Why is the American Left so Divided? The Academics!

In my experience as visiting instructor at universities in the U.S.A., the problem here is the result of the (often unreflective, but not always) capitalist habits and behaviours engaged in by the tenure-track and the tenured professors. They are willfully ignorant of how much of what they do and say is dictated by capital. If you are a professor and call yourself a leftist, do you have TIAA-CREF? Do you have other investments? Do you own your own home, a laptop, and expensive car? Do you want to efface the distinction between yourself and all of the adjunct instructors? Answer honestly, and you will say "No".

Adjunct instructors in America have no health benefits and no salary (they are paid by the course, and if the class does not fill up with students, they have no work). They are all paid the same (obscenely low) rate at the same college. They have no job security because they do not get a real contract, only a letter from the Dean of the department which the adjunct is compelled to honour, but which the school can ignore whenever it wants. But numerically speaking, there are more adjunct instructors. All across the U.S.A., at thousands of community colleges, and even some four-year schools, you have one or two or three full-time people and a dozen adjuncts.

For the tenure-track and the tenured professors in America (even the full-time visiting professors), life is much better than for the adjunct. Even if they call themselves "leftist" (as so many do), they would never agree to a real Union that was inclusive of adjuncts because this would threaten their own privileges and the hierarchy. The American pseudo-leftist academics are unreflectively capitalist--vain and greedy, promoting themselves and competing, focusing on the perks they get for not crossing the line (paid sabbaticals, etc.).

In short, the American pseudo-leftist academic is incapable of the true ethico-political act. Because their position in the socio-symbolic order is everything to them, they cannot even consider the symbolic suicide implied by the authentic act. So they only talk socialism--but the last thing they want is real solidarity. They have none of what Brecht describes as "love of the third thing", the shared commitment to the cause. Unfortunately, I can no longer support myself by means of my position in Kiev, so I also participate in capitalist system even while criticizing it.