> "The university existed before capitalism"<p>Seeming "capitalism" was said to be coined by Karl Marx, this much is obvious.<p>> "Without public investment, universities are compelled to play by private sector rules, i.e., to operate like businesses."<p>Ok, so is the issue that "science" now has to play the same rules as everyone else? (there was some sort of saying of "ivory tower academics" - I guess the ivory tower isn't as strong anymore?)<p>I agree wholeheartedly that science and academia should get public funding, more public funding the better, 110%. My wife's entire family is a family of scientists and I wanted to be a scientist too, when I was younger.<p>Not sure where that public spending money should really come from.. not "Take from the poor, give to the academics."<p>Should the title rather be:<p>"Academia is now threatened by economics like everything else" ?
Market pressures can have a corrupting influence on many human endeavors, but to say "capitalism is ruining science" is incredibly reductive.<p>Capitalist countries, such as the US and western Europe, have had an outsized contribution to scientific endeavor, winning more than their share of Nobel prizes.<p>This is probably because investment in scientific research depends on a level of material prosperity that wasn't achieved in the USSR and communist China. Centrally planned economies tend to be so corrupt that researchers may have bigger issues to navigate than "publish or perish."<p>Jacobin takes a reasonable point (marketization can have a corrupting influence), dials up the stakes hyperbolically ("a new dark age!"), and pins it on its favorite bogeyman – "capitalism" – an amorphous, nefarious scourge (it's not clear what level of socialism we need to adopt to avert the new dark ages.)<p>Seems like a more reasonable take would just be to increase public funding to scientific research.