The second wave of casualties: Intellectuals

[<Insert Username Here>]

I'm writing this on a personal level, relating to events that have recently unfolded within my very home. My father is a scientist, well respected in his field and very successful. When I was a baby we moved around the world as a family to support his scientific career, my mother voluntarily sacrificing her own career prospects (although since my youngest sister entered full time education she has through hard work and her own natural abilities built herself an excellent career where her boss is constantly pestering her to go full time- something she didn't want to do but now she may have to!). We moved to America and back to the same neighbourhood in England. My father was dedicated to his work and obsessed with reaching his goal.

My grandfather owned a small business in Germany, just a little shop he ran himself- nothing big and capitalist. Local business, and he was well known in the town. As time went on, he became more and more successful. At the same time my father was studying at university and had just met my mother. My grandfather wanted my Dad to go into the family business, and to try and sway him to it he offered him a Porsche- the car he had always dreamed of.

He turned it down. He turned it down because he believed in what he was doing, he believed in building a better world and using his natural talents to help his fellow man. It was neither as well paid, nor as materially rewarding but it was what he was about to dedicate his life to.

They had me, then my siblings. We moved all around the world to support him, as I already said. He worked hard, struggling with the death of his mother and then his father, and using his skills as a programmer to build an online presence for his father's business- now being operated by my uncle. He was working extremely long days on what was basically two careers. He seemed to feel that he had a responsibility to his younger brother, who was only 16 when their mother died. I remember him being working when I woke up and when I went to bed, the fears around his rapidly increasing blood pressure, the stress he put himself through to not let his father's legacy fall into disrepair and at the same time give his science everything he could. We had a strained relationship at times, but I admire him for what he has achieved.

He became a group leader at his scientific post (I don't want to get too specific), leading a whole laboratory, team of students and line of investigation. He was advised a few years ago to drop certain parts of his project to secure tenure. He had to oblige, and did. In return he received tenure and was at last able to commit to a house and a firm future here. Or so we thought.

In the last few weeks, his project was peer reviewed to determine whether it would be funded. This was done externally, and the results were not pleasing. His project was criticised for dropping the old line of inquiry, which he has been advised by his superiors to drop- he had jumped through every hoop he'd been set and here this pair of external twats, interested only in the bottom line and not how the research he was doing was valuable, jeopardising everything he had worked so hard and sacrificed for.

His lab are happy with him, his bosses are happy with him, but the government wants to make cuts and so here we go. Financially we'll probably be ok, but if his appeal process fails it will crush him. Another successful group leader at his work is in the same position- a internationally respected expert like him, with everything pissed on by government cost cutters wanting a financially profitable operation not a helpful to society one. He was here last night, they've found some solidarity in each other but have been hitting the bottle pretty hard.

The thing that stings the most, is that a typical banker's bonus for FAILING the UK economy would pay for both of these hardworking, extremely academic and well qualified men to continue to enrich all mankind with their work. We're talking about real science, with real implications for all kinds of medical conditions. And its all been thrown back in their faces, with implications for everyone involved (except the assholes who want to cut their funding).

I know this is smaller scale than many worker struggles, but in a way I think while financially it may be less upsetting, to the soul it must burn more. You may loose your manufacturing job and be hurt by that, but imagine if they gave you the choice of being one of their rich materially well off elite, and instead you chose a harder path to pursue your passion and help people, and then you got slashed anyway. I don't mean to demean the struggles of other workers, but on top of the usual worries and struggled, my father is facing being completely crushed emotionally- with a family history of depression.

My point is, I don't know. I just wanted to vent. The capitalists won't leave the workers alone, and they won't leave the scientists and doctors alone. I'm stating the obvious here- they need to be crushed. Thanks to anyone who read this, sorry its a bit all over the place. :(

[RED DAVE]

Vent away, Comrade. Capitalism is a heartless system. It's good to share. Sometimes it's the only thing we can do.

RED DAVE

[red cat]

Research for the sake of humankind is forbidden in capitalism.

My sympathies lie with your father. Ask him not to give up.

[robbo203]

I think the quote from Communist Manifesto you cite in your signature sums up your father's situation very well:

"The bourgeoise has stripped of it's halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers."

Speed the day when we can look forward to complete abolition of the system of wage slavery!

[Morgenstern]

Your pains are quite understandable. Though your post, in my opinion, does help bring up a question: Are intellectuals oppressed too? I mean sure they don't physically produce goods but they do produce things in the way of medicines or education for the children. They are just as subject to the forces of capital wrecking their jobs; being pawns for the ruling classes. In the industrialized west (United States, United Kingdom, etc) the intellectuals are the largest non-ruling class. The intellectuals are everyone from the IT guys, to teachers, to scientists, to secretaries. Their job is to create or fix, rather than manage.

Your pains are understandable but they could be for the better. When I was younger my mother used to be a programmer and was rising up the ranks until she was laid off, the company was laying off and several employees was able to convince management she should go. But this all proved for the better. Sure she lost her very nice salary but when she took up the teaching profession she gained so much more. She gained more time with her family, a career she probably enjoys more, and the chance to watch over her children like a hawk while they were in the school she was teaching.

Perhaps your father may get a career change with this opportunity, a change for the better. While not all change is good, some change are simply good things in wait, good things you don't know were there until you finally made it.

I wish you and your father the best.

[Omi]

It always makes me sad to read about these kind of stories, where people who devote their life to help others are crushed in the wrecking mechanisms of capital.

I hope it will turn out for the better, as the poster above me mentioned.
Don't let the system get to you!

[DancingLarry]

I'm going to respond in very theoretical terms, but trust me I entirely sympathize, for I am the child of the ruined petty bourgeois myself, so I understand with every fiber of my being what you're talking about.

The vast majority of the petty bourgeois cannot escape from their social powerlessness. One "wrong" decision, even if as in your father's case, it was on the advice of his mentors, and the trapdoor to ruin under the petty bourgeois opens. Declassing follows, for the first generation of the children of the petty bourgeois, being reduced to lumpen is entirely possible, rather likely in fact.

It's this insecurity in the existence of the petty bourgeois that gives authoritarianism an attraction to many members of the class. While it actually delivers nothing of the sort, authoritarianism seems to represent stability, order, security, exactly what the petty bourgeois knows they are without. Meanwhile, the lifetime experience of self-reliance, of independence in thought and action, ill prepares the petty bourgeois to submerge into proletarian life. That's why the first generation of the children of the ruined petty bourgeois frequently stumbles into lumpen status.

[Mumbles]

I feel for your family very much.

The scientific field has been my goal in life as well, as has helping people through it. But as I've talked to people in the field, they're seeing the same problems. People have to compete for limited funding and if their idea gets rejected, from the figures I've been told is around 85-95% of ones proposed, they aren't gonna get paid till they subject to whatever the people with the checkbooks want researched, which usually isn't for the sake of mankind, go figure.

But, I hope that this oppression can be used for the benefit of the people. How respected are some scientists? Having had to work through the different positions in their fields, they've probably also seen how oppressed people's beneficial ideas are. And being a logical type of people, I would think they'd actually listen to the ideals of Communism and test them logically. My only concern though, is would this seem elitist if we tried to get scientists to try and be a major force in helping people see other ideas than Capitalism? Or am I just idealizing because this field particularly interests me?

Sorry about the tangent, man, but I'm seriously sorry that the system we live in has caused that to happen to your family and all families that have been involved in that nonsense.

[Invader Zim]

It could be worse, at my university, a single department has just had to lay off a vast portion of its staff, both academic and auxiliary, because funding ran dry.

The big problem now is that because higher education is a soft target it is suffering massive budget cuts across the board. As a result staff are being laid off, but because of the economic crisis young people, rather than being unemployed, are choosing to go to university instead. As a result university staff are becoming fewer yet student numbers are swelling. The over all result will be that teaching and research standards will collapse and the degree will become a far less worthwhile investment. For academics it gets still worse, as more students enter higher education, a higher number will also stay within the acadamy and go onto try gaining higher postgraduate degrees. As a result the lecturer job market is becoming more and more over saturared, so individuals who have decicated the better part of a decade to higher education, and have the debts to prove it, are becoming unemployable.

[comrade_cyanide444]

Scientists are just as much part of the proletarian class as are factory workers.... Many view scientists as the rich guys who are blatantly selfish and self centered... In general people in the research field are middle classed. In fact the whole of USA is starting to become anti-intellectual. Whenever someone hears something even a bit scientific sounding, they either think of a guy making meth or something sinister and toxic.

In fact, science is looked down upon in capitalism if it doesn't make money for companies....