Capitalism is a way of organising economic relations based on private control over the means of production, including farms, factories and knowledge. The 'private control' here usually refers to control at the level of an enterprise. The key to capitalist control used to be ownership, but now control usually rests in the hands of top management, who run large corporations which are structured in the form of bureaucracy.
Capitalism as a system involves some form of economic competition between enterprises in a market. What drives the capitalist system is the struggle for corporate survival and profit. Individual capitalists have little choice in their behaviour if they are to prosper.
Contemporary capitalism is strongly regulated by the power of states. The more powerful states have a wide range of controls over corporations: taxation, trade regulations, worker legislation, consumer safety and environmental regulations, etc. Much of the activity of the state serves to strengthen the capitalist system, for example by regulating government expenditure to reduce the impact of booms and depressions and by providing social welfare which reduces the likelihood of radicalisation of workers' movements. Small states have less room to manoeuvre in the face of large transnational corporations. But states - especially the stronger ones - are not simply tools of capitalism. Quite a few state policies are undertaken which are fiercely opposed by most capitalists and, more importantly, are not in the interests of the capitalist class. Examples are some takeovers of sections of industry by the state itself, and some wars.
In state socialist countries, the economic system is controlled by the same state elites who run the state, namely communist party leaders. One of the main differences between state socialism and capitalism is that in the latter there is a significant system of power in the sphere of large scale politics and economics which is not based on the power of the state. In other words, capitalism provides an alternative base for power than the state. This is important for higher education.
Capitalism also adapts to other power systems. Patriarchy, for example, by keeping many women at home or in gender-segregated occupations, inhibits the operation of a free market in labour power which would be functional for capitalism. Another example is the internal bureaucracy of most firms which serves to stabilise internal control at the expense of inhibiting innovation, maintaining inefficient work practices and procedures, and not responding to market shifts.
Aside from a few isolated instances, capitalists do not own or directly control institutions of higher education. There is no Exxon University. (The exception that proves the rule is McDonald's Hamburger University in Chicago.) Many corporations do provide funding to higher education, but this provides only a small fraction of the total funding. Capitalist influence on higher education is mainly indirect.
The most important influence of capitalism on higher education is the existence of the capitalist system itself. Because it is a major system of power in society, people and social structures adapt to capitalism. I describe here a range of influences exerted by capitalism on staffing, research, teaching and academic knowledge.
Before beginning, it is worth noting some of the limits on capitalist influence. First, most capitalists and supporters of capitalism do not think in terms of promoting capitalism, at least not in the framework used by most theorists of capitalism. Individual corporate managers may think in terms of free enterprise, serving the community, making profits, or simply doing their regular job. Few of them take a long term view on the capitalist system and how to promote it. The capitalist system drives individual capitalists to look after their own interests, even though this may be dysfunctional for capitalism as a whole. This is why the state can sometimes - far from always - serve capitalism better than the capitalists.
Second, capitalists are not homogeneous. There are many conflicting interests. They have different concerns about education.
Third, interactions by corporations with higher education are not always translated into a major effect, or even an effect at all. For example, I did my PhD at Sydney University in what was then officially called the Daily Telegraph Department of Theoretical Physics. The Daily Telegraph - a tabloid newspaper not noted for the depth of its science reporting - initially provided some money to the department. The main return to the newspaper was the naming of the department. The Daily Telegraph never had much impact on research or teaching in the department. Even when corporations do apply pressure on higher education, there are many sources of resistance, including the desires of workers, parents and teachers. Still, it must be admitted, the department was named after the capitalist Daily Telegraph and not after the Daily Worker.
Fourth, capitalists may act counter-productively. There is a lot of ignorance involved in the intermeshing of the power systems of capitalism and higher education.
With these reservations, it is time to turn to the varieties of capitalist influence on higher education.
Inside channels. This involves capitalists lobbying or sitting on bodies that decide higher educational policy. For example, capitalists are among those who lobby government bureaucrats concerning decisions about new faculties in universities or the allocation of money between the elite and the more vocational sectors of higher education. Another key role is that of top capitalists on governing bodies of universities.
Public channels. From time to time, certain individuals promote the 'capitalist cause' in relation to higher education. This may take the form of attacks on the irrelevance of academic work to 'practical problems' or 'the national interest' (in other words, corporate interests), or attacks on the left-wing bias of academics and student radicals. These attacks may come from journalists in the pro-capitalist press, or involve talks (and the reporting of talks) by leading corporate executives.
The use of such public channels does not necessarily indicate a strong corporate influence: it often signifies a lack of influence through inside channels.
Research funding. In certain disciplines, corporate grants are the major basis for research. From the corporate point of view, this is known as 'hire education'. For example, researchers studying pest control can expect to receive extensive funding from chemical companies. This provides a major incentive to investigate problems compatible with corporate objectives - such as the comparative effectiveness of different types or ways of applying pesticides - rather than looking at solutions that don't generate comparable profits, such as using biological or mechanical means of pest control, or diversifying crops and tolerating a certain loss.
In some cases corporate research can lead to corporate ownership of knowledge produced by academics, usually through the medium of patents. For example, much research in genetic engineering is subject to commercial agreements of various sorts.
Direct capitalist funding mainly comes from particular segments of business, especially the largest corporations. You will not see many hairdressers or small growers stalking the corridors of academia offering or seeking favours.
Job opportunities. Corporations provide a large proportion of jobs, and this greatly affects the role of higher education. In areas such as accountancy, commerce and engineering, the curriculum is often strongly oriented to the requirements of employers. This is a response, in a decentralised educational system, to the movement of students to those institutions which provide the best training and credentials for obtaining corporate jobs.
Job opportunities are important for staff too. When academic staff know that their prospects for corporate employment are likely to reflect the relevance of their research and their courses to corporate interests, they are less likely to adopt research and teaching perspectives hostile to those interests. In many areas there is a process of personnel exchange: Academic staff take up corporate posts, and those with 'industrial experience' may be given preference in obtaining academic jobs. (Experience in mothering, for example, doesn't give an equivalent advantage.) Once again, this applies especially in areas where academic work has a clear and direct relevance to particular corporate sectors, such as engineering.
Topics for teaching, problems for solution. Capitalism shapes a great deal of 'the way things are', including buildings, jobs and television culture. It also establishes the general panorama of ideas and problems from which syllabuses are drawn and research problems picked. This is the main way in which capitalist influence penetrates into the ostensibly pure and abstract subjects such as physics and philosophy. For these and other subjects, the existence of capitalism as a backdrop provides the illusion that subject matter is being taught or researched mainly because it is intellectually central, since the influence of capitalism on the perception of intellectual merit in a field is indirect rather than overt as in the case of direct funding or job opportunities.
Economics provides a good example. Since capitalism is the dominant economic system, it comes to seem self-evident that the issues of concern in the discipline of economics involve modelling or managing a market economy. Looking at workers' control, for example, is completely outside the mainstream of academic economics. There are few research grants or job prospects to be found in looking at how workers rather than capitalists can control the economic process. Partly as a result of this, the academic conception of economics leaves out workers' control entirely, or at most relegates it to a fringe topic.
In doing economic research, the prevailing set of ideas, methods and problems - namely the research paradigm - thus is conditioned by the existence of capitalism as the dominant economic system. Paradigms in other fields are also influenced by capitalism. In agriculture, the dominant paradigm includes management of large-scale monocultures, with production geared for large-scale corporate processing, distribution and sales. Research in geology includes an orientation to the earth as a source of minerals to be exploited, an orientation compatible with the interest of the mining industries. Paradigms for most of the engineering disciplines are also geared towards corporate interests.
The orientation of academic teaching and research to guiding ideas and outstanding problems which reflect capitalist interests is only part of the story. Academic knowledge can be useful to capitalists if it helps them solve practical problems. But also important is the function of academic knowledge in legitimating capitalist arrangements. Neoclassical economics does not provide a very useful way of understanding the reality of capitalist economics. The theory doesn't adequately treat the role of the state, economic exploitation of the Third World, the massive influence of oligopoly, the manipulation of consumer demand, the role of manager-worker struggles, and the harmful consequences of the pursuit of profit. What use is such a theory? What it does do is provide a legitimation of actually existing capitalist economics, by downgrading the nasty side of reality and instead erecting an elegant intellectual scaffold including the concepts of the maximum efficiency of a free market and the economic inefficiency of political redistribution of the economic product.
In this case there is an awkward trade off between the advantages to capitalism of an academic discipline which leads to practical understanding and research, and one which provides legitimation. The problem is that researchers and students believe in the tenets of neoclassical economics. Then they enter jobs in industry or government. The result on many occasions is policies which are counterproductive for the capitalist system, as in the continuing hostility of many elites in the United States to government regulation of the economic system. Another contending influence on the nature of academic paradigms is the self-interest of the academics themselves. If they develop sets of ideas which are completely in the thrall of capitalists, this does little for their position in academia. To build up a disciplinary power base, academics need a system of knowledge which they can control. This leads to an academic preference for intellectually difficult or esoteric knowledge systems, which can be used to defend against interlopers from other disciplines and also against popular understanding and exposure.
The mathematical foundation of neo-classical economics does this admirably, and econometrics carries the process one step further. The understanding of the economic system may be no better for the addition of spurious mathematical rigour, but the status of economists is greatly aided. Mathematical economics cannot be readily used by just anybody; corporations and governments often find it necessary to hire academics as consultants.
In many cases a symbiotic relationship develops: academic knowledge is attuned to capitalist interests, but the academic knowledge develops so that capitalists are dependent on academics for legitimation or practical application.
It is important not to overestimate the value of academic knowledge for legitimating capitalism. Capitalism structures people's lives and beliefs, and sophisticated intellectual justifications are seldom all that essential. For example, academic justifications are not important to the survival of mass advertising.
'Practical' applications of academic knowledge can be just as dubious at times. Academics have their hobby horses - such as the notorious regression analyses used in the social sciences - and some capitalists are foolish enough to ride them. There is no reason to believe that capitalists, who are often seen by leftists as perspicacious and ruthless in their drive for profits, always end up exploiting academia. Sometimes it is the other way around.
Yet another contending influence in the struggle over the nature of academic knowledge is groups such as workers, the unemployed, women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and the elderly. Such groups certainly have an interest in an economics or an engineering which would provide practical solutions to problems affecting them, or which would legitimate social perspectives that promote their interests. It is testimony to the comparatively larger influence of capitalism on academia that teaching and research oriented towards such groups is intellectually marginal. When it is introduced at all, it is usually considered low status or even unprofessional. This marginal intellectual position reflects the limited control over political and economic resources in society by these groups.
While most academics have little to gain in terms of grants or jobs by dealing with problems from the perspective of powerless groups, academia does provide a haven for some teaching and research in these areas. As I will describe later, capitalism is far from all powerful in academia.
Socialisation. Students who participate in higher education are encouraged to adopt a certain set of attitudes to knowledge, work and life. In other words, they are socialised into a particular way of viewing the world. For example, it is seldom explicitly taught that the best way to get ahead is to express opinions which are congenial to the boss. Most academics would say they try to encourage critical thinking. But conformism-for-success may be the message gained from teachers who are more responsive to students who support the teacher's views, or who provide a limited, stimulating but respectful challenge. This is an example of the so-called 'hidden curriculum', which sometimes is not so hidden.
There is a large body of literature that argues that schooling helps to recreate the class structure of capitalist society. This happens when working class pupils are encouraged to adopt attitudes and to acquire knowledge which prepares them psychologically and intellectually for working class jobs, while the children of the middle and upper classes are primed for professional and managerial jobs. There is no doubt that this is what happens to a considerable extent. But it is too much to claim that there is a detailed correspondence between the class structure of society and the socialisation role of schools. There are important areas of breakdown in the 'ideal' functioning of the system from the point of view of capitalism, including the reinforcement of working class cultures of organised resistance to authority, the encouragement of attitudes towards knowledge which give it value for purposes other than work, and involvement in social action by teachers and pupils.
At the tertiary level, these conflicting tendencies are exaggerated. The most important way that higher education helps to reproduce the class structure is via the very existence of formal training to produce an educated elite. Those obtaining academic certificates thereby increase their earning capacity, and to the extent that they accept these benefits - by joining the workforce in more privileged positions - they have thereby helped to reproduce the class structure.
But there are conflicting interests involved which make 'socialisation' problematic. Many academics are not enthusiasts of the power of corporations. Their orientation is just as likely to be towards the state and the rational administration of the capitalist system. But more importantly, higher education involves some deeper induction into cultures of knowledge, which sometimes includes critical examination of knowledge claims. This leads some students to question established beliefs about the social system. Furthermore, the students who perform best in their studies are successful in academia - not in business. Their talent lies in their ability to use knowledge, not capital.
Admittedly, corporations depend to an ever-increasing degree on the application of knowledge for producing products, manufacturing demand, managing the workforce and negotiating the political system. Nevertheless, the hidden curriculum of academia, with its implicit valuation of the power of knowledge, contains a fundamental challenge to power based on control over capital.
In any case, the power of socialisation has been overrated. To a considerable extent, students self-select themselves for courses of study which are congenial with their prior belief systems. Those thinking of a career in business are more likely to study commerce, while those critical of business are more likely to study sociology. Furthermore, many students just attend classes, obtain their degrees and continue on, relatively unaffected in their fundamental attitudes and aspirations. There are after all many other competing influences, from families to the mass media.
Academic freedom. The right claimed by academics to pursue intellectual investigations without fear of offending vested interests is essentially a claim for professional autonomy. In practice, 'academic freedom' is class-biased. A pro-capitalist stance is seen as unexceptional, whereas a pro-communist stance is seen as a marginal case for protection by academic freedom. Untold numbers of scholars have been blocked from appointments and promotions because of their left-wing views, and at times wholesale sackings occur. This is the case in capitalist societies. Under state socialism, explicit pro-capitalism is a severe impediment to an academic or any other career. The point here is that capitalism, where it is dominant, shapes the prevailing understanding of academic freedom.
Commodification of academic value. A very important belief system associated with capitalism is individualism - the belief that individuals are responsible for their own success or failure - and the associated ideas of competition and natural hierarchy. All of this sits in a society of commodities: people produce and consume goods and services, including themselves.
Does the rise of the commodity form under capitalism influence academia? One could argue that the increased emphasis on careerism by academics, using the currency of degrees and publications, reflects the influence of the commodity form generally, as well as the increased role of direct government funding of individual academics. Rather than adopting an intellectual commitment to the legendary community of scholars, most academics think and act in terms of an individual career.
Likewise, the trend towards providing a smorgasbord of bite-size courses for students, plus a proliferation of degrees, diplomas and certificates, can be seen as a symptom of the commodification of credential knowledge. Rather than the course of study being narrowly specified by the academic guild, course offerings more and more resemble a supermarket.
It seems plausible to attribute these developments in part to the influence of capitalism. Precisely how the influence operates, if in fact it does, remains to be clarified. In any case, the influence of capitalism on the organisation of higher education is not all that distinctive, considering that tertiary education under state socialism is structured very similarly.
Bertell Ollman, a prominent Marxist scholar, was offered the chairmanship of the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland in 1978. When news of the impending appointment became known outside the university, vocal protest was made by numerous Maryland state legislators. Public opposition also came from several newspaper columnists and from some members of the university's governing body. The result was that the outgoing president of the university failed to confirm Ollman's appointment, and the incoming president rejected it. This decision was confirmed in a later court challenge. The Ollman case illustrates many of the strengths and weaknesses of capitalist influence on academia.
The United States is the heartland of relatively unbridled capitalist influence. It is the only major capitalist society never to have a significant communist or social democratic political party. The trade unions are weak and largely pawns of the corporations. Capitalist influence in the state is extensive, and beliefs in individualism and 'free enterprise' are widespread and deep-seated. Repeatedly in its history, anti-capitalist social movements have suffered severe repression, most notably in this century after the two world wars.
The power of capital in the United States has had a big impact on academia. Thorstein Veblen's 1918 study of the role of businessmen on university governing bodies is still relevant today, and indeed only in the United States does the analysis of direct capitalist control over higher education begin to make sense. In the 1940s and 1950s the right-wing purge of cultural institutions, part of a much wider process, severely reduced the profile of radicals in universities. For many years Paul Baran was the only visible Marxist economist in a US university, and he was severely harassed.
As a result of the conservative social climate, academic disciplines in the US tend to be much more supportive of the capitalist system than in other countries. The power of the functionalist paradigm in the social sciences and the marginalisation of the radical critique of science are two examples.
The rise or resurgence of social movements in the 1950s and 1960s - the black movement, the antiwar movement, the women's movement, the environmental movement - provided a major challenge to established social structures. Most directly relevant to higher education was the student movement. These various challenges to the existence and uses of elite power led to a considerable freeing up of the intellectual scene. Within the universities, a small but significant number of Marxists gained positions and were able to undertake research and teaching in areas relevant to their interests. (Many others have been blocked from appointments and promotions, or been sacked. The attack on leftists never really stopped after the 1950s; only the intensity changed.)
It is significant that some Marxists have been able to obtain positions in higher education, including a few prominent positions. An explicitly Marxist journalist at a major US newspaper is hard to imagine. Marxists in government would have to keep a low profile, while in managerial positions in corporations the prospects for survival are minuscule.
Academia is built on empires of knowledge, and thus provides a stronger niche for Marxists because Marxism has a well-developed intellectual framework. Marxists can demonstrate their academic prowess, and indeed many of their journals are more intellectually high-powered and esoteric than their liberal competitors. In part, Marxist intellectualism is a survival response, affirming a strong commitment to academic culture. It often has the disadvantage of becoming separated from political practice.
Ollman is a good example of the new breed of Marxist academics. His work is widely cited and highly respected.
The selection committee at the University of Maryland recommended Ollman unanimously over the other candidates for the headship. At the level of evaluation of scholarship, anti-Marxism did not seem to play much of a role. The opposition to the appointment came from outside of scholarly channels. It was spearheaded by legislators, conservative newspaper columnists and members of the university's governing body, and pursued by influential graduates of the university. The main tactic used - aside from expressing public outrage - was to apply pressure on the university's president, the chief executive officer. He received some 340 letters of protest about the appointment.
Many of the letters of protest were from businessmen, including some presidents of corporations. Nevertheless, the key opponents of Ollman's appointment were influential politicians and professionals who supported capitalism and who saw it as their duty to prevent a capable critic of capitalism obtaining a key position in the academic hierarchy. Ollman's appointment would not have been a threat to the economic basis of capitalism, but rather to its cultural support system. The most effective attacks on the appointment came from figures from within that cultural support system.
It is important to note that the attack was not mounted on academic grounds. To do so, it would have been necessary to convince or pressure the members of the academic appointments committee. Rather than the attack being mounted through intellectual channels within the academic discipline, it utilised the alternative power system of the academic hierarchy.
This example illustrates how in many cases the power of capitalists to directly intervene in higher education to promote their ends is limited. Indeed, if, for example, the opposition to Ollman had been publicly tied to a particular corporation, this might well have been counterproductive for the attack. Corporate intervention would have been seen as a blatant violation of academic freedom. It was vitally important that the blocking of the appointment be seen as an academic decision. Hence the pressure on the president of the university, the person on the inside most likely to be responsive to outside pressures.
The influence of capitalism on higher education is sometimes direct, but the more important influence is through wider social hegemony. The Ollman case is unusual precisely because an explicitly political attack was mounted to oppose a Marxist. In the normal course of events, such an appointment would seldom be considered, since appointment committees are aware of the possible ramifications of controversial appointments.
There is also a considerable chance factor involved. If Ollman's appointment had gone through before potential opponents had realised there was something to oppose, he might now be presiding over the department with no one thinking much about it. Leakages of information, personal antagonisms and organisational quirks have a lot to do with whether a Marxist academic is supported, tolerated or suppressed.
Capitalist hegemony is far from complete. There are many challenges to capitalist interests, and most of the important intellectual challenges come from academics. Academia provides a number of supports for the development of anti-capitalist challenges. In Ollman's case, he and his supporters were able to utilise academic merit and the principles of due process and academic freedom in their struggle against the blocking of the appointment. Perhaps only in the United States, where the legal system contains its own particular set of biases, would it have been so easy for a judge to rule against Ollman.
How can academics and academic institutions nullify or resist capitalist influence - assuming that they want to?
* Academic neutrality. Academics in this stand commit themselves to intellectual values, and claim value-neutrality in regard to political and economic issues. Neutrality clearly provides a possible basis for limiting capitalist influence on higher education.
In practice, many values do penetrate even those academic disciplines which are ostensibly neutral. Because of the pervasiveness of capitalist social relations in the wider society, many academic disciplines become oriented to capitalist interests. The claim to neutrality then becomes a smokescreen for the capitalist influence.
Closely related to academic neutrality is the stance of pluralism: several different viewpoints are studied or examined. The difficulty with neutrality via pluralism is that the reservoir of viewpoints is strongly influenced by prevailing social arrangements. 'Utopias' such as workers' control are seldom included in an equal fashion. Likewise, accepting research funds from a plurality of sources sounds fine in theory, but in practice means an acquiescence to the interests of those with the most money.
* Commitment to anti-capitalist struggle. This stand more effectively negates capitalist influence, at least at the intellectual level. It can run into difficulties because of the shortage of research funds or the antagonism of students. But more importantly, explicit rejection of a higher commitment to purely intellectual goals weakens the position of an anti-capitalist academic. The academic's scholarship is then seen as tainted and inferior, and this creates numerous problems in obtaining appointments, undertaking research and establishing courses.
At the institutional level, an anti-capitalist stand is not viable except for small private operations, such as ones linked to trade unions.
* State socialism. State socialism requires the abolition of all substantial capitalist social relations. Hence the influence of capitalism on higher education is largely removed, except through connections with the international academic community.
David Dickson, The new politics of science (New York: Pantheon, 1984), chapter 2. The increasing linkages between US universities and industry in the 1980s, turning knowledge into a commodity.
Janice Newson and Howard Buchbinder, The university means business: universities, corporations and academic work (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1988). A call to debate and challenge the increasing orientation of Canadian universities to business.
James Ridgeway, The closed corporation: American universities in crisis (New York: Random House, 1968). An exposé of political and economic 'abuses' by academic staff and administrations in the service of government and business.
Upton Sinclair, The goose-step: a study of American education (Pasadena, CA: The author, 1923). A hard-hitting, fascinating study of US universities, attacking them for service to the rich and powerful.
David N. Smith, Who rules the universities? An essay in class analysis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974). An argument that business elites control university governing bodies, which have ultimate control over higher education.
Lawrence C. Soley, Leasing the ivory tower: the corporate takeover of academia (Boston: South End Press, 1995). US corporate funding of US universities and its effect on research directions and scholarly independence.
Michael Useem, 'Business segments and corporate relations with U.S. universities', Social Problems, vol. 29, no. 2, December 1981, pp. 129-141. How the dominant stratum of business forms relationships with elite universities.
Thorstein Veblen, The higher learning in America: a memorandum on the conduct of universities by business (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1918). The classic critique of capitalism influence on higher education via university governing bodies.
There are numerous studies treating the relation between capitalism and schooling, including the following:
Michael W. Apple, Education and Power (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982). How contestation affects the process of social and economic reproduction.
Michael W. Apple (editor), Cultural and economic reproduction in education: essays on class, ideology and the state (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982). Marxian categories used to analyse education.
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in capitalist America: educational reform and the contradictions of economic life (New York: Basic Books, 1976). How schooling reproduces the class structure and serves capitalism.
Martin Carnoy, Education as cultural imperialism (New York: Longman, 1974). Western education is seen as an oppressive part of the capitalist system which has been imposed on the Third World.
Roger Dale, Geoff Esland, Ross Fergusson and Madeleine MacDonald (eds), Education and the state. Volume I: Schooling and the national interest. Volume II: Politics, patriarchy and practice (Lewes, Sussex: Falmer Press, 1981). Mostly Marxian categories used to analyse education.
Roger Dale, Geoff Esland and Madeleine MacDonald (eds), Schooling and capitalism: a sociological reader (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976). Mostly Marxian categories used to analyse education.
Michael B. Katz, Class, bureaucracy, and schools: the illusion of educational change in America (New York: Praeger, 1971). Traces the development of educational bureaucracies and their relation to class structure.
Joel H. Spring, Education and the rise of the corporate state (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972). An analysis of the history of schools in the United States, seeing them as an instrument of social control.
Michael Young and Geoff Whitty (eds), Society, state and schooling: readings on the possibilities for radical education (Ringmer: Falmer Press, 1977 ) .
On the influence of capitalism on research see the journal Science for the People and Hilary Rose and Steven Rose (eds), The radicalisation of science and The political economy of science (London: Macmillan, 1976).
On the Ollman case see Bertell Ollman, Class struggle is the name of the game: true confessions of a Marxist businessman (New York: Morrow, 1983).