Jack Saturday

Friday, May 30, 2008

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations 223, 224

An English professor who had marked one of my papers with an "F" because I had proposed an unauthorized view of a 17th century divine. In the margin of the paper, the professor had written, "I don't care what you think; I'm only interested in knowing that you know what I think." The message pretty much defined the thesis of a Yale education at the time.
...The education offered at Yale, as at Harvard, Princeton, or the University of Michigan bears comparison to the commercial procedure for stunting caterpillars just prior to the moment of their transformation into butterflies. Silkworms can be made useful but butterflies blow around in the wind, and do nothing to add to the profits of the corporation, or the power of the state.
Lewis H. Lapham,
Editor of Harper's Magazine





In any case, the goal for MIT graduates was that we would unquestioningly perform any interesting tasks that the powers that be from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale proposed for us. If the masters of the universe wanted us to produce a mechanism of corporate control over workers, or a mechanism of government oversight over citizens, or a reentry system for multiple nuclear warheads delivered by one missile, or a stabilization system so that helicopter guns could more reliably shoot water buffalo and Vietnamese peasants, or, for that matter, if the masters of the universe unexpectedly asked us to design a handgun so that those same peasants could shoot down B52s, we tech tools from MIT should meet the master's challenge. We should leave calculating the social worth of the product to the masters, their having been propitiously prepared for that at Harvard finishing school. The masters would get the social calculation right. They would ask for smart bombs, not B52-threatening handguns. Our expertise was bordered by MIT's long, gray corridors. We would deliver the goods.
Michael Albert
Remembering Tomorrow



3 Comments:

  • Hi Jack. We are reading in Australia. We hate to work, and we love to read your quotes. Hope you are in good health and are getting a pension or some shit.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:46 AM  

  • Hi friends-- thanks for the words, it's great to hear I have at least two readers. I do have a basic income for now and I tell you, health improves mightily if you can get free of selling your labor power.

    Best,
    Jack

    By Blogger Jack Saturday, at 3:08 PM  

  • Ok great Jack. By the by, when I say 'some shit' its just the way I talk. It means 'some thing' I guess. Who gives a shit what it is right? Basic income this, that, the other whatever. It's a ticket to buy from the foolish society what you could have got for free if you were a homesteader 200 years ago. Build a log cabin, hunt, grow some organic veggies, all that shit.

    Now its, please take this ticket (cash) grocery slave and I will take my clad in plastic, plastic food and eat it and rent some shitty tenement when a real man should have a log cabin with a huge fireplace and some steers mounted on the wall.... but anyone who has one these days is not a real man, they are a fool working a 30 year mortgage to pay for something that 8 generations ago was ours for the taking out in the bush......



    Suggestion box....

    http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wage+slavery&search_type=

    there is a couple of good videos there to embed...

    Maybe ill spread the word around

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:19 PM  

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