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Flow of Ideas: articles - Lifelong Learning and the Political Economy of Containment |
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 A Capital Friendly Culture for Further EducationAcademy ChainsAfter the Hillcole GroupAgainst What We Are WorthAmbassadors of Capital in SchoolsAn Educational Mansion House for BusinessApprenticeship and the Use-value Aspect of Labour PowerArtistic OutlookAyers Rocked In His Own UniverseB GenerationBourdieu on CapitalBourdieu on Cultural CapitalBourdieu on Social CapitalBrown PFI MonsterBusiness Sponsorship of SchoolsBusiness Takeover of Further EducationCambridge University OccupationCaught in the Storm of CapitalCo-payment in Hospitals and SchoolsCold Hands and Quarter MoonCommunitarianism for SchoolsCompulsory Consumption and Uni-NannyConforming Schools Conforming KidsCopy/South DossierCreating MonstersCreeping Privatisation in Higher EducationCritical MassCritical Pedagogy and CapitalismCritical Space in EducationDelivering E-LearningDigital Rights ManagementDistillationDorothy L. SayersDouglas Kennedy: best-selling novelistE-learning for Free at the BBCEdison Schools in the UKEducation and Inspections Bill (2006)Education As Culture MachineEducation FireworksEducation for DebtEducation IncorporatedEducation Markets and Missing ProductsEducation RepetitionEducation the HSBC WayEducation White PaperEducation, Globalisation and the Learning SocietyEmployers and School LeaversEvaluating Different Teaching MethodsEverything Louder Than Everything ElseFinance and FearFive Endings of DesiresFoibles, Frolics and PhantasmsFreedomFreewillFrench New Wave CinemaFull Report Ruth Rikowski's Book Launch for Globalisation, Information and LibrariesGender and Spokesperson in Group Work IssuesGlobal TradingGlobalisation and Education RevisitedHabituation of the NationHigher Education and Confused Employer SyndromeHitchcock: classic auteurHuman capital, the knowledge economy and businessIn Retro GlideIn the Dentist's ChairKids in the Land of No DreamsKM CritiqueLazy Brit KidsLearning in the Earthworks of CapitalLearning InvestmentsLearning to the MaxLibrarianship and Human RightsLifelong Learning and the Political Economy of ContainmentLSBU StrategyMarketisation of the Schools System in EnglandMarx and Education RevisitedMarx and the Future of the HumanMarxism and Education RevisitedMarxist Educational Theory UnpluggedMaturity and FreedomMcDonaldization and EducationMichael JacksonMichele RobertsMiss Allison and Novel WritingMoneythought in Higher EducationMrs Thatcher and Holes in the Kitchen FloorMulticulturalism and Faith SchoolsMy Tony BlairNew Ideas in Ruth Rikowski's Book - Part 1New Ideas in Ruth Rikowski's Book - Part 2New Labour Policy for SchoolsNietzsche's SchoolNihilism and Educational ValuesNo Learner Left UnhassledNotes on the Confessions of John DenhamOn Education for Its Own SakeOn Education StudiesOn the Capitalisation of Schools in EnglandOn Transhumanism and EducationOpen AccessOutsourcing Public ServicesPeter Wilby on School PrivatisationPlanet of the CapitorgPlatoPlaygound Risks and Handcuffed KidsPoems by Gregory RikowskiPoems by Victor RikowskiPost-Fordism and SchoolsPost-Fordism in Primary SchoolsPostmodern Dereliction in the Face of Neoliberal Education PolicyPowerPointlessness in Higher EducationPrivate Schools as CharitiesPrivatisation of Schools in EnglandPrivatisation of Student DebtRaces in the Imperial WarReadings for Teaching CourseRecruitment and Labour PowerRevealed Recruitment Criteria through the Use-value Aspect of Labour-powerRobotic EthicsRuth Rikowski Updates (Archives)Ruth Rikowski Updates (Archives)School Fees and the 1944 Education ActSchools: Building for BusinessScience Fiction Films and HorrorSecond Time as FarceSnowballs and Risk in SchoolsSocial Contract Theory and Political ObligationsSocialism is not DeadSpeed of Life - Part OneSpeed of Life - Part TwoStroppy Individuals and Oppositional Cultures in SchoolsSustainability Policy at London South Bank UniversityTen Points on Marx, Class and EducationThe Business of Becoming a Business for AcademiesThe Capitalisation of Schools - Federations and AcademiesThe CBI and the Business Takeover of SchoolsThe Commodification of EducationThe Education White Paper and the Marketisation of SchoolsThe Evolution of Federations of SchoolsThe Last Parents EveningThe New Japanisation of SchoolsThe Profit Virus - The Business Takeover of SchoolsThe Standards Language-game for Schools in EnglandThe Which Blair ProjectThree Types of Apprenticeship - Three Forms of MasteryTony and Caroline BennTony Benn: Letters to GrandchildrenTransportTurney's and PPUUninspiring TowersUniverse of Capital and My SpaceUniversities in a Neoliberal WorldUtopia and EducationWhat Can Nietzsche Teach YaWhen Bullies Roam the SchoolWhen the Bowers BreakWhy Employers Can't Ever Get What They WantWill Hutton and His E-FossWolf on Marx Without SparksWomen in World Wars
| Lifelong Learning and the Political Economy of ContainmentGlenn Rikowski Senior Research Fellow in Lifelong Learning, Faculty of Education, University of Central England, UK 16th December 1999 Preface This paper was written in late-1999, for publication eventually. However, it was never completed due to pressing commitments and the fact that my mother died on 23rd December 1999 – a few days short of Christmas and the millennium. My father was also seriously ill over that same Christmas time. For several weeks I could not function too well, and the desire to finish this work never returned. However, it was not just personal reasons that stopped me from finishing it. The final section, where I was to examine what education and social life would be like if learning (as opposed to capital) was truly ‘at the centre’ of social life and existence, seemed to be impossible to write. It appeared to demand a certain type of Utopian thinking that I was not suited or inclined to undertake. The third section consists of a few fragmentary notes; but this was not because I found insurmountable in completing it, but rather time constrainst came to the fore. There is no conclusion. I had been tracking events in Seattle, with the World Trade Organisation meeting there is late-November and early-December 1999, and its aftermath in a lot of detail. Any time or stomach I had for research and intellectual work was largely taken up with that. Of course, this material eventually became The Battle in Seattle: Its Significance for Education (Rikowski, 2001). In the event, this paper was eventually only shown to a very few people, a few of which referenced it in some of their works. Bits of it went on to feature in works that were eventually published (e.g. Rikowski, 2002). But here, for the first time, I am making it more available, and I hope readers find it useful. References Rikowski, G. (2001) The Battle in Seattle: Its Significance for Education, London: Tufnell Press. Rikowski, G. (2002) Globalisation and Education, a paper prepared for the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs, Inquiry into the Global Economy, 22nd January. Online at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001941.html © Glenn Rikowski London, 16th May 2006 INTRODUCTION The dominant outlook within British lifelong learning policy, discourse and perspectives is that of economic utility based on a perceived need to respond to the challenge of enhancing national economic competitiveness within the context of globalisation (Coffield, 1999). In this article it is suggested that this outlook on lifelong learning is a particular national response to, and simultaneously an expression of, the containment of labour within its value-form. The limits of this approach to lifelong learning are explored, and some of the emerging concerns and the policy drives powering lifelong learning are examined. The first section outlines the value-form of labour. This mode of labour is the form adequate to and necessary for capital accumulation and its expansion. It ultimately frames the limits to lifelong learning (and any education and training) policy. The second section locates British lifelong learning as a particular expression of the centrality of the value-form of labour in contemporary capitalism. It shows how British lifelong learning policy has developed within the contexts of globalisation and national competitiveness. This is undertaken through a commentary on Government publications on lifelong learning and post-compulsory education and training: the last Conservative administration’s consultative document (DfEE, 1995) and policy framework document (DfEE, 1996), the Kennedy Report on widening participation in further education (Kennedy, 1997), the Fryer Report on lifelong learning (Fryer, 1997), The Learning Age Green Paper (DfEE, 1998) and the recent White Paper Learning to Succeed (1999). The third section critiques British lifelong learning policy. It is argued that it is essentially seeking to impose a form of alienation in which self and learning are subsumed under human capital formation. The key challenge for this approach to lifelong learning is to motivate potential and actual learners into learning for British capital: thus, issues of engagement and commitment of learners are central. This strategy self-destructs upon the explosive commodity labour-power and the contradictory personhoods of labourers their antagonistic relation to capital. This section of the article goes on to pose a series of other dilemmas for British lifelong learning policy-makers and strategists. The main challenge is to contain labour-power development within its capitalist value-form and still sell this as a vision for lifelong learning to millions of actual and potential learners. The fourth section is speculative. It takes the notion of learning ‘being at the centre’ of life (Ranson, 1996) seriously. It seems that this would open up possibilities for challenges to the value-form of labour. It would also challenge the political economy of containment of lifelong learning that both feeds off and nurtures this limiting social form. Lifelong learning (and learners) would then be agents engaged within a long-term struggle to break the bonds of the confining forms of labour, education and Life currently available (Rikowski, 1999a). This approach to lifelong learning places learning at the centre (Ranson, 1996) of research, policy and of the social formation - as rival to capital and its value-form of labour [1]. 1. LABOUR-POWER AND THE VALUE-FORM OF LABOUR IN CAPITALISM Labour-power is the capacity to labour. In capitalist society, it exists as labour potential within the labour market; or, more accurately, the ‘market in labour-power’ (McNally, 1993). Within the labour process, labour is the human force which is constituted by the ‘activity of labour-power’; that is, labour is labour-power ‘in action’ (Marx, 1866, p.1016). Thus, in the labour process, the crucial activity is the transformation of labour-power as human force and capabilities into labour. For Marx, labour-power is: “... the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description” (1867, p.164). The life-force of individuals as labour-power is ‘expressed through, and as, those “mental and physical capabilities” activated by the labourer when producing use-values’ (Rikowski, 1999b, p.63). Labour-power is the most explosive commodity on the world market today. This is because the capitalist labour process is also a valorisation process. Commodities produced within the capitalist labour process are simultaneously use-values and value. Thus, labour-power - as the conglomeration of those mental and physical abilities utilised in use-value production - is the foundation of value, and hence capital and capitalism as the social formation dominated by capital as social force (Postone, 1996; Rikowski, 1999b). Within capitalism, labour-power is a peculiar ‘living commodity’ (Marx, 1867) which has the capacity - when utilised within the labour process - to produce more value than it takes to reproduce and maintain itself as labour-power, that is: surplus-value. Surplus-value is value in excess of the value of labour-power as represented in the worker’s wage. It is value that is appropriated by representatives of capital, and is therefore unpaid labour and is based on unrequited labour-time. Surplus-value is the ‘lifeblood of capital’ (Rikowski, 1999b, p.61). As Marx demonstrates, it is the source of profit, rent and state revenues (value transformed into state revenue through taxation), and is necessary for the expansion of production on the basis of capital as presupposition of future production cycles. Examined from the opposite direction, the value-form of labour is labour pressed into the service of capital. It is labour-power - activated by acts of individual and collective will - which is transformed into labour in the capitalist labour process with an intensity and duration such that surplus-value is produced. This form of labour is both presupposition of the existence of capital and capitalist society and simultaneously limit to the development of capitalism (Marx, 1865). Capital(ism) is dependent upon labour-power for its existence. As a social force within the ‘human’ (Rikowski, 1999b) labour-power is therefore the only commodity capable of breaking through or undermining capitalist productive forms and social relations. At present, capital is continually reborn through the emergence of surplus-value from the capitalist labour process. Furthermore, it centres the form in which labour is expended: the value-form of labour. However, as labour-power is incorporated as a unified force within the ‘human’ and as an aspect of human consciousness itself - it is possible for us to develop collectively forms of labour-power and hence labour and labour processes which de-centre, subvert and oppose capital’s dominance within production. Consideration of such possibilities exposes labour-power as the explosive commodity: the only commodity capable of blasting through the social limits set by capital’s value-form of labour. The following section explores the processes of globalisation and competitiveness and moves towards an explanation of why labour-power is of particular significance for capital accumulation in the embers of the twentieth-century. It indicates how these processes are related to a strengthening of the social drive to enhance the quality of labour-powers within national capitals, exploring the British case in some detail. 2. POLICY CONTEXT: GLOBALISATION AND COMPETITIVENESS [2] The value-form of labour is premised upon the production of value but is ultimately socially grounded by the production of surplus-value. In the first volume of Capital, Marx explored different forms of surplus-value production, and it is to these we now turn. The first form of surplus-value production identified by Marx was absolute surplus-value (ASV). ASV production was a strategy particularly prominent in the early phases of capitalist development. In ASV production, labourers were made to work longer hours with the aim of ensuring that value over-and-above that represented in their wages, surplus-value, was attained. This was a relatively inefficient mode of surplus-value production. Its limits were set by the needs of workers to rest, sleep, eat and reproduce - to survive - in order that production could be continued. ASV production highlighted the dependence of capital on living labour-power. The second form of surplus-value production, relative surplus-value (RSV), was a mode of surplus-value production which attempted to limit the dependency of capital on labour and labour-power. As Marx noted (1867), in mature capitalism - what he called Modern Industry - capitalists and their functionaries brought in machinery on an increasing scale. The application of machinery within the capitalist labour process had the effect of reducing the labour-time labourers required to produce value equal to their wage. This meant that a greater proportion of the working day/week or whatever would then be dedicated to the production of surplus-value on a relative scale (with overall labour-time remaining constant). In contemporary capitalism, both forms of surplus-value production are used differentially as strategies for raising surplus-value production, their use varying as between nation states, regions and industries. As a number of commentators, labour market analysts and researchers have indicated, within the British context ASV is still a mainstream strategy - with working hours for full-time workers being amongst the longest in the European Union (Elliott and Atkinson, 1998). Peterson (1994, pp.25-26) notes that workers in the United States have also experienced an increase in work time, amounting to an extra month per year between 1969 and 1989. However, as Rikowski argues, Marx did not develop all aspects of RSV production in his Capital. In particular, Marx did not consider the possibility that: “A further form of relative surplus-value production is given by the possibility that labour-power itself can be worked upon - through education and training. ... [For] ... as capital comes to take over the whole of society, then both old institutions are re-cast in its image and new ones established to enhance value-production. Forms of the social reproduction of labour-power have been established in almost all contemporary nations. These social forms are characterised by their relation to the enhancement of the quality of labour-power in a number of respects, so that the transformation of labour-power into labour is maximised, and hence relative surplus-value is increased as workers work with greater commitment and effectiveness” (Rikowski, 1999b, p.74). The state form of capital (the state as capital) historically comes to takes on the role as significant social producer of labour-power through compulsory schooling and state-run or state-subsidised training and post-compulsory education. This occurs as its intensification as a capitalist state develops and as inter-state competitiveness over labour-power quality proceeds on an expanded scale. Everything else being equal, enhancing the quality of labour-power is a significant strategy for cutting labour-time devoted to producing value as represented by the wage (the value of labour-power) and hence raising the level of RSV. This is more so when labour-power attributes include not only ‘mental capabilities’ such as skills, knowledge and ability to competently manipulate signs and symbols but also include attitudes, personality traits and partial subsumption of the will of the labourer under capital (Rikowski, 1990) [3]. Globalisation hastens both the development of this form of RSV and the hardening of the social production of labour-power in capitalism. This historical process - which has gathered pace in the last twenty years in Britain and many other countries - entails education and training organisations, institutions and systems being driven to take on social forms where labour-power production becomes paramount. As individual capitals benefit from the general rise of science and its practical applications, so there is increasing pressure upon the capitalist state to develop labour-power quality. Globalisation - as real process and as ideology - hurries this process along. Globalisation Globalisation theory has assumed enormous significant in academic debates in recent years. It has functioned as a leading concept in analyses of the welfare state, trade policy, international relations, the mass media and many other areas of contemporary social life. Only recently has globalisation become a key organising concept in educational theory in the UK - with the publication of Andy Green’s Education, Globalisation and the Nation State in 1997 consolidating the concept as an important staging post within educational discourse. Globalisation is a contested concept whilst becoming ‘one of the orthodoxies of the 1990s’ (Cole, 1998, p.315). Werner Bonefeld (1999) provides a characterisation that will function as working summary of globalisation for the purposes of this paper. Bonefeld pinpoints its defining elements as: 1) The increasing importance and significance of the financial structure and the global creation of credit, leading to the dominance of finance over production. 2) The growing importance of the ‘knowledge structure’: knowledge is said to have become a significant factor of production. 3) The increase in the rapidity of redundancy of technologies and the increase in the transnationalisation of technology: an emphasis on knowledge-base industries with increasing reliance on technological innovation. 4) The rise of global oligopolies in the form of multinational corporations: corporations appear to have no choice but to ‘go global’, and multinational corporations and transnational banks have become the significant power centres beyond national states and economies. 5) The globalisation of production, knowledge and finance is viewed to have led to a decline in the regulative power of national states and the rise of global authority structures - such as the United Nations, the G7 (now G8) group of industrial powers and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. 6) The ‘new freedom’ of capital from national regulative control and democratic accountability is held to have lead to increased ecological destruction, social fragmentation and poverty - as well as having effects for personal identity as global media corporations homogenise, customise and niche market their products. As Mike Cole (1998) has noted, the depth, duration, time of origin and significance of the factors signifying globalisation have all been questioned and contested. For example, Burnham (1997) has demonstrated how globalisation theory has encouraged three fallacies concerning the state: the notion of the ‘post-Fordist state’; the withering away of the nation state; and the internationalisation of the state (pp.151-153). Hanson II (1995) has provided data that suggests limitations on transnational corporations moving production facilities into relatively poor countries with weak labour unions and low wages. Without getting embroiled within these complex debates here, a number of propositions can be stated. First, controversy around the existence, strength and duration of globalisation needs to be set within the context of the historical expansion of capital. Capital as social force, as a specific form of labour (the value-form) and as a particular form of social relations is inherently expansionary. In the process of expansion it replaces ‘all residual pre(or non)-capitalist production relations with capitalist ones in every part of the globe’ (Robinson, 1996). The capital relation is, ‘by its very form, a global relation’ (Bonefeld, 1999, p.81) as its expansion requires the world market. Secondly, despite an expanding capitalist social universe, capital can never escape its dependence upon labour or labour-power as the commodity enabling its expansion (Bonefeld, 1999). The ‘globalisation orthodoxy’ (Bonefeld, 1999 - summarised as his six elements outlined above) fails to address this point. Thirdly, failure to address the fragility of gloabal(ising) capital’s dependence on labour and labour-power establishes globalisation as an orthodoxy which constitutes ‘a major capitalist offensive’ (ibid.) as it seems inevitable, an unstoppable juggernaut - against which organised labour and nation states are perceived as being increasingly powerless and irrelevant (Cole, 1998; Bonefeld, 1999). Fourthly, according to Amoore et al (1997) this yields up a ‘politics of globalisation’ which has four characteristics when run through the mill of its dominant neoliberal form (p.181): I. to protect the interests of capital and expand the process of capital accumulation II. the tendency towards homogenisation of state policies and state forms in the direction of protecting capital and expanding the process of capital accumulation, via the orthodoxy of market ideology (wherein even the state becomes subject to marketisation while simultaneously being deployed instrumentally on behalf of capital) III. the addition and expansion of a layer of transnationalised institutional authority above the states (which has the aim and purpose of penetrating states and re-articulating them to the purposes of global capital accumulation), and IV. the exclusion of dissident forces from the arena of state policy making (in order to insulate the new neoliberal state forms against the societies over which they preside and in order to facilitate the socialisation of risk on behalf of the interests of capital). Without de-mystification of these neoliberal underpinnings, globalisation functions as an ideology which presents its real and purported effects as natural and beyond human agency (Cole, 1998, p.321). Cole indicates that as a thesis about the contemporary economic and political world order, ‘globalisation’ denotes that: “... in the face of global competition, capitals are increasingly constrained to compete on the world market. Its argument is that these capitals can only do this in so far as they become multinational corporations and operate on a world scale, outside the confines of nation states. This diminishes the role of the nation state ... [and] ... in its extreme form, globalisation predicts the end of national economies ... The fact that capitalist enterprises are increasingly operating on a global scale creates an international unity of capital. Accompanying the international unity of capital is the weakening and fragmentation of organised labour and of the working class as a whole … [And] ... within what remains of individual nation states, in the geographical location they inhabit, it is incumbent on workers, given this globalised market, to be flexible in their approach to what they do and for how long they do it, to accept lower wages and to concur with the restructuring and diminution of welfare states” (p.316 - my emphasis) Thus, as social reality feeding off this thesis and its ideological underpinnings globalisation is enjoined in the recomposition of states within a project of making them capital-friendly for footloose international capital and to restructure the labour/capital relation in favour of capital (Burnham, 1997). On this prognostication, globalisation is viewed as the ‘realisation of capital’s impossible dream: to accumulate uncontested’ (Bonefeld, 1999, p.77). The dream turns sour on the impossibility of capital’s quest to escape bothersome labour. From this outline, it is now possible to link globalisation with a perceived ‘imperative’ for nation states to modernise their education and training systems. There are three basic considerations here. First, the combined effects of globalisation appear to increase the ‘speed of life’ (Luke, 1998) - as the pace of change is relayed through the mass media, and also as it is experienced by workers as rapid changes in labour markets and labour processes brought on by deepening colonisation of production by technologies. Secondly, computerisation and de-regulation of financial markets means that capital in its money-form can hurtle around the globe at incredible (and increasing) speeds with ever fewer restrictions. Thirdly, globalisation also means an increasingly restless movement of capital in the form of means of production across national boundaries, with industrial re-location and the movement of plant to countries offering optimum conditions (or threats to re-locate if government industrial policy is viewed as unfriendly). In these conditions, it is ‘human capital’ (read labour-power) which remains relatively spatially stable. Most workers of specific nation states still stay within national boundaries for most of their working lives. It is capital that is fickle and restless. Capital attempts to escape its dependence on labour, and to lessen dependence on the ‘living commodity’: labour-power, and to search for labour-power of higher quality in terms of its potential for surplus-value production (taking wage levels and other factors into account: Hanson II, 1995). Thus, there is a dynamic within contemporary capitalist states to • First, in order to make national capitals more productive through employing better quality labour-power than other national competitors (and the literature on post-compulsory education and training repeats this message ad nauseum) • Secondly, and this is particularly important for Britain, it increases the chances of capturing and holding onto foreign capital investment. The British economic strategy of attracting overseas firms to British soil is a prime example of this • Thirdly, the quality of labour-power is important in terms of holding onto (in terms of their headquarters and tax registration) long-established national firms, or firms that are considering becoming multi- or transnational • Finally, the quality of labour-power is crucial for the continual change, innovation and anarchy of the contemporary industrial and commercial scene. References to the need for increased ‘flexibility’ and ‘adaptability’ of workers in the new climate attest to this - and it is this point that highlights the significance of lifelong learning - to which we shall return. Richard Layard (1995) has pointed to the roots of the dynamic that generates attempts by nation states to raise the quality of national labour-power to new heights: “With capital today moving freely between countries, the prosperity of a people depends on what does not move: the people themselves. Productivity grows faster in those countries where people have high skills relative to their level of income” (My emphasis). Whilst Layard reduces the notion of labour-power to an impoverished and narrow concept of ‘skills’ (a concept which still misleads the post-compulsory education and training research community in the UK), he nevertheless glimpses the central dynamic at work. As Mike Cole (1998) shows, Tony Blair also expresses the drive to raise labour-power quality within the context of globalisation: “Globalisation is changing the nature of the nation state as power becomes more diffuse and borders more porous. Technological change is reducing the capacity of government to control a domestic economy free from external influence. The role of government in this world is to represent a national interest, to create a competitive base of physical infrastructure and human skills” (Tony Blair, 1995: in Cole, 1998, p.315, my emphasis). Thus: Blair follows through the ‘logic’ of linking the need for enhanced labour-power quality to the demands of globalisation. The irony is that as globalisation fails to provide a social universe where capital floats free of labour and its reliance on labour-power, the strategy appears to be to reshape labour-power itself. This strategy involves the attempt to contain labour-power eternally within the value-form of labour on the basis of a hardening of the form of the social production of labour-power through the restructuring of education and training systems. Blair takes the view that as the general world of commodities and capital in its money form is beyond the control of nation states then the only sound strategy is to attempt to control labour-power through the modernisation of education and training (see Blair, 1998: in Cole, 1998, p.321). As Frank Coffield has indicated, this view has become the ‘prevailing orthodoxy’ within the UK, which incorporates the following elements (adapted from Coffield, 1999, p.480): A nation’s competitiveness in global markets ultimately depends on the skills of all its people. The new economic forces unleashed by globalisation and technology are as uncontrollable as natural disasters and so governments have no choice but to introduce policies to ‘upskill’ the workforce. Education must be modernised and become more responsive to the needs of employers. The responsibility is passed to individuals to renew their skills regularly to ensure their employability. The model for educational institutions to follow is that of British business. Although Coffield provides many criticisms of this ‘prevailing consensus’ he does not explain it by showing how it relates to a real social drive powered by capital as social force: to raise the quality of human labour-power (explored later in this section). The ‘prevailing consensus’ can be just dismissed as an ideology, but this superficial response evades exploration of the dynamics making for the whirligig policy responses of Governments and their civil services seeking to make sense of the absurd world of capitalist education and training. Competitiveness New Labour’s fascination with education and training as motors for raising labour-power quality in order to give the UK a competitive edge is nothing new. John Major’s Conservative administration showed the way with three reports on Competitiveness (in 1994, 1995 and 1996). In all three of them there was a central concern with raising the quality of human capital (living labour-power in the form of capital, humans capitalised). The underlying rationale for this was that as other forms of capital were held to be uncontrollable - apart from some manipulation of money through interest rates - capital in its human form (human capital) was more readily subject to state formation and development through supply-side education and training measures. Judicious reforms could yield higher quality labour-powers up to domestic capital, thus giving UKplc (individual firms and the whole national capital) an edge in the ‘new’ global(ising) international economic arena. As Perraton (1998) has noted: “Human capital policies are particularly attractive to contemporary governments. In an era when demand-led policies and traditional supply-side interventions appear to lack potency, improving human capital seems to be a legitimate means by which governments can make a significant difference to their population’s standards of living” (p.121). Green (1998) notes that there is now widespread national and international consensus that education and training policies are significant means for raising levels of economic growth, and that employers’ groups ‘see them as supporting competitiveness’ (p.134). The first Competitiveness report (DTI, 1995) can be viewed as the foundation of the last Conservative administration’s approach to reconfiguring education and training as a national competitiveness response to perceived forces of globalisation within the international economy. This point was made by Prime Minister John Major in his ‘Introduction’ to the first Competitiveness report. For Major, UK companies faced the ‘most competitive environment’ they had ever experienced (DTI, 1995, p.3). In the new context of globalisation: “Change is relentless and swift. The global financial market never sleeps. Technology has shrunk the world (Ibid.). In the hyper-competitive context of globalisation, argues Major, the government’s ‘first duty’ was to ‘win the battle against inflation’ and the second priority was ‘the highest standards of education and training’ for young people (Ibid.). In the chapter on ‘Education and Training’ (DTI, 1995, ch.4) the links between globalisation, competitiveness and enhanced human capital development through restructured education and training systems form the backbone of the argument for the need to drive up education and training standards. For: “Hard working people with high skills, and the knowledge and understanding to use them to the full, are the lifeblood of a modern, internationally competitive economy” (p.30). The drive to increase the quality of human capital is infinite as ‘Across the globe other countries are setting ever higher standards for the educational and training attainment of their workforces’ and ‘benefiting from the boost to competitiveness that this provides’ (Ibid.). Furthermore, the UK’s quality of human capital development as expressed by education and training standards are viewed as relative to those of our competitors (Ibid.). Thus, there is tacit acknowledgement that the social drive (like all drives flowing from capital as social force: Rikowski, 1998 and 1999) to enhance the quality of human capital (labour-power) expresses itself as both infinite and relative. Lifelong learning gets barely a single page in the first Competitiveness report - though it is taken up once more in the next two such reports (DTI, 1995, 1996). Significantly, it is followed through in Labour's first Competitiveness report (DTI, 1998) and the UK's stance at the Manchester Conference on The Learning Age: Towards a Europe of Knowledge (UKLL, 1999). This last report framed the issue of competitiveness within a European strategy for building a 'Europe of Knowledge' based on recently fashionable theories of the Knowledge Economy and the Knowledge Society. In her opening address, Baroness Blackstone made this clear when she linked lifelong learning closely to employment for the perceived emergence of a European knowledge economy (UKLL, 1999, Opening Address). However, the first Competitiveness report’s (DTI, 1995) framework on globalisation and competitiveness set the scene for the development of UK lifelong learning policy, leading into the 1995 Consultative Document on ‘lifetime’ learning (DfEE, 1995) and the subsequent policy framework (DfEE, 1996) document - to which we now turn. Lifelong Learning “... lifelong learning is intended and planned learning, which goes on more or less continuously over the lifespan” (Smith and Spurling, 1999, p.9). In this section we demonstrate how concerns surrounding globalisation, competitiveness and enhancement of human capital through education and training became the key drivers for UK lifelong learning policy. We begin with the first two substantial government policy documents on lifelong learning (DfEE, 1995, 1996) and follow the sequence through to the recent White Paper Learning to Succeed (DfEE, 1999). br> However, prior to that, it is necessary to outline the significance of lifelong learning for the argument developed thus far. To recap and to expand: within capitalism there is a social drive (of developing intensity) for raising the quality of human capital. It is experienced as a general historical imperative within capitalist society. Human capital is the social form that labour-power (a transhistorical phenomenon) assumes in capitalism (Rikowski, 1999b). Thus, the concept of human capital points towards processes (which include education and training) of labour-power becoming capital. As labour-power is a unified force within the ‘human’ then humanity itself (individually and collectively) is capitalised (Ibid.). This portrays the ‘human’ as a living capital (Marx in Neary, 1999, p.87). Furthermore, in the current era of deepening techno-globalisation - when capitalist social relations and productive forms and capital as social force conditioning all spheres of social development - the general historical drive to enhance labour-power is given an additional boost and urgency. Education and training play key roles in the social production of labour-power in capitalism; they are institutional forms for the development of labour-power (though they are much else too) (Rikowski, 1990, 1999b). Hence, though a general role for education and training in this line of development can be discerned the question of the significance of lifelong learning remains. Within contemporary capitalism, lifelong learning presents itself as a solution to a specific set of problems thrown up by capitalist development. The current global(ising) conditions of ‘fast capitalism’ (Agger, 1989, 1990) cause havoc within national and international labour markets. Rapid shifts in products, design specifications, the use of existing and new technologies and the development of new branches of science call forth constant recomposition and development of labour-powers. Contemporary global capitalism, allied with the de-composition of older forms of labour and labour-power and attacks on workers’ rights and organisations from governments following neoliberal economic liturgies, simultaneously creates and calls forth workers for flexible labour markets (McLaren and Farahmandpur, 1999). Within a context of rapidly changing labour markets and labour processes workers need to change jobs, careers and locations many times throughout their working lives. For this, they will require constant re-skilling and knowledge and information enhancement and updating - and it is this drive, a ceaseless learning unto death (Rikowski, 1999a), that underpins the significance of lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is the socio-educational form that expresses the dynamic intensity of processes of labour-power enhancement in global(ising) fast capitalism. It is an aspect of the increasing ‘speed of life’ (Luke, 1998; Neary and Rikowski, 2000) expressed as hyper-learning speed (powered by new pedagogies developed through information and computer technology). Lifelong learning is also a harbinger of the ‘universal individuals’ characterised by Marx in the Grundrisse (1858). These are persons which simultaneously incorporate the limits of individuality based on capital and possibilities for transcendence of those limits as members of collectivities seeking the dissolution of social forms and relations which inhibit the development of their own individualities (see Rikowski, 1999a, pp.70-72). Lifelong learning is thus an aspect of labour-power development expressed as an infinite drive of capital (as change within labour markets and labour processes is constant and increasingly rapid). Its development has the potential for uncovering possibilities for crashing through the containment of labour within its value-form in capitalism as collectivities of lifelong learners begin to understand and act on the tragedy of their own confinement. These issues receive more attention in sections 3 and 4. For now, let us turn towards the unfolding of the drive to enhance labour-power through lifelong learning as expressed in key UK government reports Lifetime Learning: A Consultation Document (1995) and A Policy Framework (1996) The Conservative Government’s Consultation Document on lifetime learning (DfEE, 1995) can be viewed as a continuation and deepening of the policy perspectives advanced in the first Competitiveness report (DTI, 1994). The key point advanced by the Secretaries of State for Education and Employment, Scotland and Wales (Gillian Shephard, Michael Forsyth and William Hague respectively) was that: “Creating a culture of lifetime learning is crucial to sustaining and maintaining our international competitiveness.” (DfEE, 1995, p.3). The three ministers go on to emphasise the value of lifetime learning for ‘personal competitiveness’ (in the labour market) and also for ‘national culture and the quality of life’ (Ibid.), but it is as a response to globalisation that lifetime learning is particularly valued. The consultation document itself reiterates the links between lifetime learning, globalisation and national competitiveness. The opening paragraphs set the tone for the whole document: “The skill levels of the workforce are vital to our national competitiveness. Rapid technological and organisational change means that, however good initial education and training is, it must be continuously reinforced by further learning throughout life” (p.6 - my emphasis). The stress in the report was very much on individuals taking responsibility for investing in their own skill and knowledge enhancement through life; the Conservative administration were hoping that the costs of labour-power development would be taken up by workers themselves. However, there was acknowledgement that it would be necessary to consult on ‘individual responsibility for vocational lifetime learning’ (Ibid.) as advocated in the second Competitiveness report which came out just before the consultation document (DTI, 1995). Individuals ‘must make themselves marketable in the competition for jobs’ (p.8) - though there was some reference to the effectiveness of individuals in communities and lifetime learning as an aspect of a civilised society, too. The consultation document of 1995 and subsequent consultation process resulted in the Conservative administration’s policy framework for lifetime learning of 1996 (DfEE, 1996). This reiterated the message of the 1995 consultation document and pointed out that capital, products, skill, knowledge and technology were all increasingly mobile as ‘economic borders have largely disappeared’ but skill was less mobile (and by implication more controllable) than any of the other factors listed. The bottom line was that: ‘... we as a country have to ... make sure that we have a workforce to sustain our competitiveness in international markets.’ (p.143). It was acknowledged, however, that ‘Convincing individuals to get involved in learning is critical.’ (p.150). Individuals need to be sure that learning for the enhanced competitiveness of UKplc was also in their own interests too. Learning Works (Kennedy Report, 1997) Helena Kennedy’s report to the English Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), Learning Works: widening participation in further education (Kennedy, 1997), was the next significant official document to address the issue of lifelong learning policy. The Widening Participation Committee was set up in December 1994 by the FEFC to explore how further education (FE) colleges - the sector between schools and universities - could widen the participation of under-represented groups in post-compulsory education and training. Learning Works appeared in June 1997, a month after the Labour Party’s general election victory. Learning Works exhibits an altogether different outlook on lifelong learning. It analyses the task of widening participation in FE colleges within a broader strategy of creating a learning society. Whilst acknowledging that both trade unions and employers were looking for ‘a quantum leap’ in Britain’s education and training performance (p.2), the report was also critical of aspects of the marketisation, businessification and money-led nature of FE following the incorporation of colleges in 1993 (where they obtained freedom from local authority control, and were funded on a complex formula by a the newly-created FEFC). Learning Works emphasised partnership (especially between employers and trade unions) and the key role that central government had in ‘presenting the powerful vision of a learning nation’ (p.7). Most importantly, for realisation of a learning nation, the report held that ‘Lifelong learning does not just happen in colleges’ (Ibid.). The Kennedy Report envisaged learning going on throughout society in the new learning nation: in schools, but also in libraries, betting shops, supermarkets, pubs and other ‘new public’ spaces (p.8). It also recognised that ‘lifelong inclusive learning’ would remain a dream without adequate financial backup to turn it into reality, and argued for a redistribution of resources towards FE is ‘really to be the engine of economic and social success’ (p.10). In the Kennedy Report, learning for ‘life’ and learning for work were viewed as inseparable (p.16). All learning was to be valued. This perspective redefines lifelong learning, and attempts to shift it beyond a univocal or primary concern with capital accumulation. This was a vision of lifelong learning where: “Learning may be undertaken: to maintain or enhance employment prospects; to support children in their reading; to care for an elderly relative; to plan for retirement; to budget on a reduced income. Learning may also be undertaken for fun, for personal development or to achieve an appreciation of broader issues” (p.29). The last point stops short of advocating learning aimed at changing the nature of society itself, but raise awkward questions for a view of learning narrowly tied to the value-form of labour in capitalism. Learning for the Twenty-first Century (Fryer Report, 1997) The Fryer Report (chaired by Professor Bob Fryer) was the product of a National Advisory Group on Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning (NAGCELL) set up by the new Labour Government in June 1997 - only a month after its general election victory. The NAGCELL was charged with advising on the preparation of a White Paper on Lifelong Learning - as precursor to legislation. Thus, the new Labour Government quickly and clearly established its commitment to lifelong learning as significant policy priority. The NAGCELL reported in November 1997 (as Fryer, 1997). The report carried on in the spirit of the Kennedy Report - taking an expansive view of lifelong learning. The initial justification for lifelong learning was very broad: “It is essential to help the country and all of its people meet the challenges they now face, as they move towards the twenty-first century (Fryer, 1997, p.3). In Part Two of the report, The Necessity of Lifelong Learning, Fryer and his colleagues moved onto familiar ground in arguing that: “Global forces are exerting and growing in influence over the everyday life of the country, its businesses and its people. Increased global competition and liberalisation of markets cause whole industries to shrink or expand, shifting the demand for skills and the availability of job opportunities for particular communities and whole nations. (p.11) [Thus the] ... aim should be to make people less vulnerable, at the same time as enhancing the capacities and competitiveness of businesses and other organisations” (p.12). The rest of the Fryer Report mainly focuses on: enhancing the capacities of learners; breaking down barriers to learning; analysing the potential for learning within a range of contexts (with special reference to community learning); and, pinpointing factors making for divisions and inequalities in learning opportunities and discussing possible solutions. In section 5, on Core Principles, the Fryer Report took a similar view to Kennedy in advocating that: ‘Lifelong learning should be for all aspects of life and meet a variety of needs and perspectives’ (p.29) - indicating that it should not just be about labour-power development. What is most significant is that Fryer's second report (Fryer, 1999), where citizenship and cultures of learning were to the fore, got little coverage in either the press or academic literature. Kennedy and Fryer went a long way towards moving lifelong learning away from a narrow conception of learning as an aspect of labour-power development within a taken-for-granted value-form of labour. Both reports risked broadening the debate around the purposes of lifelong learning, whilst stopping short of advocating learning as a element within societal transformation beyond the social universe of capital. The Learning Age (Government Green Paper, 1998) The Fryer Report was supposed to have been prequel to a White Paper. Instead, after much delay, The Learning Age (DfEE, 1998) emerged as a Green Paper. In many ways it can be viewed as an effort in making sense of the wide-ranging perspectives and concerns of the Kennedy and the Fryer reports. It can also be viewed as a narrowing down of the debate around lifelong learning in Britain back onto the terrain of labour-power enhancement within the contexts of globalisation and competitiveness. The opening statement in the Foreword from David Blunkett (Minister for Education and Employment) made this clear: “Learning is the key to prosperity - for each of us as individuals, as well as for the nation as a whole. Investment in human capital will be the foundation of success in the knowledge-based global economy of the twenty-first century (p.7).” Blunkett viewed the main aim of the consultation following The Learning Age as being about ‘how learning throughout life will build human capital’ (Ibid.), for ‘in order to achieve stable and sustainable growth, we will need a well-educated, well-equipped and adaptable labour force’ (Ibid.). Whilst Blunkett also mentioned the importance of learning for making a civilised society, developing spirituality and promoting active citizenship - it was clear that enhancing labour-power was lifelong learning’s prime mission for Britain. The body of The Learning Age reiterated this message. The opening quotation from Prime Minister Tony Blair informed the reader that ‘Education is the best economic policy we have.’ (p.9), whilst the opening sentence of the report noted that: ‘We are in a new age - the age of global competition.’ and in the same paragraph went on to announce that: “We have no choice but to prepare for this new age in which the key to success will be the continuous education and development of the human mind and imagination (Ibid.). It was argued that: ‘The most productive investment will be linked to the best educated and best trained workforces.’ (p.10). Nevertheless, it was also argued that ‘Our vision of the Learning Age is about more than employment.’ (Ibid.) - and went o to emphasise the importance of learning for individuals and communities (as well as for businesses and the nation) thus taking up some of the themes from Kennedy and Fryer. But the emphasis on labour-power enhancement within a context of hyper-competitiveness nurtured by globalisation was the leitmotif in The Learning Age. In Chapter 1 on ‘The individual learning revolution’ it was clear that lifelong learning was about labour-power development set within and subordinated to really exiting capitalism. Lifelong learning - especially collective forms - for societal transformation was off-limits. For lifelong learners, some lessons and some forms of learning were off the agenda. Learning to Succeed (Government White Paper, 1999) When a White Paper on ‘lifelong learning’ - Learning to Succeed - finally emerged in June 1999 (DfEE, 1999), the mystifying aspect of it was that it was not essentially about lifelong learning. It was essentially offering a ‘framework for post-16 learning’ (i.e. learning beyond compulsory schooling - though there was not much on higher education in the White Paper). Whilst David Blunkett attempted to demonstrate how Learning to Succeed was natural successor to The Learning Age Green Paper in his Foreword, the notion of lifelong learning appears to have been downgraded within the White Paper. For Blunkett, there was a new emphasis on removing ‘contradictions, conflict and incoherence’ within post-16 education and training (p.4) - a less ambitious (but equally futile) project than creating a learning society of lifelong learners within the social universe of capital (with all its contradictions, absurdities and conflicts). However, the task is not to demonstrate the degeneration of the notion of lifelong learning in the movement from Kennedy/Fryer to the White Paper, but to illustrate the triumph of lifelong learning as labour-power development within Learning to Succeed. The opening sentence indicates the ordering of priorities: “Our vision is to build a new culture of learning which will underpin national competitiveness and personal prosperity, encourage creativity and innovation and help build a cohesive society” (p.6). For: “In the information and knowledge based economy, investment in human capital - in the intellect and creativity of people - is replacing past patterns of investment in plant, machinery and physical labour” (p.12). These developments, it was argued in the White Paper, necessitated access to learning throughout working life to adapt to changing jobs or to train for new ones (Ibid.). This challenge grounded the need for lifelong learning. For in these competitive times, employers ‘rightly put a premium on adaptability and the capacity to learn new skills’ (p.13). The rest of the White Paper was basically about the Labour Government’s plans, strategies and policies for delivering this form of lifelong learning - a form of lifelong learning securely set within the value-form of labour. After the aberrant Kennedy and Fryer reports, the same old show was back on track. 3. LIFELONG LEARNING AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CONTAINMENT [To link lifelong learning to lifelong alienation. To indicate the riskyness of this approach – i.e. the exposure of capital within our everyday lives and our planed-for futures. To indicate the futility of the political economy of containment, as the form of agency prevalent within capitalist society forces us to seek solutions to our contradictory existences within capitalism. Yet the real solution is to end the social domination of capital within our lives. Here we have labour, unplugged, breaking out of its containment by its value-form.] 4. LIFELONG LEARNING AT THE CENTRE [This section to speculate on what might happen if learning is really at the centre of life – as opposed to capital being at the centre of social existence] CONCLUSION Notes 1. Placing learning rather than capital at the centre of the social formation implies movement towards a new form of society based on learning rather than capital and its value-for of labour. Thus, a strong version of lifelong learning (and the learning society) opens up the future to forms of learning in which the reconstitution of society becomes the collective active learning process. These programmatic statements will be sketched out in section 4 and elaborated in future work. 2. This section draws substantially upon the work of Mike Cole, in particular his article on Globalisation, Modernisation and Competitiveness: a critique of the New Labour project in education (Cole, 1998). 3. 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Postmodernism in Educational Theory: Education and the Politics of Human Resistance. London: the Tufnell Press. Robinson, W. (1996) Globalisation: nine theses on our epoch, Race & Class, 38(2), pp.13-31. Smith, J. & Spurling, A. (1999) Lifelong Learning: Riding the Tiger. London: Cassell. UKLL (1999) The Learning Age: Towards a Europe of Knowledge. Proceedings of the 1998 UK Presidency of the European Union Lifelong Learning Conference, Manchester, 17-19th May 1998, at the UK Lifelong Learning web site: http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/conference/ 16th December 1999 Print Friendly - Print Friendly with links |
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