ACADEMICS.web.id – Some time ago, just before dawn, a friend shared his struggle: “How difficult life is under the grip of capitalism.” At that moment, I thought to myself, “Ah, just another story.” Terms like capitalism, postmodernism, nihilism, and a myriad of other -isms have long been the hallmarks of intellectual vanity in our middle class. We should not be easily swayed by the words of someone who often claims to be an atheist, criticizes Marxism, or even defends it ardently. These terms are often just borrowed jargon without a deep understanding of their epistemological contexts. The intellectual endeavor has long transformed into a title easily bestowed upon those who frequently incorporate philosophical terms into their conversations while seeking ways to impose their views on others.
However, I was quite taken aback when my friend, an aspiring dentist, adequately explained why capitalism is detrimental and how it conceals various injustices in every aspect of life. To cut a long story short, my friend had recently established a small dental clinic with joint funding from other dental students. He experienced the immense difficulty of making money. “In the field of healthcare, the monopoly of production factors is profoundly felt, both through official government institutions and renowned professional doctors.”
“It’s tough being an ordinary person,” my friend emphasized. That’s why from the start, when he entered the dental faculty, he had resolved not to limit his education to dentistry alone. “Life isn’t just about teeth,” he said. Now, nearing the completion of his dental education, he feels that he isn’t as proficient in dental science compared to his peers, who solely focused on dental studies, because he studied many different things. More explicitly, he cannot deny his primordial humanistic curiosity, which constantly questions and doubts many issues.
After successfully establishing the dental clinic, he said, “Being a doctor isn’t just about healthcare.” Setting up a dental clinic requires an understanding of money circulation (i.e., production factors), and in essence, it necessitates knowing how monopolies in the healthcare business operate. My friend realized early on that healthcare is not a business matter but a concern for ensuring society’s access to a good and humanistic healthcare system. Achieving this is not easy because some dental students only learn about teeth and how to engineer production factors for the sustainability of the dental clinic business.
“Many of us don’t strive to learn other sciences or use our rationality well,” my friend’s words made me silent for a moment. At the end of our conversation, he asked me: “Why are there more and more people interested in medical school?” “It seems that, over time, I am witnessing a frightening trend of specialization. Look at how general medicine has been fragmented into dentistry, neurology, nursing, public health, and many more specialties. Why is that? I fear that one day there will be a faculty for left ear medicine,” my friend said, laughing. And I could only reply, “That’s very likely.”
The rooster crowed, and our conversation ended, but not the subject matter: education, capitalism, and the many other issues about how so many of us are immersed in the specialization of knowledge and feel exceedingly comfortable in it. At that time, I also felt somewhat reprimanded by my friend’s words: “Could it be that I have only been in philosophy and haven’t tried to engage in dialogue with other sciences?” “Could it be that the philosophical path I’ve taken is akin to the ideal world model that validates aprioristic theses with aprioristic arguments, trapping me in that mire, and consequently, my philosophy is far from practical context.” I hope not, and I hope (with God’s permission) I can break free from the mire of idealism.
The above story is merely an introduction. Through the problem we captured in the story, I will systematically discuss the issues of higher education within the climate of neoliberal capitalism concerning the phenomenon of specialization. The systematization of the problem will be done in a general manner, to then see: what movements are behind the phenomenon of educational specialization?; what are the consequences of specialization in fields of study? By answering these questions, it is hoped that we will find it easier to determine the direction in which each student should engage in their practical resistance.
Higher Education Specialization within the Production Factor Reproduction Flow
In his letter to Kugelman dated July 11, 1868, Marx stated: “Any social formation that does not reproduce the conditions of production as they initially were, will inevitably only live for a short time”[1]. Reproduction becomes a necessity to ensure that any social formation can exist, and so it is with capitalism. The typology of the capitalist social formation must ensure that each of its organs continuously reproduces as per the initial typology of capitalism. Through Marx’s thesis, Louis Althusser subsequently detailed two essential points of what must be reproduced by the social order: 1) production factors; and 2) existing production relations[2].
Now it is clear, the capitalist order driven by the macro industrial sector must answer the question of how to replace resources that have worn out during their usage. Raw materials, buildings, and production devices (machines) as material resources driving the industrial sector must be available when the current ones wear out. Besides material production factors, reproduction must also provide human resource services (labor) that are just as important as material resources. In short, the logic of reproduction is the logic of ensuring the availability of initial production factors.
Then who must ensure the availability of all replacement production factors? Large industrial companies, as the most visible backbone of capitalist practices, clearly do not concern themselves with this. Companies merely receive the supply of replacement production factors. What happens at the company level is only the consequence that illustrates the importance of reproduction. Reproduction of the initial material production conditions cannot be thought of at the company level, as the reproduction flow does not exist at the tangible level[3]. That is why all sectors outside the company must be coordinated in a single rhythm to supply the initial production factors to the company, enabling reproduction to take place.
The most essential for ensuring material reproduction for companies is the guarantee of human resource production factors. Workers must be genuinely guaranteed to exist to produce other production factors (e.g., tools, raw materials). Therefore, companies always provide “wage capital” in their accounting. However, it should be noted that wages are not the main guarantee for the reproduction of human resources. Wages are merely a representation of the value produced from the expenditure of human resources, which should not be neglected for the company’s reproduction. Wages serve as a guarantee tied to the workers to keep them alive and ensure that every morning they can go to the factory to engage in the production activity. Through wages, companies also gain additional value because workers are likely to use their wages for their children’s education—a reproduction of the proletariat as a human resource supporting the company.
What happens through wages cannot be the main basis for ensuring the reproduction process. Each worker must have specific skills according to the company’s needs. To ensure these skills, wages, which are essentially derived from the workers themselves, are clearly not an adequate production force. The children of workers must be ensured to become workers as well, with specialized skills suitable for the industrial needs over time. Therefore, the specialization process and skill enhancement must be reproduced outside the company’s production flow. Althusser explicitly states that the capitalist education system through various institutions is a “factory” that will ensure the specialization and skill enhancement of future workers. In short, educational institutions might be laden with tendencies to be labor factories rather than centers for intellectual development.
Understanding the importance of the reproduction of production factors and education as an institution outside the company tasked with ensuring the existence of production and the continuity of the capitalist system, we can be more cautious and critical of educational policies—especially higher education policies. The story I used as the introduction to this writing is just a small example of the phenomenon that Althusser refers to as the process of reproducing production factors through specialization in fields of study, which also automatically means specialization in higher education. On a more macro scale, we can observe how our higher education policies are exceedingly populist, thus merely playing around to conceal the government’s allegiance to the global neoliberal capitalist order. Therefore, let’s scrutinize what our government is doing to higher education institutions.
The policy of President Joko Widodo’s administration to separate institutional management between Primary and Secondary Education and Higher Education, which is then combined with Research and Technology, represents a major issue. This separation is one example of a populist policy without a strong foundation. There is no guarantee of improving the quality of higher education as a place for the production of intellectual discourse. The separation indicates a trend toward specialization, ultimately leading to a pragmatic approach in education. A pragmatic culture is necessary to ensure a labor supply that matches market demands. At this point, the primary role of education in cultural, political, and economic transformation is overlooked in favor of a guarantee of total uncertainty—”research quality improvement” through the merging of higher education with research and technology.
Pragmatic research becomes the benchmark for improved educational quality. Such research is clearly necessary for the continuity of the macro-industrial sector. Apart from this issue of separation, the Education Law No. 9 of 2009 on the Legal Entity of Education allows us to see clearly that education will be turned into a service sector that can be commercialized, expecting to boost the national economy. This law is tangible evidence of the government’s compliance with WTO regulations in liberalizing services in higher education, where the principles of National Treatment and Market Access also apply. The WTO needs to ensure that all sectors under state institutions must be at the forefront of instilling capitalist economic ideology. Every major company in this country requires the government’s assurance that our demographic bonus can also become a demographic bonus for the capitalist economic order.
Furthermore, higher education institutions frequently rank faculties into castes of most favored faculties, with unclear bases for such rankings. I can assure you that in almost every higher education institution, social sciences are marginalized, whereas natural sciences are excessively prioritized. The natural sciences faculty tends to receive the highest funding, research facilities, and other resources to ensure the macro-industrial sector receives a new generation of engineers and doctors. If we examine further, it becomes clear that the faculties producing engineering and medical graduates are in high demand and seen as prestigious faculties. Of course, this is based on the view that future workers are those who can work in major companies within the macro-industrial sector. These faculties produce professionals who are continuously engaged in producing production factors for companies. As a result, education has become a reproductive activity for production factors, reducing it to a labor reproduction factory. What follows is a dialogue with various sectors to find tangible solutions to prevent our education from falling into the trap of neoliberal capitalist policy.
The Problem of Education and Potential Resistance
The discourse on education in our country is merely a discussion on its practical application, and its relevance is limited to official educational institutions. Whereas, as Althusser said, education should be the primary institution to ensure reproduction. Therefore, the critical issue in education is not about whether teachers are working effectively. Instead, we need to analyze whether our education is directed towards enhancing human resources or merely reproducing production factors. We must analyze whether higher education is genuinely geared towards promoting humanistic, cultural, and intellectual development or if it is simply serving as a factory for producing workers who comply with market demands.
The movement towards specialization in higher education is a significant problem, as it often leads to the marginalization of interdisciplinary and holistic approaches to knowledge. Specialization can lead to a narrow focus on specific skills and knowledge areas, often dictated by market demands, at the expense of broader intellectual and ethical development. This tendency can result in a workforce that is technically proficient but lacks critical thinking, creativity, and the ability to engage in complex problem-solving.
The way forward involves fostering a more inclusive and interdisciplinary approach to education, where students are encouraged to explore a wide range of subjects and develop a more comprehensive understanding of the world. This approach should emphasize the importance of critical thinking, creativity, and ethical reasoning, which are essential for addressing the complex challenges of the modern world. Education should not be solely about preparing individuals for specific jobs but about equipping them with the skills and knowledge to contribute meaningfully to society and to engage in lifelong learning.
In conclusion, we must critically evaluate the direction of our educational policies and practices to ensure that they align with the broader goals of fostering intellectual, cultural, and ethical development. By doing so, we can create an educational system that not only prepares individuals for the workforce but also empowers them to become thoughtful, engaged, and responsible members of society.@
REFERENCES:
[1] Marx kepada Kugelman 11 Juli 1868, Selected Correspondence, Moskow, 1995, p. 59.
[2] Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, New York, Mothly Review Press, 2002, p.127
[3] Ibid, p. 131
[4] Ibid. p.147.
[5] 1. ISA Agama 2. Pendidikan 3. Keluarga 4. Hukum 5. Politik 6. Serikat Buruh 7.Lembaga Komunikasi 8. Budaya
[6] Marx and Engels, Collected Work jilid 24, London, , Lawrence and Wishart, 1975-2005. P 97
[7] Magnis Suseno, “Publikasi di Jurnal Internasional”, dalam koran Kompas, 9 Juli 2015
