"autodidacts" inside the communist movement

[black magick hustla]

one of the things ive admired the most about the communist movement is that it is its tendency for "autodidacts". "organic intellectuals" coming out of the working class. i think one of the things i resent about "radical scholars" is the idea, especially in the US, that you pay for someone to teach you about communism, etcetera, while there has always been a healthy autodidact activity within the communist movement. some of the clearest thinkers ive met didnt have a college degree.

i dont knowo what is the specific subject of the discussion, but i just wanted to point out that communists hold avery strong autodidact tradition and it is one of the things i admire a lot about them

[Widerstand]

And how are "intellectuals", as in "scholars", or I guess in your case it would better be called "professors", less a part of the working class than other service sector workers?

[black magick hustla]

tenured professors have fire and hire faculties. "adjunct" professors make less than janitors. tenured professors are bosses

[Widerstand]

tenured professors have fire and hire faculties.

Is that how it's in the US? I'm not 100% sure how the university employment system works in Germany, but I do know two profs who are actively engaged in working class struggles and other political activity.

[black magick hustla]

eh im pretty sure its similar in the sense that there are a few tenured proffessors and a fuckload of adjuncts that dont even have offices

[milk]

With regard to the UK, a good book to read is The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose. It has a great section on those informal study groups (mutual improvement societies) formed by like-minded workers with a desire to learn, created in part to get around the restrictions on intellectual interest (social questions, radicalism and politics) imposed by the middle class people who ran the Mechanics Institutes. Indeed the middle class tried to contain and control, both socially and economically, working class intellectual activity, or in fear, simply ended up redefining which kind of knowledge is the most valuable. The snobbery and barrier-creating involved in modernist literature for example.

[Jimmie Higgins]

People in the US tend to think of blue collar workers as brutes and white collar workers and unimaginative drones (I tend to stereotype yuppies as drones but it's from a different place: more because of their tendency towards vapid-moralism and a self-centered almost willful-ignorance of the problems faced by people around them). First, this is not true - working class people are imaginative and like to read or do art or engage in sports or hiking or whatnot... anti-intellectual sentiment comes from the ruling class who promote the idea that workers are like that and discourage intellectualism among workers as somehow suspect or elitist or whatnot... convenient for a ruling class that is restricting access to education for workers, wants to let oil companies destroy the planet for profit, and doesn't want people to know much about the history or culture of the people we are bombing and invading. Hmmm.

But on another level, many people do see no real application for "philosophy" or "history" or "politics" in their lives and so why bother... and additionally, many working people in the US are too busy and too exhausted to maintain hobbies to the level they wish to or read a lot when they get home. For radicals, studying this stuff, trying to figure out the world (culture as well as science and obviously politics) does have immediate and practical use and importance. So I know for my own experience, becoming a radical and activist has actually encouraged me to learn more about more things - not just political or class history but in general about science (which I avoided like the plague when in school) and so on. Once you break from a ruling class view of the world and begin to see things from a class-based materialist perspective, I think it makes people want to re-examine more things from that viewpoint and challenge the assumptions about art or science or human nature that we inherited from the general (capitalist-dominated) culture. So I have always been amazed by the range of interests and knowledge of various things that comrades I have met have.

[Palingenisis]

With regard to the UK, a good book to read is The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose. It has a great section on those informal study groups (mutual improvement societies) formed by like-minded workers with a desire to learn, created in part to get around the restrictions on intellectual interest (social questions, radicalism and politics) imposed by the middle class people who ran the Mechanics Institutes.

Such things also existed in Germany.

[Widerstand]

I also think it's noteworthy that neither Marx nor Engels were autodidacts, at least they certainly weren't working class.

[milk]

And the term dialectical materialism was coined by Joseph Dietzgen, who was indeed a self-educated man, as well as the son of a tanner. "Our philosopher," as Marx himself said.

[28350]

I also think it's noteworthy that neither Marx nor Engels were autodidacts, at least they certainly weren't working class.

I'm not sure what you say in that second clause is what you mean.

[Widerstand]

I'm not sure what you say in that second clause is what you mean.

Engels was not part of the working class, and afaik neither was Marx.

[9]

I also think it's noteworthy that neither Marx nor Engels were autodidacts, at least they certainly weren't working class.
er.. why is it noteworthy who isn't an autodidact when the thread is about autodidacts...? :confused:

[Widerstand]

er.. why is it noteworthy who isn't an autodidact when the thread is about autodidacts...? :confused:

Because it was implied that "autodidacts" somehow produce more "authentic" theory, as opposed to "intellectuals", yet none here cares about the intellectuality of Marx and Engels.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Marx studied quite a bit on his own. Indeed, the majority of his research and writings, activity, etc., came long after he had been to university.

[synthesis]

one of the things ive admired the most about the communist movement is that it is its tendency for "autodidacts". "organic intellectuals" coming out of the working class. i think one of the things i resent about "radical scholars" is the idea, especially in the US, that you pay for someone to teach you about communism, etcetera, while there has always been a healthy autodidact activity within the communist movement. some of the clearest thinkers ive met didnt have a college degree.

I completely agree about everything except "radical scholars" - I'd call them "radical academics" instead. I like the distinction that Nicholas Taleb draws:


The four most influential moderns: Darwin, Marx, Freud and (the productive) Einstein were scholars but not academics. It has always been hard to do genuine - and nonperishable - work within institutions.

[scarletghoul]

Honestly the education system has always been something that interferes with my real studying.. certainly i would be a lot smarter if I didn't have to deal with all that bullshit.

There was a moment, some time in middle school, when I just realised "this is useless bullshit that I don't care about" and since then it was just a constant annoyance and waste of life. I could see the same thing happen to many of my peers, though most of them didn't self educate because the whole idea of education was made into a depressing and miserable waste of time to them. This is a major function of the educational system; youth are either filled with bourgeois shit or turned away from the very idea of learning ..

Also I've met tons of middle class sixth form kids who studied marx in sociology or whatever- none of them understand class struggle. But when I talk to poor people on the council estate etc and talk about the capitalist oppression of the working class- they instantly understand what I'm talking about.

What I'm trying to say is that the only revolutionary is the self-educated revolutionary, simply because as long as you limit your learning to what the system feeds you, you will never learn to transgress and overthrow that system.