A. Science under the domination of monopolies

Today’s policy about Higher Education did not come as a suprise, but a climax of the long capitalistic misappropriation of science for the amplification of political domination and profitability of capital. Science in capitalism is in an accelerated line of subsumption under the control of few big monopolistic enterprises, directly or through governmental organisations. In USA and Japan, enterprises have, for a long time, had Universities in their hands directly. Enterprises set governmental allowances, give jobs to graduates, can make known or extinguish high scientists, even, and they formulate results of research according to their profits.

Reactive reformation of Higher Education in EU rises from capital’s need, in conditions of late crisis, to organise University education and research in a more profitable way, in the USA model. This project is already in a ‘’good’’ way in several universities of the EU, as in the large traditional universities of the United Kingdom, Cambridge and Oxford. A year ago, Cambridge proceeded to the commendation of an enterprise with MIT (Massachusetts’s Institution of Technology) aiming at ”change” of the character of enterprises through research and training of businessmen of the future’’

• Antisocial utilisation of science

Today’s level of development of science does not fit into the tight limits of capitalistic domination. Epistemic-technical progress, more than ever, impels the club direction of social production to a scientific planning as a precondition of its progress. Capitalism cannot any more come up with science that he used to produce. Capitalism disfigures science and becomes an obstacle to its progress, trying to subdue it under its advantage.

Developments in the science area uncover how dangerous this is, for humanity’s future, the continuity of domination of a socioeconomic system, that expended long ago its progressive stores and has already entered a period of ‘’crisis’’ and ‘’reaction in every line’’.

Corruption of the character and assignment of a science that is forced to serve profit is obvious through the enormous consequences of its application. Utilisation of science for the amplification of labor, crazy cows, ozone hole, greenhouse phenomenon, extreme weather phenomena, utilisation of the human genome, Echelon system which gives the ability to imperialists to police the whole planet, bombs that dispel death hundred of years after their use and a sequence of other revelations of current years, prove that science under the control of monopolies is transformed into a scary weapon and continuous threat for humanity’s future.

Counterfeiting of the social assignment of science emerges all over, even in less painful issues. It is known, for example, that multinational enterprises adopt the named ‘’embodied unprofitability’’ of their products in their researching policy. That is, talented businessmen do not deal with the improvement of product quality but with how they will ensure their disaster, so as the customer is forced to buy a new one. This fact emerges obviously in the spare parts of industry that have a certain expiration date. Even these magnificent achievements in Information Science, just like the Internet that came into our life and is supposed to facilitate it, are transformed in the limits of capitalism to a medium of an even harder utilisation of workers, control and spying. Mobile telephony offers the opportunity to the colossus of the telecommunication industry to meet every movement of their users.

In the era of science and a supposed society of knowledge, a minimum percentage of knowledge is used for the actual development of living conditions. The major percentage is used for the amplification and accumulation of wealth in less and less hands while ignoring the destruction of nature and humanity. As a consequence, indeed, of the rise in aggressiveness of imperialism and the tough competition of great imperialistic forces for global domination, though the pretense of ‘’communist threat’’ has vanished , the militarization of research goes on.

• Imperialism, a brake in science’s development

Antisocial utilisation of science, although important, is not the only consequence of its monopolistic direction. Under the glow of multi-advertised successes, like the internet, mobile telephony etc., is hidden the fact that the major percentage of stores of knowledge remain unexploited, because it is not commercially exploitable or because monopolistic profits block it. A characteristic example concerns the widespread recent use of fluorine lamps. Principals that rule illumination with Fluorescence were known before even glow lamps appeared. Though, it took forty years until monopolistic profits allowed their use. But, even today, in scientific circles, there is a discussion over the delay of research into the production of ‘’clear’’ nuclear energy by fusion, not fission, and over research into the promotion of alternative forms of energy, so as to avoid the naturally destructive consequences of the burning of hydrocarbon. Which other more tragic proof for the inhibitory role of capitalism in scientific progress, from the one of consolidating parts of human genome by several private enterprises of biotechnology, aiming at exclusiveness in commercial utilisation? These corporations, based on capitalistic laws, can stop anyone who may want to continue research, depending on their searching results. Recently, it became known that an American company of biotechnology imposed a halt on the research of a team of English scientists into breast cancer. Also, the last action of 36 pharmaceutical multinational companies, that ended up in the courts, involving the government of South Africa and led to the suspension of cheap production of drugs for AIDS, in a country that is infested by the deadly virus, assures the tough reality which is modulated by the monopolistic utilisation of science. How counterfeit and hypocritical this may seem, in these conditions, the interest that the EU supposedly shows about the propagation of the results of the research and cooperation of University and Researching Institutions for the common good!

Competition for profit has often the result of many researches being conducted two and more times by teams that work secretly from one another, leading to precious scientific work and resources being wasted, where they could be disposed for other social purposes. These remarks must not lead to devaluation of the need and ability of capitalistic system to revolt media of production. A revolution that reveals the scary power of science to release humanity by toil and desolution, when it is liberated from capitalistic production relations.

• Class of science

The future, though, of science is affected by the class destinations and hierarchies of research. The same is also affected by the strengthening of dominant ideology. In social sciences this effect is almost total but in natural ones it is smaller and relevant. By the experiment and its technical applications, natural sciences undergo an odd system of ‘’filters’’ which purifies them more and more by elements of subjective, non-scientific character. Nevertheless, the researcher’s apprehension over the world participates always in defining the direction of its work. Class effect on natural sciences is expressed mainly in defining basic acknowledgements, conditions and notions, and in interpreting results as well. Social consciousness of the era, dominant ideology soaks science and, then, bears from the ideas that have put in it, vested by its authority. (In this characteristic way, quantum mechanics was used to reject determinism, the existence of general laws in nature and to justify the existence of a superior spirit. The theory of the big bang which, according to its supporters, universe was created, is used in our times so as to shoot down the materialistic dialectical principle about the unfading of material and to insert cognitive thought).

Generally, we can tell that the myth of progress of science depends mainly on social and economic factors. Nevertheless, obstacles in the progress of science may also be the ideology, the domination of static ideas that tries to maintain the existing situation, and the attachment to standards. Brain’s advances, products of imagination, perception, intelligence of a scientist who can understand in a bigger level the most pioneer messages and scientific achievements of its era, is the source of most remarkable conquests of science, that presuppose accumulated experience and deep knowledge.

• Scientific research nowadays

Extended reference to class destinations and the content of research in a text about Higher Education has particular importance, in a period when research, absent till the end of 19th century from Universities, has come to the point, because of its great importance, of shading today the primary due of Higher Education, namely the instruction. Though connection between research and institution is the most important presupposition of Higher Education, the biggest and greatest departments of researching activity are today outside Universities. Big monopolistic units and imperialistic organisations offer their own research centers and laboratories, so as to conduct research in safety, discipline and control conditions of scientists, rather than suppress and encrypt social consequences of their job. Criterion about offering parts of their research in Universities is mainly the reduction of expenses which in that way are transferred in the state.

But even research that is charged on Universities is gathered in laboratories or Institutions (as Researching University Institutions that though technically are under university control are in fact under the control of monopolies or governments. As time passes, the secrecy of research is compromised and control of each direction is more and more detached from its creators.

Concentration of research in beneficial and controlled Universities of the countries of ‘’directorate’’ aims at the development of its monopolistic control. This fact does not exclude Universities with subordinate role to the apportionment of science, like certain Universities of our country (Kapodistrian, Aristotelian, Technical University, Universities of Patra and Crete), to take on small segmental parts of research, that are conducted for industrial colossuses, under especial safety standards of avoidance of ‘’industrial spy’’. The majority of researching programs that take on Greek Universities are programs of applied research of middle and low level, like ‘’competitive’’ programs of E.U. Occasionally there is an opportunity in such Universities to conduct promoted research aiming at the detachment of another benefit of general importance, like the diffusion of result of the research in public opinion, or for reasons of political balance.

Generally, though University research in our country is at a low level of development in comparison with other countries of E.U., not because of the low level of our scientists, but because of the subordinate position of the country in division of labor of E.U. Characteristic is that 75% of expenses for the research in E.U., is gathered in the four powerful imperialistic countries (Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom). Greece has the smaller percentage of researchers in proportion to its population and the smaller state financing of research (0,51% of gross national product), at great variance from other countries. This fact generally affects the level of our university education and instruction.

Inequality in science is the product of a general uneven development of capitalism. No illusions must be fed that in the limits of capitalistic ‘’competition’’, our country and Universities may cover the distance that divides them from famous foreign Universities. On the contrary, this distance will be growing as the embodiment of our country in E.U. will deepen and as the rules that monopolistic benefits set for the organisation of science will become tighter.