The legalisation of private universities constitutes a further subordination of science and education to capital, undermining and destroying them, and society.
Private interest, by its very nature, is incapable of rising to the level of universal objective perception and conscious realisation of deeper human needs. Science (and education), as a component of the substance of civilisation, becomes a twisted, one-sided, distorted and ultimately destructive force if it is left to be completely subordinated to the selfish interests of capital.
The direct and unconditional subordination of science and education to the short-term contextual needs of the market and capital, irreparably undermines the universal character of knowledge and the development of the subjects, undermines the perspective of the emancipation and unification of humanity, and also the possibilities of realising this perspective.
The relative autonomy of the public university, the interdisciplinary osmosis of faculties and subjects with the discourse of the social sciences, humanities and philosophy create fertile grounds for universal reflection, not only on the place and role of science and technology, but also on social reality and the prospects of humanity in general. The university becomes a unique centre of self-awareness and reflection for society.
A centre capable of expressing, if only through a minority, the momentum of the law-governed perspective of the socialisation of humanity, which is intrinsically held up by authentic research and education.
The complete subodination of thought and discourse of the university intellectuals to the will of the bourgeoisie has never been achieved.
The university has never functioned as a pure ideological mechanism of the bourgeois state.
There is no significant movement and its events, from modern times to the present, without the participation of university intellectuals and especially the student youth. Often, the unique immunity of the university has acted and continues to act as a breeding ground for progressive and revolutionary ideas, as a field for organisation and polemics, vital for the formation of movements and the launching of social transformations, uprisings and revolutions.
Today’s struggle for the relative autonomy of science and education within the capitalist system is a struggle for the preservation and development of those universal characteristics which correspond to the internal logic of the development of science, to the actual needs of society and to the perspective of the unification of humanity.
Therefore, this struggle will be doomed from its outset if it is conducted in a defensive spirit, a negation of the reactionary ‘restructuring’ and ‘modern reforms’ of capital, if it is simply reduced to the defence of past achievements. A logic which, even if unconsciously, contains an element of idealisation of previous phases of capitalism and the institutional incarnation of their concessions (e.g. the constitutional guarantee of public and free higher education in Article 16 of the constitution).
This struggle can evolve into a movement with potential only if it begins to articulate its message positively and aggressively, if it is organically linked to those imperatives of science and technology that make it a universal force for progress and for the revolutionary unification of humanity.
- No to further privatisation of science, education and the University!
- Struggle for the preservation and development of the public and free character of the institutions of higher education!
