If we look at the politics of the European neoliberal ruling class, we see that they are doing exactly this: in some countries (such as Italy) they are reducing the financing for school and for research, privatizing public schools, and provoking a large-scale de-scholarization that has already begun showing signs of producing widespread ignorance and fanaticism. In some countries (like France), they increasingly limit the public financing of research to that which can immediately translate into the politics of economic growth. Subjugating research to immediate economic interests reduces the role of research, rendering it a mere tool for governance, for the repetition of an existing framework of social activity. As cognitive workers are forced into precarity, they are also denied the possibility of deciding the scope of their own research. This obviously reduces the creativity invested by cognitarians in their work, as well as the pace of innovation and progress in technology.
In the long run, this trend obliterates the progressive features of capitalism. As the cost of labor becomes so low that exploiting the physical force of a worker costs less than looking for some technological replacement, the push toward innovation slows to a halt. The interest in immediate profit prevails over the long-term development of productive force. Notwithstanding the shortsighted opinions prevailing in the field of neoliberal economics, a decrease in labor cost suggest that the progressive impulse of capitalism is fading; capitalism becomes a factor of de-civilization, of intellectual and technological regression.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 