De Angelis & Harvie, 'Cognitive Capitalism' and the Rat Race [HM 2009]

832019 De Angelis amp Harvie Cognitive Capitalism and the Rat Race [HM 2009]

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullde-angelis-harvie-cognitive-capitalism-and-the-rat-race-hm 128



4 M De Angelis D Harvie Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 3ndash30

Tomas Gradgrind sir ndash peremptorily Tomas ndash Tomas Gradgrind With a ruleand a pair of scales and the multiplication table always in his pocket sir ready to

weigh and measure any parcel of human nature and tell you exactly what itcomes to It is a mere question of figures a case of simple arithmetic

Charles Dickens Hard imes 1

My dream is that the time will come when every drill press will be speeded justso and every planer every lathe the world over will be harmonized just likemusical pitches are the same all over the world so that we can standardize andsay that for drilling a 1-inch hole the world over will be done with the samespeed Tat dream will come true some time

Carl Barth Hearings of the US Commisions on Industrial Relations 2

In the ontology of Empire value is outside measureHardt and Negri Empire 3

Everything can be measured and what gets measured gets managedMcKinsey amp Co slogan4

1 Orientations

In the early years of the twentieth century Frederick aylor and a small bandof disciples ndash such as Carl Barth ndash entered battle on factory-floors in ChicagoPhiladelphia and other East Coast US cities Armed with stopwatches andclipboards these pioneers of scientific management were fighting a war andthey knew it A war against lsquosystematic soldieringrsquo and the lsquocommon tendencyrsquoto lsquotake it easyrsquo A war to induce coerce and cajole workmen to lsquodo a fair dayrsquos

workrsquo A war over the control of production and over craft-knowledge A war

to enable managers to appropriate workersrsquo knowledge of specific tasks how how much how long how many A war over measure

A century on and capitalist production has spread far beyond the factory- walls It has been argued most famously by Hardt and Negri in Empire thatthe production of things ndash material objects that can be counted weighedmeasured ndash is no longer hegemonic Capital has invaded every aspect of human lives and production is increasingly immaterial producing information

affects (the increased capacities of bodies to act) and percepts It is increasingly diffi cult to distinguish production from re production the sphere inside capitalist production from that outside it and to pinpoint where labour-poweris produced When immaterial production is centre-stage the skills know-

1 Dickens 1995 p 4

2 Barth 1914 p 8893 Hardt and Negri 2000 p 3744 WetFeet 2002 p 34



M De Angelis D Harvie Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 3ndash30 5

how and attitudes of workers are (re)produced by the relational practices learntand re-learnt in the home from uncles and aunts sisters and brothers mothersfathers and lovers Te immateriality of labour implies an activity that

emphasises and is self-aware of its cooperative nature a biopolitical activity that produces affects5 Hence cooperation is far more likely to be of ahorizontal rhizomatic nature organised on the basis of networks informal

workgroups peer-to-peer relationships and even social ties rather thandirected by the boss standing at the apex of a hierarchy Te value produced by this labour is therefore lsquobeyond measurersquo because the immaterial living labourproducing value is identified with lsquogeneral social activityrsquo lsquoa common power

to actrsquo that cannot be disciplined regimented and structured by measuringdevices such as clocks In such circumstances exploitation still continues butnot through the subjection of labour to capitalrsquos measure Tis exploitationcontinues lsquooutside any economic measure its economic reality is fixedexclusively in political termsrsquo6 In the context of what Hardt and Negri calllsquoEmpirersquo value can at most be indexed lsquoon the basis of always contingent andpurely conventional elementsrsquo imposed by lsquothe monopoly of nuclear arms the

control of money and the colonization of etherrsquo7

Against this we argue that the war over measure continues at the pointof immaterial self-organised and cooperative production Capital is indeedpervasive and its means of measurement often appear distant and elusive Butthey nevertheless contribute to the constitution of the norms and modes of production ndash the how how much how long and how many that delimit oursocial doing While thinkers such as Hardt and Negri are celebrating the

impossibility of measuring immaterial production the heirs of Frederick aylorand Dickensrsquo Gradgrind are attempting to do just that An army of economistsstatisticians management-scientists and consultants information-specialists

5 In Foucault biopolitics refers to the style of governance regulating population through theapplication of political power on all aspects of human life He speaks of lsquo the endeavor begunin the eighteenth century to rationalize the problems presented to governmental practice by thephenomena characteristic of a group of living humans beings constituted as a population healthsanitation birthrate longevity race rsquo (Foucault 1997 p 73) Tis latter term has been used torefer to practices of public health reproduction rights immigration laws regulation of heredityand risk-regulation In the works of Hardt and Negri (2000 2004) biopolitics refers instead toanticapitalist practices against such a power and the correspondent constitution of a productivesocial fabric

6 Negri 1994 p 287 Hardt and Negri 2000 p 355 Hardt and Negri along with other scholars claim to have

identified a structural break in the capitalist mode of production with the emergence of lsquopost-

Fordismrsquo lsquocognitive capitalismrsquo or from a more orthodox perspective the lsquoknowledge economyrsquoFor more general critiques of Hardt and Negrirsquos argument on the immeasurability of value andthe periodisation of capitalism see Caffentzis 2005 Harvie 2005 and De Angelis 2007




accountants bureaucrats political strategists and others is engaged in a struggleto commensurate heterogeneous concrete human activities on the basis of equal quantities of human labour in the abstract that is to link work and

value Far from the law of value being redundant as Negri and Hardt havesuggested it is increasingly assuming the form of a struggle over measure evenin the realm of immaterial production

In this paper we seek to uncover capitalrsquos attempt to measure immateriallabour and thus (re)impose value and the law of value We use British highereducation (HE) as our case-study since between us we have over three decadesrsquo

worth of experience working in this sector and it gives us the opportunity

to problematise our own activity Academic work possesses all the basiccharacteristics of immaterial labour It is a form of directly social work in

which the form of social cooperation is crucial in defining the lsquooutputrsquomoreover it is a form of doing that is necessarily grounded on relationalawareness It is labour that produces affects Academic work is also a contextfor the production of ideas in the form of research-papers books conferencepresentations lectures and so forth Moreover this production is lsquobiopoliticalrsquo

and can occur at any time we have both experienced waking up in the middleof the night with the solution to a problem intractable during our formal

working day or reached insights that will find their way into a paper whilstplaying with a child

Tere is another reason why the United Kingdomrsquos higher-education sectoris important as a case-study From the late 1970s onwards the UK has beenthe most neoliberal of European countries and the market-discourse offers the

only framework within which new policies are designed In Britain all new policy is designed to lsquopush throughrsquo the lsquoEmpirersquo of neoliberal markets in ways that simultaneously attempt to bypass and silence a left opposition thatlacks any alternative project In higher education this lsquopushing throughrsquo takesa number of forms including artificial scarcity of resources greater competitionacross HE workers (including students) changes in syllabi towards anlsquoeducationrsquo subordinated to the needs of business transformation of the nature

and modalities of academic work and the imposition of constraints that limitthe forms of social cooperation In higher education we may be lsquopushingthroughrsquo Empire but we see no light at the end of the tunnel

Te paper is structured as follows In Section wo we discuss the context of the struggle over measure in academia Here we will briefly review the Britishgovernmentrsquos calls and consequent policies for universities to become morecompetitive and to emulate business In Section Tree we provide concrete

examples of the multiplying chores and barriers constructed across the flowsof communicational affective and creative work Tese we categorise under




the rubrics of standardisation quantification and surveillance We try to makesense of this all in Section Four Here we invoke the traditional Marxiancategory of value following an interpretative tradition that understands

socially-necessary labour-time ndash the substance of value ndash as a category of struggle over measure not simply as the expression of a past given quantumof labour In other words the labour that at any given time is lsquosocially necessaryrsquois both the result of past measuring processes and the present benchmark Wedistinguish three lsquolevelsrsquo at which measuring takes place across education-

workers within individual academic institutions across academic institutions within the nation-state and from the higher-education sector to other sectors

both national and international Tese measuring process are self-similarimplying a fractal-like organisation of academic work and work in general

In the final section we explain that measure involves both synchronic anddiachronic processes Tat is to say it encompasses processes through whichheterogeneous human activities are made commensurable thus allowingsocially-necessary labour-times to emerge and processes through which thesesocially-necessary labour-times are driven down We also hint at some of the

implications that our interpretation of measure has for our understanding of the circulation of struggles both within education and throughout society andof capitalist development and the law of value

2 Context lsquoWe canrsquot be complacentrsquo

Since the 1970s ndash and the social struggles of that decade ndash education hasundergone widespread restructuring lsquoWarwick University Ltdrsquo was a forerunnerin consciously attempting to align itself with the needs of capital8 globallyeducation-systems and institutions have now become a terrain for marketisation-agendas9 Charting the lsquoentrepreneurialisation of the universitiesrsquo and the lsquorise of the corporate universityrsquo in the United States the editors of Steal this University suggest that lsquo[w]hat is new about todayrsquos university is not only that it serves thecorporation ndash for it has always done that ndash but that it emulates itrsquo10 Universitiesthemselves lsquoare becoming businessesrsquo11 In the United Kingdom many neoliberaltrends are articulated in the governmentrsquos White Paper on Te Future of Higher Education In a critique of this document and of state-education reformsmore generally Andrew Robinson and Simon ormey argue that a lsquoonce

8 Tompson 19709 See Levidow 2002 and Rikowski 2001

10 Johnson et al 2003 p 1311 Ovetz 1996 p 113




ldquoindependentrdquo public service [is being reduced] to a wing of capital []hepenetration of neoliberal assumptions goes well beyond the formal statusof the higher education sector it permeates every assumption about the

rationale of education itselfrsquo12

Te situations in the UK and the US are notidentical but there are many common themes also shared by education-systems in other lsquoadvanced capitalist economiesrsquo13 Tese include the growthof for-profit education institutions the invasive intervention of both private-sector corporations and government in the daily running of lsquopublicrsquo universitiesthe increasing importance of market-relations managersrsquo use of lsquobenchmarkingrsquolsquoperformance indicatorsrsquo lsquoperformance managementrsquo and various forms of

lsquoperformance-related payrsquo (lsquomerit payrsquo) rhetoric of lsquobest practicersquo lsquoeffi ciencyrsquoand lsquoglobal competitivenessrsquo and the lsquoproletarianisationrsquo of academics14

Education is not only big business it is also a global business A decade agoonly the lsquotoprsquo universities ndash in the UK Oxford Cambridge and the moreprestigious London universities like LSE SOAS and London Business Schoolin the United States Harvard Yale and so on ndash tended to compete to attractoverseas students Now many lsquonewrsquo universities (former polytechnics) are

also competing in the global higher-education market Luton and Middlesexuniversities for example both earn more than one-sixth of their total incomefrom non-European Union students Te corresponding figure for the LSE isroughly one-third as it is for SOAS15 Foreign students are important to theUKrsquos economy as a whole with those from outside the European Unioncontributing annually pound4 billion in fees and a similar amount spent on livingcosts (typically fees for non-EU students are double the funding universities

receive for students originating from within the EU) But the market isbecoming increasingly competitive Not only are Britainrsquos lsquobig namesrsquo competing with the likes of lsquolowlyrsquo Luton and Middlesex as well as the prestigious American colleges Other developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand are also encouraging foreign students to study with them whilsttraditional lsquosourcersquo countries of the South ndash China Malaysia and Singaporefor example ndash are developing their own higher-education sectors Tus as

(then British prime minister) ony Blair warns us lsquowe canrsquot be complacent

12 Robinson and ormey 2003 p 113 See for example Cooper et al 2002 for discussion of the situation in Australia14 In the global South higher education has been a casualty of the more general imposition

of neoliberal policies as indebted governments have been forced by the IMF and World Bank toimplement so-called lsquoStructural Adjustment Programmesrsquo (SAPs) Te Bank has argued for

example that SAPs present African governments with lsquoa golden opportunity to ldquoincrease theeffi ciency of resource userdquo rsquo Caffentzis 2000 pp 5ndash8 see also Levidow 200215 MacLeod 2006




[w]e are determined to stay ahead of our competitorsrsquo16 Or in the words of David Young then Chair of the Higher Education Funding Council forEngland (HEFCE) in his Foreword to that organisationrsquos Strategic Plan for

2003ndash08 lsquothis is no time to rest on our laurels because the challenges facinghigher education are more wide-ranging and profound than ever beforersquo17

And Secretary of State for Education Charles Clarke in his Foreword to the2003 White Paper on Te Future of Higher Education after having celebratedthe lsquosuccess storyrsquo of British universities proceeds to suggest that although lsquoit

would be possible to opt for a quiet life bask in previous successes shirk theneed for reform [i]t would be wrong because the world is already changing

faster than it has ever done before and the pace of change will continue toacceleratersquo18

Tis choir of reformers and lsquomodernisersrsquo has good reasons to sing its tunesagainst lsquocomplacencyrsquo19 What goes on under the name of education is thepractice of lsquomobilizing even more effectively the imagination creativity skillsand talents of all our peoplersquo Tis instrumental understanding of education inturn lsquodepends on using that knowledge and understanding to build economic

strength and social harmonyrsquo While the latter depends on making lsquothe systemof supporting students fairerrsquo by introducing fees and targeting support-grantsonly for the very poor economic strength is supposedly achieved by lsquoharnessingknowledge to wealth creationrsquo and this lsquodepends on giving universities thefreedoms and resources to compete on the world stagersquo20 Te platitude revealsa reality in which this lsquofreedomrsquo is predicated on the slashing of public spendingon education and forcing universities to compete for students and resources

Across the sector the allocation of resources is driven by the consideration of where particular universities can best compete high-flying research-institutionsget more research-money whilst lsquolowlyrsquo institutions get funding tied to lsquowideningaccessrsquo

In this context many universities have used revenue from overseas-studentsto make up a funding shortfall resulting from the systematic cuts in state-expenditure on education since the lsquofiscal crisis of the statersquo21 With increasing

global competition this revenue is increasingly uncertain In turn this has had

16 Blair 200617 HEFCE 2003 p 218 DfES 2003 p 219 Te lsquomodernisersrsquo drive change in a double sense Neoliberal governments push for more

trade-liberalisation and increasing competition on the international stage and then use theeffects of these agreements to tell the rest of us that the world has changed and therefore we must

continue the rat-race20 DfES 2003 p 221 OrsquoConnor 1973




the effect of sharpening disciplinary pressures on higher-education workersreducing the space for critical consciousness in the education of undergraduatesand fostering instead lsquobite-sizedrsquo standardised concept-learning

Although there are commonalities amongst trends within higher educationacross the planet the situation in the UK seems special with its education-system representing a frontline in capitalist development For example many other European countries are now in the process of standardising andlsquoharmonisingrsquo their university-systems under the so-called lsquoBologna ProcessrsquoTe aim is to create a single European-wide market in higher educationBut many of the proposed changes ndash shocking as they are to continental

academics ndash are common practices in the UK

3 Quantification standardisation and surveillance the burden of academic labour

Before analysing this situation in more depth we will first describe measurein higher education as we personally have experienced it over the past twodecades We can sum up some of these processes under the terms lsquoquantificationrsquolsquostandardisationrsquo and lsquosurveillancersquo In all cases chores are imposed and barrierserected that cut across and interrupt the flows of communicational affectiveand creative work It seems clear ndash from discussions with older academics andfrom accounts such as AL Halseyrsquos Decline of Donnish Dominion or Slaughterand Lesliersquos Academic Capitalism ndash that the forms of measure we describebelow are new22 Indeed measure in any systematic form with accompanying material consequences seems to be new Measure as we would now recognise itsimply did not exist in the post-war university or polytechnic Of courselecturers had to perform various tasks ndash teaching administration pastoralcare ndash but for the most part these were shared and rotated allocated on thebasis of custom collegiate-decision or on the head of departmentrsquos say-so A certain level of research-activity was expected of academics particularly thoseemployed by universities as opposed to polytechnics but monitoring of this

was minimal In fact the contractual obligation was to engage in lsquoscholarly activityrsquo rather than to produce a research-output High-quality publications

would certainly be rewarded in terms of prestige andor promotion to readeror chair (which may or not have brought financial benefits) but even a lecturer

who published nothing would enjoy material security relaxed conditions of work and a high and rising income

22 Halsey 1992 Slaughter and Leslie 1997




o obtain a bachelorrsquos degree in a British university a student needs toattain 360 lsquocredit-pointsrsquo ie 360 credit-points = 1 degree At least 120 of these credit-points must be awarded at lsquolevel 3rsquo (the third or final year) and

a further 120 must be at lsquolevel 2rsquo (the second year) Degree-courses (orlsquoprogrammesrsquo) are further broken down into lsquomodulesrsquo of between 10 and40 credit-points So for example in each of her three years a student mightstudy six 20-credit modules Te amount of work required to attain a certainnumber of credit-points is also standardised across any particular institutionFor example the lsquonormrsquo for a 20-credit module might be two one-hour lectureseach week plus a fortnightly seminar or tutorial over the course of two

semesters with assessment by a two-hour exam and a 2500-word essayTe content of both the overall degree-programme and each of its constituent

modules is framed by a set of lsquoindicative learning outcomesrsquo (ILOs)23 whichtake the form of statements lsquoon completion of this degreemodule the student

will rsquo ILOs can be either lsquosubject specificrsquo (eg lsquo have attained a knowledgeof the ways in which working-class struggles drive capitalist developmentrsquo) orlsquogenericrsquo (eg lsquo be able to work cooperatively within a small rhizomatic

networkrsquo) Te set of ILOs for a particular module must be lsquoappropriatersquo tothat modulersquos lsquolevelrsquo while the learning outcomes for a degree must satisfy so-called subject benchmark-statements So ILOs for level-1 modules forinstance tend to emphasise mere lsquoknowledgersquo of theories whilst at level 3students are expected to be able to lsquocritically engagersquo24 o ensure consistency across institutions the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education(QAA) produces a set of subject benchmark-statements Tese specify the types

of skills and lsquocompetenciesrsquo which for example an economics-student shouldhave acquired upon graduation An elaborate set of procedures exists in order to allow the monitoring of

these and other norms For instance (and note that these are examples only)

bull For each module the lsquomodule-leaderrsquo (ML usually the modulersquos mainlecturer) must complete various pieces of paperwork in particular lsquomodule-

specificationrsquo and lsquomodule-reviewrsquo documents Te lsquomodule-specificationrsquosubmitted prior to the teaching period will list the modulersquos lsquoaims and

23 Academics have learnt to deploy this vocabulary with bravado yet no one is very sure whether the lsquoIrsquo in ILO stands for lsquointendedrsquo or lsquoindicativersquo and the lsquoOrsquo for lsquooutcomersquo orlsquoobjectiversquo

24 One of us worked in a department which scheduled annual lsquoexam-scrutinyrsquo meetings in which faculty would collectively consider each otherrsquos examination-papers It was interesting to

see what type of questions onersquos colleagues were asking of students Less easy to endure weresuggestions that perhaps first-year students should merely be asked to lsquoexplainrsquo such-and-such atheory rather than lsquocritically discussrsquo it




objectivesrsquo and ILOs its lsquomodes and methods of assessmentrsquo and otherinformation such as lsquoindicative readingrsquo and a summary of lsquoteachingmethodsrsquo In the lsquomodule-reviewrsquo document completed at the end of the

module the ML reports studentsrsquo average marks and their dispersionsummarises studentsrsquo feedback on the module and offers their ownassessment of the modulersquos strengths and weaknesses and suggests changesfor the following year

bull Across a degree-programme as a whole (say BA [Hons] Economics) thisinformation is collated into two important documents with similarstructures First a lsquoprogramme-specificationrsquo which will include the

module specifications for all of a programmersquos constituent modules along with a fairly detailed rationale for the degree as a whole its overall lsquoaimsand objectivesrsquo and learning outcomes and an inventory of the resources(academic staff library and other facilities etc) available to lsquodeliverrsquo theprogramme Second annual programme-reports which collate modulereviews and summarise the overall performance of a cohort of studentsin terms of lsquoprogression-ratesrsquo lsquowithdrawal-ratesrsquo location and spread of

marks and so onbull o ensure lsquofairnessrsquo studentsrsquo assessed work ndash particularly for longer

pieces such as a dissertation ndash is usually graded against a lsquomatrixrsquo with thevarious degree lsquoclassesrsquo (First Upper Second etc) along one axis and a listof categories (eg structure grasp of lsquokey conceptsrsquo ability to critically analyse referencing) along the other Within each cell is a description of the standard that must be achieved in that category in order to warrant

that class of degree Markers must complete the matrix for each individualassignmentbull Before any degree-programme can be offered it must be lsquovalidatedrsquo Te

validation-process involves scrutiny of the lsquoprogramme-specificationrsquoandor a lsquovalidation-documentrsquo by several committees internal to theuniversity and at a final validation-meeting a panel that will include twoor three external validators Tese scruntineers will judge the proposed

degree on the basis of its internal consistency the extent to which itslearning outcomes correspond to the subject-benchmarks and so on Alldegree-programmes must be periodically (approximately every four years)revalidated

bull Annually module- and programme-documentation is examined by various lsquoqualityrsquo committees overseen by institution-level bodies withnames like the lsquoCentre of Academic Standards and Qualityrsquo A module-

leader whose marks are significantly higher or lower than for other




modules or too dispersed or clustered about the mean might be requiredto justify their digression from the norm25

bull Marks and degree-classifications awarded by universities are monitored

by lsquoexternal examinersrsquo who scrutinise a sample of studentsrsquo exam-scriptsand assignments and attend examination-boards Te role of lsquoexternalsrsquois to ensure consistency and lsquofairnessrsquo across the sector

bull Departments are subject to periodic visits ndash lasting three or four days ndashby the QAA which sends in a team of inspectors Although the inspectorsdo observe teaching and meet with students and faculty they spendmost of their time holed up in a lsquobase-roomrsquo poring over programme-

documentation (module- and programme-specifications and reportsexternal examinersrsquo reports examples of student-work examples of academicsrsquo feedback on student-work documentary evidence of lsquoexcellencersquoin various areas) Of course preparing collating and cataloguing thisdocumentation involves an immense amount of work which must startup to eighteen months before the visit

bull In 1998 a Joint Costing and Pricing Steering Group ndash a bloc comprising

universities colleges and funding bodies including the HEFCE ndashinitiated a lsquoransparency Reviewrsquo Te purpose of this was to lsquoimprovethe accountability for the use of public fundsrsquo by discovering the amountof time academics spend on various activities ndash teaching funding by HEFCE (EU undergraduate students) teaching funded by other sourcesHEFCE-funded research and so on In practice it has required academicsto complete time-use diaries for sample weeks26

bull Since the 1980s British academics have been exposed to so-calledlsquoresearch-selectivityrsquo a project designed lsquoto evaluate the quality of researchin UK higher-education institutionsrsquo Te mechanism for this evaluationhas been a series of Research Assessment Exercises (lsquothe RAErsquo) held in1989 1992 1996 2001 and 2008 University departments must submiteach of their lsquoresearch-activersquo academicsrsquo lsquobestrsquo four publications over theassessment-period again accompanied by reams of documentation Te

lsquoqualityrsquo of this research is assessed by one of a number of panels or lsquounitsof assessmentrsquo ndash there were sixty-seven in the most recent exercise ndash andat the end of the exercise each department receives a grade Te exercise

25 We can understand a modulersquos mean mark as an indicator of how much work its teachingteam imposes on students the dispersion of marks (their variance or standard deviation) measuresthe extent to which students are ordered into a hierarchy see Harvie 2006

26 See JCPSG 2005




has material effects both for departments and for the academics it employs (orchooses not to employ) since the lsquoassessment informs the selective distributionof funds by the UK higher education funding bodiesrsquo27

4 Measuring academic labour lsquoexecutives should not abandon hopersquo

Tese practices and requirements of quantification standardisation andsurveillance obviously impose a huge burden of work on academics and few are happy about it Tere have been a number of responses Managers havefrequently suggested there is no alternative (INA) and instead urged us tolsquowork smarter not harderrsquo Tis seductive slogan is deployed not only todampen staff-resistance to further deterioration in working conditions It alsoattempts to harness lsquochangersquo (restructuring and innovation) and increasedlsquocompetitivenessrsquo to our very resistance Unfortunately many academics acceptthe INA argument and even the argument that there must be standardisationin the interests perhaps of lsquofairnessrsquo or lsquoqualityrsquo Many nevertheless adoptindividualised acts of refusal Tese may involve fabricating documentationor more often engaging in mindless lsquotick-boxingrsquo practices whenever feedback is required on something or another Frequently the discursive acceptance of INA by staff goes hand-in-hand with practices that show on the contrarythat there are alternatives So whilst management requires standardisation forthe sake of effi ciency ndash a high student-staff ratio ndash and in the name of lsquofairnessrsquoin private staff may well provide unstandardised services to meet particularstudentsrsquo needs Indeed we can make the general point that thanks to staff-refusal to submit to management-norms and standards students do in fact getlsquoan educationrsquo articles are written and published (especially in new universities)and knowledge is produced In other words the struggles against management-measures and the values they promote are also the realm of alternative measuresand values Unfortunately this often implies overwork on the part of staff Wedo not have room in this paper to discuss in details academicsrsquo struggles foralternatives to capitalist value28 Suffi ce to say most of these struggles andalternative practices take place on the micro- or molecular level Most are

27 Te two quotations are taken from HEFCE 2008 see further RAE 2008 Te specificdiffi culties associated with measuring research are myriad and we do not have space here todiscuss them in detail Suffi ce to say there are now many critiques of research-selectivity and its(adverse) effects on scholarship both in general and in particular disciplines See for example

Harvie 2000 Lee 2007 Dunne and Harney and Parker 200828 For more on these struggles and practices see Harvie 2004 2006 and 2008 Harvie andPhilp 2006 and the excellent EduFactory (see EduFactory Collective 2009)






progress ndash have created a situation in which the waged and unwaged workersin education (staff and students) must continuously meet benchmarks that areposited outside them Benchmarks are concrete socially-defined norms of

production that producers must meet or beat and in so doing they are part of the social process that defines how we produce what we produce and how much we produce Once this social process is coupled to a system of rewardsand punishment we have a disciplinary system Individual lsquoproductive nodesrsquoin higher education might deviate from these socially defined norms Indeedthese deviations from the average are precisely the dynamic principle thatoversees the production of value Once the producersrsquo living labour is caught

within the ongoing opposition between their own performance and a movingstandard and once the condition of their livelihoods is increasingly tied to thecondition of meeting or beating these standards we have in place the dynamicprocess that Marx associates with the formation of socially-necessary labour-time in capitalism31

In this section we will discuss a few contested measuring processes thathighlight value as a category of struggle in the case of UK higher education

An immediate political implication of this approach is that breaking withthose homeostatic mechanisms that attempt to couple the value-practices of intellectual and affective work to the value-practices of capital requires arecognition of the problematic of their coupling We should certainly notdismiss immaterial labour as being lsquobeyond measurersquo32 for capitalrsquos managerialdiscourse believes otherwise

As services become an ever-larger part of the global economy managers are rightly looking for ways to improve productivity and effi ciency Services may be diffi cultto measure and standardize than the manufacture of products but executivesshould not abandon hope33

What is even more worrisome about this inducement to keep faith in capitalrsquosmeasure is that capitalist managers acting upon this belief will put capitalrsquosmeasures above all else Trough their measures of things and processes they

will always end up making our lives hell It goes without saying that this is notbecause we believe they are sadists Rather as Marxists we believe that they areagents that ndash to a large extent ndash personify social relations of productionFurthermore the clash of different values and measures that these social relations

31 For a more extensive discussion of the link between value and measure along these lines

see De Angelis 2007 pp 175ndash9432 Hardt and Negri 2000 p 29433 Harmon Hensel and Lukes 2006 p 6




of production express passes through all subjects in capitalism includingmanagers although perhaps to a different degree and intensity34

Te structure of our analysis below follows another consideration linked

to the question of measure Tis is the fact that the homeostatic processesemerging from the struggles over measure tend to occur in self-similar ways atdifferent scales of social action in what has been called a lsquofractal-panopticonrsquo35 Briefly the market-order as conceptualised by for example Friedrich Hayekhas organisational properties similar to that of Jeremy Benthamrsquos lsquopanopticonrsquoTese essentially disciplinary properties shaping social production are reproducedand extended throughout the social field and the planet Te panopticon of

the global market is fractal in that different levels of social aggregation are self-similar in terms of their disciplinary processes

In what follows therefore we distinguish three (self-similar) lsquolevelsrsquo of measure all of which are linked to disciplinary processes making the measurereal We first consider measure within higher-education institutions (HEIs)that is treating each HEI as the social field with individual education-workersits constituent nodes Moving to a larger scale we treat HEIs as nodes exploring

measure across HEIs-as-nodes within the nation-state Finally we look atinternational measure across nation-states ie the nation-state is the node

Measure within HEIs

We have described the processes through which class-contact hours assessment-methods and so on are being standardised across coursesmodules for studentsTis standardisation frames and makes possible workload-calculations forlecturers too with the other key variable being student-numbers University-managers construct workload-models for academics on this basis Such modelsvary between institutions but for example a one-hour lecture might beallocated 35 hours (the additional 25 hours being time for preparation anddealing with subsequent student queries) and a one-hour seminar 25 hoursModule-leaders may perhaps receive an additional allowance to take intoaccount their module-management functions In some universities allocatedhours might be weighted by student-numbers such that teaching a largenumber of students is better lsquorewardedrsquo Academics are also allocated hours forperforming other key aspects of their jobs such as administration and possibly

34 lsquoWithin this framework therefore social subjects are not either ldquogoodrdquo or ldquobadrdquo eitherldquousrdquo or ldquothemrdquo either ldquoworking classrdquo or ldquocapitalistsrdquo o the extent that the real is constituted by a plurality of value practices we can regard social subjects as being traversed by the social forces

they contribute towards constituting social forces often in conflict with each otherrsquo De Angelis2007 p 3035 See De Angelis 2001 2002 and 2007




research So an admissions-tutor or programme-leader might lsquoreceiversquo 200hours a personal tutor 25 hours per group and so on In many universitiesthe allocation of a research-allowance is lsquodiscretionaryrsquo being awarded by a

lsquoresearch-committeersquo based on past and potential research performance Tusa lsquobetterrsquo researcher ndash that is to say one who has more or more prestigiouspublications ndash may be allocated a larger research-time allowance A full-timelecturerrsquos hour-allocation is supposed to sum to 1575 or similar over thecourse of the year (375 hoursweek times 42 weeks)

It is easy to ridicule as lsquoabstractrsquo or lsquomade-uprsquo such workload-models and thelsquonormsrsquo of which they are constituted From one perspective ndash a perspective

that values the communicative and relational aspect of teaching and its potentialto inspire students from a wide variety of backgrounds ndash these lsquonormsrsquo are ridiculous Rather than standardisation the conditions of an increasingly heterogeneous student-body and lsquowidening accessrsquo would necessitate maximumself-managed flexibility and autonomy of judgement by individual staff anddepartments In turn this would require a context of abundant lsquounder-utilisedrsquoresources that could be put to use when specific needs required it but be kept

otherwise as the normal context of creativity and socialityBut these norms are also real ndash or material ndash in the sense that they help

shape the form of academic labour in both its educational and research-contexts Tey do so by counter-posing the measures of capital which privilegethe meeting of abstractly defined targets (whether these indicate financialviability or consistency with government policies) to the immanent measuresof immaterial labourers who instead privilege the intellectual and relational

content of their work Tus for example an lsquoineffi cientrsquo lecturer becomes one who is unable to meet or beat the norm one who spends more than say two-and-a-half hours preparing each lecture or an educator who assigns lsquoexcessiversquovalue to the relational practices with students who do not conform to thestandard academic background and so need particular attention Converselyan lsquoeffi cientrsquo lecturer is one who uses the pittance of his or her researchallowance and produces lsquomeasurable outputrsquo ndash one article in a lsquogoodrsquo refereed

journal each year ndash without asking for more time off teaching36

It goes withoutsaying that unless such a lecturer is able to beat norms elsewhere andrecuperate time in this way then they will be forced to extend their own

working day and week In this way a quantitative definition of socially-necessary labour-time for the labour of a lecturer emerges as the result of anongoing process of norm-definition

36 A departmentrsquos RAE score is essentially based on each of its membersrsquo lsquobest fourrsquopublications Since RAEs have taken place every four or five years the lsquonormrsquo for the productionof a lsquogoodrsquo article is roughly one year




Work-allocation models exclude a variety of activities For exampleallowances for meetings (which yearly increase in number) are not alwaysgranted nor is time for the writing of student-references Our informal

interviews with several staff across the sector also reveal that strategies of work-intensification frequently occur when middle-ranking managers fiddle withthe weights and parameters of the workload-model in a bid to squeeze anincreasing number of activities into the maximum time permitted by thecontract At other times when this maximum is exceeded by a significantamount management-discourse is deployed to make sure that the meaning of the figures is not taken lsquoliterallyrsquo as an absolute amount of work performed

(which would run against the national contract) but rather as an indication of lsquorelative labour-inputsrsquo But such management-reliance on the workload-model immediately opens up a tactic of struggle against this form of measurenamely a type of work-to-rule or rather work-to-the-workload-model Every time one is expected to perform a task for which no hours have been allocatedthe task is refused and instead forwarded to the line-manager

Tis framework often reveals a contradictory set of incentives On one

hand academic staff are pushed to become lsquomore effi cientrsquo that is to spendless time preparing teaching material and engaging in discussions withstudents On the other hand there is an incentive for lecturers to hide frommanagement any lsquoeffi ciency-gainsrsquo they do make ie instances when they beatthe norm for fear that as next-yearrsquos weights are calculated in a context of reducing resources the goalposts will be shifted once more

We have already mentioned (in Section Tree) the so-called lsquoransparency

Reviewsrsquo imposed on English and Welsh universities by the UK reasury and implemented by HEFCE lsquoransparency Reviewsrsquo have been designed todiscover the relative proportion of time actually spent on various classes of activity such as lsquoteachingrsquo lsquoteaching-relatedrsquo lsquoresearchrsquo lsquoadministrationrsquo andso on Such information would enable all institutions lsquoto determine the fulleconomic cost of all their activities at a level appropriate to their decision-makingrsquo and to lsquoset a price for their activities using market-based pricing or

cost-based pricing where appropriatersquo ndash and of course to design suitable workload-models37 What is interesting about the lsquoransparency-Reviewrsquo exerciseis not so much that many academics invent the time-use diary-returns upon

which the review is based but that absolute honesty on the part of academicsis also discouraged We are reminded of Verushka Graef a mathematicianin Iain Banksrsquos Te Steep Approach to Garbadale Neither Graefrsquos sparsely-furnished Glasgow flat nor her university-offi ce has curtains or blinds because

37 JCPSG 2005




as she explains to Alban the novelrsquos protagonist lsquoher job involves a lot of staring out of windows thinkingrsquo38 Real-world academics who have been ascandid in their transparency-review time-use diary have been reprimanded by

managers for not taking the exercise seriously

Measure across HEIs measure within the nation-state

Let us now lsquozoom outrsquo from individual institutions and explore the measuringprocesses within the higher-education sector as a whole Here we canunderstand that the rationale for this measuring of academic labour largely emerges from a struggle for funding among increasingly resource-constrainedinstitutions While it is obvious that this lsquoresource-constraintrsquo has beenpolitically engineered by a string of neoliberal governments it now acts as acontext in which individual institutions make lsquoeconomicrsquo choices and definelabour-processes

Measure across and competition between HEIs takes place in a number of ways First the standardisation and record-keeping processes generate a largevolume of comparable statistics which in turn allow the production of league-tables Such data include staff-student ratios lsquoprogression-ratesrsquo and lsquoretention-ratesrsquo ie proportion of level-1 students who proceed to level 2 etc proportionof students awarded degrees in particular degree-classes (First Upper Secondetc) proportion of students employed six months after graduation lsquoscoresrsquoawarded to departments by the QAA following inspection-visits and performance-indicators regarding lsquowidening accessrsquo Te rationale for the collation andpublication of such statistics and league-tables is to make the market morelsquoeffi cientrsquo by increasing the quantity of information available to applicantsthey are then supposedly better able to exercise their lsquoconsumer rightsrsquo inchoosing universities that are most lsquoappropriatersquo to their needs and budgetIn reality such choice is restricted to a core of students with lsquotraditionalrsquoschool-backgrounds For the bulk of university-students poorer and possibly from lsquodisadvantagedrsquo backgrounds choice is restricted to institutions in theirlocalities or those with looser entry-levels

Tese indicators also form the basis for a proportion of HEIsrsquo state-funding which we discuss below Tus they influence universitiesrsquo funding both directly and indirectly and consequently put pressure on staff to meet targets whetherthis is through intensification of labour restructuring of the forms of labouror simply as practised in the old Soviet Union fiddling with the ways lsquoevidencersquois produced in relation to these targets

38 Banks 2007 p 103




British universities are funded from a number of sources All are conditionalupon measure andor competition and hence are uncertain and disciplinarythey all exhort higher-education workers to not lsquobe complacentrsquo Neoliberalism

enters the classroom in several ways

bull Student tuition-fees Since 199899 all European-Union students ndash includingBritish citizens ndash studying in Britain have been required to pay lsquotop-uprsquo feesCurrently universities are allowed to charge students up to pound3225 perannum But clearly for universities this income is dependent uponattracting students As we noted above competition for non-EU students is

also becoming increasingly fiercebull HEFCE grant Tis has three primary components teaching resource

special funding and research-funding

(i) eaching resource is allocated on the basis of a model that first calculatesa level of lsquostandard resourcersquo which takes into account current student-numbers subject-mix and a few other factors Standard resource is then

compared with lsquoassumed resourcersquo the level of funding that each institutionhas previously received If the assumed resource and standard resource differby more than 5 then lsquoadjustmentrsquo is required According to HEFCErsquosexplanation of the process lsquoAdjust funding [occurs] where institutions havefailed to meet the requirements of their funding agreement Tis usually arises because institutions are unable to recruit or retain the numbers of students for which the previous yearrsquos grant was allocatedrsquo39 So universities

must compete to recruit students and the losers are forced to makeadjustments lsquoFor institutions which fall outside the tolerance band wetake action to bring them within the band Tis may be by expectinginstitutions to increase or reduce their student numbers or by adjustingfundingrsquo40 In practice this means a process similar to the lsquostructuraladjustment-programmesrsquo forced on poor countries by the IMF in the wakeof debt default or other financial crisis (after all a country cannot live

lsquobeyond its meansrsquo as the adage goes) Tus a university in crisis ispressurised to design and implement a recovery-plan which may involvecutting programmes closing departments and other restructuring allgeared towards making the university more lsquoaccountable to the taxpayerrsquo

39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14




So for example in the last few years there has been increasing concern overa lsquoscience crisisrsquo in UK universities In 2004 the closure of a number of chemistry- physics- engineering and mathematics-departments prompted

the government to order HEFCE to investigate this potential crisis AlthoughHEFCE concluded that there was lsquono general crisisrsquo the Royal Society hasargued that too many science-departments have been closed without studentsrsquoneeds being safeguarded41 en universities have recently closed chemistry-departments for lack of demand and in 2005 Sir Howard Newby chief executive of HEFCE warned MPs that applications to study those science-disciplines had fallen up to 30 in recent years42

(ii) Special funding is awarded to enable universities to meet HEFCErsquoslsquostrategic aimsrsquo43 which are set by government-policies Tese include(i) lsquowidening participation and accessrsquo (ii) lsquoenhancing excellence inteaching and learningrsquo which takes almost half of the pound1 billion available(iii) lsquoenhancing excellence in researchrsquo and (iv) lsquoenhancing the contributionof HE to the economy and societyrsquo All four strategic aims are lsquounderpinnedrsquo

by three lsquocross-cutting supporting aimsrsquo (i) lsquobuilding on institutionsrsquostrengthsrsquo (ii) lsquodeveloping leadership governance and managementrsquo and(iii) lsquoexcellence in delivery organisational development within HEFCErsquoFor each of its aims HEFCE has defined lsquokey performance targets by

which we plan to demonstrate in measurable terms our progress towardsthe aim and objectivesrsquo44

Regarding research-funding HEFCErsquos position is that lsquoa dynamic world-classresearch-sector is not only vital for the health of universities but crucial toeconomic growth and social cohesionrsquo45 A lsquokey elementrsquo of the strategy is thusto strengthen the lsquocontribution [of the national research-base] to nationalcompetitivenessrsquo46 HEFCE recognises that lsquo[m]easuring the outputs from theresearch that we fund is not straightforwardrsquo But it notes that lsquo[s]omeencouraging work has been done in recent years for example in developing

bibliometric indices and reasonably comprehensive output measures and weintend to build on this With other funding bodies we will sponsor studies of

41 MacLeod 200542 Te Guardian 200543 HEFCE 2003 p 10

44 Ibid45 HEFCE 2003 p 2346 Ibid




the social impacts of research and develop tools for measuring the outcomes of investment in researchrsquo47

bull Non-HEFCE research and consultancy-incomes Te constraints on educationfunding imposed by government-policies are not only a means to facilitateongoing competitive restructuring in higher education Tese constraintsalso provide an opportunity to channel the know-how skills and expertiseof staff to fulfil broader government-targets to have a competitive society geared to attract capital-investment and out-compete others While lsquobig-playerrsquo universities with their research-intensive environment and resources

provide greater resources and time free from teaching so that their staff can bid for project-based research-funding in the lsquolowlyrsquo ones pressureis mounting to meet the demand for research-funding with the new buzz

word of lsquoknowledge-transferrsquo While this is interpreted by HEFCE as lsquobuildingon institutionsrsquo strengthsrsquo in reality it means conflating independentresearch with the dependency and subordination of academia to the priority of the market and competitiveness

Measure across sectors and nation-states

As we have seen within the lsquonationalrsquo economy measure across institutions-as-nodes is implemented through a system of competitive funding processesdesigned either to simulate the marketrsquos homeostatic mechanisms or tocreate lsquorealrsquo markets We have also noted the intensification of competition forlsquointernational studentsrsquo Te struggle over measure also plays a role here

Tis measure of the market is one aspect of the measuring process amongHEIs across national borders Such measure is facilitated by policy initiativessuch as the Bologna Declaration on the European Space for Higher Education(1999) which is driven by two underlying issues lsquocompatibility andcomparabilityrsquo and global competitiveness Next to the need to lsquoachievegreater compatibility and comparability in the systems of higher educationrsquo(mainly an intra-European issue) the Declaration expresses lsquoin particularrsquo adesire to increase lsquothe international competitiveness of the European system of higher educationrsquo It suggests that the lsquovitality and effi ciency of any civilisationcan be measured by the appeal its culture has for other countriesrsquo Te signatory countries explicitly express their goal to lsquoensure that the European higher

47 HEFCE 2003 p 24 See also Harvie 2000 on lsquoresearch-selectivityrsquo as a neoliberal processof measure designed to strengthen the link between money and (research) work




education system acquires a worldwide degree of attractiveness equal to[Europersquos] extraordinary cultural and scientific traditionsrsquo48

More generally we can understand nation-states as essentially in competition

with one-another to attract and retain capital49

A key parameter of thiscompetition is the presence of labour-power that is both adequately educatedand suffi ciently compliant Producing such labour-power is of course thefunction of the education-system (labour-power also has to kept suffi ciently healthy which is the function of health-services) Debates on the relationshipbetween education on the one hand and productivity and internationalcompetitiveness on the other are now informed by a fast-growing literature

that uses sophisticated econometricstatistical tools to measure the lsquoreturnsto schoolingrsquo and the lsquoreturns to healthrsquo wo types of return might beestimated

First there is the lsquoprivatersquo rate of return which treats an agentrsquos spendingon health-care or education as a lsquoprivate decision to invest in human capitalrsquoand then attempts to estimate the lsquoexpected internal return to that privateinvestmentrsquo It is possible to envisage universities using such estimates to guide

their own fee-setting decisions For example two econometricians who useBritish Labour Force Survey data to estimate the rate of return to first degreesMasters-degrees and PhDs in various distinct disciplines conclude that theirresults lsquoreveal considerable heterogeneity in returns to particular degreeprogrammes and by gender which have important policy implications for charging students for the costs of their educationrsquo50

Second there is the lsquosocialrsquo or lsquopublicrsquo rate of return which is an estimate of

the effect on growth-rates or levels of GDP per head of schooling (or health-services) Such studies already inform the World Bank policies In the wordsof one Bank working paper

Te purpose of project economic analysis is to distinguish among potentialprojects and select that project which promises to contribute the most to theeconomic welfare of the country Te scarcity of funding makes it necessary fornational decision-makers to be selective Tis is especially true for poor developing

countries Even many good projects have to be passed up in the absence of resources for project funding Only the best project should be selected thereforeand when that project is underway if additional financing is available then thenext best project and so onrsquo51

48 Bologna Declaration on the European Space for Higher Education 199949 See for example Holloway 1996

50 OrsquoLeary and Sloane 2005 p 75 our emphasis51 Vawda et al 2001 pp 10ndash11 See also the special issue of the Journal of Econometrics onhigher education volume 121 nos 1minus2 (JulyminusAugust 2004)




5 Conclusions values the struggle over measure and the productionof commons

In the previous two sections we have tried to chronicle a few of the many waysin which the labour of higher-education workers is quantified and comparedand through this managed and disciplined A few observations are worthmaking here

First these processes and tools of measure are myriad Tey includebenchmarking performance-indicators league-tables workload-models therhetoric of lsquobest practicersquo lsquoeffi ciencyrsquo and lsquocompetitivenessrsquo the constructionof metrics (such as bibliometric indices) and economiceconometric lsquorates-of-returnrsquo analysis Tere does not appear to be any universal measure

Second we have been able to distinguish several different layers of measure We can thus understand individual academics as nodes constituting the socialfield of a single HEI We can also understand HEIs as nodes within thenational economy and nation-states as nodes within the global economyHowever definitions of each lsquolayerrsquo are not entirely distinct of course Tusan individual academic might submit to measuring processes at national level(say in applying for a research-council grant) and at international level as wellas measure imposed by his or her own institution Similarly in the market forlsquointernational studentsrsquo institutions compete with one another directly

Tird the processes and tools we have described as operating within highereducation clearly have counterparts in every other sector of the economy ndashand indeed with the pervasiveness of the fractal-panopticon any other sphereof social practice Tis is most obvious within the education-system generally

and within the health and other lsquopublicrsquo services But the struggle over measureis also evident in the statersquos strategies to manage unemployed and precarious

workersrsquo unwaged job-searches or in its management of the unwaged work of parenting Unemployment-benefit for example has now become lsquoJobseekerrsquos

Allowancersquo and claimants must show evidence of adequate job-seeking activity in order to receive their pittance Regarding adultsrsquo relationships with theirchildren unsupervised play is increasingly denigrated lsquoexpertrsquo pressure is

mounting for replacing it with adult supervised lsquosuccess-enhancing activitiesrsquoand exam-measurable schooling52

Te rhetoric of lsquobest practicersquo permeates many private companies too Tepractice of benchmarking for instance was pioneered by Xerox which definesit as lsquothe continuous process of measuring products services and practicesagainst the toughest competitors or those companies recognised as industry

52 See for example the discussion of lsquoparanoid parentingrsquo in Furedi 2002




leaders (best in class)rsquo53 Parallels can also be found with management-strategiesin material production lsquoquality-circlesrsquo lsquoworkgroupsrsquo and so on Workers aregranted more freedom to self-manage but this freedom is always framed and

constrained by managementrsquos goals ie to maximise profitability Finallypermeating every lsquolevelrsquo of scale and every sector is the measure of the financialmarkets as financial derivatives allow the lsquocommensurationrsquo of different formsof asset and heterogeneous lsquobits of capitalrsquo Derivatives lsquomake it possible toconvert things as economically nebulous as ideas and perceptions weatherand war into commodities that can be priced relative to each other and tradedfor profitrsquo54

In higher education as in other sectors the struggle over measure operatesthrough two processes In the first place there is a diachronic process thatdrives down the labour-time socially-necessary for the lsquoproductionrsquo of ideas (papers validation-documents new courses) and affects (studentsrsquo lsquocustomer-satisfactionrsquo educational lsquoexperiencersquo and so on) in a context of increasingly tight budgets Such a process brings us lsquoeffi ciency-gainsrsquo lsquoimproving standardsrsquoand lsquobetter-qualityrsquo research In the second place this diachronic process is

made possible by an ongoing s ynchronic comparison ndash or commensuration ndash of heterogeneous activities ndash within education and across the social field ndash on thebasis of quantities of human labour in the abstract Appearing in the discursiveforms of benchmarks and norms across nodes of production these enablecapital to adjudge that a scholarly article (published in a lsquotoprsquo journal) willlsquonormallyrsquo embody the same quantity of academic labour as say two 20-creditmodules Tus socially-necessary labour-times are constructed

Synchronic and diachronic processes are interrelated each one facilitatingthe other For example the commensuration of research- and teaching activities(synchronic) provides an lsquoincentiversquo (disciplinary spur) to the aspirant researcherBy lsquoraising their gamersquo ndash working harder ndash in order to publish journal-articlesthey are lsquorewardedrsquo with a reduced teaching load But the actions of this teacher-researcher also demonstrate that it is possible to lsquoproducersquo both publications andnew labour-power Tus the socially-necessary labour-time of both activities

is forced down increasing the pressure on other researchers and teachers(diachronic process)Our interpretation of measure has several implications for the way in which

we understand not only immaterial labour but also the production of valueand the law of value the circulation of struggles and the production of alternatives and capitalist development We conclude by hinting at some of these implications

53 Te Xerox Corporation cited in Jones 2009 p 154 Bryan and Rafferty 2006 p 12




First immaterial labour is not a practice that is inherently communistbecause it is lsquooutsidersquo or lsquobeyond measurersquo which is what Hardt and Negriseem to imply Te political and strategic question for us is not whether capital

measures immaterial labour but at what level and with what frequency it doesso in different contexts vis-agrave-vis different class-compositions and organisationalreaches of immaterial and affective workers55 Moreover the overcoming of capitalrsquos measure is not a lsquotendencyrsquo that will play itself out Hardt and Negrirsquosteleological determinism is misplaced

Second measure is a category of struggle lsquoProductsrsquo both material andlsquoimmaterialrsquo only become commodities if they can be commensurated on the

basis of quantities of human labour in the abstract Otherwise they remain somany tonnes of wheat or barrels of oil or such and such a number of scholarly articles Te lsquolaw of valuersquo is wholly dependent for its continued operationupon measure against some universal equivalent Tus capitalrsquos constantstruggle to impose and reimpose the lsquolaw of valuersquo is always a simultaneousstruggle to impose (a single universal) measure It may well be true thatproducing subjects produce both material and immaterial products that they

value in forms and ways that are outside and beyond capitalrsquos own measuresBut it is also the case that capital ndash via its army of economists statisticiansmanagement-scientists and so forth ndash struggles to measure immaterial lsquooutputsrsquoin its own terms (profit effi ciency competitiveness and so on) In so doingcapital helps shape the forms immaterial labour just as it shapes the form of material labour

In higher education as elsewhere production depends upon access over a

common pool of resources ie the commons But some of these commons arenot given they must be produced by the academic labourers themselves Te ways and forms in which commons are produced depend on the balance of forces between clashing values and measuring processes At the moment thosecommons that are produced in higher education tend to be produced withinthe discourse of coupling lsquoqualityrsquo with lsquoeffi ciencyrsquo (as we have pointed outabove we are struggling against measure and for alternative values behind the

55 For example at one extreme there is Finland In that country schooling does not beginuntil a child is six years old there is no streaming or selection of pupils whatsoever and there areno national exams until the age of eighteen or nineteen At the other extreme is Britain whereselection of pupilsstudents is widespread and students face national exams from as early as ageseven and proposals are discussed to introduce them earlier by age fourteen national testing isalmost annual Yet Finlandrsquos education-system is still measured the OECD publishes annually aranking of the educational performance of industrial countries (Crace 2003) Moreover in aglobal economy the lsquoperformancersquo of the Finnish state is compared with that of other nation-

states in terms of the costs of the labour-power reproduction In short high spending on state-education must be funded by higher taxation which threatens capitalrsquos profitability within thatterritory




faccedilade of managerial discourse) We think that a first step is to make ouropposition more public and visible in order to decouple as much as possiblethe priorities of competitiveness and profit-seeking from those of knowledge

and social production Just as capitalist measure is based on a social processthat seeks to define the how the what and the how much and to subordinatethese to accumulation a recomposition of the fragmented struggles in highereducation must occur on the basis of alternative values and measures of thewhat how much and how Here the lsquofrontlinersquo between these two conceptionsof value and measure must become visible and the object of public opendebate

Tird acknowledging measure as a category of struggle suggests a basisfrom which to link or circulate struggles both within and outside the universitysince capitalrsquos measure is pervasive across social cooperation Te university has long been a site of struggle against capitalrsquos measure Most visibly

worldwide the latter has invaded the campuses in the form of the slashing of budgets and in the form of riot-police (mostly in the global South) dispersingstudents protesting such cutbacks and lsquostructural adjustmentrsquo more generally

Capitalrsquos measure also may appear in the suppression of lsquoacademic freedomrsquo ndash arecent example in the UK context was the six-day detention under anti-terrorlaws of a University of Nottingham research-student and his administratorfriend for downloading an al-Qaeda document56 Less visibly capitalrsquos measurealso invades the campus disguised in the rhetoric of lsquoconsumer-satisfactionrsquoand lsquovalue for moneyrsquo Tis managerial discourse needs to be openly contestedand we must find a way to connect the lsquoundergroundrsquo struggle againstbeyond

capitalist measure within universities to struggles againstbeyond measure inother contexts of social production

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Barth Carl G 1914 estimony of Carl G Barth Hearings of the US Commisions on Industrial Relations 64th Congress 1st Session Senate Doc 26 (Ser Vol 6929 April)

Banks Iain 2007 Te Steep Approach to Garbadale London Little BrownBlair ony 2006 lsquoWhy We Must Attract More Students from Overseasrsquo Te Guardian available

at lthttpwwwguardiancoukeducation2006apr18internationalstudentspoliticsgt accessedMay 2009

Te Bologna Declaration on the European Space for Higher Education 1999 available at lthttp wwwbologna-bergen2005noDocs00-Main_doc990719BOLOGNA_DECLARAIONPDFgt accessed May 2009

Bryan Dick and Michael Rafferty 2006 Capitalism with Derivatives A Political Economy of Financial Derivatives Capital and Class Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan

56 Newman 2008




Caffentzis George 2000 lsquoTe World Bank and Education in Africarsquo in A Tousand FlowersSocial Struggles Against Structural Adjustment in African Universities edited by Silvia FedericiGeorge Caffentzis and Ousseina Alidou renton Africa World Press

mdashmdash 2005 lsquoImmeasurable Value An Essay on Marxrsquos Legacyrsquo Te Commoner 10 87ndash114

Cleaver Harry 2000 [1979] Reading lsquoCapitalrsquo Politically 2nd edition Edinburgh AK PressCooper Simon John Hinkson and Geoff Sharp (eds) 2002 Scholars and Entrepreneurs Te

Universities in Crisis Melbourne Arena PublicationsCrace John 2003 lsquoEducation Heaven and Helsinki odayrsquos International League ables for

Education will Show that Finland Leads the Worldrsquo Education Guardian available at lthttpeducationguardiancoukschoolsstory05500104247900htmlgt accessed November 2008

De Angelis Massimo 2001 lsquoHayek Bentham and the Global Work Machine Te Emergenceof the Fractal-Panopticonrsquo in Te Labour Debate An Investigation into the Teory and Reality of Capitalist Work edited by Ana Dinerstein and Michael Neary Aldershot Ashgate

mdashmdash 2002 lsquoTe Market as a Disciplinary Order a Comparative Analysis of Hayek andBenthamrsquo Research in Political Economy 20 293ndash317

mdashmdash 2007 Te Beginning of History Value Struggles and Global Capital London Pluto PressDepartment for Education and Skills (DfES) 2003 lsquoTe Future of Higher Educationrsquo available

at lthttpwwwdfesgovukhegatewaystrategyhestrategygt accessed November 2008Dickens Charles 1995 [1854] Hard imes London Wordsworth ClassicsDunne Stephen Stefano Harney and Martin Parker 2008 lsquoTe Responsibility of Management

Intellectuals A Surveyrsquo Organization 15 2 271ndash82Edufactory Collective 2009 lsquoEdufactory Conflicts and ransformations of the Universityrsquo

available at lthttpwwwedu-factoryorggt accessed May 2009Foucault Michel 1997 Ethics Subjectivity and ruth Te Essential Works of Foucault 1954ndash1984

Volume 1 edited by Paul Rabinow New York New PressFuredi Frank 2002 Paranoid Parenting Why Ignoring the Experts May Be Best for Your Child

Chicago Chicago Review PressGuardian 2005 lsquoMore Warnings Over Decline in Science Studentsrsquo available at lthttpwww

guardiancoukeducation2005oct20highereducationuk1gt accessed May 2009Halsey Albert H 1992 Decline of Donnish Dominion Te British Academic Professions in the

wentieth Century Oxford Oxford University PressHardt Michael and Antonio Negri 2000 Empire Cambridge MA Harvard University Pressmdashmdash 2004 Multitude War and Democracy in the Age of Empire New York Te Penguin PressHarmon Eric Scott C Hensel and imothy E Lukes 2006 lsquoMeasuring Performance in

Servicesrsquo Te McKinsey Quarterly 1 1ndash6Harvie David 2000 lsquoAlienation Class and Enclosure in UK Universitiesrsquo Capital and Class 71

103ndash32mdashmdash 2004 lsquoCommons and Communities in the University Some Notes and Some Examplesrsquo

Te Commoner 8 available at lthttpwwwcommonerorguk08harviepdfgt accessed November

2008mdashmdash 2005 lsquoAll Labour Produces Value for Capital and We All Struggle Against Valuersquo Te

Commoner 10 132ndash71mdashmdash 2006 lsquoValue-Production and Struggle in the Classroom eachers Within Against and

Beyond Capitalrsquo Capital and Class 88 1ndash32mdashmdash 2008 lsquoAcademic Labour Producing Value and Producing Strugglersquo in Renewing Dialogues

in Marxism and Education Openings edited by ony Green Glenn Rikowski and HelenRaduntz London Palgrave Macmillan

Harvie David and Bruce Philp 2006 lsquoLearning and Assessment in a Reading Group Formatrsquo

International Review of Economics Education 5 2 98ndash110Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) 2003 lsquoHEFCE Strategic Plan

2003ndash08rsquo available at lthttpwwwhefceacukpubshefce200303_35htmgt accessed November 2008




mdashmdash 2007 lsquoFunding Higher Education in England How HEFCE Allocates its Fundsrsquo availableat lthttpwwwhefceacukPubshefce200707_20execgt accessed November 2008

mdashmdash 2008 lsquoResearch Assessment Exercisersquo available at lthttpwwwhefceacukresearchrefreformraeaspgt accessed November 2008

Holloway John 1996 lsquoGlobal Capital and the National Statersquo in Global Capital National State and the Politics of Money edited by Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway BasingstokeMacmillan

Johnson Benjamin Patrick Kavanagh and Kevin Mattson (eds) 2003 Steal Tis University Te Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labour Movement London Routledge

Joint Costing and Pricing Steering Group (JCPSG) 2005 lsquoCosting and Pricing Groupsrsquo availableat lthttpwwwjcpsgacukprojectgt accessed May 2009

Jones Neil 2009 lsquoBenchmarking raining Articlersquo available at lthttpwwwtraining-managementinfoPDFbenchmarking-trainingpdfgt accessed May 2009

Larbi George A 1999 lsquoTe New Public Management Approach and Crisis Statesrsquo available atlthttpwwwunrisdorgunrisdwebsitedocumentnsf05F280B19C6125F4380256B6600448FDBOpenDocumentgt accessed November 2008

Lee Frederic S 2007 lsquoTe Research Assessment Exercise the State and the Dominance of Mainstream Economics in British Universitiesrsquo Cambridge Journal of Economics 31 2 309ndash25

Levidow Les 2002 lsquoMarketising Higher Education Neoliberal Strategies and Counter-Strategiesrsquo Te Commoner 3 available at lthttpwwwcommonerorguk03levidowpdfgt accessed November 2008

MacLeod Donald 2005 lsquoNo Science Crisis in Universities Says Funding Councilrsquo Te Guardianavailable at lthttpwwwguardiancoukeducation2005jun28highereducationcutsandclosures1gtaccessed May 2009

mdashmdash 2006 lsquoInternational Rescuersquo Te Guardian available at lthttpwwwguardiancoukeducation2006apr18highereducationinternationalstudentsgt accessed May 2009

Negri Antonio 1994 lsquoOltre la legge di valorersquo DeriveApprodi 5ndash6 26ndash8Newman Melanie 2008 lsquoResearch into Islamic errorism Led to Police Responsersquo available at

lthttpwwwtimeshighereducationcoukstoryaspstorycode=402125gt accessed May 2009OrsquoConnor James 1973 Te Fiscal Crisis of the State New York St Martinrsquos Press

OrsquoLeary Nigel C and Peter J Sloane 2005 lsquoTe Return to a University Education in GreatBritainrsquo National Institute Economic Review 193 75ndash89Ovetz Robert 1996 lsquourning Resistance into Rebellion Student Movements and the

Entrepreneurialization of the Universitiesrsquo Capital and Class 58 113ndash52Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 lsquoResearch Assessment Exercise 2008rsquo available at

lthttpwwwraeacukgt accessed May 2009Rikowski Glenn 2001 Te Battle in Seattle Its Significance for Education London ufnell PressRobinson Andrew and Simon ormey 2003 lsquoNew Labourrsquos Neoliberal Gleichschaltung the

Case of Higher Educationrsquo Te Commoner 7 available at lthttpwwwcommonerorg

uk07robinsonamptormeypdfgt accessed November 2008Slaughter Sheila and Larry L Leslie 1997 Academic Capitalism Politics Policies and the

Entrepreneurial University Baltimore John Hopkins University PressTompson Edward (ed) 1970 Warwick University Limited Industry Management and the

Universities Harmondsworth PenguinVawda Ayesba Yaqub Peter Moock J Price Gittinger and Harry Anthony Patrinos 2001

Economic Analysis of World Bank Education Project Outcomes available at lthttpwdsbeta worldbankorgexternaldefaultWDSContentServerIW3PIB20010330000094946_01032007445742RenderedPDFmulti0pagepdfgt accessed November 2008




Tomas Gradgrind sir ndash peremptorily Tomas ndash Tomas Gradgrind With a ruleand a pair of scales and the multiplication table always in his pocket sir ready to

weigh and measure any parcel of human nature and tell you exactly what itcomes to It is a mere question of figures a case of simple arithmetic

Charles Dickens Hard imes 1

My dream is that the time will come when every drill press will be speeded justso and every planer every lathe the world over will be harmonized just likemusical pitches are the same all over the world so that we can standardize andsay that for drilling a 1-inch hole the world over will be done with the samespeed Tat dream will come true some time

Carl Barth Hearings of the US Commisions on Industrial Relations 2

In the ontology of Empire value is outside measureHardt and Negri Empire 3

Everything can be measured and what gets measured gets managedMcKinsey amp Co slogan4

1 Orientations

In the early years of the twentieth century Frederick aylor and a small bandof disciples ndash such as Carl Barth ndash entered battle on factory-floors in ChicagoPhiladelphia and other East Coast US cities Armed with stopwatches andclipboards these pioneers of scientific management were fighting a war andthey knew it A war against lsquosystematic soldieringrsquo and the lsquocommon tendencyrsquoto lsquotake it easyrsquo A war to induce coerce and cajole workmen to lsquodo a fair dayrsquos

workrsquo A war over the control of production and over craft-knowledge A war

to enable managers to appropriate workersrsquo knowledge of specific tasks how how much how long how many A war over measure

A century on and capitalist production has spread far beyond the factory- walls It has been argued most famously by Hardt and Negri in Empire thatthe production of things ndash material objects that can be counted weighedmeasured ndash is no longer hegemonic Capital has invaded every aspect of human lives and production is increasingly immaterial producing information

affects (the increased capacities of bodies to act) and percepts It is increasingly diffi cult to distinguish production from re production the sphere inside capitalist production from that outside it and to pinpoint where labour-poweris produced When immaterial production is centre-stage the skills know-

1 Dickens 1995 p 4

2 Barth 1914 p 8893 Hardt and Negri 2000 p 3744 WetFeet 2002 p 34

































































































































26 See JCPSG 2005

































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008





















































































































































































26 See JCPSG 2005

































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008







































































































































































26 See JCPSG 2005

































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008























































































































































26 See JCPSG 2005

































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008










































































































































26 See JCPSG 2005

































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008




























































































































26 See JCPSG 2005

































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008












































































































26 See JCPSG 2005

































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008
































































































26 See JCPSG 2005

































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008
















































































26 See JCPSG 2005

































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008


































































26 See JCPSG 2005

































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008





















































































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008













































































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008











































































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008






























































Measure within HEIs






























37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008















































































37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008

































































37 JCPSG 2005










38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008






























































38 Banks 2007 p 103













39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008

































































39 HEFCE 2007 p 1340 HEFCE 2007 p 14






















































































References






56 Newman 2008










































































































































References






56 Newman 2008






























































































































References






56 Newman 2008



















































































































References






56 Newman 2008



































































































References






56 Newman 2008





















































































References






56 Newman 2008










































































References






56 Newman 2008






























































References






56 Newman 2008

































































































































Documents

De Angelis & Harvie, 'Cognitive Capitalism' and the Rat Race [HM 2009]