Dead Labor and Vacuous Accountability

In this second conversation with David J. Blacker, the author of The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame, KMO and guest review Marx's idea of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the productivity gains from technology that were supposed to free workers from the need to toil but somehow did not do so, and how the needs of the Neoliberal elite continue to shape the agenda of universal, compulsory education. David describes the vacuous talk around "accountability" in education. The minders of the public discourse treat accountability as an unqualified good, but in practice, it amounts to a record-keeping fetish dressed up as a moral imperative. The tacit assumption among accountability fetishists is that numbers are more real than words.

 

Music by Fernando Tarango and the Wickersham Brothers.