This article constitutes a contribution to the critique of the political economy of contemporary higher education. Its notes form, intended to open "windows" on the thorny issue of metrics permeating academia on both the local/national and global levels, facilitates a conceptualization of the academic law of value as a mechanism responsible for regulating the tempo and speed of academic labor in a higher education system subsumed under capital. First, it begins with a presentation of the Marxist approach to acceleration and (...) measure. Second, it presents the academic law of value as a socially necessary impact/time. Third, it conceptualizes a figure of capital that operates in the contemporary global higher education system. Fourth, it describes the conditions of operation of merchant capital within higher education and explores the close links of global university rankings, metadata providers, and the academic publishing industry. As a fifth and final point, the analysis turns to Central Eastern Europe and the case study of Poland to demonstrate that, to function properly, the academic law of value needs to be imposed by political means, that is, through policy reforms that establish and legitimize the sets of parameters and criteria for the evaluation of academic labor. In conclusion, the argument suggests that the domination of merchant capital over academic labor, resulting in the latter's ongoing and uncontrolled acceleration, cannot be overcome without addressing not so much the issue of private property but, first and foremost, the politically and socially defined metrics. (shrink)

THE COMMON AS A NON-CAPITALIST FORM OF WEALTH. ANTONIO NEGRI’S THESIS ON THE CRISIS OF THE LAW OF VALUE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES The core aspect of Antonio Negri’s political philosophy and the reading of “Marx beyond Marx”, that is the thesis on the crisis of law of value, was analyzed here in details. Thesis that Negri’s altermodern humanism, at least since the end of the 1960’s, is developing in the strict interrelationship with the thesis on the crisis of law of (...) value was proposed. Together with an ontological assumption that we are living in the era of real subsumption of society under capital it creates the conceptual matrix of the project of the common. The main parts of this text explored the following problems: a) the context of the formulation of the thesis on the crisis of law of value; b) the meaning of the law of value in the Marx’s theory; c) Marxist debate on the status of law of value in socialism with reference to its usefulness for the projects of the alternative to capitalism; d) core aspects of the thesis; e) its consequences for the new theories of exploitation, antagonism and value for the present state of the development of capitalism. The aim of the text is to show the political meaning of the thesis of on the crisis of the law of value. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article introduces a general framework for the critique of the university in crisis that originates in the Marxist tradition. After indicating the limitations of current proposals rega...