ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on social movements and struggles coalescing around the neo-liberal restructuring of higher education (HE). HE has increasingly become a battleground. There has been extensive discussion of the numerous ways in which universities and HE are being restructured according to neo-liberal logic. These debates have been wide ranging. For example, many have directed their arguments against the increased precariousness of academic labour others the increased anxiety associated with academic working conditions and the introduction of metric systems and an audit culture that commodifies the outputs of academic work. During 2008, protestors in Italy organized the first mobilization against austerity measures related to the 2007–8 financial crisis. This movement became known as the ‘anomalous wave’ and developed into the largest in Italy in thirty years. The concept of the ‘general intellect’ is introduced by Marx in a passage in the Grundrisse commonly referred to as the ‘fragment on machines’.
