Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 17:48:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Alexander Glage <glage-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Bashing academia





> (The all-too-obvious problem with [unregulated 
> universities] is that they would be unable to raise 
> much money, and even if they could, they would only 
> be attended regularly by people sufficiently wealthy
> to have that much time to devote to something out of
 > which they could expect no financial return.)


Indeed, having spent the last week happily reading Bakunin, I have
often found myself asking questions like this.  To what extent does a
free academy--may we call it an anarchist university?--already and
necessarily *presuppose* a more ideal, more equal society?  For how
*would* such a university be funded?  How would it fund any of its
students? How would it decide which ones to support?  Would it be free
to all?  Or would "education" at such a place be understood as a
strictly part-time activity?  Or would such a university already imply
a kind of society in which capital was already abolished (or at least
on the wane), or where no one really needed to worry about getting a
job, or about the "prestige" granted by the acquisition of a degree?  

To be sure, Bakunin makes me long for such a free academy, an academy
where people come together out of pure fraternity and love of wisdom,
rather than in order to obtain degrees or power or prestige.  But what
kind of society, if any, must already be in place in order for such a
university to thrive?





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