Indebtedness is already a site of struggle, but until now, at least in the US, it is a struggle that has taken place silently, under the radar, articulated through hidden forms of resistance, escape, and defaults, rather than an open confrontation. The default rate on federal student loans is continuing to rise, especially at for-profit colleges where it has topped 11.6%.
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A key step towards it is an education campaign about the nature of debt as a political instrument of discipline, dispelling the assumption of individual responsibility and demonstrating its collective dimension. The moralism that has been accumulated over the question of indebtedness must be exposed. Acquiring a degree is not a luxury but a necessity in a context where for years education has been proclaimed at the highest institutional levels as the fault line between prosperity and a life of poverty and subordination. But if education is a must for future employment, it means that employers are the beneficiaries of it. From this viewpoint, student debt is a work issue that unions should take on, and not academic unions alone. Teachers too should join a debt abolition movement, for they are on the frontline: they must save appearances and pretend that for the university, cultural formation is of the essence. Yet, they have to accommodate to profitability requirements, like oversized classes, the gutting of departments, overworked students, carrying at times two or three jobs. Debt is also a unifying demand; it is everybody’s condition in the working class worldwide. Credit card debt, mortgage debt, medical debt: across the world, for decades now, every cut in people’s wages and entitlements has been made in the name of a debt crisis. Debt, therefore, is a universal signifier and a terrain on which a re-composition of the global work force can begin.
