Introduction: Academia and the Production of Unemployment

Abstract

In communism, Marx and Engels wrote in 1845–1846, everyone is able ‘to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, […] without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic’ (Marx and Engels 1976, p. 47). Now, is this not how everyday life of today’s academics looks like? Are they not also teaching in the morning, serving coffee in the afternoon, proofreading in the evening, and grading after dinner, without ever becoming teachers, waiters, proofreaders, or PhD supervisors? Indeed, the world of academic workers appears as what Marx and Engels described as communism. But then again, the wealth of nations also ‘appears as an “immense collection of commodities”’, to quote a later Marx book (1976, p. 125), the one devoted, according to Fredric Jameson at least, to the question of unemployment (see Jameson 2001, pp. 2–3). And this is precisely the difference between the prefigured communism of the ‘early’ Marx and the criticised capitalism of the ‘mature’ Marx, namely, the difference between the undoing of employment and, quite simply, unemployment. Academics today appear as communists insofar as they are in effect unemployed.