Corporatizing and Militarizing a University Town

Harry Targ

The Greater Lafayette area consists of two towns: Lafayette is a mixed community with some manufacturing and service as its economic base and West Lafayette, a smaller community, but a central location of Purdue University. Lafayette’s population as of 2020 was about 70, 000 and West Lafayette’s 44, 000. The metropolitan area, including several neighboring towns has a population of about 237,000, a growth of 16 percent since 2010. By far the major “industry” in the area, Purdue University, employs 17,000 workers of all kinds and the Purdue Research Park employs some 3,000 who work for 155 companies.

Although Purdue University always had strong programs and a research agenda involving engineering and agriculture, over the last thirty years the liberal arts, social sciences and humanities grew as well. Purdue employed poets and novelists of national reputation, as well as historians, political scientists and philosophers. Interdisciplinary studies programs were established in African American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, American Studies, and smaller programs for example concerning Human Rights, Peace Studies, Latin American Studies, Jewish Studies and others. The intellectual vitality of the university and the surrounding communities parallels such growth in many places around the country.

However, pressures from conservatives, advocates for “free enterprise,” and opponents of the flowering of higher education in all its diversity as a result of “the 60s,” grew as well. The politics of Indiana moved to the right with the electoral victories of Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence, due to the weakening of the Democratic Party and the sustained assault on organized labor. Indiana moved from a “purple” to a deep “red” state.

And thus, the pressures on higher education in keeping with the new rightwing agenda, which began before the prominence of Donald Trump, expanded. Nancy MacLean, in “Democracy in Chains,” documents the steady penetration of education, K through university, by the Koch Foundation and other conservative forces.  Their programs have been recently illustrated in the document Project 2025 which recommends policies that will reverse the vitality and diversity of higher education. This historic project of dismantlement of education was accelerated by the long-term defunding of higher education by states and the national government and the covid epidemic.

These changes involved universities, like Purdue, increasingly currying financial connections with huge corporations and the military, downsizing and marginalizing the university work force, privatizing heretofore public services including food, residences, software services, transforming a public university into a series of private corporations. And these changes in the political economy of higher education have been paralleled by pressures to transform the curricula from rigorous discussion to celebration of American exceptionalism. And the transformation of higher education in the Greater Lafayette area has paralleled the transformations of the political economy of the twin cities, increasing privatization of public services, enticing outside corporate investors, increasing ties to the military and transforming communities and residences.as well.

Now, West Lafayette, in conjunction with the Purdue Research Foundation (which has been deemed “private”) is embarking on the construction of a huge South Korean chip manufacturing and packaging plant in West Lafayette. The West Lafayette City Council is scheduled on May 5 to debate changing ordinances to allow this massive factory to be housed in a residential community in the north end of West Lafayette. (The City Council has the last word even though the Area Planning Commission voted against the rezoning request.)

Indiana politicians and spokespersons have been fantasizing for many years about Central Indiana becoming “the Silicon Valley of the Midwest.” Now the pending agreement with the firm, SK hynix, it is claimed, will make Indiana a huge player in the new US/global political economy. However, those familiar with such dreams recall that SK hynix closed a large plant in another college town in Eugene, Oregon because product demand had declined. And those familiar with Wisconsin, are reminded of huge tax incentives given by the US government and the state to another high-tech company, Foxconn. In both cases, large numbers of new jobs were promised and, in both cases, smaller communities suffered critical residential dislocations. The jobs did not materialize. In the Oregon case the plant shut down. In Wisconsin the facility built turned out to be a fraction of the size of what was promised.

Critics of the rezoning request that the West Lafayette City Council is being asked to grant make the following points.

The zoning request is for Sy Hynix to use 121 acres of land which is surrounded by residential communities. The plant to be constructed would be for packaging superchips, including manufacturing processes, and to develop a research and development center. The manufacturing of semiconductors is known to risk fire, explosions, and health risks to adjacent communities and workers. And the state of Indiana has already issued orders to reduce “regulatory safeguards.” Since semiconductor manufacturing causes health and safety hazards, experts urge that factories be placed far from residential areas. In this case, SK hynix will be adjacent to and surrounded by existing residential communities and near a school, a wellness center, and a park, as well as large areas of greenery to the north.

Along with the dangers of air pollution, the projected plant will increase traffic in a heretofore residential area, put demands on the county’s water supply, and in the main radically transform a residential, and rural environment to an industrial zone that may destroy the sense of community which residents have enjoyed.

In sum, for the last decade the Greater Lafayette community and its primary “industry,” Purdue University, have embraced a single-minded economic development model that pays little attention to the quality of life of the community, health and safety inside and outside facilities, while transforming the tradition of open and vibrant education at Purdue University to the celebration of a model of unbridled growth at all costs.

If the West Lafayette City Council approves the business/university push for moving closer to a midwest “Silicon Valley,” it will substantially reduce the quality of life as well as the educational vitality of this community.

ESSAYS CELEBRATING MAY DAY: WORKERS UNITE:1

 

 

Harry Targ

 

MAY DAY BRINGS THOUGHTS OF SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVES: And Thoughts about Moving Ahead

(Originally posted on May 1, 2009)

Pete Seeger - "L'Internationale"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v85NWc0RIKc

Sketching Today’s Global Political Economy

During the latest phase of monopoly and finance capital (1945- to the present) enormous changes occurred in the global political economy. First, the United States emerged as a superpower and in an effort to crush the threat of socialism around the world committed itself to constructing a “permanent war economy.” This permanent war economy would create the military capacity to destroy alternatives to global capitalism, stimulate and maintain a high growth manufacturing economy, justify an anti-communist crusade to crush the left in the United States, and co-opt and/or repress working class demands for change. In addition, the permanent war economy would occasion the perpetuation of racism and patriarchy in public and private life.

As the years passed corporate rates of profit began to decline as a result of rising competition among capitalist states, over-production and under-consumption, an increasing fiscal crisis of the capitalist state, and rising prices of core natural resources (particularly oil). With a growing crisis, global corporate and finance capital shifted from investments in production of goods and services to financial speculation. Thus capitalist investment steadily shifted to financialization, or the investment in paper-stocks, bonds, private equity and hedge funds and other forms of speculative investment. Financial speculation was encouraged by state tax policies, “free trade” agreements, an expanded international system of indebtedness, and increased reliance on consumer debt.

Multinational corporations which continued to produce goods and services sought to overcome declining profit rates. This, they concluded, could only be achieved by reducing the costs of labor. To overcome the demand for higher real wages, health and other benefits, and worker rights, manufacturing facilities were moved from core capitalist states to poor countries where lower wages were paid. Thus, in wealthier countries millions of relatively high paying jobs were lost while production of goods increasingly moved to sweatshops in poor countries. Wealthy capitalist states experienced deindustrialization.

Finally, assisted by technological advances, from computers to new forms of shipping, financial speculation and deindustrialization fueled the full flowering of globalization, or the radically increased patterns of cross border interactions-economic, political, and cultural. Globalization began to transform the world into one integrated global political economy. (The current tariff war launched by President Trump does not change the core reality of global capitalism).

In short, we may speak of a four-fold set of parallel political and economic developments that have occurred since the end of World War II, in which the United States has played a leading role: creating a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization.

Should We Be Thinking About Socialism Today?

A rich and vital set of images of a socialist future comes down to us from the utopians, anarchists, and Marxists, the martyrs of the first May Day, and the variety of experiments with socialism attempted in Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Extracting from the multiple reasons why individuals and movements chose socialism one reason stands out; that is, that capitalism historically is and has been a cruel and inhumane system, a system borne and fueled by slavery, genocide, super exploitation of workers, tactics of division based on race and gender, and an almost total disregard for the natural environment that sustains life. Building a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization are merely extensions of the cruel and heartless pursuit of profit which has been the fundamental driving force of the capitalist mode of production.

Drawing on the history and the images of a better future coupled with the brutality of the capitalist era, we might conceive of a 21st century socialist future that has four main dimensions.

First, we need to create institutions that are created and staffed by the working classes and serve the interests of the working classes. While scholars and activists may disagree about what “class” means in today’s complicated world, it is clear that the vast majority of humankind do not own or control the means of production, nor do they usually have an instrumental place in political institutions. Therefore, socialism involves, in the Marxist sense, the creation of a workers’ state and since most of us are workers (more than 90 percent of the US population for example), a state must be established that represents and serves the interests of the many, not the few.

Second, our vision of socialism is a society in which the working classes fully participate in the institutions that shape their lives and in the creation of the policies that these institutions develop to serve the needs of all the people.

Third, socialism also implies the creation of public policies that sustain life. Socialism in this sense is about good jobs, incomes that provide for human needs, access to health care for all, adequate housing and transportation, a livable environment, and an end to discrimination and war.

Fourth, socialism is also about the creation of institutions and policies that maximize human potential. A socialist society provides the intellectual tools to stimulate creativity, celebrate diversity, and facilitate writing poetry, singing and dancing, basking in nature’s glow, and living, working, and loving with others in humanly sustainable communities.

Today we remain terribly far from any of these dimensions of socialism. But paradoxically, humankind at this point in time has the technological tools to build a mass movement to create a socialist future. We can communicate instantaneously with peoples all over the world. We can access information about the world that challenges the narrow ruling class media frames about the human condition. We have in the face of brutal war, environmental devastation, enduring racism, super exploitation of workers everywhere mass movements of workers, women, people of color, indigenous people, and youth who are demanding changes. Increasingly public discourse is based upon the realization that our future will bring either extinction or survival. Socialism, although it is not labeled as such, represents human survival.

Where do we who believe that socialism offers the best hope for survival stand at this critical juncture? We are weak. Many of us are older. Some of us have remained mired in old formulas about change. Nevertheless, we can make a contribution to building a socialist future. In fact we have a critical role to play.

We must articulate systematic understandings of the global political economy and where it came from: permanent war, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization. We need to articulate what impacts these processes have had on class, race, gender, and the environment. In other words, we need to convince activists that almost all things wrong with the world are connected and are intimately tied to the development of capitalism as the dominant mode of production.

We need to take our place in political struggles that demand an expanded role for workers in political institutions. We need to insist that the working classes participate in all political decisions.

We need to work on campaigns that could sustain life: jobs, living wages, single payer health care, climate change etc. Our contribution can include making connections between the variety of single issues, insisting that participants in mass movements take cognizance of and work on the other single issues that constitute the mosaic of problems that require transformation. We must remember that in the end the basic policies that sustain life require building socialism. Most struggles, such as those to achieve living wages or a single payer health care system for example, plant the seeds for building a broader socialist society. We can incorporate our socialist vision in our debates about single issues: if we demand a living wage, why not talk about equality for example?

We need to rearticulate our belief that human beings have a vast potential for good, for creativity, and given a just society, we all could move away from classism, racism, and sexism. We could pursue our talents and interests in the context of a sharing and cooperative society.

By working for institutional incorporation (empowerment) and life-sustaining and enhancing policies we will be planting the seeds for a socialist society.

“In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.
For the union makes us strong”

From “Solidarity Forever,” Ralph Chaplin lyrics, 1915.