education
Dear friends,
We live in a time of intensifying identity-based conflict, where every social and political issue becomes refracted through the lens of personal identity and group affiliation. Look no further than headlines shared here on mind reader every day. The deployment of identity politics – both by the ostensible “left” and the increasingly mask-off right – has become a primary mechanism through which hegemonic power maintains its grip on civil society while forestalling any genuine movement toward working class solidarity (let alone anti-capitalist movements). I think it is worth us spending additional time examining this phenomenon and its implications for building an intersectional movement capable of challenging capitalism’s death grip on our collective future. Because our future is collective, identities be damned.
Identity politics, in its current manifestation, represents both a genuine expression of marginalised groups’ experiences and grievances under capitalism and a tool cynically wielded by power to fragment class consciousness. What began as important movements highlighting specific forms of oppression – from feminist critiques of patriarchy to queer resistance against heteronormativity to racial justice struggles against white supremacy – has been co-opted and transformed by hegemonic forces into battles over representation and recognition that leave fundamental power relations untouched. Capitalism marches on, and indeed, intensifies, subsumes and co-opts in the wake of these divisive rhetorics. The right deploys reactionary identity politics centred on nationalism, whiteness, and “traditional values” (read: rape, plunder, pillage) to redirect working class anger toward marginalised groups, while liberal identity politics often reduces systemic critique to demands for more diverse faces in positions of power. Both varieties serve to obscure the material basis of oppression in capitalist relations. Don’t @ me.
The emotional power of identity as a mobilising force is incredibly significant in our current political context. The assumptions, roles, and realities of communities are important and they colour how we see the world. Our sense of self, our experiences of marginalisation or privilege, and our community affiliations shape our social epistemology – which is equally shaped by a capitalist ontology. The right understands this viscerally – their appeals to white grievance, xenophobia, and moral panic over gender and sexuality tap into deep wells of fear and anger among their base. The “mainstream media” amplifies these cultural conflicts, with Australia’s Murdoch-dominated landscape taking particular glee in stoking hatred toward LGBTQI+ folks through endless inflammatory coverage. One need only look at how trans people have been demonised and scapegoated, basic human dignity turned into fodder for manufactured outrage designed to drive engagement and distract from capital’s continued pillaging of our planet. Oh, and to sell Murdoch’s rags.
The Australian media’s complicity in amplifying identity-based division represents a textbook example of manufactured consent in action. By framing every issue through a culture war lens – whether it’s gender-neutral bathrooms, Indigenous Voice, or immigration – the corporate media ensures that genuine class analysis and critique of capitalism remains off the table. To them, that’s all this is – a way of keeping “the proles in their jobs, asking no questions, and hating each other” – you can’t make this shit up. The endless cycle of inflammatory coverage creates a feedback loop where legitimate grievances get twisted into weapons for attacking other marginalised groups rather than challenging the very system that creates the marginalisation in the first place. Headlines about “woke ideology” and “gender ideology” serve as convenient distractions while – in our case, both major political parties continue implementing anti-worker policies – and revelling in the hate they have manufactured to grab more power at the next election.
This devolution into identity-based warfare has devastating consequences for building working class solidarity. Not to mention on the mental and physical health of “minorities” and marginalised peoples across the gamut of the political spectrum (even when they vote for the leopards which eat their own faces). When workers are convinced that their real enemies are immigrants, trans people, or “cultural Marxists” (guilty) rather than the capitalist class stealing the surplus value of their labour, the prospects for unified resistance plummet. And that’s what we’ve seen deployed time and again over the last thirty years, particularly as the Labor party undermines any affective worker movement through it’s monopoly over (bourgeoise) “unions”. The right’s concomitant deployment of reactionary identity politics serves to actively prevent the development of class consciousness, while liberal identity politics often reduces intersectional analysis to performative representation that leaves capitalism’s core operations intact. Both varieties in their pernicious creep into identity battles only strengthen rather than challenge hegemonic power – thereby simply reinforcing the damaging power imbalances that created the issues in the first place.
The cost of this fragmentation falls hardest on those facing multiple, intersecting forms of marginalisation. When movements for social transformation devolve into competing claims of oppression rather than building genuine solidarity, it is invariably the most vulnerable who suffer – Indigenous workers, disabled folks, queer and trans people of colour, and so on. Their specific experiences of exploitation and exclusion demand an intersectional analysis that holds both the particularity of identity-based oppression and the universality of class struggle. We cannot build effective resistance by either ignoring difference or reducing everything to identity – we need an educative praxis that fosters deep understanding across lines of difference while maintaining focus on our shared enemy –capitalism. And this doesn’t mean “reasoning with the right” who are hellbent on running the globe into climate-based destruction just for shits and giggles (masochistic and religious nut jobs alike).
Where might we go from here? The path forward requires developing forms of solidarity that can honour both our differences and our fundamental commonality as members of the working class facing extinction under capitalism’s death drive. This means creating spaces for genuine dialogue and political education that help people understand how their specific experiences of marginalisation connect to systems of oppression. Only the 1% has “got it made” in this system, and just because someone has a veneer of privilege, does not make them an exploiter – though idly leveraging that privilege for personal benefit is deeply problematic. The panacea isn’t more identity-based battling, or divisive rubbish, but rather building movements that centre the leadership of the most impacted while fostering collective understanding of how capitalism relies on and reproduces multiple, intersecting hierarchies. And, in case I haven’t been clear enough, most importantly, it means maintaining laser focus on the real enemy – not each other, but the capitalist class and their political enablers pushing us toward fascism and ecological collapse.
The tools for this work already exist in our theoretical traditions – from intersectional feminism to social reproduction theory to Gramsci’s insights about building counter-hegemony. What we need now is the collective will to deploy them in service of genuine solidarity rather than allowing our identities to be weaponised for capital’s benefit. The ruling class wants us fighting each other over pronouns, level of personal exploitation and disadvantage, and “others that look like you made this system” all while the capitalists steal the future from us, our planet and our children. If you choose the path of lateral violence over identity battles you choose capitalism, the system that oppresses you. An alternate path, one of radical education, deep solidarity, and unified resistance against the death cult of colonial capitalism is a panacea for resistance that allows our strengths to shine – not dividing us on our (perceived) identities, labels applied by others to keep us busy.
In closing, friends, none of us are free until all of us are free. The revolution must be intersectional or it will be bullshit. Platitudes, or action? I think action.
In solidarity,
Aidan
Dear friends,
Today I have some off the cuff thoughts about global heat death – revisiting an early theme (actually, the earliest in this particular incarnation of dispatches).
Yesterday I felt happy about expanding numbers of women-identifying YouTube creators – yes I still watch YouTube, I know ... who were interested in the intersection of technology and creativity – not because this is (or should be) rare, but because “in my day” the dominance of sexist men in that particular niche was incredibly overwhelming. But one of these creative sorts, you know how the algorithm goes – particularly with YouTube, a story for another post – popped up talking about creating a bespoke AI, fit for purpose if you like. As part of this video was discussion of the role of creativity and AI (re: “AI stealing all the creative work”) and, further, the rising electricity demands of the AI industry. This got me thinking of things to really truly test in my own environment.
Just recently I’ve been running a combination of tools on my Linux desktop machine – unfortunately “hamstrung” in AI land, at least, by an AMD CPU/GPU(Ryzen 9 7900X / RX 6750 XT / 32 GB DDR4) combo – to run local Large Language Models. I’m still a novice in this space, but I was more interested in the comparative time to response from, even a modest sized local model (i.e. 70b [1]), compared to commercial AI systems. I know this is a very unscientific test, but time to response on very short (“write me a poem about AI”) prompts is decent, probably around 1s. But the revelatory moment was in the massive spin up of fans and power draw from the wall (which I won’t pretend to have properly scientific figures for).
Generating a 1500 word story, basically on complete nonsense because this particular model is no where near competitive even with the free tier of ChatGPT, for instance, made my 3sqm office hot – like I’d been playing Tiny Glade for three+ hours hot. Again, anyone who knows about measuring energy efficiency, comparing apples to apples, and has an interest in genuinely benchmarking technologies against one another is flat out scrunched into a ball of cringe right now, but the purpose of this very unscientific test stands. I wanted to get a feel for time, and energy, on a machine which I control, using a data set, model, and algorithm I control. And the results of this, ignoring everything I know about streamlining, caching, using more appropriate hardware, and so on, still make me incredibly “worried” about commercial AI solutions.
I’ve shared a litany of news stories on the extreme cost on power networks that commercial AI uses – to the point where Microsoft is recommissioning a nuclear power reactor for the sole purpose of powering just some of its AI infrastructure. But until you feel the heat coming off a computer generating a three line poem about itself, it doesn’t quite feel “real”. We are seriously looking at a global power consumption footprint larger than most nations with the combined use of AI as tech bros increasingly wet themselves with excitement – and the line-go-up capitalists get their jollies by suggesting automating workers’ jobs.
This accelerationism which is lauded – and genuinely so, by capitalism and its vanguards – middle managers, for instance – is accelerating global heat death. Not to mention the continuing deep inequity in AI use, not only at an infrastructural level where resources and materials are being diverted from nations to power bourgeois CEOs email writing, but also at the use-interface. As the proletarian hype for AI dies down, something we are right in the middle of with increasingly “bored” responses to the latest AI hype, particularly from coal-face workers who have seen the hallucinations completely derail BAU, the increasing bourgeification (making up words) of AI rolls on.
Instead of using LLMs as a tool for crafting social change, we’re seeing the working class turn away from these tools. And perhaps, given their inefficiencies and inequity, rightfully so – but that won’t stop capitalists replacing you with an LLM the minute they can get it just barely passably at your “standard”. Hand in hand with the deliberate mystification of the systems and tools that make, power, and generate AI, this abstraction of workers away from the means of production is a tale as old as time in our capitalist hell.
There are genuine solutions to these problems. Running local LLMs and seeing for yourself the limitations, power use, and possibility is a start. Investing in green(er) power sources, getting involved in community projects to bring AI tools to communities, and seriously and in an activist mode debating with capitalists about the use of AI to replace humans is all a start. My fear is, not only accelerated heat death but, accelerated worker replacement into increasingly deskilled roles while a mediocre, half-baked, environmentally destructive AI takes over the creative and intellectual work of the proletariat – rapidly increasing inequity in the first world, while AI currently continues to disadvantage expropriated and poorer countries right now.
I am excited about the possibilities and capabilities of LLMs as an augmentation tool. I benefit as much as anyone from the use of ML in analysing photo libraries, telling me what plants and birds are in photos, and so on. I’m certainly not a luddite. But I think that – in conjunction with a growing awareness of how much energy these tools use, the malice of capitalists in turning machinery of production against the workers, and the unequal and problematic distribution of global resources to keep a small minority comfortable – the context is “a lot” to process. Obviously disclaimers abound about no ethical consumption under capitalism, but I think that this kind of thinking about these problems needs to happen more, and I applaud those who are having this conversation with an audience [2].
So what do you reckon? Where are we headed with these technologies? Will we be further abstracted from knowledge of systems and tools than we are now? Will schools start teaching kids how to design their own AI? Or will we keep doing stupid shit like banning phones? I’m not hopeful that we’ll see radical shift in the way technology is taught and used, because after all it is anti-capitalist to believe in access, knowledege, and understanding – and damn that’s sad.
With trepidation,
Aidan
Dear friends,
Another day in hell. In the last fortnight we have seen: the ALP eject an elected member over their relatively limp anti-genocide stance [1], the rapid increase in cost of education visas [2], the taxation of higher degrees by research [3], and many policy and party platform transformations to reconfigure the once upon a time centrist party as the firmly right wing player.
Where does the fascism start? If we momentarily set aside the deliberately genocidal and narcissistic behaviour of the Australian Government and its ALP rulers, we have just as recently borne witness to the systematic decimation of higher education – in the long run. Education in this country is government controlled. Allegedly public schools and universities are run for the public interest. In reality this has always been the hegemony’s interest. While higher education, in particular, has been seen as a relative bastion of liberal thought, over the past 30 years in Australia, there has been an acceleration towards corporatised, privatised, and conservative thought and decision making.
Importantly, the “liberal thought” of higher education in Australia has always been a centrist, socially and economically conservative, and static status quo. This enabled higher education institutions to avoid neoliberalism longer than other institutions, not because they were special, but because in this country they were already functioning under managerialist, cost-saving, and conservative models. This was brought by the ALP in decades past, unlike how neoliberalism arrived in the rest of the world [4]. The intensification of crack-downs on research funding for the arts, humanities, social sciences, and, frankly, anything the conservative Minister for Education doesn’t like was a hallmark of the Liberal-National coalition. While this intervention was allegedly reversed relatively early in the ALP’s most recent term in government, these two most recent developments only show a re-commitment to the rapid deskilling of the working class due to ripple affects.
As recently as last week the NTEU, the union for higher education, and CAPA, the peak body for postgraduate students, called for raising the wage of research students to the minimum wage. Currently, Australian postgraduate research students are paid approximately $30,000 per year – tax free. This approximately $14 per hour wage is supposed to enable transformative science, radical thought, new frontiers in social transformation, and to up-skill workers for the next generation of higher education - as well as covering the cost of living. Instead, the government has decided to tax this stipend, in addition to preventing more than 7.5 hours of work per week (or 30% of the stipend, whichever comes first).
Australian higher education has long been wholly dependent on international students to sustain itself. Importantly, while this is financially irresponsible, this is the status quo in higher education. For domestic students to be educated, the university sector requires international student enrolments, this is because of the exorbitant fees. In another regressive decision from the past week, the ALP has also announced the almost doubling of the international study visa cost. This deters international students from Australian institutions, and even those who are currently enrolled may reconsider returning for study in 2025.
Atop funding cuts, massive indexation on study debt for domestic students, previous policy which continues to influence study flows towards “professions”, and other tax disincentives for institutions, donors, and so on, the financial situation of most universities is now dire. After a massive downturn during COVID-19 lockdowns, the sector has been incredibly slow to recover. With these latest developments amounting to punching down by government on higher education and students simultaneously.
Okay – this brings us to fascism.
There has been a clear repositioning of the ALP from the so called centre-left party, connected integrally to unions, to occupying the centre-right, and now the right – and, as illustrated above, completely disconnected from the worker. We have seen the Liberal-National Coalition progress further to the extreme right, and their ‘retreat’ or continued loss of popularity with the majority populous. Now, drawing on their tactics, the ALP seeks to reposition itself as the party for the capitalists – millenials, boomers, never mind, this is distinctively class warfare. From a prime minister with a massive housing portfolio, who could expect pro-renter housing policy? From a foreign minister with an ongoing relationship with Israel, who could expect anti-genocidal policy? The bourgeois hegemony of the ALP now rivals the Howard era in contemptibility.
Recent propaganda from the ALP’s MPs and candidates indicates copying the LNP’s homework directly. Investment in churches, increased funding in private schools, reducing tax (for the 1%), individualist claims in individualist times. Inwardly, past the propaganda, is a continued and deeply economically conservative party whose financial interests lie with property developers, investors, corporate CEOs, and other plutocrats. Socially, the ALP stands on the side of genocide, so I do not believe I need to say more about their positionality.
With this divestment from even a ‘liberal’ centrist educational system, which I will at this juncture point out continues in its hegemonic control by the government from preschool through graduate education, we are now seeing the ALP stamp their mark as the anti-intellectual part of the country. A populist movement not seen in left-wing (populist) politics in the anglosphere. Indeed, the right gut and disfigure education the world over, and when it talks like a duck, acts like a duck, and makes regressive policy decisions like a duck, it’s probably a duck – sorry, fascist. With higher education being on the chopping block it is a matter of time before the future of this country becomes increasingly narrow and devastatingly less class-conscious. The latter was already fading away beyond belief, particularly given the dire state of a corrupt, narcissistic, profiteering, yet underfunded and radically unequal, higher education system. The future does not look bright.
We need an education system that fosters class consciousness. We need a curriculum, from preschool to higher education, that enables positive social transformation. We need more equality, acceptance, and communal spirit to push back the ravages of unchecked neoliberal capitalism. Instead, we are seeing an increasingly desperate focus by governments and political figures on the de-skilling and anti-intellectualising of the populous and constant undermining of those in vague positions to be able to create a better future together. Such is the rise of global fascism.
We can but hope for a French-style left-jerk in the next election, but the Murdoch press are so hellbent on authoritarianism that they still back the LNP in the face of a “nuclear overlord”. The Greens as the last remaining centre-left party in Australia are in dire straits. The rhetoric that the Greens are the ‘radical left’ is so ingrained in the populous by the ALP, LNP, and Murdoch monopoly, that the average citizen still thinks the ALP represents a centrist position. This is patently untrue – fascism is here, and it wears red (again).
In solidarity,
Aidan
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/06/fatima-payman-quits-labor-party-palestine-voters-base ↩︎
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/07/international-student-cap-visa-fees-increase-albanese-government ↩︎
https://www.campusreview.com.au/2024/07/taxing-part-time-postgrad-study-strange-punitive-measure/ ↩︎
Humphrys, E. (2019). How Labour built neoliberalism: Australia’s accord, the labour movement and the neoliberal project. Brill. ↩︎