marxist view on education

Marxist Perspective on Education

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Key Takeaways

Marx and Engels themselves wrote little about education. Nonetheless, there is a long history of Marxists who have argued that education can both enforce and undermine capitalism.
Sociologists Bowes and Gintis argue that education serves three main purposes: the reproduction of class inequality, its legitimization, and the creation of a compliant capitalist workforce.
Althusser and his successor, Bordieu, believed that education served to benefit the ruling class both by spreading capitalist ideology and transmitting cultural capital, giving more legitimacy to those in the know.
Critics have pointed out that those “exploited” by the education system are aware of their status, and do not blindly accept the values of educational institutions.

interior of a traditional school classroom with wooden floor and furniture

Marxist Views on Education

Although Marx and Engels wrote little on education, Marxism has educational implications that have been dissected by many. In essence, Marxists believe that education can both reproduce capitalism and have the potential to undermine it.

However, in the current system, education works mainly to maintain capitalism and reproduce social inequality (Cole, 2019).

According to Marx and Engels, the transformation of society will come about through class struggle and actions — such as the actions that the working-class proletariat can take to disempower the ruling bourgeoisie.

Marx and Engels emphasize the role of the spread of “enlightened” opinion throughout society as a way of creating class change.

Nonetheless, Marx and Engels both believed that fostering a full knowledge of what conditions under and what it would mean to overthrow capitalism was necessary to enact basic structural change.

Marx believed that the bourgeoisie failed to offer a real education; instead, education is used to spread bourgeois morals (Marx, 1847). Marx and Engles also, however, believed that workers are educated by doing labor and that education in schools should even be combined with labor.

The theorists felt that this combination of education with labor would increase awareness of the exploitative nature of capitalism.

Marxists were interested in two related issues regarding education under capitalism: firstly, how and to what extent education reproduces capitalism, and, secondly, the ways in which education in capitalist societies could undermine capitalism.

Bowes and Gintes (1976)

Bowes and Gintes (1976) were the two sociologists most associated with the Traditional Marxist perspective in education.

In the view of Marxist, educational systems in capitalist systems perform three functions of the elite, or bourgeoisie class: reproducing class inequality, legitimizing class inequality, and working in the interests of capitalist employers.

The Reproduction of Class Inequality

The process of reproducing class inequality works like this: Middle-class parents use their cultural and material capital to ensure that their children get into the best schools and then go on to achieve highly in those schools.

This can happen through giving children one-on-one instruction with tutors, paying for private school tuition, or, in extreme cases, making donations directly to elite schools that they want their children to attend.

All of this capital meandering means wealthier students tend to get the best education and then go on to get jobs in the middle class.

Meanwhile, working-class children, who are more likely to get a poor education, are funneled into working-class jobs.

The Legitimization of Class Inequality

Marxists argue that, while in reality money determines the quality of one”s education, schools spread a “myth of meritocracy” to convince students that they all have an equal chance of success and that one”s grade simply depends on their effort and ability.

Thus, if a student fails, it is their fault.

This has the net effect of controlling the working classes. Believing that they had a fair chance, the proletariat became less likely to rebel and attempt to change society through a Marxist revolutionary movement (Thompson, 2016).

Bowes and Gintis explain this concept through the idea that students in the capitalist education system are alienated by their labor. Students have a lack of control over their education and their course content.

School motivates, instead, by creating a system of grades and other external rewards. This creates often destructive competition among students who compete to achieve the best grades in what is seen, at least superficially, as a meritocratic system.

Reproduction and legitimization of social inequality – Althusser

Althusser saw himself as building on the conditions that Marx theorized necessary for capitalist production through emphasizing the role of ideology in the social relationships that permeate people’s lives.

He believed that all institutions, schools included, drilled the values of capitalism into pupils, perpetuating the economic system. In this way, he considered education to be part of the “ideological state apparatus.”

Althusser says this influence perpetrates education in multiple ways. This ideological state apparatus, according to Althusser, worked by injecting students with ideas that keep people unaware of their exploitation and make them easy to control.

Secondly, he believed that this injection of ideas produces complaints and an unquestioning workforce, passively accepting their roles (Ferguson, 2018).

Althusser’s successor, Pierre Bordieu (1971) also believed that the education system and other cultural institutions and practices indirectly benefited the bourgeoisie — the capital class — through passing down “cultural capital.”

Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviors, and skills that someone can use to demonstrate their competence and social status, allowing them to wield influence.

Working in The Interests of Capitalist Employers

Finally, Bowes and Gintis (1976) suggested that there is a correspondence between the values taught by schools and the ways in which the workplace operates.

They suggest that these values are taught through a so-called hidden curriculum , which consists of the things that students learn through the experience of attending school rather than the main curriculum thoughts at the school.

Some parallels between the values taught at school and those used to exploit workers in the workplace include:

The passive subservience of pupils to teachers, which corresponds to the passive subservience of workers to managers;

An acceptance of hierarchy – the authority of teachers and administrators over students — corresponding to the authority of managers over employees;

Motivation by external rewards (such as grades over learning), which corresponds to workers being motivated by wages rather than the job of a job.

Correspondence Principle

The Key concept in Bowes and Gintis’ Schooling in Capitalist America (1976) is that the reproduction of the social relations of production is facilitated and illustrated by the similarities between how social relations in education and in production work.

In order to reproduce the social relations of production, the education system must try to teach people to be properly subordinate and render them sufficiently confused that they are unable to gather together and take control of their material existence — such as through seizing the means of production.

Specifically, Bowes and Gintis (1976) argued, the education system helps develop everything from a student”s personal demeanor to their modes of self-presentation, self-image, and social-class identifications which are crucial to being seen as competent and hirable to future employers.

In particular, the social relations of education — the relationships between administrators and teachers, teachers and students, students and students, and students and their work — replicate a hierarchical division of labor. This means that there is a clear hierarchy of power from administrators to teachers to students.

The Myth of Meritocracy

One such aspect of the capitalist education system, according to Bowes and Gintis, is the “myth of meritocracy “.

While Marxists argue that class background and money determine how good of an education people get, the myth of meritocracy posits that everyone has an equal chance at success. Grades depend on effort and ability, and people’s failures are wholly their fault.

This casts a perception of a fair education system when, in reality, the system — and who succeeds or fails in it — is deeply rooted in class (Thompson, 2016).

Criticisms of the Marxist Perspective on Education

The Marxist perspectives on education have been criticized for several reasons.

The traditional Marxist perspective on education has been evaluated both positively and negative. On the affirmative side, there is a wealth of evidence that schools reproduce class inequality.

In particular, evidence suggests that those from the middle and upper classes do much better in education because the working classes are more likely to suffer from material and cultural deprivation. Meanwhile, the middle classes have high material and cultural capital, along with laws that directly benefit them.

Another point in favor of the Marxist view of education is the existence of private schools. In these schools, the very wealthiest families can buy a better education for their families. This gives their children a substantially greater chance of attending an elite university.

There is also strong evidence for the reproduction of class inequality in elite jobs, such as medicine, law, and journalism. A disproportionately high number of people in these professions were educated in private institutions and come from families who are, in turn, highly educated (Thompson, 2016).

On the other hand, sociologists such as Henry Giroux (1983) have criticized the traditional Marxist view on education as being too deterministic. He argued that working classes are not entirely molded by the capitalist system and do not accept everything they are taught blindly. Paul Willis’ study of the working-class “lads” is one example of lower-class youths actively rejecting the values taught by education.

There is also less evidence that pupils believe school is fair than evidence that pupils believe school is unfair. The “Lads” that Paul Willis studied (2017) were well aware that the educational system was biased toward the middle classes, and many people in poorly-funded schools know that they are receiving a lesser quality of education than those in private schools.

The Functionalist Perspective of Education

Bourdieu, P., & Bordieu, P. (1971). Formes et degrés de la conscience du chômage dans l”Algérie coloniale. Manpower and Unemployment Research in Africa , 36-44.

Bowes, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in Captalist America.

Cole, M. (2019). Theresa May, the hostile environment and public pedagogies of hate and threat: The case for a future without borders . Routledge.

Ferguson, S. (2018). Social reproduction: what’s the big idea? Giroux, H. (1983). Theories of reproduction and resistance in the new sociology of education: A critical analysis. Harvard Educational Review, 53 (3), 257-293.

Giroux, H. (1983). Theories of reproduction and resistance in the new sociology of education: A critical analysis. Harvard Educational Review , 53 (3), 257-293.

Marx, K., Engels, F. (1847). Manifesto of the communist party .

Thompson, M. (2016). Assess the Marxist View of the Role of Education in Society .

Willis, P. (2017). Learning to labour: How working class kids get working class jobs . Routledge.

Evaluate the Marxist View of the Role of Education in Society

Last Updated on November 18, 2022 by Karl Thompson

According to Marxists, modern societies are capitalist, and are structured along class-lines, and such societies are divided into two major classes – The Bourgeois elite who own and control the means of production who exploit the Proletariat by extracting surplus value from them.

Traditional Marxists understand the role of education in this context – education is controlled by the elite class (The Bourgeoisie) and schools forms a central part of the superstructure through which they maintain ideological control of the proletariat.

Louis Althusser argued that state education formed part of the ‘ ideological state apparatus ‘: the government and teachers control the masses by injecting millions of children with a set of ideas which keep people unaware of their exploitation and make them easy to control.

According to Althusser, education operates as an ideological state apparatus in two ways; Firstly, it transmits a general ideology which states that capitalism is just and reasonable – the natural and fairest way of organising society, and portraying alternative systems as unnatural and irrational Secondly, schools encourage pupils to passively accept their future roles, as outlined in the next point…

The second function schools perform for Capitalism is that they produce a compliant and obedient workforce…

In ‘Schooling in Capitalist America’ (1976) Bowles and Gintis suggest that there is a correspondence between values learnt at school and the way in which the workplace operates. The values, they suggested, are taught through the ‘Hidden Curriculum’, which consists of those things that pupils learn through the experience of attending school rather than the main curriculum subjects taught at the school. So pupils learn those values that are necessary for them to tow the line in menial manual jobs.

Fourthly, schools legitimate class inequality . Marxists argue that in reality class background and money determines how good an education you get, but people do not realize this because schools spread the ‘myth of meritocracy’ – in school we learn that we all have an equal chance to succeed and that our grades depend on our effort and ability. Thus if we fail, we believe it is our own fault. This legitimates or justifies the system because we think it is fair when in reality it is not.

Willis argued that pupils rebelling are evidence that not all pupils are brainwashed into being passive, subordinate people as a result of the hidden curriculum. Willis therefore criticizes Traditional Marxism. These pupils also realise that they have no real opportunity to succeed in this system, so they are clearly not under ideological control.

Evaluating the Marxist Perspective on Education

To criticise the idea of the Ideological State Apparatus, Henry Giroux, says the theory is too deterministic. He argues that working class pupils are not entirely molded by the capitalist system, and do not accept everything that they are taught. Also, education can actually harm the Bourgeois – many left wing, Marxist activists are university educated, so clearly they do not control the whole of the education system.

However, if you look at the world’s largest education system, China, this could be seen as supporting evidence for the idea of the correspondence principle at work – many of those children will go into manufacturing, as China is the world’s main manufacturing country in the era of globalisation.

Signposting and Related Posts

This essay was written as a top band answer for a 30 mark question which might appear in the education section of the AQA’s A-level sociology 7192/1 exam paper: Education with Theory and Methods.

The full knowledge post relevant to the above essay is here:

The Marxist View of Education

The role of education in reproducing social inequality, the ideological functions of education, preparing individuals for roles in the capitalist economy.

Critiques and Contemporary Relevance

The Marxist perspective on education is grounded in the broader theoretical framework developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which centers on the analysis of class struggle, the modes of production, and the inherent inequalities within capitalist societies. From a Marxist viewpoint, education is not merely a neutral institution designed to impart knowledge and skills, but rather a mechanism that perpetuates class divisions and maintains the dominance of the ruling class. This essay will outline and explain the Marxist view of education, emphasizing the role of education in reproducing social inequality , the ideological functions it serves, and the ways in which it prepares individuals for their roles in the capitalist economy.

Class Structure and Education

Marxists argue that the educational system is a reflection of the class structure inherent in capitalist societies. According to this perspective, education serves to reproduce the existing class hierarchy by ensuring that children of the working class remain within their social strata, while children of the bourgeoisie (the ruling class) are prepared to take up positions of power and influence. This reproduction of class structure is facilitated through several mechanisms within the educational system.

One of the key mechanisms is the hidden curriculum, which refers to the implicit lessons that are taught in schools, such as obedience, punctuality, and conformity to authority. These lessons are designed to prepare working-class children for their future roles as compliant workers in the capitalist economy. For instance, Bowles and Gintis (1976), in their seminal work “Schooling in Capitalist America,” argue that the hidden curriculum instills values that are essential for the maintenance of a capitalist workforce. They assert that schools mirror the hierarchical nature of the workplace, with teachers exercising authority over students, akin to managers over workers.

Furthermore, the allocation of resources and opportunities within the educational system is heavily skewed in favor of the affluent. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods typically have better facilities, more experienced teachers, and greater access to extracurricular activities, which enhance the educational experience and future prospects of their students. In contrast, schools in working-class areas often suffer from underfunding, overcrowded classrooms, and a lack of resources, perpetuating educational disadvantages for these students. This disparity ensures that children from privileged backgrounds are better equipped to succeed academically and, subsequently, economically.

The Myth of Meritocracy

The Marxist critique also extends to the concept of meritocracy, which is the idea that individuals succeed based on their talents and efforts. Marxists contend that meritocracy is a myth that serves to legitimize the existing social order. They argue that the notion of meritocracy obscures the structural inequalities that hinder the educational and occupational achievements of the working class. By promoting the belief that success is solely the result of individual effort, the educational system diverts attention away from the systemic barriers that perpetuate social inequality.

Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital further elucidates how the education system favors the privileged classes. Cultural capital refers to the non-economic assets that individuals possess, such as language skills, cultural knowledge, and educational credentials, which can be used to gain social advantage. Children from middle and upper-class families are more likely to possess cultural capital that aligns with the values and expectations of the educational system, giving them an inherent advantage over working-class children. This advantage is often mistaken for merit, thereby reinforcing the myth of meritocracy.

Ideological State Apparatus

Marxists view education as part of the ideological state apparatus (ISA), a concept developed by Louis Althusser. According to Althusser (1971), ISAs are institutions such as schools, churches, and the media that serve to perpetuate the ideology of the ruling class. Unlike the repressive state apparatus (RSA), which includes institutions like the police and the military that maintain control through force, ISAs function through ideology and consent. The education system, as an ISA, plays a crucial role in inculcating the dominant ideology and ensuring the acceptance of capitalist values.

Schools, through their curriculum and teaching practices, transmit the dominant ideology by promoting certain values and norms while marginalizing others. For example, the emphasis on individualism, competition, and the pursuit of personal success aligns with the capitalist ethos. Additionally, the content of the curriculum often reflects the perspectives and interests of the ruling class, with little attention given to alternative viewpoints or critical perspectives that challenge the status quo. This ideological indoctrination ensures that individuals internalize the values necessary for the perpetuation of the capitalist system.

The Role of Education in Legitimizing Social Inequality

Education also serves to legitimize social inequality by presenting the existing social order as natural and inevitable. By naturalizing inequality, the education system helps to maintain social stability and prevent resistance to the status quo. This is achieved through various means, including the curriculum, which often portrays history and society from the perspective of the dominant class. For instance, the contributions of marginalized groups may be underrepresented or omitted, reinforcing the idea that their subordinate position is justified.

Moreover, the stratification within the education system itself, through practices such as streaming and tracking, further legitimizes social inequality. These practices involve grouping students based on their perceived abilities, which often correlates with their social background. As a result, working-class students are disproportionately placed in lower tracks or streams, where they receive a less challenging curriculum and fewer opportunities for advancement. This reinforces their marginalization and perpetuates the belief that they are less capable or deserving of success.

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Marxism and educational theory.

Mike Cole Mike Cole University of East London
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.105
Published online: 25 January 2019

While Marx and Engels wrote little on education, the educational implications of Marxism are clear. Education both reproduces capitalism and has the potential to undermine it. With respect to reproduction, it is informative to look at key texts by Althusser and Bowles and Gintis (and the latter’s legacy). As far as challenging capitalism is concerned, considerations are given to both theoretical developments and practical attempts to confront neoliberalism and enact socialist principles, the combination of which Marxists refer to as praxis. There have been constant challenges to Marxism since its conception, and in conclusion we look at two contemporary theories—critical race theory and its primacy of “race” over class—and intersectionality which has a tendency to marginalize class.

educational theory
education and the reproduction of capitalism
education and the undermining of capitalism
and Saunders
contemporary theoretical challenges to Marxism

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The Marx Revival
Copyright page
About the Editor
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Note on the Text
1 Capitalism
2 Communism
3 Democracy
4 Proletariat
5 Class Struggle
6 Political Organization
7 Revolution
9 Capital and Temporality
11 Gender Equality
12 Nationalism and Ethnicity
13 Migration
14 Colonialism
16 Globalization
17 War and International Relations
18 Religion
19 Education
21 Technology and Science
22 Marxisms

19 - Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 May 2020

The end of the twentieth century saw the collapse of communist state systems and a brief moment of Western triumphalism that has given way to new uncertainties as deep-seated economic and political problems re-emerge. Even so, there are areas of social life where capital’s drive to create a society after its own image is hard at work, despite the wider issues. One of these is education. Now that Karl Marx is back on reading lists as a source of insight into today’s world, we want to know if he makes a useful contribution to debates over our schools and universities. The evidence for Marx’s views on education comes from texts throughout his career. They include not only well-known passages from the Manifesto of the Communist Party , written with Friedrich Engels, and the first volume of Capital , but also documents of the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA) that are known to be his work. 1

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By Robin Small
Edited by Marcello Musto , York University, Toronto
Book: The Marx Revival
Online publication: 29 May 2020
Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316338902.020

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MIA : Subjects : Education:

Marxism & Education Index to the works of Marxists and others on education, cognitive psychology and child development. Because Marxists have tended to approach the whole range of psychological issues — development, feeling, neurosis, pathology, personality and character — from the point of view of cognitive and linguistic development, much of the material in this subject archive is also found in the more comprehensive Psychology Subject Archive . Likewise, for Marxists, there has never been a sharp line between social and individual development, so social theory penetrates deeply into both psychology and educational theory. The Marxist approach to education is broadly constructivist , and emphasises activity , collaboration and critique , rather than passive absorption of knowledge, emulation of elders and conformism; it is student-centred rather than teacher centred, but recognises that education cannot transcend the problems and capabilities of the society in which it is located. This archive lists the works of Marxist and some non-Marxist writers on teaching and learning to be found on the Marxists Internet Archive. Early ideas on Socialist Education Theses On Feuerbach #3 , Marx 1845 Communist Manifesto , Marx 1848 Juvenile and Child Labour , International Workingmen's Association 1866 On General Education , Speech by Marx August 1869 Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63 , Marx Section 9 (Factory Acts) , Capital, Chapter 15, Marx 1867 Section 9 (Factory Acts) , Capital, Chapter 15, Marx 1867 Productive Labour , Capital, Chapter 16, Marx 1867 On Education , Mikhail Bakunin 1869 The Struggle of Woman for Education , Bebel 1879 The Socialist System of Education , Bebel 1879 Socialism and Education , May Wood Simmons 1901 The Material Basis of Education , Lena Morrow Lewis 1912 Self-Education of the Workers , Anatoly Lunacharsky 1918 Independent Working Class Education – Thoughts and Suggestions , Eden and Cedar Paul 1918 Bolshevism v Democracy in Education , Eden and Cedar Paul 1918 Education of the Masses , Sylvia Pankhurst, 1918 Men or Machines , Gramsci 1916 On the Organisation of Education and of Culture , Gramsci 1923 >--> Soviet Ideas on Education Decree on Child Welfare , Alexandra Kollontai 1918 To All Who Teach , Anatoly Lunacharsky 1918 Church and School in the Soviet Republic , Nikolai Bukharin, 1919 Communism and Education , from The ABC of Communism , by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky 1920 Lenin on Education What Can be Done for Public Education? , Lenin 1914 Speech at first All-Russian Congress on Education , Lenin 1918 To People's Commissariat of Education , Lenin 1919 Work of People's Commissariat for Education , Lenin 1921 Reports on Soviet Education Russian Children , from Six Red Months in Russia , Louise Bryant 1918 Soviet Education , from Russia in 1919 , Arthur Ransome Education and Culture , My Disillusionment in Russia , Emma Goldman 1922 Children of Revolution , Anna-Louise Strong 1925 Education in Soviet Russia , The First Time in History , Anna-Louise Strong 1925 The Revolution in Education and Culture , Soviet Russia: a living record and a history , Wm Chamberlin 1929 Family Relations Under the Soviets , Trotsky 1932 Education in Stalinist Russia On Communist Education. Selected Speeches and Articles (1926-1945) , M. I. Kalinin Learning to Live , A. S. Makarenko 1936-1938 The Road to Life (An Epic of Education), Volume 1 , A. S. Makarenko 1933-1935 The Road to Life (An Epic of Education), Volume 2 . Lectures to Parents , A. S. Makarenko 1937 Problems of Soviet School Education , A. S. Makarenko Makarenko: His Life and Work , A. S. Makarenko Makarenko (1888-1939) reflects some ideas which were characteristic of Stalin's Soviet Union. Nonetheless, his ideas were very radical and are much admired by progressive educators to this day, especially in the education of disadvantaged children. The psychologists of the Vygotsky School, whose writings predominate in what follows, were a minority current in the Soviet Union; they were not allowed to travel or publish overseas and their influence on the Soviet education system was limited. Early Childhood and Play Play and its role in the mental development of the Child , Vygotsky 1933 Tool and Symbol in Child Development , Vygotsky 1930 --> The Construction of Reality in the Child , Jean Piaget 1955 Piaget's theory of child language and thought , Vygotsky 1934 Comment on Vygotsky , Piaget 1962 The Child and his Behavior , Luria 1930 The Prehistory of Written Language , Vygotsky 1930 --> The Origins of Thought in the Child, Henri Wallon 1947 Genetic Psychology , Henri Wallon 1956 Summerhill - A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, Erich Fromm 1960 The Psychological Development of the Child , Henri Wallon 1965 Stages in the Mental Development of the Child , Elkonin 1971 Mental Development in Twins , from Soviet Psychology , Luria 1979 --> Mental Development --> The development of Perception and Attention and --> Mastery of Memory and Thinking , Vygotsky 1930 --> Verbal Regulation of Behavior , and Mechanisms of the Brain , Luria 1979 from Soviet Psychology Introduction to Luria's The Making of Mind , by Michael Cole, 1979 --> Adolescence and Ethical Development Ethical Behavior , from Educational Psychology Vygotsky 1926 Esthetic Behavior , from Educational Psychology Vygotsky 1926 Development of thinking and concept formation in adolescence , Vygotsky 1931 Imagination and creativity of the adolescent , Vygotsky 1931 Vygotsky's tool-and-result methodology , Fred Newman and Lois Holzman Society and Individual Development The Psychological and Sociological Study of the Child , Henri Wallon 1947 The Influence of Social Factors in Child Development , Erich Fromm 1958 Human Nature and Social Theory , Erich Fromm 1969 Man in Marxist Theory , Lucian Seve 1974 Cognitive Development: Its Social and Cultural Foundations , Luria 1976 Cognition and Foundations of Learning Internalization of Higher Psychological Functions , Vygotsky 1930 Interaction between Learning and Development , Vygotsky 1930 --> The Genetic Roots of Thought and Speech , Vygotsky 1934 Thought and Word , Vygotsky 1934 Activity and Knowledge , Ilyenkov 1974 Activity and Consciousness , Leontyev 1977 Activity, Consciousness, and Personality 1978: Leontev's Introduction Marxism and Psychological Science , Activity and Personality , Motives, Emotions, and Personality . Personal account of Soviet Psychology , Luria 1979 The Historical Context , Introduction to Soviet Psychology , Luria 1979 Vygotsky , from Soviet Psychology , Luria 1979 Cultural Differences in Thinking , from Soviet Psychology , Luria 1979 --> Much Learning does Not Teach Understanding , Vasili Davydov Types of Generalization in Instruction: Logical and Psychological Problems in the Structuring of School Curricula , Vasili Davydov Biography of Vasily Davydov and an outline of his ideas , Vladimir Kudryavtsev John Dewey on Education Interest in Relation to Training of the Will , 1896 My Pedagogic Creed , 1896 The School and Social Progress , 1899 The Child and the Curriculum , 1902 Education as Growth , 1916 Experience and Thinking , 1916 The Need of a Theory of Experience , 1938 Criteria of Experience , 1938 See also: Hegel on Education Pedagogy of the Oppressed , Paulo Freire 1968 History Archive Subjects Section Encyclopedia of Marxism Cross-Language Section What's New? Contact Us Comments to Andy Blunden M.I.A. Home Page | MCA Discussion Forum

the encyclopaedia of pedagogy and informal education

Karl Marx and education

Karl marx and education. what significance does marx have for educators and animateurs today an introduction and assessment by barry burke..

contents: introduction · life · Karl Marx as a thinker · Karl Marx and the class struggle · the communist manifesto · Karl Marx’s relevance to knowledge and education · further reading · links · how to cite this article

Pictire of Karl Marx from Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Wikimedia Commons – pd.

Karl Marx never wrote anything directly on education – yet his influence on writers, academics, intellectuals and educators who came after him has been profound. The power of his ideas has changed the way we look at the world. Whether you accept his analysis of society or whether you oppose it, he cannot be ignored. As Karl Popper, a fierce opponent of Marxism, has claimed ‘all modern writers are indebted to Marx, even if they do not know it’.

Karl Marx was born in Trier on May 5, 1818. He studied at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. His early writings for, and editorship of, the Cologne newspaper Rheinische Zeitung brought him quickly into conflict with the government. He was critical of social conditions and existing political arrangements. In 1843 after only a year in post, Marx was compelled to resign as editor. Soon afterwards the paper was also forced to stop publication. Marx then went to Paris (where he first met Engels). His radicalism had come to be recognizably ‘communistic’. His revolutionary analysis and activity led to him being ordered to leave Paris in 1845. Karl Marx went onto settle in Brussels and began to organize Communist Correspondence Committees in a number of European cities. This led to the organizing of the Communist League (and the writing of the Communist Manifesto with Engels) (see below). With the unrest and revolutionary activity of 1848, Marx was again forced to leave a country. He returned to Paris and then to the Rhineland. In Cologne he set up and edited the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and continued organizing. In 1849 Marx was arrested and tried on a charge of incitement to armed insurrection. He got off, but was expelled from Germany.

Karl Marx spent the remainer of his life in England, arriving in London in 1849 (see Karl Marx in Soho ). His most productive years were spent in the Reading Room of the British Museum where much of his research and writing took place. He wrote a great deal although hardly any of it was published in English until after his death in 1883.

Karl Marx as a thinker

Marx’s intellectual output is difficult to categorize for whilst his major work, Das Kapital, translated into English as Capital, is a work of economics, he is more popularly recognised as a social scientist and a political philosopher. As C.Wright Mills has explained: “as with most complicated thinkers, there is no one Marx. The various presentations of his work which we can construct from his books, pamphlets, articles, letters written at different times in his own development, depend upon our point of interest …; every student must earn his own Marx.” So today, we have Marxist anthropology, Marxist literary criticism, Marxist aesthetics, Marxist pedagogy, Marxist cultural studies, Marxist sociology etc. His intellectual output lasted from the early 1840s to the early l880s and over that long period of 40 years produced a number of works that have enriched the thinking of those who came after him.

There are many who see different stages in the thinking of Karl Marx. His earlier works are sometimes referred to as showing a humanistic Marx, a philosophical Marx who was concerned with the role of the individual, with what human beings are actually like, with the relationship between consciousness and existence. The later Marx, we are told, wrote as a social scientist, a political economist who was more concerned with social structure than with individuals. It is possible to read this into the work of Karl Marx but it is also possible to see a basic thread going right through all his work. One of the reasons for this is that one of his major works, the Grundrisse or Outlines, described by David McLellan, Marx’s biographer as “the most fundamental of all Marx’s writings” was not published in English until the 1970s. It is quite easy, therefore, to see why there are different perspectives on Karl Marx, why my Marx can be different from your Marx.

Karl Marx on the class struggle

So what was it that made Karl Marx so important? At the cornerstone of his thinking is the concept of the class struggle. He was not unique in discovering the existence of classes. Others had done this before him. What Marx did that was new was to recognize that the existence of classes was bound up with particular modes of production or economic structure and that the proletariat, the new working class that Capitalism had created, had a historical potential leading to the abolition of all classes and to the creation of a classless society. He maintained that “the history of all existing society is a history of class struggle”. Each society, whether it was tribal, feudal or capitalist was characterized by the way its individuals produced their means of subsistence, their material means of life, how they went about producing the goods and services they needed to live. Each society created a ruling class and a subordinate class as a result of their mode of production or economy. By their very nature the relationship between these two was antagonistic. Marx referred to this as the relations of production. Their interests were not the same. The feudal economy was characterized by the existence of a small group of lords and barons that later developed into a landed aristocracy and a large group of landless peasants. The capitalist economy that superseded it was characterized by a small group of property owners who owned the means of production i.e. the factories, the mines and the mills and all the machinery within them. This group was also referred to as the bourgeoisie or capitalist class. Alongside them was a large and growing working class. He saw the emergence of this new propertyless working class as the agent of its own self emancipation. It was precisely the working class, created and organized into industrial armies, that would destroy its creator and usher in a new society free from exploitation and oppression. “What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers”.

The Communist Manifesto

These ideas first saw the light of day as an integrated whole in the Communist Manifesto which Marx wrote with his compatriot Frederick Engels in 1847/8. The Manifesto begins with a glowing tribute to the historical and revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie. It points out how the bourgeoisie had totally altered the face of the earth as it revolutionized the means of production, constantly expanded the market for its products, created towns and cities, moved vast populations from rural occupations into factories and centralized political administration. Karl Marx sums up the massive achievements of the bourgeoisie by declaring that “during its rule of scarce one hundred years (it) has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to Man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?”. However, the creation of these productive forces had the effect, not of improving the lot of society, but of periodically creating a situation of crisis. Commercial crises as a result of over-production occurred more and more frequently as the productive forces were held back by the bourgeois organization of production and exchange.

But along with the development of the bourgeoisie who own the means of production we find the development of the proletariat – the propertyless working class. With the evolution of modern industry, Marx pointed out that workmen became factory fodder, appendages to machines. Men were crowded into factories with army-like discipline, constantly watched by overseers and at the whim of individual manufacturers. Increasing competition and commercial crises led to fluctuating wages whilst technological improvement led to a livelihood that was increasingly precarious. The result was a growth in the number of battles between individual workmen and individual employers whilst collisions took on more and more “the character of collisions between two classes”. Marx and Engels characterize the growth of the working class as a “more or less veiled civil war raging within existing society” but unlike previous historical movements which were minority movements, the working class movement is “the self-conscious independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority”. The conclusion they drew from this was that the overthrow of bourgeois supremacy and a victory for the working class would not, therefore, produce another minority ruling class but “in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all”.

The Communist Manifesto contains within it, the basic political theory of Marxism – a theory that Marx was to unfold, reshape and develop for the rest of his life. Without doubt, the Manifesto is sketchy and over-simplistic but its general principles were never repudiated by Marx although those parts that had become antiquated he was only too ready to reject or modify.

For instance, the two-class model which has always been associated with Marx was never an accurate picture of his theory. Marx later made it quite clear that within the bourgeoisie, there were a whole number of factions existing based on different types of property such as finance, industry, land and commerce. He was aware of the growth of the middle classes, situated midway between the workers on the one side and the capitalists and landowners on the other. He regarded them as resting with all their weight upon the working class and at the same time increasing the security and power of the upper class. At the other end of the spectrum, he explains the existence of different strata of the working class such as the nomad population moving around the country, the paupers, the unemployed or industrial reserve army and what has become known as the aristocracy of labour, the skilled artisans. All of these strata made up a working class created by capitalist accumulation.

However, why is it that Marx felt that the existence of classes meant that the relationship between them was one of exploitation? In feudal societies, exploitation often took the form of the direct transfer of produce from the peasantry to the aristocracy. Serfs were compelled to give a certain proportion of their production to their aristocratic masters, or had to work for a number of days each month in the lord’s fields to produce crops consumed by the lord and his retinue. In capitalist societies, the source of exploitation is less obvious, and Marx devoted much attention to trying to clarify its nature. In the course of the working day, Marx reasoned, workers produce more than is actually needed by employers to repay the cost of hiring them. This surplus value, as he called it, is the source of profit, which capitalists were able to put to their own use. For instance, a group of workers in a widget factory might produce a hundred widgets a day. Selling half of them provides enough income for the manufacturer to pay the workers’ wages. income from the sale of the other half is then taken for profit. Marx was struck by the enormous inequalities this system of production created. With the development of modern industry, wealth was created on a scale never before imagined but the workers who produced that wealth had little access to it. They remained relatively poor while the wealth accumulated by the propertied class grew out of all proportion. In addition, the nature of the work became increasingly dull, monotonous and physically wearing to the workforce who became increasingly alienated from both the products they were creating, from their own individuality and from each other as human beings.

Karl Marx’s relevance to knowledge and education

Karl Marx made it clear that “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” and what he meant by life was actual living everyday material activity. Human thought or consciousness was rooted in human activity not the other way round as a number of philosophers felt at the time. What this meant was the way we went about our business, the way we were organized in our daily life was reflected in the way we thought about things and the sort of world we created. The institutions we built, the philosophies we adhered to, the prevailing ideas of the time, the culture of society, were all determined to some extent or another by the economic structure of society. This did not mean that they were totally determined but were quite clearly a spin-off from the economic base of society. The political system, the legal system, the family, the press, the education system were all rooted, in the final analysis, to the class nature of society, which in turn was a reflection of the economic base. Marx maintained that the economic base or infrastructure generated or had built upon it a superstructure that kept it functioning. The education system, as part of the superstructure, therefore, was a reflection of the economic base and served to reproduce it. This did not mean that education and teaching was a sinister plot by the ruling class to ensure that it kept its privileges and its domination over the rest of the population. There were no conspirators hatching devious schemes. It simply meant that the institutions of society, like education, were reflections of the world created by human activity and that ideas arose from and reflected the material conditions and circumstances in which they were generated.

This relationship between base and superstructure has been the subject of fierce debate between Marxists for many years. To what extent is the superstructure determined by the economic base? How much of a reflection is it? Do the institutions that make up the superstructure have any autonomy at all? If they are not autonomous, can we talk about relative autonomy when we speak about the institutions of society? There have been furious debates on the subject and whole forests have been decimated as a result of the need to publish contributions to the debate.

I now want to turn to Marx’s contribution to the theory of knowledge and to the problem of ideology. In his book, The German Ideology, Marx maintained that “the class which is the dominant material force in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual force”. What he meant by that is that the individuals who make up the ruling class of any age determine the agenda. They rule as thinkers, as producers of ideas that get noticed. They control what goes by the name “common sense”. Ideas that are taken as natural, as part of human nature, as universal concepts are given a veneer of neutrality when, in fact, they are part of the superstructure of a class-ridden society. Marx explained that “each new class which puts itself in the place of the one ruling before it, is compelled, simply in order to achieve its aims, to represent its interest as the common interest of all members of society i.e. ..to give its ideas the form of universality and to represent them as the only rational and universally valid ones”. Ideas become presented as if they are universal, neutral, common sense. However, more subtly, we find concepts such as freedom, democracy, liberty or phrases such as “a fair days work for a fair days pay” being banded around by opinion makers as if they were not contentious. They are, in Marxist terms, ideological constructs, in so far as they are ideas serving as weapons for social interests. They are put forward for people to accept in order to prop up the system.

What Marx and Marxists would say is that ideas are not neutral. They are determined by the existing relations of production, by the economic structure of society. Ideas change according to the interests of the dominant class in society. Antonio Gramsci coined the phrase “ideological hegemony” to describe the influence the ruling class has over what counts as knowledge. For Marxists, this hegemony is exercised through institutions such as education, or the media, which the Marxist philosopher and sociologist, Louis Althusser referred to as being part of what he called the Ideological State Apparatus. The important thing to note about this is that it is not to be regarded as part of a conspiracy by the ruling class. It is a natural effect of the way in which what we count as knowledge is socially constructed. The ideology of democracy and liberty, beliefs about freedom of the individual and competition are generated historically by the mode of production through the agency of the dominant class. They are not neutral ideas serving the common good but ruling class ideas accepted by everyone as if they were for the common good.

This brings us back to the notion of education as part of the super-structural support for the economic status quo. If this is the case, there are a number of questions that need to be asked. The first is can society be changed by education? If not, why not? Secondly, can education be changed and if so, how?

Marx – key texts

Go the Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels Internet Archive for online versions of Marx’s key works.

Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels Internet Archive – Excellent collection of primary and secondary works. Includes pieces on various colleagues and family.

In Defence of Marxism Argues for Marxist analysis it’s relevance to current social and political questions.

Marxism Page – links and resources.

Marx and Engel’s Writings – collection of Marx and Engels’ writings in history, sociology, and political theory.

Acknowledgements : Picture: Karl Marx, sourced from Wikemedia Commons from International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Listed as being in the public domain.

How to cite this article : Burke, Barry (2000) ‘Karl Marx and informal education’, The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education , www.infed.org/thinkers/et-marx.htm . Last update: January 03, 2013

Revision Resources
Learning sociology starts here!!!
Sociology revision books
Answering Exam Questions

What’s the point of education? A Marxist perspective

Marxist perspective of education-revision notes.

In Marx’s view this ruling class ideology is far more effective in controlling the subject classes than physical force, as it is hidden from the consciousness of the subject class – this is known as ‘ false consciousness’ . One example Marxists might use is the role of meritocracy in education to control the working classes by getting the working classes used to being rewarded for being good and doing as you’re told.

Education and Ideology

Louis Althusser (a Marxist) (1971) argued that the main role of education in a capitalist society was the reproduction of an efficient and obedient work force. This is achieved through schools:

transmitting the ideology that capitalism is just and reasonable (school teaches you to compete with your fellow pupils by trying to do better than them)
train future workers to become submissive to authority (schools teachers you to accept as normal to do as you’re told, this way when your boss orders you what to do, it seems perfectly normal)

Bowles and Gintis’s (Marxists) research ‘Schooling in Capitalist America’ (1976) supported Althusser’s ideas that there is a close correspondence ( known as the correspondence principle ) between the social relationships in the classroom and those in the workplace. Through the hidden curriculum (it is vital you follow the hidden curriculum link). Bowles and Ginitis argue schools introduce the ‘long shadow of work’ because schools create a hard-working disciplined workforce for capitalist societies. This process is essential for social reproduction – the reproduction of a new generation of workers schooled (disciplined) into accepting their role in society. This occurs through:

School and workplace – school mirrors the workplace through its hierarchical structures – teachers’ give orders and pupils obey. Pupils have little control over their work – a fact of life in the majority of jobs. Schools reward punctuality and obedience and are dismissive of independence, critical awareness and creativity – this mirrors the workplace expectations. The hidden curriculum is seen by Bowles and Gintis as instrumental in this process.

Social inequality – schools legitimate the myth of meritocracy that every person in life has an equal chance to reach the top. This myth justifies the belief that those people who have reached the ‘top’ deserve their rewards because they achieved them by their own had-work ( meritocracy ). In this way inequality becomes justified.

However Bowles and Gintis argue that rewards in education and occupation are based not on ability but on social background. The higher a person’s class or origin the more likely they are to attain top qualifications and a top job. For Bowles and Ginitis, schools are institutions which legitimize social inequality. See Bourdon (position theory); Bourdiau (cultural capital) ; and Bernstein ( language and class).

Assessing Marxist and functionalist perspectives of education.

To appreciate the subtle differences between Functionalist and Marxist perspectives on education please work through the following presentation then test your knowledge Marxism test questions only Click on this link for the 15 questions

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14 Karl Marx and the Theory of Education

Ganesha Somayaji

Karl Marx and the Theory of Education

While tracing the early history of the Sociology of Education, Saha (2011: 300) observes that though Marx and Engels have not directly written on education, their passing references to education of the working class children and education for bringing about socialist transformation are very informative. Marx never fully developed or integrated education into his theory of capitalism and social class. But he and Fredrick Engels1 did refer to education frequently in their writings about the class struggle. They advocated education for all, but they were primarily concerned with the type of education that was given to the children of the working classes and how this education served the interests of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, in maintaining their social dominance. Although Marx did not focus directly on education in his theory of society, his ideas have formed the base of what later would become known as neo-Marxist sociology of education. This perspective is very much related to forms of reproduction theory, in which education is thought to serve as a mechanism for reproducing the class structure of society, thereby reproducing the privileges of the dominant class ( Ibid : 300).

From various works of Marx and Engels on the analyses of transformation of capitalist and socialist societies and the works of Marxists and neo-Marxists, we have to knit a Marxist theory of education, which, we urge you to consider as ideas presented in logical sequence and not theoretical constructions. Marx and Engels’ and Marxists’ views on education are only parts of the general theory of Marxian analyses of modern society and societal transformation. Therefore, you will first learn an outline of the Marxian theory before studying Marx’s and neo-Marxists’ views on education as a social institution.

Salient components of Marxian Social Theory

Karl Marx’s social theory saw society as moving from one historical stage to another on account of class struggle. This class struggle was a reflection of disproportionate access of different classes to the material base of society. Thus Marx’s theory, though economic in nature, has social political and cultural implications. He felt that social theory should be grounded in the existence of living human beings who must survive in a relatively hostile environment. A social scientist and revolutionary, he was of the opinion that social theorists should give attention to the material conditions that influence the life of people.

Marx’s materialist orientation is seen by many to be in direct opposition to Hegel’s idealism. Marx himself attacks the young Hegelians in The German Ideology and accuses them of “theoretical bubble blowing”. Marx believed that for young Hegelians, great revolutions only take place in thought because no buildings are destroyed, and no one is injured or dies (Turner, et al : 2012: 142). In fact, Marx’s understanding of the nature of society developed in response to what he saw as an idealistic humbug of the Young Hegelians.

But Marx’s critique of the Young Hegelians should not be seen as an outright rejection of the ideas of Hegel. He had a lifelong fascination with Hegel and kept returning to him, strengthening his points of differences as well his agreement with the dead philosopher.One of the most influential thinkers of the nineteenth century, Hegel proposed the notion of philosophical idealism. To put it simply, philosophical idealism is the view that matter does not exist in its own right, that in fact it is a product of mind. The world, which is filled with objects, is ultimately a mental construction. It is only through an examination of abstract philosophical categories, that we can have a thorough understanding of human existence. Marx questioned the role that Hegel’s philosophy played in understanding human existence. As the focus of philosophical idealism was an abstract processes and not on concrete reality, Marx felt that it led to a distortion that overlooked the more real and practical problems that humans faced.

Marx believed that only when the physical needs of humans were met, they could focus on intellectual needs. These material needs are satisfied by direct productive activity. This line of thinking led to the formulation of the materialistic perspective. Though Marx’s materialism is diametrically opposed to Hegel’ s idealism, his materialistic conception of history strongly rests on the Hegel’s claim that history occurs through dialectic or a clash of opposing forces. But Marx claimed that his dialectic method is opposite to Hegel’s dialectic. Whereas Hegel had believed that the principles of development found in concepts such as contradiction, opposition and affirmation and negation were represented by ideas acting in history, Marx took the view that the central principles of change were manifested at the level of class formations and in the concrete historical development of economic production in society (Morrison 2006: 144).

Marx’s analysis of history is based on his distinction between the means of production, literally those things, like land and natural resources, and technology, that are necessary for the production of material goods, and the social relations of production, in other words, the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together these comprise the mode of production. Marx observed that within any given society the mode of production changes. This change in the mode of production, often a result of conflict between the forces of production and relations of production, leads to a new historical stage in society. Marx emphasised that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.” In every society, there were always opposing interests between those who owned the means of production and those who did not. This conflict between the oppressor and the oppressed was present in every stage of history, except the first. In the stage of primitive communism, there was no private property, no classes and hence no exploitation on the basis of class. In course of time, however, slavery, the first system of exploitation emerged, when ownership of other human beings determined rank and position. Slavery was followed by feudalism wherein, the two classes, landowners and landless serfs represented opposing interests. Feudalism gave way to capitalism, in which capitalists hire proletariat, only if they generate profits. Marx believed that capitalism would grow like a giant octopus, spreading its tentacles, over the entire globe, until nearly every human activity became debased because it was a commodity subject to purchase (Turner et al 2012: 161).

Marx opined that the contradictions inherent in capitalism, the tremendous sense of alienation it produced among the workers, would lead to its collapse. This would bring about a transitory phase of socialism which was characterised by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Eventually Marx predicted that communism would emerge, wherein there would be a classless society in which all would give according to their ability and take according to their need. In order for this utopian society to emerge, what was needed was a revolution that would hasten the collapse of capitalism. Marx’s praxis was hence geared towards initiating and contributing to this revolution. For revolution to occur the status quo had to be changed. The capitalists, being small in number were a class for themselves, which meant that they were aware of their common interests. This awareness made them cooperate with each other in facilitating the exploitation of the workers. The workers, on the other hand, though living under common conditions, perhaps due to their large numbers, do not recognise their common interests. They remain a class- in –themselves.

For revolution to take place there must be the development of awareness among the workers of their common interests. They must move from being a class-in- themselves to a class-for-themselves. Marx predicted that this change in class consciousness would arise on account of two reasons: As they are cramped into factories, the physical proximity to each other makes them discuss and recognise their common interests. Secondly, some members of the bourgeoisie would break away and join the proletariat, thus hastening the inevitable revolution. The outcome of the revolution would be a communism which will come to be a fruition of the dialectical process that began at the end of the first stage of history.

While promulgating their theses on the exploitative capitalistic system and its eventual demise, Marx and Engels commented on the working of social institutions in modern societies. This unit is devoted to examine Marxist views on education.

Marxian Perspectives on Education

While discussing the Marxian perspectives on education, in the beginning, two observations are worth noting: the non-explicit attention given by Marx and Engels to education and also their recognition of education in fostering class consciousness among the workers. Consequently, the study of ‘Marx with reference to education’ can have two main components: (1) A description of direct reference to education by Marx and Engels in some works and (2) An examination of the Marxist and Neo-Marxist positions on education.

The first component aims at showing the way in which Marx and Engels looked at the institution of education within their general interpretation of capitalist society and their aim of bringing about socialist transformation of society. Among the various works we will consider Engels “ The Condition of the Working Class in England” (1845) first. We will then briefly cover a few other works of Marx and Engels.

Engels wrote on the abysmal living conditions and disorganised life of the workers of his time. The children of the working class were drawn to various temptations which according to him were due to the neglect of their education (Engels 1845: 67). The education arranged for the children was the education which the bourgeoisie thought was required for the children of the working class. Moreover, the bourgeoisie did not want educated workers. With regard to the pathetic school system and education available to the children of the workers, Engels concludes: “It cannot be otherwise; the bourgeoisie has little to hope and much to fear, from the education of the working-class” ( Ibid : 71)

The references Marx and Engels make to education in the Manifesto of the Communist Party give us clues to grasp their idea on the role of education in the future classless society. Waugh (2010) identifies three explicit references to education in the Manifesto. The first is when the rise of the bourgeoisie was discussed. When the bourgeoisie was constantly fighting with various categories of classes such as aristocrats, opponent bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie from the other countries, they sought the help of the proletariat by providing the necessary education to them regarding the usefulness of industrial capitalism and the factory system. Through education ‘the bourgeoisie furnishes the weapons to fight for their cause’. The industrial bourgeoisie attempts to construct a group of educated adults among the proletariat. The second direct reference to education in the Manifesto is made when Marx and Engels address the charges made against communism by the spokespersons of the ruling class:

“But you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is it not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of the society, by means of schools etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education: they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.” (Marx, Engels 1982: 50).

In the context of abundant instances of child labour and control of formal education by the bourgeoisie, the Manifesto’s agenda for educational reformation in the future communist society states the Marxian perspective on schooling. The third explicit reference to education is made while charting out the “public programmes of action (they are ten in numbers)” in the future Communist State. Marx and Engels opine that the specific programmes of action in a Communist State will differ from one country to the other. Still they suggest ten such general programmes of action. Among them the tenth programme of action is about education.

“Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc” (Marx and Engels 1982: 53).

In several of their works, Marx and Engels argue for expanded public education for the working class. They saw themselves as providing education and theoretical guidance to the working class and socialist movement. Marx and Engels did not write much on educational institutions in bourgeois society, or develop models of education in socialist societies. Yet their historical materialist theory of history has been used to theorize and critique educational institutions within bourgeois society and to develop alternative conceptions of education that are in accord with Marxian socialist principles. For example, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976, 1981, and 2002) in their various works since 1976 have dealt with schooling in capitalist America in a critical perspective.

Several new dimensions have been added to the Marxian theory of education in the later part of the 20th century. Saha (2011) in his reference handbook on the sociology of education, while commenting on the conflict-oriented perspectives on education, mentions two Marxist inspired perspectives: Neo-Marxist approaches and the Critical theory of the Frankfurt school. “Many writers within this perspective have proposed their own versions of how education is controlled by the elite and how it helps to maintain elite status. Some examples of these writers and their works are Carnoy’s Education as Cultural Imperialism (1974), Apple’s Ideology and Curriculum (1979), Giroux’ s Ideology, Culture,and the Process of Schooling (1981), and Bourdieu and Passeron’s Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (1977).”

Describing further, Saha (2011) mentions the critical theory of Frankfurt School as yet another version of Marxian approach to education. It must be noted here that in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School we get a critique of various institutional arrangements and cultural patterns. Education is one among them. Critical theorists typified social life under capitalism with concepts such as the totally administered society, one-dimensional man, and communicative competence. This perspective applies to education and other social institutions. Critical theorists strive to both study and emancipate society from capitalist oppression. They seek to unmask the intrusion of this form of capitalism over social life, and therefore emancipate individuals from their false beliefs. In education, critical theory is relevant to the critical study of the curriculum (and the hidden curriculum), educational administration, and teacher education.

Another dimension of Marxian perspective on education is its practice in the erstwhile communist state of the USSR and the present communist state of Peoples’ Republic of China. In both these nation- states, education has become a means to usher in and sustain a classless society. In both these states, education has been funded by the government. In such educational practices education is viewed in universal terms and not particularistic terms. In communist and socialist states the guiding educational motto is: “Education for all through the state.” In capitalistic states education is a private enterprise guided by some regulatory legislation. The State does not take the responsibility of ensuring education for all.

In India, where socialism is one of the guiding principles of statecraft, not only is free and compulsory education the responsibility of the state, but education at all levels is supervised by government agencies. Therefore, we can conclude that Indian educational practice is to some extent guided by the Marxian idea of egalitarian society.

Concluding Remarks

Marx and Engels did not develop a theory of education. Their main concern was to analyse the nature and functioning of capitalistic societies through historical dialectic methodology. While doing so they did make ample reference to the role of education in maintaining the exploitative class system. They also hinted at the education of the working class in classless society to be established after communist revolutionary transformation. The later scholars of Marxian persuasion, especially, the critical theorists of Frankfurt School, delineated education as an important aspect of culture industry. It may be noted that in all endeavours of preparing the younger generation for equalitarian social order Marxian theory and guidelines for socio-political praxis are relevant.

When we study Marx’s contribution to knowledge, we have to acknowledge his intellectual companionship with Friedrich Engels (1820-18950), son of a Prussian manufacturer which started in September 1884 in Paris and remained life-long. Therefore, when we refer to Marx’s ideas on education we have to acknowledge them as ideas of as Marx and Engels on education.

Adams, Bert and Sydie, R.A.. 2001. Sociological Theory . New DelhiVistaar Publications Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reforms and the Contradictionsof EconomicLife. New York: Basic Books.
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 2002. Schooling in Capitalist America Revisited.
Sociology of Education, Vol. 75, No. 1, (Jan., 2002), pp. 1-18.
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis.1981.”Contradiction and Reproduction in Educational Theory” in Schooling, Ideology, and Curriculum,edited by Len Barton. Sussex, England: Falmer Press.
Marx and Engels. 1982. Selected Works. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Moore, Rob. 2014. Education and Society: Issues and Explanations in the Sociology of
Education. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Morrison, Ken. 2006. Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of modern social thought (2nd edition) . New Delhi: Sage.
Saha, Lawrence, J. 2011. Sociology of Education. 21 st Century Education: A Reference Hand Book . Sage Publications.
Turner, et al . 2012. The Emergence of Sociological Theory ( Seventh edition) . New Delhi: Sage.

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Waugh, Colin. 2010. http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2010/04/13/marx-and-engels-education Assessed on 05 September 2015 at 10.30 pm
Friedrich, Engels. 1845. The Conditions of the Working-Class in
England. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1840/cond-wce/cwe14.htm (9 of 9) [23/08/2000 16:28:37] Marx/Engels Internet Archive
IlanGur-Ze’ev ‘Max Horkheimer and Philosophy of Education’, in Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education, downloaded from
http://eepat.net/doku.php?id=horkheimer_and_philosophy_of_education on 29 July 2014 at 9.10 pm.
www.age-of-the-sage.org › … › Philosophy of History index. Accessed on 20-9-14.

Marxist Perspective on Education – Explained with 980 Words

Marxist perspective on Education: Education is a universal phenomenon. It can exist within distinct, formal organizations like schools and colleges, but an also simultaneously exist in other forms in the confines of our home or other immediate environments. There exist multiple perceptions on education and its effectiveness in our society. An amalgamation of various social theories and postulations by numerous social theorists are used to explain the role of education in the lives of individuals. This paper will be primarily focusing on the Marxist perspective on education and how it plays into the capitalist society that we are all a part of.

“Education is perceived as a place where children can develop according to their unique needs and potential. It is also perceived as one of the best means of achieving greater social equality. Many would say that the purpose of education should be to develop every individual to their full potential, and give them a chance to achieve as much in life as their natural abilities allow (meritocracy). Few would argue that any education system accomplishes this goal perfectly. Some take a particularly negative view, arguing that the education system is designed with the intention of causing the social reproduction of inequality” (Satapathy, n.d., p. 7). As we all know, before the institutionalized education begins, which includes an organization of individuals, syllabuses etc., there is also learning and education that starts from one’s immediate surroundings, like home, family, neighborhood, lifestyles, religion etc. This paper will delve deeper into how our educational systems prepare us or the lives in the outside world encompassed by capitalistic ideals; through a Marxist perspective.

Marxist Perspective on Education

Marxist theory is derived from the ideas and accounts of a German sociologist named Karl Marx. The Marxist perspective expanded to a great extent through his influential works. He sought to explain the inequalities and perpetuated differences in society which led to class conflict; for which the economic system of capitalism was blamed. The Marxist theory believes that the educational system that exists in the current capitalistic society is highly problematic. They believe that the curriculum does not believe in allowing the children to acquire skills for individual growth but rather seeks to create products that are meant to be forcefully assimilated into the society, only to maintain the status quo.

I agree with this view as according to the Marxist perspective, the capitalistic society seeks to generate workers for the purpose of generating labor. The curriculum’s only objective being this, views students as a homogenous crowd and neglects the existence of individuality, uniqueness, and personal self-expression. In the current educational system, students are forced to fit a predesigned mold that is often associated with success, leading to any deviation from this pattern viewed in a poor light and associated with failure. The grading system that exists in modern educational systems creates a form of alienation in the minds of children where their young minds are rid of any ideas that deviate from the assigned curriculum enforced on them. The Marxist perspective explains how the educational systems further perpetuate inequality, rather than seek to ensure individual growth.

While I agree with the fact that the majority of the methods used in modern education are counterproductive to uplifting young minds, I also believe that the enemy in the situation is not the concept of education, but the system that enforces it and the values they hold. I believe that education has the power to spread knowledge and awareness and is an important factor in instigating a social change. The same tool that is being used by the unequal capitalist society can be used against them. Education should not be limited within the constraints of a particular academic curriculum and individuals must be encouraged to broaden their spectrum of knowledge by having access to other informational sources, such as, the internet, social media, books and articles from authors with various perspectives on social issues etc. The Marxist perspective uses the ability to educate individuals, and do a wonderful job in highlighting the problems with the current educational system, and this information can be utilized to develop a more equal, broader and interdisciplinary educational system.

Satapathy, S. S. (n.d.). Sociology of Education . DDCE. https://ddceutkal.ac.in/Syllabus/MA_SOCIOLOGY/Paper-16.pdf.

Intellectual Affairs

Scott McLemee interviews Paul Reitter, translator of a new English edition of Marx’s Capital .

By Scott McLemee

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The cover of a new English translation of Karl Marx's 'Capital,' Vol. 1, translated by Paul Reitter.

Princeton University Press

In early 1845, a young and precariously employed holder of a Ph.D. in philosophy named Karl Marx signed a contract with a German publisher for a book, in two volumes, on political economy. He had already filled notebooks with extracts from his studies in the field, and at the time likely felt like he was already reasonably far along on the project. But his publisher canceled the contract two years later, in part on the grounds that Marx rejected the suggestion to write with an eye to avoid provoking the authorities.

The gestation of Das Kapital (1867) took another 20 years, most of them in England, where the author did research at the British Museum (a library) digesting official reports on factory conditions as well as economic and business literature in several languages. Marx also worked with British trade unionists, including many from abroad, and served as a foreign correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune . Documenting the extremes of inequality in Victorian Britain was ultimately secondary to Marx’s efforts to understand capitalism as a dynamic system—one already well along the way to instantiating itself everywhere, remaking the world in its own image.

Marx’s model of capitalism as an inherently crisis-generating system became more plausible to many readers in the wake of the global financial system’s near-collapse in 2008. Arriving 16 years later—to the month, as it turned out— Princeton University Press’s new translation of Capital arrives as a certified classic. The edition draws on generations of scholarship on Marx’s economic manuscripts, which are voluminous in mass and headache-making in penmanship. Prefatory essays by the political theorist Wendy Brown and by Paul North, a scholar of German literature, move between the 19th-century context of Marx’s writing and the 21st-century horizon of the new edition’s readers.

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The translator is Paul Reitter, a professor of Germanic languages and literatures at Ohio State University. He answered a few questions about his work by email. A transcript of the discussion follows.

Q: Nobody undertakes the translation of a massive, recondite book into English for the fourth time without feeling a very clear and distinct need. What motivated you to take it on?

A: It’s true that on some level I wanted to produce a translation that conveys elements of Marx’s text that in my opinion the other English translations of Capital don’t convey so well—which isn’t to suggest that those translations are failed efforts, just that they clearly didn’t prioritize textual elements that have come to matter a lot for 21st-century readers, including me. Since I had taught both the Moore-Aveling translation (1887) and Ben Fowkes’s translation (1976), I had experienced their limitations in a very particular and highly motivating way—all my retranslation projects have begun in the classroom.

Q: What’s your personal history with Capital ? What aspect(s) of its historical, theoretical or literary qualities, say, made the strongest impression?

A: I’ve connected with Capital in a number of ways—as someone who became devoted to intellectual history pretty early in life, as a student of critical theory, as a scholar of radical German-Jewish intellectuals and, not least, as someone trying to understand the workings and effects of capitalism and the persistence of market fundamentalism in the here and now.

What made the biggest impression? The scope of what Marx was trying to do is astonishing. According to one well-informed estimate, volume one represents 1/72 of the project he had in mind to carry out. But this is of course a hard question. Although Marx turns decisively away from classical political economy’s focus on the egoism of the individual, and instead wants to understand capitalism in terms of its “laws of motion,” there’s a humaneness to the project, because he keeps asking whether these laws promote human flourishing among those doing most of the work, a question most economists today neglect to pose. Also, the writing in Capital is often really brilliant. I hope my translation has managed to preserve something of that.

Q: What effect did translating Capital have on your sense of the book? Did it change anything about how you understood it?

A: I certainly think that I’ve come away from the work of translating Capital with a much keener understanding of many of the book’s most important ideas and arguments, by which I mean such things as Marx’s notions of value and commodity fetishism. You’d expect this, of course: translating entails very, very close reading, or, for example, thinking at great length about how this or that individual term is being used, and if the process of translating doesn’t leave you with the sense that you’ve truly deepened your knowledge of a text’s form and content, well, you should be surprised (and alarmed).

But the kind of poring over I just described isn’t necessarily conducive to coming up with a big new interpretation. If it were, we’d see lots of translators writing books about the texts they just translated. We don’t see so much of that, however, and keep in mind: Many of the people who retranslate classics are scholars, i.e., people who write books. On the other hand, I could imagine writing about certain impressions of the Capital that didn’t take shape until I translated it.

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Here are two. First, I had seriously underappreciated the sophistication of Marx’s mimetic techniques: There are places where he pulls off a kind of free indirect imitation, essentially impersonating someone without having that person speak directly—an unusual and, I think, very effective device. Second, I had underappreciated the extent to which Marx makes an effort to locate positive possibilities in developments that in the short run cause a lot of suffering, such as the rapid development of machinery. According to Marx, this drains the content from labor and throws a lot of people out of work but increasingly necessitates that workers be retrained again and again, allowing them to cultivate an unlikely and fulfilling well-roundedness.

Q: In the spring, someone on social media predicted this would be the “definitive” translation. It came as a relief to see you don’t claim that! Marx himself might have been dubious about the idea. He prepared a second, revised German edition of Capital in 1872 and left notes for additional corrections and tweaks he did not live to make, plus he had a hand in the Russian and French translations, with the latter incorporating changes he regarded as significant for understanding his arguments. You’ve translated the second German edition. Why did that seem like the one to work on?

A: There’s really no definitive source text to work from here. Some scholars point to the authoritativeness of the first French edition of Capital (1875) because it’s the last edition of volume one whose publication Marx oversaw, and Marx himself said that the changes he made—he revised Joseph Roy’s French translation—gave it an “independent scientific value.” But it’s easy to push back against this. Marx, who didn’t have the highest opinion of the French reading public, also said that he had to smooth/flatten out/simplify the French edition, and in fact the edition drops some important formulations. Furthermore, we don’t have the manuscript of the translation by Roy that Marx worked over, so most of the time, we don’t know what’s from Marx and what’s from Roy.

We do have some lists where Marx identified passages in the French edition that should be translated into German for future German editions. But the passages that scholars dwell on when they talk about the important changes in the French edition, the ones that are supposed to reflect changes in Marx’s thinking, mostly aren’t from his list, and you can make the case that some of the passages that scholars have treated as crucial, change-reflecting “revisions” are in fact translations—I do this in my translator’s preface.

Not only that, Friedrich Engels didn’t exactly follow Marx’s instructions when he edited the third (1883) and fourth (1890) editions of volume one, and to me the formulations of his own that he inserted into the fourth edition, which are meant to clarify Marx’s arguments, sound like Engels, not Marx, and are sometimes counterproductive. That’s how we landed on using the second German edition (1872), the last German edition Marx saw through to publication, as our source text.

Although someone writing in Jacobin recently suggested otherwise, the back matter in our edition includes quite a bit of material informing readers about how the first German edition differs from the second edition and about how the French edition differs from the second German edition. Will Roberts contributed a great afterword essay on the latter topic.

Q: You are also translating the second and third volumes of Capital , left in manuscript at the time of Marx’s death and edited for publication by Engels. Is it too early to ask how that part of the project is going?

A: We are excited to be back at it and are enjoying the mix of continuity and change: Volume two has its own special translation and philological challenges. In volume one, for example, we tried to make transparent what you might call Marx’s creative practices of citation. Sometimes he reorders that material he’s citing; sometimes he paraphrases rather than translates quotations from foreign-language source material but still uses quotation marks. So where Marx cites English-language texts in his own German translations, we didn’t just plug in the original English sources; in cases where his creative citing affected the meaning of the quotations in a substantial way, we matched the quotations to what Marx gave his readers.

One thing that made this difficult—and interesting—is Marx’s translating style. When Marx translates English factory inspectors’ reports, he often drops little qualifying words, such as “almost.” Where the original text has “the smell was almost unbearable,” his German translation will say what you’d back-translate into English as “the smell was unbearable.” So what’s he doing? Is he amplifying the evidence to make working conditions out to be even worse than the factory inspector’s report indicates? Or did Marx read the “almost” as British understatement that doesn’t register well in German? In other words, it can be hard to say whether Marx was citing creatively or translating creatively.

In volume two, the challenge is to make transparent Engels’s creative editing. Volume two is actually Marx’s last word on the Capital project, based as it is on eight different manuscripts, the last of which Marx worked on into the 1880s (in contrast, he wrote the manuscript on which volume three is based in the mid-1860s).

As Engels laboriously put, or pieced, together the text of volume two, struggling with a bad back and Marx’s nearly indecipherable handwriting, he tried to make the text seem like a “finished whole.” He inserted transitional sections, evened out and to some extent formalized the style, which varies quite a bit in the manuscripts, and worked to create an impression of conceptual integration when Marx’s thinking in fact evolved considerably over the course of the eight volume-two manuscripts. Since the German critical edition of Marx’s and Engels’s works, with its 30-volume section of Capital (completed in 2012), has made available reliable versions of all the volume two manuscripts, you can now track—and, again, make transparent—Engels’s editorial interventions, something that couldn’t be done for the only English translation of volume two currently in print, David Fernbach’s edition, which was published in 1978.

Q: When I first started studying Capital —some time in the first Reagan administration—it felt very much like a Victorian text, not just because of Marx’s examples (all those waistcoats and spools of linen) but in the style. Your translator’s introduction discusses the nuances of his diction that you’ve pursued. But somehow the text reads as much more contemporary, or at least less Victorian, than the others. Any thoughts on this?

A: To respond to your specific question, Marx’s prose in Capital is often very direct, streamlined and forceful—Engels described it as the most concise and vigorous writing in German. There’s much more subject-verb-object word order than you find in most 19th-century German scholarship or “high” literature (see the first pages of chapter one), and while Marx neologizes quite a bit, he otherwise tends to avoid uncommon or recondite words: He uses a lot of colloquial and earthy expressions. It’s a scholarly prose that feels untimely in Nietzsche’s sense, or like it’s from the 19th century but not entirely of it. And in steering away from Victorian language, I wasn’t trying to make Marx sound like a contemporary author: I was trying to match what I hear when I read Capital .

There’s a saying that a classic work should be retranslated every 50 years or so. It certainly looks like Anglophone translators of Capital (volume one) took that to heart. First English translation: Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, 1887. Second English translation: Eden and Cedar Paul, 1928. Third English translation: Ben Fowkes, 1976. Fourth English translation: me, 2024.

I can’t claim that the saying actually played a role in my decision to retranslate Capital , but I think it’s right, insofar as we can read its message as being that it’s good to have translations from multiple eras. Not everyone agrees. When the Pauls’ translation appeared, David Riazanov, the leading Marx scholar at the time, saw it as an affront. According to him, to produce a new English translation was to imply that the Moore-Aveling version, which Engels edited, was “useless.” And when Fowkes introduced his translation, he maintained that the Moore-Aveling edition was outdated to the point of near uselessness. For Fowkes, Moore-Aveling’s vocabulary felt wrong (e.g., because they used the term “labourer” rather than “worker”), and what he called their “watering down” of Marx’s philosophical terms no longer made sense.

In my translator’s preface, I noted some of the ways my own priorities align with the wants and needs of present-day readers and, in addition, some of the ways my translation benefited from scholarly resources that came into being only after Fowkes’s translation was published. But I tried to avoid striking an adversarial tone. Much of the time, the particular pressures under which a translator operates will be at once limiting and productive. A first translation introduces a text to an audience that hasn’t had access to it, so if the text is strange (and Capital is a strange text), there’s obviously going to be pressure to pull back on its strangeness and to draw the audience in. If the text has become a classic, you’ll have a motivated readership, which brings a certain freedom, but you’ll also have critical authorities exerting a different kind of pressure.

A new English retranslation of The Communist Manifesto is unlikely to contain a rendering that travels as far from the source text as the most iconic line from Samuel Moore’s early English translation: “All that is solid melts into air.” So, different “epochs of translation,” to speak with Goethe, have different advantages. Ideally, then, readers committed to a classic text they gain access to through translation will engage with different translations and try to profit from their different strengths.

Scott McLemee is Inside Higher Ed ’s “Intellectual Affairs” columnist. He was a contributing editor at Lingua Franca magazine and a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education before joining Inside Higher Ed in 2005.

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Marxist Theories of Teaching

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First Online: 01 January 2022
pp 1035–1039
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Derek R. Ford 2

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Introduction

Marxism is much more than an intellectual exercise or a theoretical mode of investigating the world. Marxism is a guide to action, a way to change the world in the interests of the exploited, oppressed, and dispossessed. Yet it is no dogmatic guide. In fact, Marx’s own theories evolved over the course of his life, and they did in response to changes in the workers’ movement in which Marx and his frequent co-thinker, Frederick Engels, were deeply involved. While Marx never explicitly addressed teaching or pedagogy, his work left a rich and capacious reserve from which teacher educators have drawn. However, as Marxism is not a fixed dogma, it’s necessary to clarify that Marx ism is much broader than the writings of Marx. In this sense, Marxist theories of teaching are both contributions to teacher education and contributions to Marxist theory and practice.

One of the key pillars of Marx’s work is historical materialism, which asserts that world developments on any level are...

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Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist america: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life . New York: Basic Books.

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Ford, D. R. (2016). Communist study: Education for the commons . Lanham: Lexington.

Grande, S. (2004). Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought . Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Lewis, T. E. (2018). Inoperative learning: A radical rewriting of educational potentialities . New York: Routledge.

Malott, C. S. (2016). History and education: Engaging the global class war . New York: Peter Lang.

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Marxist thinking can offer a critical understanding of education in an international context. Jones tackles these issues from a variety of angles and perspectives, taking advantage of recent theoretical innovations in Marxist analysis as well as the personal experiences of educational practitioners with Marxist commitments.
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The author argues that Marxist approaches to education overstate the role of education in reproducing capitalist relations and ignore the complexities of the educational process. He compares Marxism with functionalism and the 'new sociology' and suggests that the former is influenced by the latter's political context.
What's the point of education? A Marxist perspective
Louis Althusser (a Marxist) (1971) argued that the main role of education in a capitalist society was the reproduction of an efficient and obedient work force. This is achieved through schools: transmitting the ideology that capitalism is just and reasonable (school teaches you to compete with your fellow pupils by trying to do better than them ...
14 Karl Marx and the Theory of Education
Marx and Engels' and Marxists' views on education are only parts of the general theory of Marxian analyses of modern society and societal transformation. Therefore, you will first learn an outline of the Marxian theory before studying Marx's and neo-Marxists' views on education as a social institution. Salient components of Marxian ...
Marxist Perspective on Education
The Marxist perspective explains how the educational systems further perpetuate inequality, rather than seek to ensure individual growth. Ezewu (1990) argues that education by its nature is a cultural process. He further notes that the basic aim of education should be the transmission of cultural heritage, preparation for adulthood and fitting ...
Interview with translator of Marx (opinion)
Scott McLemee interviews Paul Reitter, translator of a new English edition of Marx's Capital. In early 1845, a young and precariously employed holder of a Ph.D. in philosophy named Karl Marx signed a contract with a German publisher for a book, in two volumes, on political economy. He had already filled notebooks with extracts from his studies in the field, and at the time likely felt like ...
Marxist Theories of Teaching
'Marxist Theories of Teaching' published in 'Encyclopedia of Teacher Education' Red pedagogy, according to Grande, begins with narratives of survival, which locates teacher education within the ongoing legacy of dispossession and frames the act of teaching around "conversations about power" that "include an examination of responsibility, to consider our collective need 'to live poorer ...
Who is Sri Lanka's new president Anura Kumara Dissanayake?
A former Marxist. Dissanayake was born on 24 November, 1968 in Galewela, a multi-cultural and multi-religious town in central Sri Lanka.

Marxist Perspective on Education

Key Takeaways

Marxist Views on Education

Bowes and Gintes (1976)

The Reproduction of Class Inequality

The Legitimization of Class Inequality

Reproduction and legitimization of social inequality – Althusser

Working in The Interests of Capitalist Employers

Correspondence Principle

The Myth of Meritocracy

Criticisms of the Marxist Perspective on Education

Evaluate the Marxist View of the Role of Education in Society

Evaluating the Marxist Perspective on Education

Signposting and Related Posts

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The Marxist View of Education

Table of Contents

Class Structure and Education

The Myth of Meritocracy

Ideological State Apparatus

The Role of Education in Legitimizing Social Inequality

Vocational Training and the Division of Labor

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Karl Marx and education

Karl Marx as a thinker

Karl Marx on the class struggle

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx’s relevance to knowledge and education

Further reading

Marx – key texts

What’s the point of education? A Marxist perspective

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Marxist Theories of Teaching

Introduction

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