Huntington, the leading promoter for the project, engaged in a sordid combination of strategically placed bribes and appeals to communities’ fears of being bypassed in order to extort grants of “rights of way, terminal and harbor sites, and . . . stock or bond subscriptions ranging from $150,000 to $1,000,000” from a long string of local governments that included San Francisco, Stockton, and Sacramento.
Government also revised tort and contract law to ease the carriers’ way—for example, by exempting common carriers from liability for many kinds of physical damage caused by their operation.
Had railroad ventures been forced to bear their own initial capital outlays—securing rights of way, preparing roadbeds, and laying track, without land grants and government purchases of their bonds—the railroads would likely have developed instead along the initial lines on which Lewis Mumford speculated in The City in History: many local rail networks linking communities into local industrial economies. The regional and national interlinkages of local networks, when they did occur, would have been far fewer and far smaller in capacity. The comparative costs of local and national distribution, accordingly, would have been quite different. In a nation of hundreds of local industrial economies, with long-distance rail transport much more costly than at present, the natural pattern of industrialization would have been to integrate small-scale power machinery into flexible manufacturing for local markets.
Alfred Chandler, in The Visible Hand, argued that the creation of the national railroad system made possible, first, national wholesale and retail markets, and then large manufacturing firms serving the national market. The existence of unified national markets served by large-scale manufacturers depended on a reliable, high-volume distribution system operating on a national level. The railroad and telegraph, “so essential to high-volume production and distribution,” were in Chandler’s view what made possible this steady flow of goods through the distribution pipeline: “The revolution in the processes of distribution and production rested in large part on the new transportation and communications infrastructure. Modern mass production and mass distribution depend on the speed, volume, and regularity in the movement of goods and messages made possible by the coming of the railroad, telegraph and steamship.”
fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-distorting-effects-of-transportation-subsidies/
Kevin Carson holds a 'chair' at an independent foundation:
c4ss.org/content/author/kevin-carson
libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/kevin-carson-awarded-c4sss-karl-hess-chair-in-social-theory/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carson
To finish, a look at a book asking “Why are there so few Anarchists in the Academy?”
Anarchism in the academy
by Jeff Shantz
Anarchist academic David Graeber devotes the first section of his book Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology to his attempt to answer the question, “Why are there so few anarchists in the academy?” For Graeber this is a pressing question given the veritable explosion of anarchist theory and lively debates over anarchism outside of the academy, especially within the numerous social movements which have emerged recently. Despite the blossoming of anarchist thought and practice, David Graeber is perplexed that this flowering of anarchism has found little reflection in the academy. Graeber seems to long for the type of success that Marxists have enjoyed in their move into the academy following the rise of Marxist theory among the students of the New Left. As he notes in his disappointed comparison of anarchist successes with those of the Marxists: “In the United States there are thousands of academic Marxists of one sort or another, but hardly a dozen scholars willing openly to call themselves anarchists” (2004: 2). In his view this is something that should be a cause of concern for anarchists.
philosophersforchange.org/2012/08/14/anarchism-in-the-academy/
Prof Graeber works at the LSE:www.lse.ac.uk/anthropology/people/departmentalstaff.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber
strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
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