A Marxist Critique of the Ruined University

Szadkowski and Krzeski offer a compelling reappraisal of critique as a mechanism to liberate intellectual work. By linking critique to how knowledge is structured and commodified, they help us transcend reductionist narratives of a crisis-ridden University. Prioritising ontological renewal, they embrace the political and the common, enriching our collective ways of knowing the world as a movement. Pivoting around academic and student protests in Poland, the book enables us to imagine spaces and times of critical hope that resist the capitalist subjugation of intellectual activity to knowledge production.

Richard Hall, Professor of Education and Technology, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

In the century since Antonio Gramsci new works in the Marxist tradition have made only modest contributions to social thought: the combined result of the savage repression in the West of the dangerous revolutionary ideas, plus the collapse in the East into jacobin conspiracy and dogmatism. If a living, vibrant Marxism had been part of the twentieth century mainstream then much catastrophe would have been averted. Now the drive for capital accumulation, sovereign individualism and rampant nationalism have brought us to the brink of ecological disaster and World War III. Into the void step two emerging scholars, Krystian Szadkowski and Jakub Krzeski with an original Marxist critique of higher education and the common good. There is hope in this development, vital resources for reflection, discussion and action.

Simon Marginson, Professor of Higher Education at the Universities of Bristol and Oxford, UK,

Honorary Professor at Tsinghua University in China, and Joint Editor in Chief of the journal 'Higher Education'