“We are not seeking to indoctrinate our students at all. We leave indoctrination to Stalin and the Devil. We love liberalism; we love democracy.”
— Alvin Johson, first Director of The New School

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The New School was established in 1919 to develop new leaders who could tackle the political and social problems stemming from America’s booming economic development.

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World War I reinforced the domination of US capital, both domestically and abroad, as production expanded rapidly to meet wartime needs. The post- WWI era of state monopoly capitalism brought new forms of struggle between capital and labor.

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The New School founders grasped capital’s growing need for an educated stratum which could devise “progressive” new ways to handle potentially volatile class contradictions.

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This task is addressed in its founding document: “Our corporations and industrial enterprises are asking for trained workers of scientific insight and generous opinions who can deal with problems of employment and the relations of the employer with labor and the public.”
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The school’s core mission has always fit squarely in line with the interests of capital, which is to say: antagonistic to the interests of the working class.

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It is simply nonsense to claim, as do the authors of recent @Jacobinmag article “The New School Is in Crisis,” that radical thought “was the original purpose of The New School.” #Marxism #radicalthought #neoliberalism #jacobin
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In fact, the “original purpose” of the New School founders was to educate students who could develop new methods to manage the “problems of employment and the relations of the employer with labor and the public”– that is, the problem of capital and labor.
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Read our new article “Petty Bourgeois Romanticism and Neoliberal Austerity Collide: Response to a Recent Jacobin Article” to learn more
#thenewschool #austerity #highereducation https://maydaystudentorganization.com/2021/01/29/jacobin-reply/
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