Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge [Illustrated] 1623961211, 9781623961213

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Advance praise for Teaching Marx Disillusionment with a system where increasing productivity leads only to increased gaps between rich and poor, where reductions in social programs (retirement, health care, education) are the chief response an uninspired political sector can muster, and where non-sustainable exploitation of the Earth continues undiminished—in short, as the looming, world-wide economic crisis draws nearer, the essays in Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge are critical reading. It is time for our teachers to prepare students not to take their place in an increasingly corrupt economy, but to bring about the fundamental changes we need to build an equitable, prosperous, sustainable future. —Dr. Dennis Vickers Humanities Department College of Menominee Nation Keshena, Wisconsin Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge is an extraordinarily important text at this juncture of world history. Functioning as more than just another pedagogical weapon to be used against the ideological structures of death and social hallucinogenics manufactured by the transnational capitalist class, it is a book that can provide fecund opportunities for teachers to re-learn how to put social and economic justice front and center in the agenda for educational reform by putting Marx front and center, where he belongs. —Peter McLaren Professor, UCLA and author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Revolution Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge provides a useful starting point for understanding the origins of today’s global crisis of capitalism. Our work in public schools to encourage respectful dialogues between Indian and non-Indian students about local conflicts over land ownership, through the TERRA Institute, should encourage cooperative action to find common interests. This book reminds us to move those specific discussions to explorations of the causes of conflicts over land, including the imperatives of global capitalism. —David Stanfield TERRA Institute www.terrainstitute.org This collection by Malott, Cole and Elmore is a very timely contribution to the current revival of marxism in education. The authors engage seriously with the ideas of Marx—from his theory of capitalist crises to the increasing impoverishment of the working class—and debunk many of the commonly held myths about marxism. The compilation of writings provide a devastating rejoinder to those who believe that we can only make changes within the present system and show how this crisis has made discussion of socialist alternatives, in education and society, an urgent necessity. They argue that,in Marx’s words, the educators need to get educated and find ways—through their students, through what they teach, and through their political activism—to feed into wider movements of social change. —Marnie Holborow author on marxism and language Dublin City University, Ireland

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Teaching Marx The Socialist Challenge

A volume in Critical Constructions: Studies in Education and Society Curry Stephenson Malott, Series Editor

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Teaching Marx The Socialist Challenge

edited by

Curry Stephenson Malott West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Mike Cole Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln

John M. Elmore West Chester University of Pennsylvania

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC. Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data   CIP data is available for this book at www.loc.gov.

Copyright © 2013 Information Age Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America

Contents Foreword................................................................................................ ix Curry Stephenson Malott, Mike Cole, and John M. Elmore Introduction: Rethinking Educational Purpose—The Socialist Challenge.............................................................................................. xv Curry Stephenson Malott

Sect i o n I The Larger Context 1 Marx, Marxism and (Twenty-First Century) Socialism....................... 3 Mike Cole 2 The Crisis in Marxism: Language, Agency, and the Problem of Marx’s Authorial Voice.................................................................... 27 Brad Hollingshead 3 Class Consciousness and Teacher Education: The Socialist Challenge and The Historical Context............................................. 103 Curry Stephenson Malott

Sect i o n II A Marxist Challenge to Capitalist Schooling 4 Marx, Teacher Education, and the Corporate University............... 143 John M. Elmore

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5 Critical Multicultural Social Studies and the Socialist Challenge............................................................................. 161 Marc Pruyn and Curry Stephenson Malott 6 “Shut Up! He Might Hear You!”: Teaching Marx in Social Studies Education............................................................................... 207 E. Wayne Ross and Greg Queen 7 Seeking Liberatory Possibilities in Science Education.................... 233 Andrew Gilbert

Sect i o n III Social Class and Student Perspective 8 “Class” Discussion: Social Class, Communication and the Classroom Environment.................................................................... 259 Carrie Freie 9 Student-Teaching as an Emerging Marxist....................................... 273 Eric Gerard Anderson

Sect i o n I V Twenty-First Century Socialism in Practice 10 The Role of Higher Education within the Socialist Revolution of Latin America................................................................................. 327 John M. Elmore 11 Education and Twenty-First Century Socialism: The Venezuelan Alternative to Neo-Liberal Capitalism................. 343 Mike Cole Afterword: Teaching Marx in the N eo-liberal Age......................... 363 John M. Elmore

Foreword Curry Stephenson Malott, Mike Cole, and John M. Elmore

We are in the midst of yet another crisis in capitalism. In the United Kingdom, we have the most right-wing and ideologically driven government since Thatcher, using the crisis to drive through a social counter-revolution: to drastically diminish workers’ rights and living standards, the latter having been pushed back thirty years (Shaoul, 2012), and to undermine the welfare state. In the United States, President Obama, whose initial record did not live up to the expectations of many on the Left, is increasingly driven by right-wing republicanism and other corporate interests. At the same time, there are developments in Latin America, in particular Venezuela, which are heralding the dawn of a new politics, and recovering the voice of Marx, but with a twenty-first century socialist focus, thus giving hope to the lives of millions of working people throughout the world. This is why the world media is intent on discrediting President Hugo Chávez; and insisting that ordinary people have to pay the cost of the crisis in capitalism. The Arab Spring and the Occupy movement also show signs of an anti-capitalist movement in embryo. In Greece, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe (even France), the austerity-stricken working-classes are pushing for real existing socialism. It is therefore not surprising that the ruling class of Greece is increasingly supporting the neo-Nazi, fascist Golden Dawn party threatening civil war should they lose power as a class. Now, is a prescient time to bring twenty-first century socialism to the educational institutions of the world, to teach Marx across the curriculum and across the globe. Teaching Marx, pages ix–xiii Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Through this volume, our goal was to contribute to the literature by concretely demonstrating the practical implications of Marx’s theory to curriculum. However, while this book provides concrete examples of how Marx can inform, and has informed a revolutionary critical education, it is not intended to be prescriptive. That is, the chapters should not be read as a how to guide, but they should be taken as inspiration for new, creative approaches to Teaching Marx and interpreting and posing The Socialist Challenge. What follows is a summary of chapters, a small but important preview of the contents herein. Chapter Summaries Section I: The Larger Context Chapter 1: Marx, Marxism and (Twenty-first Century) Socialism (Mike Cole) In chapter one, Mike Cole provides an introduction to Karl Marx and the unique strengths of Marxism, as both an analytical framework, and as a harbinger of a non-exploitative future world. This chapter looks at some historical challenges to Socialism and outlines two central tenets of scientific socialism. Chapter 2: The Crisis in Marxism: Language, Agency, and the Problem of Marx’s Authorial Voice (Brad Hollingshead) In chapter two, Brad Hollingshead discusses efforts to revitalize the place of Marxist theory in higher learning. In examining the shadow of crisis under which Marxism continues to labor, Hollingshead considers the issue of Marx’s voice, or more precisely, the conventional narrative of Marx’s voice that solidified into doctrine over the course of the twentieth century. This chapter is theoretical in emphasis, and seeks to highlight what it means to bring Marx into the twenty-first century classroom at the tail end of a crisis in critical theory that seriously undermined the credibility of Marx’s voice. Chapter 3: Class Consciousness and Teacher Education: The Socialist Challenge and The Historical Context (Curry Malott) In chapter three, Curry Malott considers one of the current trends in teacher education; the absence of class consciousness, within the normalizing impulse of capitalism. The chapter traces the tendency to distort the class-based nature of social existence, from the birth of large-scale industrial capitalism and the reorganization of Western-based societies to the

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current unimaginably levels of domination and exploitation, and the subsequent need to manufacture consent to this barbaric project and process. In the final section Dr. Malott expands on the argument for a revolutionary education, not as a prescription, but as a place of departure for the vast diversity of global contexts within the ever-expanding, ever-deepening social universe of capital. Section II: A Marxist Challenge to Capitalist Schooling Chapter 4: Marx, Teacher Education, and the Corporate University (John Elmore) In chapter four, John Elmore considers the role of teacher education in producing the level of critical consciousness necessary for teachers to engage their respective classrooms as sites of revolutionary praxis. Education for such liberation, Dr. Elmore argues, must teach students to see inequities within society and, more importantly, to comprehend the social, political, and economic systems that generate them. Currently the neo-liberal-inspired corporate-model of education acts as a major barrier to revolutionary pedagogy. Chapter 5: Critical Multicultural Social Studies and the Socialist Challenge (Marc Pruyn and Curry Malott) In chapter five, Marc Pruyn and Curry Malott focus on the iterative and potentially self-reinforcing relationship between “Critical Multicultural Social Studies” (CMSS) and Marxist/socialist ways of understanding society; and how this relationship—and the resultant pedagogical and larger struggles for justice and equity—might be fostered. This chapter considers questions such as: What are social studies, civics and citizenship, and democracy education? How are they taught? What does it mean to teach and do “thick,” participatory democracy? What does it mean to approach the educative process from a perspective of Critical Multicultural Social Studies? Chapter 6: “Shut up! He might hear you!” Teaching Marx in Social Studies Education (E. Wayne Ross and Greg Queen) In chapter six, Wayne Ross and Greg Queen consider the ideology of neutrality that dominates current practices in social studies education, which is sustained by theories of knowledge and conceptions of democracy that constrain rather than widen civic participation in our society. This chapter examines how the theory of knowledge and conceptions of de-

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mocracy that support what has been call “traditional social studies instruction” (TSSI), function to obscure political and ideological consequences of mainstream social studies{em}passive learning; democratic citizenship as a spectator project; and ultimately the maintenance of status quo inequalities in society! Chapter 7: Seeking Liberatory Possibilities in Science Education (Andrew Gilbert) In chapter seven, Andrew Gilbert considers how we can utilize critical notions of science and Marxist perspectives to challenge the status quo capitalist schooling agenda. This chapter examines the current efforts to commodify science education, the possibilities that perspectives steeped in critical theory can challenge these capitalistic notions of science teaching, and the experiences of an exceptional teacher and his students working within a critical science context and discuss the possibilities that exist for employing Marx across the sciences. Section III: Social Class and Student Perspective Chapter 8: “Class” Discussion: Social Class, Communication and the Classroom Environment (Carrie Freie) In chapter eight, Carrie Freie examines some of the constraints on classroom participation experienced by college students. Of particular interest, are the ways students, teachers, and the larger university and social/economic environments shape or influence the ways discussion is approached in the college classroom. Framed around the idea of social class positioning, class consciousness, and identity this discussion explores the constraints around, and opportunities for, using classroom spaces for democratic discussion. Chapter 9: Student-Teaching as an Emerging Marxist (Eric Gerard Anderson) In chapter nine, Eric Anderson considers some of the challenges faced by beginning Marxist educators in New York public schools, as well as some solutions and methods used during my experience along with strategies moving forward. This chapter examines teaching global history from a Marxist standpoint and possibilities for engaging Marx in teaching American history, where Marx is rarely included even when discussing socialist political parties in the United States.

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Section IV: Twenty First Century Socialism in Practice Chapter 10: The Role of Higher Education within the Socialist Revolution of Latin America (John Elmore) In chapter ten, John Elmore considers the current revolutions of Latin America, where a movement of convergence is underway in the region that has mobilized governments from a broad political range behind a common imperative; the necessity of rising to challenge the systematic plundering by the U.S. government and U.S. corporations, which most recently, has been cloaked in the veil of “globalization”: the neo-liberal privatization of the world. In this chapter, Dr. Elmore considers the role that education should play at this revolutionary moment. Chapter 11: Education and Twenty-First Century Socialism: The Venezuelan Alternative to Neo-Liberal Capitalism (Mike Cole) In chapter eleven, Mike Cole looks briefly at the advent of the government of Hugo Chávez, and the ensuing ascendancy of social democracy, and the move toward socialism. In this chapter, Dr. Cole considers the effects of the overall Bolivarian educational processes at the level of educational institutions as a whole and proceeds to outline the work of revolutionary socialist educators in an alternative school started by residents and activists in Barrio Pueblo Nuevo in Mérida, Western Venezuela. References Shaoul, J. (2012). Cuts push U.K. workers’ living standards back 30 years, World Socialist Web Site, March 12 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/mar2012/ wage-m12.shtml

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Introduction

Rethinking Educational Purpose The Socialist Challenge Curry Stephenson Malott

Symbolized by the housing market crash in the United States between 2006 and 2008, the most recent crisis of capitalist over-accumulation has had devastating effects on both the center (i.e., the United States, Great Britain, Germany, etc.) and the periphery (i.e., Ireland, Greece, Egypt, Syria, Panama, etc.) as communities of workers are crudely hacked out of the global economy with drastic austerity policies. These current developments can be said to be part of the most recent period of capitalist development—the neo-liberal period of capital. In the United States neo-liberalism was brought on, in part, by the decline of the post-WWII boom when U.S. capitalist competition in Europe and Japan began to pose a competitive challenge after rebuilding their infrastructures. Simply stated, neo-liberal policies are clearly designed to increase profitability for the capitalist class, while being portrayed to the general public as serving the so-called common good.

Teaching Marx, pages xv–xxvi Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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We can begin our story noting that income in the United States (in the so-called center) was at an all-time high in 1972, after which it began to decline (a decline still in process). Ronald Reagan, a former movie star and governor of California, after being elected President of the United States in 1981, used this ebb in the economy as a pretext for cutting the social programs labor fought for since the second industrial revolution in the late 1800s, which further slowed growth and depressed wages. Coupled with these cuts was the dismantling of the regulation and taxation of capital. We might refer to this as the capitalist state giving tax breaks to the capitalist class. For example, in 1972 in the United States the capitalist class was taxed 70%; with Reagan (1981–1989) that decreased to 40%; today, it is 15%. After running up the debt by cutting taxes on the rich (i.e., trickle down economics) and massively increasing military spending to further expand and forcibly open markets and prevent the global spread of peoples’ programs (i.e., socialism), the path was paved to say: We have been spending too much. We are not working hard enough. We are enjoying too many entitlements. We have to cut back. We have to tighten our belts. There is not enough to go around, so we have to consume less. (Perlo, 2012, http://politicalaffairs.net/austerity-and-the-economic-crisis/)

It is argued that this sentiment has been so thoroughly normalized that liberals do not fully reject its scarcity premise arguing that capitals’ greed just needs to be reigned in (i.e., transaction tax) but, it seems, not overcome (instead we hear vague notions of social justice). In practice, liberal critical educators tend to argue that social justice will be achieved when the culture of capitalist societies is democratized by cultural workers. However, the consequence here is that the abolition of class society is sidelined. As we will see below, it therefore seems clear that even much of the educational left, especially in the United States, have conceded to the inevitability of capital thesis. Consequently, it is not uncommon to hear those on the left proclaim that, the WalMarts aren’t going anywhere. They will always be here so we should put pressure on them to be socially and environmentally responsible. This inevitability thesis comes from the false end of history assumption drawn on most recently by the West with the fall of Soviet communism used as “evidence” against Marx (Cole, 2011; McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2005). Situating this shift away from the hope within an anti-capitalist Marxism in a larger global context Göran Therborn (2008) notes that, “the labor movement in capitalist countries, the socialist-feminist movement, the anticolonial liberation movements and ‘actually existing’ socialist countries, whatever their faults, were seen as carriers of a different future . . . of emancipation. By the 1990s, however, that belief in the future had been fundamentally shattered” (p. 125).

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Understood within this hyper-capitalist context, the socialist-oriented pedagogies of radical educators such as Paulo Freire have consequently been reduced to self-reflective, dialogical learning circles abandoning the class analysis of anti-global-capitalism. The liberal understanding of educational purpose, now, perhaps more than ever, therefore, assumes that the social function of schooling is to advance democracy by providing a way for the oppressed to achieve upward vertical social mobility creating greater equality within capitalism (i.e., social justice), which, it is assumed, is the only option in a world forever capitalist. Austerity (cutting education budgets as part of the process of privatization), from this liberal perspective, is, therefore, viewed as an attack on democracy. While this conclusion is somewhat true, I would argue, it does not tell the whole story. Education, from a Marxist understanding, on the other hand, was never intended to be democratic, it is (as argued below) a necessary cost of production fulfilling the following functions: training to reproduce labor (changes with shifts in capital); manufacturing consent to selling ones labor power for a wage far less than the value it produces; creating new technologies and commodities to increase efficiency, create new markets, and offset the falling rate of profit within capitalist production; and to reproduce the capitalist class. From here we can observe that austerity reflects both the changing needs of capital and new forms of disciplining labor. * * * Returning to the consequences of capitalism (i.e., poverty and growing inequality), it is, perhaps, telling that as the internal contradictions of capital become more obvious, rendering Marx’s work more relevant, it becomes increasingly more difficult for the supporters and beneficiaries of capital to discount or deride him. That is, as the global economy began to free fall in 2008, it was becoming far too obvious that the free market economic theories of Hayek and Friedman (that support an unregulated and untaxed capitalist class as the key to general prosperity) were too flawed for even the most pro-capital economists to ignore. That is, cutting taxes on the rich and cutting spending on social programs does not free up more capital for reinvestment and stimulus, as is argued, but rather contributes to the slowing down and depression of the economy. If saving capitalism is the goal, then increasing spending on social programs such as education, health care, and so on and simultaneously increasing transaction taxes for capitalist investment, have proven far more effective. More importantly, perhaps, in contributing to the shift, however slight, concerning the legitimacy of the work of Karl Marx, was the Arab Spring coupled with the Occupy Wall Street movements’ ability to change the international discourse (especially in the extremely conservative United

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States) in a matter of months. Class and the very legitimacy of capitalism have become mainstream topics, which was unthinkable in 2010. So significant is this movement, Noam Chomsky (2012) has boldly called it “unprecedented” and that if you would have asked him about launching Occupy in 2010, he would have said, more or less, it will never work so don’t even bother trying—offering some legitimacy to the Marxist observation that as the competitive drive of capital shifts more and more wealth to the capitalist classes thereby intensifying the poverty, suffering, and insecurity of the laboring classes, the possibility (not the inevitability) of rebellion also escalates. In a few rare capitulations to the conclusion that Marx was right, mainstream economists, if only for a brief moment, acknowledged that the growing poverty and suffering of billions of people across the Earth cannot, with good conscious, be attributed to the deficiencies of the working-class itself, but, at some level, is the outcome of competitive capitalism, which, periodically/cyclically, goes into crisis. For example, elite management specialist, Umair Haque (2011), writing in the Harvard Business Review, notes that there is, perhaps, “a tiny mote of insight or two hidden in Marx’s diagnosis of the maladies of industrial age capitalism” while offering the disclaimers that he is “a staunch believer in capitalism” and, therefore, does not believe that “Communism is the glorious future of humankind” (p. 1). That is, Haque makes a special point to continuously remind his readers that while Marx’s diagnosis might be somewhat accurate, his solutions were outright wrong. Apparently advocating for a reformist approach to thinking outside the “big-box store” (p. 2), Haque rejects a revolutionary approach, what he calls overthrowing and communalizing. However, because Haque does not identify what Marx refers to as the true cause of the conflict between labor and capital, private property, Haque’s dismissal, I argue, is unfounded. That is, because of the legalized and, thus, institutionalized creation of private property (i.e., the Enclosure Acts in England that helped make the transition from feudalism to capitalism), there emerged a landless class of former peasants (i.e., no direct access to the means of production/land to reproduce their own existence) who, due to a lack of alternatives, found themselves in a social context where they had to sell their labor power for a wage to survive. These English and Scottish tribesmen became the basis for the original industrial, global working class. The unequal relationship between the purchasers of labor power (i.e., capitalists) and the sellers of labor power (i.e., labor ourselves) stemming from capitalist property relations is the foundation of the capitalist mode of production. The exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class is, therefore, a predictable consequence of the labor/capital relationship, which, fundamentally, does not change even as the means of production expands into digital and online arenas.

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Again, failing to identify the true cause of conflict, Haque seems to be guilty of the same error Marx (1844/1988) critiques Adam Smith for. Just as Marx (1844/1988) pointed out how political economy acknowledges the consequences of capital, such as how “the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes the most wretched of commodities” (as in neo-liberal capitalism), but “does not demonstrate how [such conditions] arise from the very nature of private property” (Marx, 1844/1988, pp. 69-70) (i.e., the privatization and centralization of land/means of production), so, too, do liberal (i.e., Haque) cries against poverty fail to reveal the true cause of these material conditions. Similarly, veteran critical educator and researcher, Jean Anyon (2011), in her text Marx and Education, argues that the very notion of revolution is outdated and irrelevant due to “historical events.” This conclusion is reached by separating the creation of private property from the exploitation of labor as two separate forms of oppression. Anyon, therefore, allows herself the ability to primarily focus on the consequences of capitalism, namely poverty and wealth, leaving Marx’s connection between the property relations of capital and exploitation unexplored. By not centering the cause of conflict between labor and capital Anyon, like others, either fails or refuses to comprehend the need for revolution and the socialist challenge. The culture of capitalist greed and consumerism are, therefore, portrayed as the causes of suffering, not the underlying property relations. Anyon’s neoMarxist focus on the culture of capitalism is thus reformist and a betrayal of Marx the revolutionary. For Anyon then, extending Marx means “working for progressive change” challenging “a small elite of investors” who have stolen “our jobs, income, homes, schools, water, pension funds, transportation systems” (p. 96). In her discussion, there is no mention of abolishing private property and the relationship between labor and capital. Critical pedagogy, in this context, means involving students in “public struggles over rights, injustice, and opportunity” (p. 97), but, within, it seems, rather than against capital. Unlike Anyon, this essay is based on the conclusion that a rigorous engagement with Marx does in fact demand a revolutionary program because the property relations between labor and capital at the heart of competitive capitalism will always lead to the maladies highlighted by Haque (2011), Anyon (2011), and many others—stagnation, alienation, false consciousness, commodity fetishism, and cyclical crisis—and if peace, stability, selfactualization, security, and an end of exploitation and poverty are desired, then capitalism must be abolished by organized labor—including all of us who depend on a wage to survive. Taking up the malady perhaps most closely related to a socialist pedagogy, alienation, offers yet another level of reasoning connecting education to revolutionary struggle. The result of the property relations of capital

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making possible the capitalist appropriation of wealth created by labor, and thus increasing poverty, is, of course, the alienation of labor from all that is, self, other, and the natural world. In other words, not only poverty, but alienation as well, are both consequences of the property relations of capital. Regardless of income, or relationship to consumer culture, capitalism, by definition, denies labor free control over their own labor power. Not only is revolutionary change necessary, but during periods of crisis the possibility for working class rebellion increases dramatically (which the world today is testimony)—weather apologists and reformists like it or not (Malott, 2012). This potential is largely a result of the fact that crisis itself stems from over accumulation. That is, over accumulation is the condition when the capitalist class has appropriated so much of the wealth produced by labor that labor is left with below subsistence wages and, thus, nearly unable to survive, much less consume the non-food commodities produced by others. In practice, the mountainous income gaps between rich and poor make the fact that what tends to be good for labor, higher wages, tends to be bad for capital, lower profits—a fact nakedly obvious to an exploding mass of workers and students (i.e., future or hopeful workers). When poverty, even among the employed, is widespread enough, the cycle of capitalist production begins to break down and goes into crisis. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that during these times the costs of economic crisis are almost always externalized onto workers (i.e., austerity and budget cuts). The present moment therefore presents a potential opportunity for socialist revolution. For example, in a recent U.S. public opinion poll it was found that while the general public’s perception of socialism has remained relatively the same and negative (60% view it negatively), for the first time 49% of young people (between the ages of 18 and 29) in the United States have a positive view of socialism whereas just 46% of the same demographic view capitalism positively (Pew Research Center, 2011). Put another way, the youth of today in the United States seem to be starting to depart from their elders’ negative, Cold War view of socialism. However, while this trend offers a sense of hope to those of us who view socialism as a positive solution to the destructiveness of capitalism, what this pole does not tell us is what respondents believe socialism is. Remember, in the United States, Obama’s pro-capitalist agenda has been derided as socialist and Marxist with little publicized challenge. In the conservative political and economic context of the United States the recent election of Francois Hollandes’ anti-austerity government in France is also portrayed as the extreme, far-Left. This is not a difficult feat of propaganda when one considers the fact that Hollande has served in many positions such as the first Secretary of the French Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008. However, Hollande is known as Mr. Normal, a moderate socialist whose successful campaign was based more on New Deal reformism than anti-

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capitalist socialism. That is, Hollande promised to increase taxes on the capitalist class 75%; tax financial transactions; and stand up to Germany’s Merkel on austerity in favor of growth. However, it is predicted that he will not be able to enact these progressive reforms, but rather, advance neo-liberal policies by “keep[ing] faith with bond holders” rather than increasing taxes and “seek a compromise with” rather than “challenge Merkel” (Coy, 2012, p. 1). Even though Hollande is clearly focused on saving capitalism rather than subverting it, in the United States he is portrayed as an evil socialist unjustly attacking the freedom of the wealthy. What this signifies is a larger failure to break with the false assumption that capitalism is inevitable, which contributes to a lack of ability to even imagine an existence outside the social universe of capital and the property relations of production. An indication of this is the student and faculty protests against state budget cuts to public and higher education in the United States and beyond. The protests seem to be informed by the idea that public education itself can lead to democracy and social justice. In this movement, I have seen little to no consciousness of the simple fact, underscored by Marx (1867/1967), that because competitive capital is in constant motion perpetually re-investing in the technologies of production to increase efficiency and, thus, profitability by reducing the costs of production, the major capitalist employers are able to produce with far less labor power than just 30 years ago. That is, because the value of commodities is determined by the socially necessary labor time to produce them, an important variable is the cost to produce labor power, what Marx (1867/1967) famously termed that “peculiar commodity,” which distinguishes capitalism from all other modes of production (i.e., feudalism, slavery, and socialism). According to Marx (1867/1967) then, “the value of labor-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labor-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article” (pp. 170–171). Marx then notes that this entails two elements, “the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the laborer,” such as food, clothing, and shelter, as well as training or education so he or she can do the work required by the capitalist class. This function of education has played a central role in increasing the productivity of labor, which has been an increasing necessity of the capitalist class due to the falling rate of profit. For Marx (1867/1967), the falling rate of profit is one of the central laws of capitalist accumulation—a system based on perpetual growth and, thus, movement as capitalists, driven by sheer survival, exist in fierce competition with one another, seek ever higher returns and greater market share. This law stems from “the composition of capital” itself consisting of constant capital (i.e., the means of production such as machinery, land, and buildings) and variable capital (i.e., human labor power) (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 612).

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Marx stressed the importance of understanding that these two elements are internally related. That is, when capitalists (at least the small percentage of successful and/or governmentally subsidized ones) enlarge production by reinvesting profits to expand constant capital, an equal increase in variable capital must be realized to set it in motion. If all relevant variables, such as the supply of wage-workers, in a given economy remain constant, the perpetually increasing demand for laborers by the capitalist class will reach a point when “the demand for laborers may exceed the supply, and therefore, wages may rise” (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 613). Of course, as Marx stresses, capitalists, driven by their own insatiable quest for surplus value, have been shown to withdraw their capital from circulation before investing in a situation where wages completely eliminated profitability. The economic cycle therefore, ebbs and flows, correcting itself, not in the interests of society as a whole, but in the interests of the capitalist class always. Toward these ends, capitalism has a long, complex history of engaging in many practices to counter the falling rate of profit. Of these, we might underscore: • increasing exploitation by driving down wages and dramatically reducing benefits, such as health insurance and public education; • war and other forms of wasteful production, but also war to force open markets and gain access to both constant and variable capital; • immigration which has long played a central role in increasing the reserve army of workers needed to keep the supply of variable capital up and thus wages and demand down; • financialization, which has, more recently, played a central role in creating the appearance of growth, when no real productive growth had occurred; and, • finally, Marx stresses that in the historical development of capital, and even in the business cycle itself, there comes a point when increasing the productivity of labor becomes “the most powerful lever of accumulation” (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 621)—thereby underscoring the significance of education in the historical development of capitalism. Increasing the productivity of labor can be done in two primary ways. The method most celebrated within the dominant hegemonic culture of capitalist societies is through training the worker to be endowed with all the latest knowledge, especially knowledge associated with computers and the so-called knowledge economy. Virtual commodities are now produced available on the internet, which drastically increases the productivity of labor by eliminating many of the material costs of production such as buildings and physical materials. What these new skills and products are often not linked

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to, is the new computerized machines, which are the real source of the increasing profitability of variable capital. In the realm of manufacturing, these new robotic machines are enabling capitalists to produce commodities such as automobiles with a fraction of the work force, thereby drastically reducing the cost of labor and countering the falling rate of profit. However, what this means is that the global economy is contracting leaving entire regions excluded from economic activity, causing upheaval and conflict as the material basis for hegemonic consent in places such as Greece has been mortally wounded. The amount and type of education required by capital therefore varies as technology advances making production more efficient and, thus, profitable for the capitalist class. Education itself has more intensely become a source of profit through privatization and on-line education. It is important to re-state that increases in efficiency do not translate into benefits for labor in capitalism but lead to greater rates of return or profits for the capitalist class. Consequently, the recent global trend in slash and burning education budgets are not just the result of greedy, evil neoconservatives (i.e., Republicans in the United States), but rather, reflect the changing needs of capital. That is, as indicated above, capitalists do not need as many highly trained workers today. Reflecting this trend, the percent of the population considered middle-class in Western, industrialized countries has declined from roughly forty percent to twenty percent since 1972 (Pressman, 2007). In making a case for the need for a middle-class mainstream demographers tend to point to arguments that support the capitalist class such as reducing the threat of rebellion and providing a large group of consumers with disposable income needed for value realization and to prevent over production and crisis. These arguments and this literature have nothing (or very little) to say about the wellbeing of all those middle-class families losing their homes, jobs, and tenuous security (Pressman, 2007, 2010). If an educated citizenry with the academic skills needed to participate in a complex democratic socialist society is desired, as many protesters suggest, then resisting budget cuts by itself makes little sense. What is needed is an outright attacked on the property relations of capital and a transition from production for profit to production to satisfy human needs and the needs of the living planet and its many damaged, interconnected eco-systems. If a movement against budget cuts can lead to more frontal assaults with the capitalist class, then they could play a revolutionary role—otherwise, they are merely unrealistic and uninformed forms of reformism destined to fail. The challenge is, therefore, how to move from the state of frustration, anger, and reformism, to socialist revolutionary struggle. The socialist challenge for education offers a revolutionary purpose. While this Marxist approach to education was first explored in significant detail by Bowles and Gintis (1976) in Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Re-

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form and the Contradictions of Economic Life, Marxist educational research and revolutionary pedagogy experienced significant atrophy through the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the United States, as postmodernism emerged as the dominant critical theory. It was not until roughly 15 years ago that Peter McLaren, in collaboration with Dave Hill, Mike Cole, Glenn Rikowski, Paula Allman, Ramin Farahmandpur, and others, that Marxist educational theory and research in the United States, the center of mega-capitalist imperialism, began regaining and breaking new ground. According to Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur (2005), a socialist pedagogy takes as its starting point a consciousness of the role that education plays in reproducing the capitalist relations of production. This revolutionary pedagogy takes as its ultimate goal the socialist reconfiguration of capitalist society taking special care to avoid past mistakes, such as any element of Stalinist authoritarianism, prescriptions or attacks on freedom (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2005). An education for a socialist future offers students and workers “opportunities to develop critical social skills that will assist them in gaining an awareness of—and a resolve to transform—the exploitative nature of capitalist social and economic relations of production” (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2005, p. 53). In a number of recent public addresses internationally renowned Marxist geographer David Harvey argues that because of the impoverished conditions of a growing number of the earths’ population and thus the lack of political power, the vast majority are increasingly finding they have to take these skills to the streets. McLaren and Farahmandpur (2005) keenly observe that such complex connections are best taught to students using the concept of relation. Why? It helps students and workers become class conscious (as a class for itself). It helps students understand that everyone who relies on a wage to survive has a common class interest with all workers globally helping understand nationalism as an ideological tool (as well as a source of ruling class military and judicial power). The concept of relation helps make connections between the past and the present informing analysis and tactics targeting the true cause of conflict between labor and capital. Again, democratic socialism is not “a prescription for socialism, but one based on mutuality, dialogical reciprocity, humility, and self-respect” (McLaren & Farahmandpur, p. 56). Some of the deepest insights on enacting our socialist pedagogy (both currently and historically) come from anarchist pedagogies. For example, Robert Haworth (2012) in his Introduction to Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflection on Education notes that “over the last century, anarchists have made numerous attempts to create educational processes that transgress authoritative factory models and deterministic curriculum of the state and corporate entities” (p. 2). While I value the horizontal, radically democratic anti-capitalist anarchist pedagogies cel-

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ebrated in Haworth’s (2012) Anarchist Pedagogies (a volume I, myself, an international Marxist, contributed to), I do not agree with some anarchists and autonomous Marxists who argue that capitalism is undergoing a shift from a material to an immaterial knowledge economy (industrial output has continued to expand within the globally integrated system of capitalist production) or that the on-going development of capitalism has fundamentally transformed the basic nature of accumulation and the relationship between the buyers and sellers of labor power. Pedagogically, however, Anarchist Pedagogies (Haworth, 2012) includes fundamentally important essays on free schools and workers’ colleges as well as pedagogical explorations surrounding more recent manifestations such as street medics. Situated in a slightly larger context, we might observe that in the religiously anti-socialist/Marxist/communist atmosphere of the United States in particular, anarchist activists, revolutionaries, and pedagogues have been most visible in the anti-capitalist movements from the anti-globalization Seattle demonstrations of 1999 to the more recent Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. At the end of the day, it seems reasonable to observe that there is a whole range of theoretical and practical issues Marxist and anarchist critical pedagogues must collectively find the humility to engage each other in order to move the anti-capitalist movement in education forward. This endeavor is well beyond the scope of this short essay, but it is a topic that needs more attention. In conclusion, regardless of what form consciousness raising takes, a revolutionary ideology must be adopted. As Lenin (1902/1975) reminded us, without revolutionary theory there can be no revolution (although I have more confidence in the working class’ ability to develop an independent ideology and revolutionary program than Lenin did). Situated in the context of the current global anti-capitalist movement in “embryo” (an embryo perhaps more developed in Greece than anywhere else in Europe at the present moment), the international occupy movement and the “Arab Spring” can be characterized by what Lenin (1902/1975) called “spontaneous” uprisings and, thus, the “embryo” of an anti-capitalist movement. What we venture to do to see this embryo reach a healthy, revolutionary maturity remains the core of this socialist challenge and our collective, unwritten future. References Anyon. J. (2011). Marx and education. New York: Routledge. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York: Basic Books. Chomsky, N. (2012). Occupy. New York: Zuccotti Park Press.

xxvi   Rethinking Educational Purpose Coy, P. (2012). Hollande and Merkel: Odd couple or soulmates? http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/25020-hollande-and-merkel-odd-couple-orsoulmates Haque, U. (2011). “Was Marx right?” In Harvard Business Review. http://blogs.hbr. org/haque/2011/09/was_marx_right.html Haworth, R. (2012). Introduction. In R. Haworth (Ed.). Anarchist pedagogies: Collective actions, theories, and critical reflection on education. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Lenin, V. I. (1902/1975). What is to be done? In R. (Ed.). The Lenin Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Malott, C. (2012). Social class and rebellion: The role of knowledge production in capitalist society. In R. Kumar (Ed.). Education and the reproduction of capital: Neo-liberal knowledge and counterstrategies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Marx. K. (1867/1967). Capital: A critique of political economy: Volume 1: The process of capitalist production. New York: International Publishers. Marx, K. (1844/1988). The Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. New York: Prometheus Books. McLaren, P., & Farahmanpur, R. (2005). Teaching against global capitalism and the new imperialism: A critical pedagogy. New York: Roman & Littlefield. Perlo, A. (2012). Austerity and the economic crisis. Accessed July, 2012. http://politicalaffairs.net/austerity-and-the-economic-crisis/. Pew Research Center. (2011). Little Change in Public’s Response to ‘Capitalism,’ ‘Socialism’: A Political Rhetoric Test. http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/28/littlechange-in-publics-response-to-capitalism-socialism/ Pressman, S. (2007). The decline of the middle class: An international perspective. Journal of Economic Issues, XLI(1), 181–200. Pressman, S. (2010). Notes and communications: The middle class throughout the world in the Mid-2000s. Journal of Economic Issues, XLIV(1), 243–261. Therborn, G. (2008). From Marx to post-Marxism? New York: Verso.

Section I The Larger Context

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Chapter 1

Marx, Marxism and (Twenty-First Century) Socialism Mike Cole

Introduction In this chapter, I begin by briefly introducing Karl Marx. I go on to address the unique strengths of Marxism, as both an analytical framework, and as a harbinger of a non-exploitative future world. In so doing, I look briefly at some historical challenges to it. I then outline two central tenets of scientific socialism (how Marx’s co-writer Friedrich Engels described Marxism). The first is Marx’s Labour Theory of Value which provides an explanation of the pivotal position of social class as the basis of surplus value and profit under capitalism. The second is the materialist concept of history which stresses how deeply the processes of production affect our lives. I then raise some common objections to Marxism and socialism, and respond to them, concluding with a brief discussion of the defining characteristics of twentyfirst century socialism. This discussion is concretized in chapter 11, where I look at developments in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Teaching Marx, pages 3–26 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Karl Marx Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier, Germany. He spent his whole life as both a political activist supporting the struggles of working people worldwide, and as a prolific and most influential writer. His best known political tract, co-written with his collaborator and close friend, Frederick Engels, is The Communist Manifesto, first published in English in 1848. His most celebrated economic works are the three-volume series, Das Kapital, the first volume of which was published as Capital in England in 1887. In Capital Marx developed the theory of surplus value (see later in this chapter) which attempted to demonstrate that capitalism was objectively a system that exploited the working class. Marx spent much of his life in exile, being expelled from various countries because of his anti-capitalist activities. In the summer of 1849, he moved to London, England. Marx was also a journalist, being a regular contributor to the New York Tribune, acting, until the outbreak of the American Civil War, as the editor for European politics of this, the leading Anglo-American newspaper. Marx died March 14, 1883, and is buried at Highgate Cemetery in North London. Engels stated at his funeral: On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. . . . An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. . . . Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history. . . . Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. . . . And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered, and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers—from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America—and I make bold to say that, though he may have had many opponents, he had hardly one personal enemy. His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work. (Engels, 1883)

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The Strengths of Marxism The major strengths of Marxism are that it both provides a comprehensive and coherent analysis and explanation of the fundamental exploitative nature of capitalist society and a vision for the future. Moreover, this vision of the future is not static. Marxism is not, as some would have it, a moribund set of beliefs and practice. On the contrary, as Jean-Paul Sartre (1960) noted, Marxism is a “living philosophy.” To Sartre’s observation, Crystal Bartolovich (2002, p. 20) has added, Marxism is not “simply a discourse nor a body of (academic) knowledge”, but a living project. Challenges to Marxism perhaps began with the sociologist Max Weber. Although Albert Salomon’s famous observation that Weber was involved in a debate “with the ghost of Marx” (Salomon, 1935) may be somewhat overstated, ever since Weber (c. 1915) made a number of criticisms of Marx and Marxism, the intellectual struggle against Marxist ideas has been at the forefront of academic writing. Weber suggested that social class might not be solely related to the mode of production; that political power does not necessarily derive from economic power, and that status as well as class might form the basis of the formation of social groups. Subsequent attempts to challenge Marxist ideas have ranged from the poststructuralist writings of Michel Foucault who believed that power is diffuse rather than related to the means of production, and of Jacques Derrida who stressed the need for the deconstruction of all dominant discourses; through the postmodernism of Jean-François Lyotard who was incredulous of all grand narratives, of Jean Baudrillard who argued that binary oppositions (such as the ruling and working classes) had collapsed; to the scholarly endeavours of Critical Race Theorists. Elsewhere (Cole, 2008, 2009, 2011), I have defended Marxism against these various challenges, but have also acknowledged some of the insights of these diverse theories. None, however, have succeeded in surpassing Marx and Engels’ exposition of scientific socialism. Crucially, none provide a viable vision of a future free of exploitation and oppression. From Utopian Socialism to Scientific Socialism The common ownership, cooperation, and collective activity that socialism entails predate contemporary socialism. In fact, in very early history, most, if not all, societies held common property in the soil and were grouped according to kindred. Modern socialism, however, was born in the nineteenth century in Britain and France. The word was first used publicly in English in 1827 in connection with the movement associated with Robert Owen, and in French in 1835, with respect to the supporters of Henri de Saint-Simon (Berki, 1975, p. 12). The other prominent French socialist theoretician

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was Charles Fourier.1 For Engels (1892/1977, pp. 398–404), Saint-Simon’s major contribution to Marxism was his recognition of class struggle; Fourier’s was dialectical thinking;2 and Owen’s bequest was communism3 and his dedication to workers’ welfare. What these utopian socialists all had in common was that, unlike Marxists who advocate the revolutionary emancipation of the working class in order to change society, the utopian socialists were concerned with liberating all humanity without such revolutionary changes. As Marx and Engels (1848/1977, p. 60) point out, Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen all recognized the class antagonisms in existing societies, but viewed the working class as “a class without any historical initiative.” This is primarily because of the “undeveloped state” of the proletariat4 at the time (Marx & Engles, 1848/1977, p. 59). For the utopian socialists, change was to come about by “peaceful means,” by “small experiments,” and by “force of example.” Marx and Engels, on the other hand, “openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions” (Marx & Engles, p. 63).5 Although Marx denounced utopian socialism, he never actually referred to his own ideas as “scientific socialism.” It was, in fact, Engels (1892 /1977, p. 404) who, believing utopian socialism to be “a mish-mash” of “absolute truth, reason, and justice” based on “subjective understandings” associated with various schools of utopian socialist thought, argued that “to make a science of socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis” (Engels, p. 405) (his and Marx’s conception of “utopia” accords with its original meaning, “a place that does not exist”). Engels explains the role of scientific socialists in capitalist society, when referring to the proletarian revolution, which: frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. . . . To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish . . . is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism. (Engels, 1892/1977, p. 428)

The “real basis” of Marxism is the materialist conception of history and the labour theory of value (LTV)—the basis of surplus value. As Engels (1877/1962, p. 43) argues: [t]hese two great discoveries, the materialist conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries socialism became a science.

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The Materialist Conception of History As Engels explains, the materialist conception of history “starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure” (Engels, 1892/1977, p. 411). The materialist conception of history is most clearly explained by Marx (1859/1977) in the “Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Marx argues that the way we think is fundamentally related to forces of production. As he puts it, in sexist language characteristic of his time: My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so called general development of the human mind, but that, on the contrary, they originate in the material conditions of life. . . . In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

Marx argued that societies progress through various stages. Moreover, all past history, with the exception of its most early stage (primitive communism—the original hunter-gatherer society of humanity), is, according to Marx and Engels, the history of class struggles. These warring classes are always the products of the respective modes of production, of the economic conditions of their time. Thus, slaves were in class struggle with their owners in the historical epoch of ancient slavery; feudal serfs with their lords in times of feudalism; and in the era of capitalism, workers are engaged in a class struggle with capitalists. Like ancient slavery and feudalism, capitalism is viewed merely as a stage in human development. Marxists see such stages as containing a number of contradictions which resolve themselves dialectically. Thus, when these contradictions become too great, a given stage gives way to another. For example, just as the privileges that feudal lords held and the hereditary basis of subordinating serf to lord in the feudal societies contradicted the need for “free” labour power in emerging capitalism (“free” in the sense that workers were not needed to be indentured to the capitalists; they were, of course, forced to sell their labour power in order to survive), present-day

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capitalism contains contradictions that Marxists believe, given the right circumstances, can eventually lead to its demise, and be replaced by socialism). It is worth stressing here that socialism, as understood by Marx and Engels, is profoundly and genuinely democratic. Under socialism, wealth is shared equally. Workers own and control the means of production distribution, and exchange, and make decisions democratically. Democracy entails decisions being taken by workers, not just in the political realm, but in the schools, factories, shops, offices, and everywhere else they work, workplaces that would be collectively owned by these workers. Socialism, thus understood, is far removed from many dictatorial regimes that have described themselves as “socialist,” even though some, such as the Soviet Union, began with democratically socialist ideals (see later in this chapter for a fuller discussion of socialism). The Labour Theory of Value Whereas sociological definitions of social class tend to focus on factors such as income, occupation, status, life chances, and so on, a Marxist interpretation relates class to the mode of production and to exploitations. This is encapsulated in the Labour Theory of Value (LVT). As Tom Hickey (2006) has explained, capitalism has an inbuilt tendency to generate conflict, and is thus permanently vulnerable to challenge from the working class. As he puts it: The objective interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are incompatible, and, therefore, generate not a tendency to permanent hostility and open warfare, but a permanent tendency toward them. The system is thus prone to economic class conflict, and given the cyclical instability of its economy, subject to periodic political and economic crises. It is at these moments that the possibility exists for social revolution. (Hickey, p. 192)

An understanding of the source of this incompatibility and permanent tendency toward hostility can be facilitated by Marx’s LTV. The LTV explains most concisely why capitalism is objectively a system of exploitation, whether the exploited realize it or not, or indeed, whether they believe it to be an issue of importance for them or not. The LTV also provides a solution to this exploitation. It thus provides dialectical praxis—the authentic union of theory and practice. According to the LTV, the interests of capitalists and workers are diametrically opposed, since a benefit to the former (profits) is a cost to the latter (Hickey, 2002, p. 168). Marx argued that workers’ labour is embodied in the goods that they produce. The finished products are appropriated (taken away) by the capitalists and eventually sold at a profit. However, the

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worker is paid only a fraction of the value s/he creates in labour; the wage does not represent the total value s/he creates. We appear to be paid for every single second we work. However, underneath this appearance, this fetishism, the working day (like under serfdom) is split in two: into socially necessary labour (and the wage represents this); and surplus labour, labour that is not reflected in the wage. Greatly oversimplifying matters, let us assume that a capitalist employs a worker to make a table. Let us say that the value of the basic materials is $100, and that after these basic materials have had labour embodied in them (i.e., have become a table), that table has a value of $500. Let us further assume that in the time it takes to make the table, £20 of overhead are used up. What happens to the $400 surplus value that the worker has created? The worker is paid, say, $100, and the remaining $300 is appropriated, taken away, by the capitalist. After overheads are paid, the capitalist still has $280 surplus that s/he can reinvest to create more surplus. To continue the example, with this $280 surplus, the capitalist can buy $200 worth of basic materials, and employ two workers, and after these basic materials have had labour embodied in them (e.g., have become two tables), those tables have a value of $1,000. Assuming overhead increases to $30, and two workers are each paid $100, the capitalist is now left with $770 surplus that can be thrown back into production to create yet more surplus value, and so on and so on. If the capitalist continues to employ workers, say, seven, the surplus would be over $6,000. It is thus easy to see how surplus value multiplies and how capitalists’ surplus (which is converted into profit) is, in truth, nothing more than accumulated surplus value, really the “property” of the worker but appropriated from that worker.6 While the value of the raw materials and of the depreciating machinery is simply passed on to the commodity in production, labour power is a peculiar, indeed unique, commodity, in that it creates new value. “The magical quality of labour-power’s . . . value for . . . capital is therefore critical” (Rikowski, 2001, p. 11). “Labour-power creates more value (profit) in its consumption than it possesses itself, and than it costs” (Marx, 1894/1966, p. 351). Unlike, for example, the value of a given commodity, which can only be realized in the market as itself, labour creates a new value, a value greater than itself, a value that previously did not exist. It is for this reason that labour power is so important for the capitalist in the quest for capital accumulation. It is in the interest of the capitalist or capitalists (nowadays, capitalists may, of course, consist of a number of shareholders, for example, rather than outright owners of businesses) to maximize profits, and this entails (in order to create the greatest amount of new value) keeping workers’ wages as low as is “acceptable” or tolerated in any given country or historical period, without provoking effective strikes or other forms of resistance.

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Therefore, the capitalist mode of production is, in essence, a system of exploitation of one class (the working class) by another (the capitalist class). Whereas class conflict is endemic to, and ineradicable and perpetual within, the capitalist system, it does not always, or even typically, take the form of open conflict or expressed hostility (Hickey, 2002, p. 168). This is, in large part, due to the successes of the state apparatuses and of ruling class hegemonic power. Fortunately for the working class, however, capitalism is prone to cyclical instability and subject to periodic political and economic crises. At these moments, the possibility exists for social revolution. Revolution can only come about when the working class, in addition to being a “class-in-itself” (an objective fact because of the shared exploitation inherent as a result of the LTV) becomes “a class-for-itself” (Marx, 1885/1976). By this, Marx meant a class with a subjective awareness of its social class position; that is, a class with “class consciousness”—including its awareness of its exploitation and its transcendence of “false consciousness.” As Hickey (2006) explains: Crises provide the opportunity for transition from the oppressive and exploitative, competitive and alienating conditions of the order of capital to a realm of human freedom in which humanity as a whole, through a radically democratic structure, engages collectively in satisfying its needs, ordering its priorities, and constructing new needs and aspirations to strive for, and challenges to overcome.

It should again be stressed that while this scenario is always a possibility, it should never be seen as a certainty. Common Objections to Marxism and Socialism, and a Marxist Response7 Marxism Is Contrary to Human Nature Because We Are All Basically Selfish and Greedy and Competitive For Marxists, there is no such thing as “human nature.” Marxists believe that our individual natures are not ahistorical givens, but products of the circumstances into which we are socialized, and of the society or societies in which we live or have lived (including crucially the social class position we occupy therein). While it is true that babies and infants, for example, may act selfishly in order to survive, as human beings grow up they are strongly influenced by the norms and values that are predominant in the society in which they live. Thus, in societies which encourage selfishness, greed, and competitiveness (Thatcherism is a perfect example) people will tend to act in self-centered ways, whereas, in societies which discourage these values

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and promote communal values (Cuba is a good example), people will tend to act in ways that consider the collective as well as their own selves; the international, as well as the national and local. Marx (1845/1976) argued that “[l]ife is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.” Unlike animals, we have the ability to choose our actions, and change the way we live, and the way we respond to others. Hence, in a capitalist society, the working class is capable of transcending false consciousness and becoming, “class for itself” (Marx, 1847/1995), as well as “a class in itself” (Bukharin, 1922 cited in Mandel, 1970/2008), that is to say, pursuing interests which can ultimately lead to a socially just society. Socialism does not require as a precondition that we are all altruistic and selfless; rather, as Bowles and Gintis (1976, p. 267) argue, the social and economic conditions of socialism will facilitate the development of such human capacities. Some People Are Naturally Lazy and Won’t Work Unlike utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon, who believed that we are “lazy by nature” (Cole, 2008, pp. 15–17), Marxists would argue that laziness, like other aspects of our “nature,” is most likely acquired through socialization too, but even if it is not, we can still choose to overcome our laziness. In a socialist world, there are sound reasons to work, in order to create cooperative wealth. Whereas, in capitalist societies, as we have seen, a surplus is extracted from the values workers produce, and hived off by the capitalists to create profits, under socialism everything we create is for the benefit of humankind as a whole, including us as individuals. Thus, the only incentive for most workers under capitalism: more wages (an incentive which is totally understandable, and indeed encouraged by Marxists, because it ameliorates workers’ lives and lessens the amount of surplus for capitalists) is replaced by a much more worthwhile incentive: the common good. Why Shouldn’t Those Who Have Worked Hard Get More Benefits in Life? Again this viewpoint is a product of a capitalist society, based on selfishness. If everything is shared, as in a socialist world, we all benefit by working hard. No one needs to go short of anything that they need for a good life. In capitalist societies, needs are created by advertisers working for capitalists, and many of these (excessive amounts of clothes, or living accommodation beyond our personal requirements) we do not really need. Indeed, excess possessions in a capitalist world where most of the population has nothing

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or next to nothing is obscene. As the We Are The 99% movement (2012) has put it of the 99%: We are the 99%. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we’re working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99%.

And of the 1%: They are the 1%. They are the banks, the mortgage industry, the insurance industry. They are the important ones. They need help and get bailed out and are praised as job creators. We need help and get nothing and are called entitled. We live in a society made for them, not for us. It’s their world, not ours. If we’re lucky, they’ll let us work in it as long as we don’t question the extent of their charity. We are the 99% movement. (2012)

As we have seen, in reality, according to the LTV, it is the workers, not the capitalists who create the wealth of the world. Moreover, while people are starving and there are food riots breaking out across the world, the fact is, given the world’s total resources, there is no world food shortage overall, and there is more than enough food produced to supply everyone with a decent diet (Molyneux, 2008, p. 13). The grotesque nature of capitalism is revealed par excellence at the time of writing (Winter, 2011), as workers in the United Kingdom and the United States are being told that they must make massive sacrifices because of the current crisis in capitalism, while at the same time massive war campaigns involving billions of dollars, are squandered in imperialism’s never-ending “war on terror.” Marxism Can’t Work Because It Means State Control, and Always Leads to Totalitarianism Marxists have learnt from Stalinism,8 which was, in many ways, the antithesis of Marxists’ notions of democratic socialism. To succeed, socialism needs to be democratic. Indeed, as Jonathan Maunder (2006, p. 13) reminds us, whereas previous exploited classes, such as the peasantry could rise up, seize lands, and divide them up among themselves, workers cannot, for example, divide a factory, hospital or supermarket. Thus, if workers do seize control of such institutions, they can only run them collectively. As Maunder (2006, p. 13) concludes: “[t]heir struggles have

Marx, Marxism and (Twenty-First Century) Socialism    13

a democratic logic that can lay the basis for a different way of running society.” Genuinely democratic socialism, where elected leaders are permanently subject to recall democratically by those who have elected them, is the best way to safeguard against totalitarianism (this concept, a central plank of democratic socialism, is, in fact, enshrined in the 1999 constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the form of a Recall Referendum. This means that Venezuelan voters have the right to remove their president from office before the expiration of the presidential term). While capitalist political systems are formally democratic, representative democracy, for example in the United States and Britain, in effect amounts to a form of totalitarianism. In these countries, citizens can vote every five years, having in reality a choice (in the sense of who will actually be able to form a government) of two or three main totally pro-capitalist parties, who then go on to exercise power in the interests of neo-liberal global capitalism and imperialism, with little or no regard for the interests of those workers who elected them. There are, of course, some restraints on what they can get away with (minimum wage and European human rights legislation in Britain, for example), and importantly, the balance of class forces and the strength of working class resistance (e.g., Hill, 2009). Someone Will Always Want to Be “Boss” and There Will Always Be Natural “Leaders” and “Followers” As argued above, Marxists believe in true democracy. If a given individual in a socialist society wants to exploit others, s/he will need to be controlled democratically and subject to permanent recall. Under capitalism, if people feel they are “born to be followers” rather than leaders, this is most like to be due to their social class position in any given society and to their socialization (see above). Under socialism, there will be more chance for all to take roles of responsibility if they want. Under capitalism, see certain people are educated for leadership positions in the society, while others are schooled to be exploited members of the working class (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). Someone Has to Do the Drudge Jobs, and How that Could Be Sorted Out in a Socialist World Technology already has the potential to eliminate most of the most boring and/or unpleasant jobs. Some of those that remain could be done on a voluntary rota basis, so that no one would have to do drudge jobs for longer

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than a very brief period (utopian socialist Charles Fourier had a similar idea (see Cole, 2008, pp. 17–20). Voluntary work under capitalism in the public sector abounds, and there is every reason to assume that such work would flourish much more under socialism.

Socialism Means a Lower Standard of Life for All The only losers when a socialist society is created are the capitalists and other rich people. There will not, for sure, be the massive disparities of wealth apparent in our present capitalist world. There will, of course, be no billionaires and no need for a (parasitic) monarchy. If the wealth of the world is shared, then there will be a good standard of life for all, since all reasonable needs will be met, including enough food (as noted above by Molyneux [2008, p. 13]) enough already exists). To paraphrase Marx (1875), the principle will be from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her needs.

Socialism Will Be Dull, Dreary, and Uniform, and We Will All Have Less Choice This is a popular misconception related to the experiences of life in former Stalinist states such as the USSR, and the former states of Eastern Europe. Life under socialism should be exciting, challenging, and globally diverse, as different countries develop socialism to suit their own circumstances, but with a common goal. The intensively creative (world) advertising industry (now in private hands), when under public control could be used for the common good. For example, it can be used to increase awareness of the availability of free goods and services (health promotion, universal life-long education, public transport, advances in medical care and so on). We do not need the excessive branded products common in capitalist societies, and created by different capitalist firms to increase profits. A cursory glance at the Web site of one well-known supermarket in Britain revealed a total of over sixty different butters/margarines. It is not necessary for western consumers to have this degree of “choice” when most of “the developing world” eats its bread without spreads. Moreover, in many cases, the ingredients in the vast array of products will be very similar, while the huge amount of unnecessary plastic packaging clearly adversely affects the environment (see Cole, 2008, chapter 7).

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A Social Revolution to Create Socialism Will Necessarily Involve Violence and Death on a Massive Scale It is, in fact, capitalism that has created and continues to promote death, violence and terror on a global scale. Inequalities in wealth and quality of life cause death and disease in capitalist countries themselves, and the capitalist West’s underdevelopment of most of the rest of the world and the aforementioned massive disparity in wealth and health has dire consequences (Hill & Kumar, 2009; Hill & Rosskam, 2009). In addition, imperialist conquest historically and contemporaneously unleashes death, terror, and destruction on a colossal scale. Stalinism, and other atrocities, committed in the name of, but not in the spirit of socialism, also shares this guilt, but, as argued above, there is no inherent reason why the historical perversities of Stalinism need to be repeated. As for the violence entailed in future social revolution is concerned, as argued earlier, social revolution is not predicated on a violent overthrow of capitalism. As I have argued elsewhere (Cole, 2008, pp. 78–79) socialism is a majoritarian process not an imposed event which is not dependent on violence. It is, of course, inconceivable that a world social revolution would involve no violence, not least because of the resistance of the dominant capitalist class. However, there are no reasons for violence to be a strategic weapon. Anyone who has ever attended a mass socialist gathering (e.g., the annual Marxism event organized by the Socialist Workers Party in Britain; http://www.marxismfestival.org.uk/), can attest to the fact that violence is not, in any way, an organizing tool of the socialist movement. Mass violence is the province of world capitalism. Moreover, as far as terrorism is concerned, Marxists oppose it unreservedly. Terrorism is reactionary, in that it diverts attention away from the class struggle. It militates against what Leon Trotsky has described as self-organization and self-education. Trotsky favoured a different resolution to the revenge desired by many who subscribe to terrorism. As he put it: The more “effective” the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organization and self-education. . . . To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all our energies into a collective struggle against this system—that is the direction in which the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction. (Trotsky, 1909)

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The Working Class Won’t Create the Revolution Because They Are Reactionary It is a fundamental tenet of Marxism that the members of the working class are the agents of social revolution, and that the working class, as noted above, needs to become a “class for itself” in addition to being a “class in itself” (Marx, 1847/1995). It is, unfortunately, the case that major parts of the world are a long way off such a scenario at the present conjuncture. It is also the case that successful interpellation and related false consciousness hampers the development of class consciousness and the move towards the overthrow of capitalism. Britain is one example where the Ruling Class has been particularly successful in interpellating the working class (see Cole, 2011 for a discussion). To take just one example, in the U.K. general election of 2010, the vote for socialist parties was totally insignificant, and if interpellation was resisted, it was resisted more by a minority who voted for the very right-wing U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) and the fascist British National Party (BNP). The 2010 U.K. election resulted in a hung parliament; that is, no political party with an overall majority. The three unequivocally pro-capitalist parties fared as follows: a little over 36% of voters voted for the Conservatives, 29% for New Labour, just over 23% for the Liberal Democrats. About 12% voted for others (this last figure includes nearly 2% for the BNP and over 3% for UKIP, the two most popular parties after the three main parties). Elsewhere, however, there are examples of burgeoning class consciousness, witnessed, for example, by developments across South America, notably the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (see chapter 10 of this volume). It is to be hoped that, as neo-liberal global imperial capitalism continues to reveal and expose its essential ruthlessness and contempt for those who make its profits, class consciousness will increase and that the working class will one day be in a position to overthrow (world) capitalism and to replace it with (world) democratic socialism. Perhaps, it should be pointed out here that Marxists do not idolize or deify the working class; it is rather that class’s structural location in capitalist societies that interests Marxists. Once the working class has become “a class in itself” it becomes the agent for change. Moreover the very act of social revolution and the creation of socialism mean the end of the very existence of the working class as a social class. As Marx and Engels (1845/1975) put it: When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all . . . because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. . . . [The proletariat] cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of society today which are summed up in its own situation.

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At the time of writing (winter 2011–2012), the Occupy movement  has emerged as an international protest movement, primarily directed at economic and social inequality. The first Occupy protest to receive wide coverage was Occupy Wall Street in New York City’s Zuccotti Park, which began on September 17, 2011. By October 9, Occupy protests had taken place or were ongoing in over 95 cities across 82 countries, and over 600 communities in the United States (Wikipedia, 2012). While Marxists, of course, support such movements, the point is to link the struggle against inequality to the struggle against capitalism itself, not just its neo-liberal excesses. This must be in tandem with the struggle for socialism. Marxists Just Wait for the Revolution Rather than Address the Issues of the Here and Now This is manifestly not the case. Marxists fight constantly for change and reform which benefit the working class in the short run under capitalism (for example, Marxists are centrally involved with work in trade unions agitating for better wages) with a vision of socialist transformation in the longer term (increasing class consciousness in the unions is part of this process). As Marx and Engels (1848/1977a, p. 62) put it, referring to those who struggle for the eventual achievement of communism in the sense of the stage after socialism (see Note 3): The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of the movement.

The choice is not between life in the neo-liberal global capitalist world or a return to Stalinism, but between the anarchic chaos of capitalism and genuine world-wide democratic socialism. There is a burgeoning recognition that this is the case from the mass global movements against globalization and in the growing anti-neo-liberal politics throughout Latin America, from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to Bolivia, from Argentina to Brazil, and, as we have seen, more recently in many other parts of the world. Marxism Is a Nice Idea, But It Will Never Happen (For Some of) the Reasons Headlined Above Bringing Marxism to the forefront is not an easy task. Capitalism is selfevidently a resilient and very adaptable world force and interpellation has been very successful. However, as noted above, Marx argued that society has

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gone through a number of different stages in its history: primitive communism; slavery; feudalism, capitalism. It is highly likely that in each era, a different way of living was considered “impossible” by most of those living in that era. However, each era gave birth, in a dialectical process, to another. Thus, though it may be extremely difficult to imagine a world based on socialist principles, such a world is possible if that is what the majority of the world’s citizens come to desire and have the will to create. Marxists need to address the obstacles full on. As Callinicos (2000, p. 122) has argued, we must break through the “bizarre ideological mechanism, [in which] every conceivable alternative to the market has been discredited by the collapse of Stalinism” whereby, the fetishization of life makes capitalism seem natural and therefore unalterable and where the market mechanism “has been hypostatized into a natural force unresponsive to human wishes” (p. 125). Capital presents itself “determining the future as surely as the laws of nature make tides rise to lift boats” (McMurtry, 2000, p. 2), as if it has now replaced the natural environment. It announces itself through its business leaders and politicians as coterminous with freedom, and indispensable to democracy such that any attack on capitalism as exploitative or hypocritical becomes an attack on world freedom and democracy itself” (McLaren, 2000, p. 32). However, the biggest impediment to social revolution is not capital’s resistance, but its success in heralding the continuation of capitalism as being the only option. As Callinicos puts it, despite the inevitable intense resistance from capital, the “greatest obstacle to change is not . . . the revolt it would evoke from the privileged, but the belief that it is impossible” (2000, p. 128). Given the hegemony of world capitalism, whose very leitmotif is to stifle and redirect class consciousness, and given the aforementioned reactionary nature of certain sections of the working class, restoring this consciousness is a tortuous, but not impossible task. Callinicos again: Challenging this climate requires courage, imagination and willpower inspired by the injustice that surrounds us. Beneath the surface of our supposedly contented societies, these qualities are present in abundance. Once mobilized, they can turn the world upside down. (2000, p. 129)

As we hurtle into the twenty-first century, we have some important decisions to make. Whatever the twenty-first century has to offer, the choices will need to be debated. The Hillcole Group expressed our educational choices as follows: Each person and group should experience education as contributing to their own self-advancement, but, at the same time, our education should ensure that at least part of everyone’s life activity is also designed to assist in securing the future of the planet we inherit—set in the context of a sustainable and equitable society. Democracy is not possible unless there is a free debate about all the alternatives for running our social and economic system. . . . All

Marx, Marxism and (Twenty-First Century) Socialism    19 societies [are] struggling with the same issues in the twenty-first-century. We can prepare by being better armed with war machinery or more competitive international monopolies. . . . Or, we can wipe out poverty . . . altogether. We can decide to approach the future by consciously putting our investment into a massive drive to encourage participation from everyone at every stage in life through training and education that will increase productive, social, cultural, and environmental development in ways we have not yet begun to contemplate. (Hillcole Group, 1997, pp. 94–95)

While the open-endedness of the phrase, “in ways we have not yet begun to contemplate” will appeal to poststructuralists and postmodernists, for whom the future is an open book, this is most definitely not the political position of the Hillcole Group. Whereas, for poststructuralists and postmodernists, all we have is endless deconstruction without having strategies for change (see Cole, 2008, Chapter 5), for Marxists, the phrase is tied firmly to an open but socialist agenda. For Critical Race Theorists, there are nonspecific notions of “ending oppression.” These suggestions are no doubt well intentioned, but they are idealistic in the current historical conjuncture. Like the views of the utopian socialists, the vagaries of CRT do not engage with the nature of the contradictions within capitalism, the dialectic, and with the working class consciousness needed for revolutionary change. An equitable, fair and just world can be foreseen neither through postmodernism/post-structuralism, nor through the more enlightened and progressive ideas of CRT. For Marxists, as global neo-liberal capitalism and imperial hegemony tightens its grip on all our lives, the choice, to paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg (1916), is quite simple: that choice is between barbarism—“the unthinkable”—or democratic socialism. Ok, Show Me Where Socialism Works in Practice Even if all of the above questions are answered convincingly, Marxists are inevitably asked, “Ok, show me where Socialism works in practice?” I have lost count of the number of times that I have been asked that question. Since I first visited Cuba many years ago, and up to my trip to Venezuela where I worked briefly for the Bolivarian University of Venezuela in 2006, I tended to reply on the lines of, “well, I know it’s not perfect, but the case of Cuba is in many respects a good example.” However, I am now able to commend developments in Venezuela with far fewer reservations. In chapter 10 of this volume, I discuss at length twenty-first-century socialism in Venezuela. Although Marx had no blueprint for a socialist society, it may be useful to conclude this chapter by outlining some of the main features that one would expect in a socialist society, and to delineate some of the main differences between the “socialism” of the twentieth century, and that of the twenty-first.

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Socialism To reiterate, Marx did not have a blueprint for the future, nor do Marxists (see Rikowski, 2004, pp. 559–560, and Cole, 2008, pp. 80–81). However, there are certain features, which would distinguish world socialism from world capitalism. What follows are just a few examples. There are many more. Bowles and Gintis (1976, p. 54) argue that whereas in capitalist societies, the political system is “formally democratic,” capitalist economies are “formally totalitarian,” involving: the minimal participation in decision-making by the majority (the workers); protecting a single minority (capitalists and managers) against the wills of a majority; and subjecting the majority to the maximal influence of this single unrepresentative minority. Under socialism, this would be reversed. The workers would own and control the means of production and would encourage maximal participation in decision-making. Public services would be brought under workers’ control and democratically run by the respective workforces. There would be jobs for all who want them. There would be universal free health care for all, incorporating the latest medical advances. There would be no need for private health care. There would be universal free comprehensive education for all from birth to death. There would be free comprehensive leisure facilities for all, with no fee for health clubs, concerts, etc. There would be full rights for women, for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) communities, for all members of minority ethnic groups, and for disabled people. There would be full freedom of religion.9 There would be no ageism. There would be no war, no hunger, and no poverty. Bowles and Gintis (1976, p. 266) capture the essence of socialism as follows: Socialism is not an event; it is a process. Socialism is a system of economic and political democracy in which individuals have the right and the obligation to structure their work lives through direct participatory control. [Socialism entails] cooperative, democratic, equal, and participatory human relationships; for cultural, emotional and sensual fulfilment.

Twentieth Century “Socialism” and Twenty-first Century Socialism Twentieth Century “Socialism” tended to have the following features: • (White male) organized working class, • top down control as Stalinism became entrenched, • Atheism (except some varieties of Christian social democratic “socialism”),

Marx, Marxism and (Twenty-First Century) Socialism    21

• lack of ecological awareness, and • a general belief that the end justifies the means (Cole & Motta, 2011). Twenty-first Century Socialism, on the other hand, is characterized by: • • • •

women of color playing a central role, the involvement of the informal economy, genuine attempts at participatory democracy, a central focus on the spiritual, in particular indigenous religions and Roman Catholic liberation theology, • ecological awareness, and • central processes viewed as ends as well as means (Cole & Motta, 2011).

Conclusion In this chapter, I began with a brief biography of Karl Marx. I went on to examine the strengths of Marxism, before outlining two of its central tenets. I then raised some common objections to Marxism and responded to them. I concluded with a brief summary of the defining characteristics of socialism, including its twentieth and twenty-first century manifestations. Capitalism has repeatedly showed itself as a failed economic system, most recently in the current crisis in capitalism which began with the great recession of 2007–2008. In chapter 10 of this volume, I will address the possibilities of replacing this rogue system with actually existing twenty-first century socialism, concentrating on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Notes 1. For a discussion of utopian socialism, see Cole, 2008, pp. 13–21. My focus is on Europe because the utopian socialists, which Marx and Engels critiqued in their development of scientific socialism (see below), were Europeans. This is not to imply that socialist thought was not occurring elsewhere in the world. Marxism has been accused of Eurocentrism. However, I would argue that one of the major strengths of Marxism is that it is non-Eurocentric. As I have argued elsewhere (Cole, 2008, p. 76), while Eurocentricity may be true of modernism in general, Marxism is not Eurocentric. That this is the case is attested to by the “fact that many of the most brilliant, prominent, and effective anticolonial activists have insistently pronounced themselves Marxists” (Bartolovich, 2002, p. 15). While accusations of lack of awareness in the North’s complicity in the underdevelopment of the South, of Euro-American genocide, and the lack of dialogue between the North and the South are

22    M. COLE valid when directed at many “modernists,” they also do not apply to Marxism, particularly current Marxist analyses, which do engage with such issues. Top priorities for modern-day Marxists include the way in which the economic situation in the South is a direct result of decisions made in the North, particularly with respect to impoverishment as a result of debt burdens; and the violence practiced as a result of the economic and political trajectory of neo-liberal capitalism. This is the form of capitalism where the market rules; public expenditure is cut; governments reduce regulation of everything that could diminish profits; state-owned enterprises, goods and services are sold to private investors; and the concept of “the public good” or “community” is eliminated (Martinez & García, 2000). Neo-liberal capitalism is accompanied by (US) imperialism. Connections need to be made and lessons learned with respect to resistance to US imperialism and Left political and economic developments in countries such as Cuba, and in Latin America (Cole, 2008, p. 76; see chapter 10 of this volume for a discussion of twenty-first-century socialism in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela). 2. In Marxist terminology, the dialectic refers to contradictions between opposing forces and their solutions A dialectical conception of history sees societies moving forward through stages of struggle. Thus, out of opposing forces (thesis and antithesis), a new form of society arises (synthesis). This, in turn, generates a new thesis and antithesis, and ultimately a new synthesis, and so on and so on (see later in this chapter for a discussion of the materialist conception of history. 3. The word “communism” is a greatly misunderstood one. It was used by Marx to refer to the stage after socialism when the state would have withered away and when we would live communally. In the period after the Russian Revolution up to the demise of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries were routinely referred to as “communist” in the West. The Soviet Union, founded in 1922, actually referred to itself, following Marx, as “socialist.” Some Marxists (e.g., Cliff, 1974) have described what became of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries as “state capitalist.” It is ironic that the West falsely designated these states “communist.” In reality (despite the fact that many had a number of positive features—full employment, housing for all, free public and social services, safety for women to walk the streets at night, and so on), they were undemocratic dictatorships with special privileges for an elite and drudgery for the many. These Eastern European societies were not real socialist states, and were also far removed from Marx’s vision of communism. Marx and Engels also made reference to early pre-capitalist social formations—stages of communal living—for example, “the ancient communal and State ownership which proceeds especially from the union of several tribes into a city by agreement or by conquest, and which is still accompanied by slavery” (Marx & Engels, 1845–1846). 4. Terry Eagleton (2002, p. 3) makes a distinction between the term proletariat (originally those who served the state by producing children), and the term working class. While the former refers primarily to a kind of labour (waged industrial manual workers), the latter denotes a position within the social relations of production (all those who sell their labour in order to survive).

Marx, Marxism and (Twenty-First Century) Socialism    23 5. “Forcible” does not necessarily imply or involve excessive violence (a charge often levelled at Marxists). Engels, for example, stated: “if the social revolution and practical communism are the necessary result of our existing conditions—then we will have to concern ourselves above all with the measures by which we can avoid a violent and bloody overthrow of the social conditions” (Engels, 1845/1975, p. 243). Engels believed that education could play a role in a peaceful transformation of society: “the calm and composure necessary for the peaceful transformation of society can . . . be expected only from an educated working class” (Engels, p. 243). While Marxists recognize that violence has been perpetrated on a grand scale in the name of Marxism, it is, in fact, neo-liberal capitalism that is currently unleashing unabashedly an orgy of violence, hitherto unprecedented, causing masses of avoidable deaths from world poverty and imperialist conquest (for a discussion of Marxism, social revolution, and violence, see chapter 10 of Cole, 2008). 6. Marx argues that the origins of the capital held by capitalists lie in the forcible seizure of feudal and clan property, the theft of common lands and state lands, and the forced acquisition of church property at nominal price. In other words, capitalism has its origins in theft and continues on the same basis (see Marx, 1887/1965, pp. 717–733). 7. The following section of the chapter draws heavily draws heavily on Cole, 2009, pp. 115–125. 8. Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1953. He was in large part responsible for fostering an undemocratic dictatorship there (see Note 3 above). 9. Marx’s views on religion are well known. As he famously put it: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people” (Marx, 1843–1844). The editors of the Marx Internet Archive (MIA) (cited with this extract from Marx) explain that in the nineteenth century, opium was widely used for medical purposes as a painkiller, and, thus, Marx’s dictum did not connote a delusionary state of consciousness, but rather a way of easing the pain of capitalism. Although Marx and Marxism have traditionally been associated with atheism, my own view is that this needs amending. While religion, as opposed to theism (belief in a God or Gods that intervene in the world) or deism (belief in a God who does not intervene in the world) has often been and continues to be form of oppression and conservatism, there have been and are large numbers of people who identify with a religious or spiritual belief who also identify with Marxism or socialism (millions of Roman Catholics in Venezuela; for example). There are also, of course, many Marxists who are atheists or agnostics. Whatever our beliefs or lack of beliefs, it is my view that our energies should be devoted primarily to the creation of equality and happiness on earth. This becomes increasingly imperative as capitalism and imperialism intensify their ravages.

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References Bartolovich, C. (2002). Introduction. In C. Bartolovich, & N. Lazarus (Eds.), Marxism, modernity and postcolonial studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berki, R. N. (1975). Socialism. Letchworth: Aldine Press. Bowles, S., & H. Gintis (1976). Schooling in capitalist America, London: Routledge and Keegan Paul. Bukharin, N. (1922). Theorie des Historischen Materialismus. The Communist International, 343–345. Callinicos, A. (2000). Equality. Oxford: Polity Press. Chávez, H. (2010). Coup and countercoup: Revolution! http://venezuela-us. org/2010/04/11/coup-and-countercoup-revolution/ April 11 (accessed April 14, 2010). Cliff, T. (1974). State capitalism in Russia. Available at HTTP: http://www. marxists. org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm (accessed July 6, 2008). Cole, M. (2008). Marxism and educational theory: Origins and issues, London: Routledge. Cole, M. (2009). Critical race theory and education: A Marxist response. New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cole, M. (2011). Racism and education in the UK and the US: Towards a socialist alternative. New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan. Engels, F. (1845/ 1975). Speeches in Elberfeld. Marx and Engels, collected works. (Vol. 4). www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/02/15.htm (accessed November 28, 2009). Engels, F. (1877/1962). Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s revolution in science. Moscow: Foreign Language Press. Engels, F. (1883). Karl Marx’s funeral. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/ death/dersoz1.htm (accessed October 7, 2011). Engels, F. (1892/1977). Socialism: Utopian and scientific. In Karl Marx & Frederick Engels: Selected works in one volume. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Eagleton, T. (2002) ‘A shelter in the tempest of history’ red pepper http://www.red pepper.org.uk/A-shelter-in-the-tempest-of/ Hickey, T. (2002). Class and class analysis for the twenty-first century. In M. Cole (Ed.), Education, equality and human rights. London: Routledge/Falmer. Hickey, T. (2006). Multitude or class: Constituencies of resistance, sources of hope. In M. Cole (Ed.), Education, equality and human rights (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Hill, D. (Ed.) (2009). The rich world and the impoverishment of education: Diminishing democracy, equity and workers’ rights. New York: Routledge. Hill, D., & Kumar R. (Eds.) (2009). Global neo-liberalism and education and its consequences. New York: Routledge. Hill, D., & Rosskam E. (Eds.) (2009). The developing world and state education: Neoliberal depredation and egalitarian alternatives. New York: Routledge. Hillcole Group (1997). Rethinking education and democracy: A socialist alternative for the twenty-first century. London: Tufnell Press.

Marx, Marxism and (Twenty-First Century) Socialism    25 Luxemburg, R. (1916). The war and the workers: The Junius pamphlet. Available HTTP: http://h-net.org/~german/gtext/kaiserreich/lux.html (accessed July 9, 2008). Mandel, E. (1970/2008). Bourgeois ideology and proletarian class consciousness’ in Leninist Organisation: Part 2. Available HTTP: http://www.international viewpoint. org/spip.php?article464 (accessed August 14, 2008). Martinez, E., & García A. (2000). What is neo-liberalism? A brief definition. Economy 101. www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/econ101/neoliberalDefined. html (accessed April 4, 2010). Marx, K. (1843/1844). Introduction to a contribution to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ intro.htm (accessed October 22, 2008). Marx K. (1845/1976). Theses on Feuerbach. In C. J. Arthur (Ed.), Marx and Engels, the German ideology. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Marx, K. (1847/1995). The poverty of philosophy. Loughton: Prometheus Books. Marx, K. (1859/1977). Preface: A contribution to the critique of political economy, http:// www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm (accessed October 7, 2011). Marx, K. (1875/1996). Critique of the Gotha programme. Beijing: Foreign Language Press. Marx, K. (1885/1976). The eighteenth brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, In K. Marx & F. Engels (Eds.) Selected works in one volume. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Marx, K. (1887/1965). Capital. (Vol. 1). Moscow: Progress Publishers. Available HTTP: http://www.maxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ ch02e.htm/ (accessed November 28, 2008). Marx, K. (1894/1966). Capital. (Vol. 3). Moscow: Progress Publishers. Marx, K., & Engels F. (1845/1975). The holy family. Available HTTP: http:// www. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch04.htm (accessed July 27, 2008). Marx, K., & Engels F. (1848/1977). The communist manifesto. In Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected works in one volume. London: Lawrence and Wishart. McLaren, P. (2000). Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the pedagogy of revolution. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Moscow: Progress Publishers. http://www.marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol economy/preface.htm (accessed August 5, 2008). Maunder, J. (2006, June). Marxism and the global south. Socialist Worker. McMurtry, J. (1998). Unequal freedoms: The global market as an ethical system. Toronto: Garamond Press. McMurtry, J. (2000). Education, struggle and the left today. International Journal of Educational Reform, 10(2), 145–162. McMurtry, J. (2002). Value wars: The global market versus the life economy. London: Pluto Press. Molyneux, J. (2008, July). Is the world full up? Socialist Worker, p. 13. Murphy, P. (1995, June). A mad, mad, mad, mad world economy. Living Marxism, 80, 17–19. Rikowski, G. (2001). The importance of being a radical educator in capitalism today. Guest Lecture in Sociology of Education, The Gillian Rose Room, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry, May 24. Institute for

26    M. COLE Education Policy Studies. Available HTTP: http://www.ieps.org.uk.cwc.net/ rikowski2005a. pdf (accessed August 1, 2008). Rikowski, G. (2004). Marx and the education of the future. Policy Futures in Education 2 (3 and 4), pp. 559–571. Available HTTP: http://www.wwwords. co.uk/ pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=pfie&vol=2&issue=3&year=2004&article=10_Rikowski_ PFEO_2_3-4_web&id=195.93.21.133 Salomon, A. (1935). Max Weber’s political ideas. Social Research, 2, 368–384. Sartre, J. P. (1960). The search for method (1st part): Introduction to critique of dialectical reason. Available HTTP: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/ works/critic/sartre1.htm (accessed August 8, 2006). Sheehan, C. (2010). Transcript of Cindy Sheehan’s interview with Hugo Chávez. March 30. http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5233 (accessed August 1, 2010). Trotsky, L. (1909). Why Marxists oppose individual terrorism. Available HTTP: www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1909/tia09.htm (accessed August 8, 2006). We Are The 99 Percent (2012). http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/ (accessed February 26, 2012) Weber, M. (c. 1915/1947). The theory of economic and social organizations, New York: Free Press. Wikipedia (2012). Occupy movement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_ movement (accessed 26 February 2012).

Chapter 2

The Crisis in Marxism Language, Agency, and the Problem of Marx’s Authorial Voice Brad Hollingshead

Capital has not been widely or carefully read, even by professed Marxists, and much of Marx’s work was not published or translated until long after his death. Nevertheless, Marxism is in part a struggle between readings of Marx and attempts to interpret and change the world. The problem of reading Marx is then central to Marxism. —Drew Milne, Marxist Literary Theory, 1996, p. 18

In the spring of 2011, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article by Terry Eagleton in its Chronicle Review section entitled “In Praise of Marx.” In this article, Eagleton defends Marx’s thought against the criticisms of it that emerged over roughly the last three decades of the twentieth century in order to explain why Marx is, or at least should be, “back on the agenda.” He couches his explanation of the relevancy of Marx inside such a defense—dryly commenting that “Marx was no more responsible for the monstrous oppression of the communist world than Jesus was responsible for the Inquisition”—because he realizes that to many of the Chronicle’s readers “[p] raising Karl Marx might seem as perverse as putting in a good Teaching Marx, pages 27–101 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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word for the Boston Strangler.” The answer he gives to his readers about why Marx is finding his way back on to the agenda is, ironically enough, “because of capitalism.” He explains: Whenever you hear capitalists talking about capitalism, you know the system is in trouble. Usually they prefer a more anodyne term, like “free enterprise.” The recent financial crashes have forced us once again to think of the setup under which we live as a whole, and it was Marx who first made it possible to do so. It was The Communist Manifesto which predicted that capitalism would become global, and that its inequalities would severely sharpen. Has his work any defects? Hundreds of them. But he is too creative and original a thinker to be surrendered to the vulgar stereotypes of his enemies.

Eagleton makes a persuasive case about the relevancy of Marx’s ideas to the learning that goes on in higher education, particularly as capitalism finds itself in the midst of a severe crisis in the first decades of the twenty-first century. At the same time, the rhetorical strategy of this short article reminds us that not that long ago, as the twentieth century was coming to a close, Marxist theory was in a rather severe crisis itself. Together, the content and form of the article suggest that Marx’s ideas—what Eagleton terms “his socalled materialism”—are, indeed, pertinent to the democratic mission of contemporary higher education, but not as transparently as those who have remained committed to Marxist theory might imagine. In addressing the higher education community generally, Eagleton employs a rhetorical strategy that makes it clear that putting Marx back on the agenda can only be done meaningfully by working through, not sidestepping, the lasting effects of the theoretical assault on Marxism that occurred over the last part of the previous century.1 Marx’s writing, and the Marxist tradition more generally, can provide important resources for students to think critically and creatively about their circumstances and the challenges of building just, democratic societies in the twenty-first century. As Eagleton’s recent article intimates, however, the critical and theoretical uses to which Marxism can be put, whether in the classroom or in scholarship, still linger under the doubts raised by the thoroughgoing critique of Marxism that occurred across virtually every field of inquiry during the latter part of the twentieth century. As such, efforts to revitalize the place of Marxist theory in higher learning must be informed by two significant contexts: the crises and injustices that late capitalist society continues to produce and exacerbate on a global scale and the shadow of crisis under which Marxism continues to labor. In what follows, I examine this second context. In this context, the main issue at stake is Marx’s voice, or more precisely, the conventional narrative of Marx’s voice that solidified into doctrine over the course of the twentieth century. Exploring the construction of this voice, which cuts across theorists

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both sympathetic and hostile to Marxism, means revisiting the theoretical strategies and language that were used both to bolster and debunk Marxism in the last part of the twentieth century. The aim of revisiting these theoretical debates is to problematize the traditional understanding of Marx’s voice in order to underscore the implications that it, as well as the most recent crisis in Marxism, has for contemporary efforts to get Marx “back on the agenda.” Thus, what follows is largely theoretical in emphasis, but in the interest of highlighting what it means to bring Marx into the twenty-first century classroom at the tail end of a crisis in critical theory that seriously undermined the credibility of Marx’s voice. It also is in the interest of clearing the way for a reexamination of Marx’s writing that has the potential to short-circuit the theoretical assault that threw Marxism into crisis, as well as begin to construct a voice that is more compelling intellectually and politically than the voice of the philosopher-scientist that has shaped how we understand what Marx is saying about the damaging effects of capitalist society and the collective effort it will take to overcome them. * * * Marxist theory has been subjected to systematic critical examination since the last decade of the nineteenth century. For a large part of its history, Marxism, nevertheless, retained a vitality for many that was not undermined by the opposition it faced. Marxism offered a distinctive explanatory power and a significant challenge to other modes of thought that gave it enduring importance, despite certain unresolved problems its critics indicated.2 Political and theoretical developments in the latter part of the twentieth century, however, put the intellectual relevance of Marxism to the test, unlike any other previous challenges. The development of poststructuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse, coupled with the post-1989 political changes in Eastern Europe, settled the question of the relevancy of Marxist theory for a great number of people. Marxist theory was linked both conceptually and historically to Stalinism, and as such, it appeared not only to be outdated but dangerous as well.3 On the one hand, the unfolding of history, which should have assured the dictatorship of the proletariat by most accounts of Marx’s theories, seems to have practiced a terrible irony on the “prophet” of capitalist collapse. Authors like Francis Fukuyama (1989) of the Rand Corporation, for example, proclaimed that the collapse of Stalinism marked the “end of history” and signaled the triumph of Western capitalism as the only workable economic system.4 On the other hand, post-structuralist and postmodernist theorists participated in Fukuyama’s triumphalism, claiming that the political nightmare that led to the failure of the Soviet Union simply underscored the treacherous ideological underpinnings of Marxist thought that they had pointed out long

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before 1989.5 Altogether, the linking of Stalinism both conceptually and historically to Marxism threw Marxist studies into crisis near the end of the twentieth century and opened the usefulness of writing under the sign of Marx to serious doubt. This crisis cut across the entire theoretical and political terrain that Marx had charted, and was, as Terry Eagleton (1996) writes in his introductory remarks to Marxist Literary Theory, the “most grievous crisis of [Marxism’s]  fraught career” (p. 1). In the context of this crisis, some of the most significant challenges to Marxist theory came from feminist and post-structuralist and postmodernist theorists. These theorists drew particular attention to what they saw as an inadequate theorization of agency endemic to Marxism. Marx’s dialectical materialism posits agents determined by economic forces beyond their control, forces that inexorably shape human history according to the independent and objective laws of dialectical development. The materialist determinism at the heart of Marx’s theory, these theorists argued, could not provide a sufficient understanding of agency to effect the transition to a just society based on the socialist principles that Marxists champion. It is true that the feminist and post-structuralist and postmodernist critiques of Marxism take different trajectories, and as such, we must learn from them in different ways. The feminist critique of the Marxian theory of dialectical materialism investigates how Marxism might contribute to or get in the way of revolutionary struggle for a more just, democratic society. In fact, it often seeks to ally itself with Marxist concerns while supplementing the deficiencies of Marxist theory.6 The post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism, by contrast, seeks no such alliance; rather, this critique attempts to make Marxist theory unavailable. Because Marxism relies on a totalizing narrative—a hermeneutical grasp of the entire socio-historical process—it does violence to the multiplicity of subject positions, essentially ignoring the radical differences constituting agents through its narrative closure around the category of “class.” Totalizing theories, post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse contends, are synonymous with “totalitarianism.”7 Trapped in the legacy of Enlightenment and modernist grand recits, Marxism, that is, coerces people into dreams of the just society that only lead to political disaster and the Gulag. For post-structuralism and postmodernism, the concerns of Marxist theory and the society it attempts to envision, embarrassingly enough, are “spectres” after all. Despite the different trajectories these two critiques take, they share the view that the Marxian voice of dialectical materialism fails to theorize agency adequately because it neglects, in fact forswears, the linguistic-conceptual construction of agency. From the perspective of these critiques, the authorial voice of Marx is at the center of the crisis in Marxist theory near the end of the twentieth century, and the voice of Marx that these critiques rely on is a familiar one. Moreover, this voice is largely constructed within a

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narrative advanced by the Marxist tradition itself, making the feminist and post-structuralist and postmodernist critiques of Marxist theory all the more compelling because they appear to deconstruct Marx on his own terms. The voice of Marx that emerges from the conventional narrative of the development of Marxism is the voice of the philosopher who turned Hegel “right side up again . . . [to]  discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell” (Tucker, 1978, p. xxi). It also is the voice of an emerging scientist who discovered the key to historical development through that transformational critique of Hegel, founding the science of dialectical materialism. There is a face from which this imaginary voice speaks as well. It is the face that “presents a ‘master image’ dating from late in life, when the master’s ‘thought’ is presumed to have matured from germs of intimation traceable in the early writings” (Carver, 1998, p. 164). The portrait photograph of the mature Marx, with its rigid Victorian character, and the stony monument at Highgate Cemetery help make up the image with which we are familiar. In short, the face suits the voice. Together they give a unity and coherence to a philosophical-scientific doctrine that comes to the present as the monologue of an individual talking to himself in scholarly solitude (or to those of like mind, such as Engels). Thus while the feminist critique of Marxism and the post-structuralist and postmodernist one take different directions, as suggested above, they share an important point of departure—the conventional narrative of Marx’s voice. As such, they invite a serious reconsideration of that narrative and the supposed essence of Marx’s thought it voices. The narrative that frames “orthodox” Marxism, Terrell Carver argues, begins with Engels’s book review of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in 1859.8 In his review, Engels locates the essence of Marx’s theory, and of the project developed through their partnership, in Marx’s inversion of the Hegelian dialectic. The Marx– Hegel pairing initiated by Engels has become the lynchpin of the conventional narrative of Marx’s voice up unto the present. The Hegelianized Marx that emerges from this narrative, Carver (1998) persuasively explains, has fed “the fantasies of commentators searching for exactly what Marx says isn’t there: a ‘historico-philosophic’ key to history and to what he is saying about it” (p. 189). The traditional narrative of Marx’s voice inaugurated by Engels, on the whole, is a narrative that has profoundly influenced the construction of Marxism—whether sympathetic or hostile. In broad terms, the conventional narrative of Marxism sees Marx as dismantling the idealism of Hegel by replacing Absolute Spirit with Economy. It is argued, for instance by Robert C. Tucker (1978), that Marx found that “the fundamental human reality reflected in a mystified way in Hegel’s philosophy of history was the reality of man’s [sic]  alienation in economic life” (p. xxiv). This transformational critique of Hegel, then, commits Marx to a view that economic or material forces exclusively shape various social for-

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mations and that through the class struggle marking this history humans will overcome alienation, what Hegel only dimly perceived in Phenomenology of Mind. By turning Hegel’s philosophy into science, Marx was able to formulate “his own conception of history as a process of self-development of the human species culminating in communism” (Tucker, 1978, p. xxiv). In the technological era of industrial capitalism, the capacity to overcome alienation becomes materially possible. The politics of Marxism, finally, becomes the task of guiding the proletariat with this science, of making real what Hegel had predicted in mystified fashion through his dialectical method. “[F] ollowing Hegel’s basic scheme,” Marx realized that “[t] he way of escape lies in the revolutionary seizure and socialization of the productive powers by the proletariat. . . . Human self-realization will be attained on the scale of humanity. So Marx defined communism in the 1844 manuscripts as ‘transcendence of human self-alienation’ and ‘positive humanism’” (p. xxv). As suggested by the narrative framework that Tucker (1978) uses above to introduce his Marx–Engels Reader, Engels has, in many ways, defined the terms through which we understand Marx’s writing and the three major pieces on which they worked jointly to varying degrees.9 The partnership motif that runs through this doctrinal view of Marxism, one that only came to be articulated after Marx’s death, has constructed a narrative wherein when Engels speaks, Marx seems to speak as well. Thus, when Engels puts Hegel between Marx and his audience, it seems as if Marx himself locates the essence of his work in his transformational critique of Hegel, and it becomes easy to forget that the Marx who challenged and slew the philosophical giant Hegel is not an account of what “really happened” but a story constructed to serve different purposes at different times, much like the partnership motif itself. Marx as system builder, as the philosopher who had penetrated the mystery of historical development, is a voice created through Engels’s narration of the Marx–Engels partnership, and in a selfsufficing way, it is also the voice that sanctions the partnership motif and solidifies Marxism as philosophical-scientific doctrine. Carver (1998) is worth quoting at length: This “Marx” is a voice that Engels used very effectively to recount the “materialist interpretation of history” (not a phrase Marx used) and to create the “imprimatur” that drives the partnership narrative in its most stringent form—perfect agreement—or its slightly less stringent versions—eventual convergence in a “deterministic” system, or “division of labour” in complementary fields. . . . It was Engels who broadened the focus beyond the critique of political economy (to include life, the universe and everything, i.e., laws of “nature, history, and thought”); it was Engels who singled out Hegel, quite exclusively, with-

The Crisis in Marxism    33 out noting the importance of the scholastic tradition, whether Aristotelian or otherwise; and it was Engels who contradictorily attempted to make Marx easier by putting the world’s most difficult philosopher between him and his audience. (pp. 170 & 188)

The strategy of pairing Marx and Hegel may well have been effective given Engels’s time and circumstances, when scientific system building was the order of the day, especially among working class organizations.10 However, the Marx–Hegel narrative initiated by Engels and perpetuated by others has gained a status whereby the narrative feature of this pairing seems to have evaporated, allowing the Marx–Hegel relationship to appear as fact. As a consequence, the focus of Marxist theory becomes primarily a philosophical-scientific one, one geared toward applying the universal laws of history “discovered” by Marx. The conventional narrative of Marx’s voice has, in many respects, turned Marxism into the academicism that Trotsky warned against.11 The relationship between Marx’s thought and his reading of Hegel, nevertheless, is a complex one, and I do not mean to imply that we should eschew this relationship altogether. Furthermore, I do not want to imply that the narrative inaugurated by Engels somehow obscures the “true” meaning of Marx’s work, which somehow can be revealed by cutting through the layers to what he “really” said. What I do want to suggest is that the Marx–Hegel relationship is, first of all, a construction and that, secondly, this construction has created a Marxism, especially in the current, postmodern context, that is not very compelling intellectually or politically. The most recent crisis in Marxism, when viewed through the critiques coming from feminism and post-structuralism and postmodernism, offers an important opportunity to reassess the tendency of seeing materialist determinism—the “historico-philosophic key” to social relationships in their totality—as the doctrinal essence of Marxist theory. The significance of their critiques of Marxism does not lie so much in their revelation and deconstruction of an epistemological flaw at the core of Marx’s theory. Instead, their relevance lies in pointing attention to the debilitating effects of the Marx–Hegel narrative dominating our understanding of what Marxist theory is “all about.” Their critiques, in other words, do not expose a rotten core in Marxist theory, if we recognize that the “core” is an interpretive narrative, but they do reveal the damaging effects of uncritically accepting the traditional understanding of Marx’s “authoritative” voice. What, in short, would it mean to recognize that the misgivings about the vitality of Marxism are grounded in a narrative, rather than in some doctrinal essence of Marx’s writing? The next two sections of this essay explore this question through a detailed consideration of the feminist and post-structuralist and postmodernist critiques of Marxism that were launched in the last part of the twentieth century. Exploring this question in the context of these cri-

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tiques can begin to clarify whether Marx’s writing offers little more than an outdated dogma or whether it provides a theoretical discourse that is still important to contemporary critical-theoretical practice. The Feminist Critique of Marxism As Michele Barrett (1980) notes in her book Women’s Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis, the critique of Marxism in the 1960s, which saw “the reduction of all political and ideological phenomena to their supposed economic determinants as the worst and most vulgar error of Marxism,” led many to seize the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s “as a walking falsification of economism” (pp. 2–3). In this context, Barrett emphasizes that “[t] he ideas of radical feminism are for the most part incompatible with, when not explicitly hostile to, those of Marxism and indeed one of its political projects has been to show how women have been betrayed by socialists and socialism” (p. 4). Marx’s near silence on women is problematic, but even more troubling to some feminists are the cross-cultural claims detected in his materialist conception of history. The Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism, some feminists have astutely argued, subsumes the unique political position that women occupy into the category of class, essentially ignoring if not exacerbating the ways in which women are oppressed in ways separate from the relations of economic production. Nevertheless, some feminists, like Barrett, have argued for the need to forge an alliance between Marxism and feminism. I would like to consider some of their critiques of Marxism. I think that their interest in Marxism throws into relief how much the voice constructed by the Marx–Hegel narrative informs the general reading strategy for and understanding of Marx’s writing. Josephine Donovan’s (1991) chapter “Feminism and Marxism,” in her book Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions of American Feminism, provides a helpful overview of how feminism understood and engaged with Marxist theory near the end of the twentieth century. Donovan claims that “this chapter will show that there is much in Marx’s and Engels’ ideas, and in subsequent Marxist theory, that is of central importance in the development of feminist theory” (p. 65). To support this claim, Donovan does not engage in a series of proofs and illustrations. Instead, she outlines what she understands to be the most important aspects of Marxism in relation to feminism and the main contours of Marxist-feminist and socialist-feminist thought, suggesting where Marxism warrants a radical critique from a feminist perspective and where there may be fruitful connections. This theoretical overview, it is important to note, is set within the context of feminist reservations about Marxist theory, which Donovan shares, and she is careful

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to warn that “[i] n truth, ‘Marxist feminism’ is more appropriately called ‘socialist feminism’ to point up that it no longer presents an undiluted Marxism but a Marxism modified (primarily) by radical feminism” (p. 66). “[U]  ndiluted Marxism” is the science of dialectic materialism, and for Donovan, it is the starting point for explaining Marxist theory. She writes, “One of Marx’s central insights is the idea of materialist determinism, usually called historical materialism, which holds that culture and society are rooted in material and economic conditions” (p. 66). This central tenet of Marxism can be located, Donovan explains, in Marx’s transformational critique of Hegel, wherein he established the material determination of consciousness in contradistinction to idealist philosophy. Later in the chapter, Donovan demonstrates how this view of consciousness is problematic, especially for a theory of revolutionary social change. Citing the critiques of Barrett, Catherine A. MacKinnon, and Nancy Hartsock, she suggests that this is where feminism must radically revise, if not completely part ways with, Marxism.12 With the historical master key of dialectical materialism at its heart, Marxism appears to be inadequate as a theory of agency. Its determinism flattens subjectivity by making individual consciousness a reflex of the empirically verifiable material conditions that obtain in a particular economic system. Moreover, Marxism appears to be inadequate on political grounds as well, because its view of the formation of subjectivity is in direct conflict with feminism’s analysis of gender, understood here as a socio-cultural construct that has very little to do with the “material” in the traditional Marxian sense, and because it often leads to a type of “party elite” politics abhorrent to the libratory and participatory aims of feminist struggle. These theoretical and political problems reflect “two epistemological strains inherent in Marxism from the beginning, indeed, from Marx himself [emphasis added] ” (Donovan, 1991, p. 86). Drawing upon Barrett, Donovan argues that a “classic paradox” thus exists in Marxist theory. It is a theory of revolutionary change that relies on people, who are thoroughly determined by material conditions that have an objective existence independent of them, to transform these very same material conditions. Because “the traditional Marxist view was, as we have seen, that ideology is rooted in a material base, indeed is determined by it” (p. 86), Marxist theory becomes problematic in terms of explaining the development of the revolutionary consciousness necessary to social transformation. On the one hand, it appears that “true” revolutionary consciousness could only develop, rather deterministically, inside of a class framework: “one can assume that the conditions of production will lead the members of an economic class to see the nature of their condition dialectically, to identify with other class members and resolve to change things” (p. 86). On the other hand, it appears that an elite leadership, having already somehow come

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to consciousness, could guide the proletariat and orient its revolutionary activities. Quoting Harstock, Donovan shows how feminism firmly rejects the political implications of this tendency: “We cannot support the elitism implicit in the concept of a vanguard party. . . . [T] he Leninist model . . . was developed to create a vehicle that could function in the absence of . . . political education” (quoted in Donovan, 1991, p. 86). For Donovan, however, it is MacKinnon who best sums up the feminist critique of the theoretical underpinnings of Marx’s dialectical materialism, which “posit and refer to a reality outside thought which it considers to have an objective . . . content.” Feminist “consciousness raising, by contrast, inquires . . . into that mixture of thought and materiality which is women’s sexuality in the most generic sense” (quoted in Donovan, 1991, p. 87). Thus, Donovan concludes that for feminism, the scientific doctrine of historical materialism lacks the kind of theoretical reflexivity necessary to understanding the formation of subjectivity inside a framework of radical social change. Despite these shortcomings, Donovan finds an important place for Marxism within feminist discourse. She outlines five areas of socialist feminism that she sees as connecting with Marxist theory in differing degrees: domestic labor and its place in capitalism, women as wage earners, intersections of gender and class, ideological socialization, and the idea of praxis—perhaps the idea she finds most exciting for Marxist-feminist alliances (p. 76). However, if Marxism has to be emptied of what are perceived to be its central theoretical premises to be of much use, as the above criticisms of the scientific doctrine of historical materialism suggest, then it is hard to tell what kind of alliances are being forged. Put differently, if socialist feminism is a modified version of “undiluted Marxism,” as Donovan claims at the beginning of her discussion, and if its modification consists in denying the essence of Marx’s theory, materialist determinism, then exactly how do Marxism and feminism connect beyond some shared terms and a commitment to theoretically informed politics? This voice of Marx—the originator of historical materialism—it seems to me, is not the right candidate for alliance making. Having deconstructed the core of Marx, it might just be best to drop the label altogether. Donovan’s overview of feminist engagements with Marxist theory and politics provides an excellent touchstone for understanding important aspects of the feminist critique of Marxism, but before clarifying what I take to be the most important features of this powerful critique, I would like to consider another feminist author, who is sympathetic to Marxism, and her discussion of Marx’s ideas. Considering her work should help to extend the context within which feminism’s critique of Marxism can be understood. The title of Linda Nicholson’s (1987) essay, “Feminism and Marx: Integrating Kinship with the Economic,” suggests how she envisions an alliance between the two theories. Before elaborating the foundation

The Crisis in Marxism    37

of this association, though, Nicholson considers Marx’s views on production and how they problematize the way that feminism might use Marx’s theories. In her overview of Marx’s thought, she focuses mainly on ambiguities in his concept of production, wherein production seems ultimately to “refer to ‘those activities concerned with the production of food and objects’” (p. 19). Noting the masculinist orientation of this understanding of production—through which family structures and sexual reproduction, for instance, are negated from a world of economic production that has primary determinacy—Nicholson locates the major stumbling block of Marx’s theory in its scientific, cross-cultural application of this economic paradigm. While Nicholson does not rehearse the Hegelian narrative of Marx’s thought that Donovan does, it is apparent that the voice of systembuilder is what feminism must dismantle for Marx to be anything other than a “serious opponent” (p. 17). Likewise, she shares the critical stance, described by Donovan, against the implications of Marx’s theory for developing revolutionary consciousness, against its tendency to see subjectivity exclusively inside a materialist determinism. In her focus on the specific economic contours of Marx’s theory, however, Nicholson extends the feminist critique of Marxism in interesting ways. Nicholson claims that Marx and later Marxists have the virtue of seeing more clearly than other economic theorists the historical, rather than natural, character of capitalism. The difficulty is that, firstly, this awareness is uneven and that, secondly and more damagingly, it is compromised by “a significant strand within his [Marx’s] writings, and most prominently in what might be called his philosophical anthropology or cross-cultural theory of the nature of human life and social organization” (p. 16). This “philosophical anthropology” sees the economic as an independent, yet determining, component of human existence. As such, Marx’s theory is seen as helpful only when its core assumptions about dialectical materialism—which, if maintained, overwhelm any original insight on the historical nature of social constructs—are eradicated from his thought. Nicholson explains: In particular, they enable Marx to falsely project features of capitalist society onto all societies, and . . . to cross-culturally project the autonomization and primacy of the economic in capitalist societies. This point is illustrated by examining Marx’s claim that “the changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.” This claim is intended as a universal claim of social theory, i.e., it is meant to state that in all societies there is a certain relation between the “economy” and the “superstructure.” . . . Thus, by employing the more specific meaning of “economic” in his cross-cultural claims, Marx projects the separation and primacy of the ‘economic’ found in capitalist society onto all human societies. (p. 19)

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This scientific application of a Base/Superstructure model identified as the defining voice of Marxism, Nicholson argues, unwittingly mimics the liberal political economists Marx originally set out to repudiate. Through its system building, which makes the economic central to human existence, and its scientific rhetoric, Marxist theory uncritically re-creates the essential problem of bourgeois economics: a world of object relations that stands outside, yet dominates, people’s lives in a trans-historical and cross-cultural way. This is a convincing, and I would say, well-argued criticism of the voice of dialectical materialism. “Indeed,” Nicholson comments, “Marx, by building a philosophical anthropology on the basis of this assumption, developed and made more explicit that very perspective in much other economic theory which he in other contexts criticized” (p. 16). In trying to connect Marxism and feminism, Nicholson argues “that while in Marx’s concrete historical analysis there is much from which feminism can draw in comprehending the changing relation of family, state, and economy, it is most strongly in Marx’s cross-cultural claims that the theory becomes unhelpful to feminism” (p. 23). The grounds for alliance Nicholson identifies are stronger than those Donovan invokes; insight on how social relations are constructed and not determined by the “natural order of things” seems a much more useful Marxian feature than some overriding notion of praxis. Additionally, the importance of the feminist critique of Marxist theory to those engaged in Marxist critical-theoretical practice is superbly elucidated by her emphasis on how gender serves “as a concrete and fundamental example of the problem” with the voice of materialist determinism (p. 29). “Thus the feminist critique of Marxism,” Nicholson asserts, “goes beyond what is often perceived as a relatively superficial call to incorporate gender, to become a powerful voice in the analysis of its basic weaknesses and a necessary means in the task of its reconstruction” (pp. 29–30).13 Nicholson’s formulation of this alliance, however, still begs the question of why the label Marxist is in some way fundamentally important to socialist feminism. Within Nicholson’s framework, Marx’s attention to the sociohistorical construction of relations of family, state, and economy signals a recessive characteristic in his theory. The “philosophical anthropology or cross-cultural theory of the nature of human life and social organization” is the dominant, if not defining, characteristic of Marx’s thought. As I read Nicholson’s analysis, the only way to draw out that recessive trait and salvage it is to deconstruct thoroughly Marx’s dominant voice, thereby demonstrating that within Marx’s writing is a revelation of the socio-historical construction of human relations. On the one hand, this strategy values Marxism mainly for its descriptive rather than theoretical vitality: “Thus one can conclude that Marxism as social theory is very much a product of its time, insightful as an exposition [emphasis added]  of that which was becoming

The Crisis in Marxism    39

true, and false to the extent that the limited historical applicability of its claims was not recognized” (Nicholson, 1987, p. 23). The choice of Marx in illustrating the social construction of family, state, and economic relations seems no more compelling than choosing Adam Smith or David Ricardo— whose scientific presumptions about an independent and determining economic realm are shared by Marx, according to Nicholson. It might be safely assumed that the same point could be revealed by a deconstructive reading of their liberal economic theories. On the other hand, limiting Marx’s relevance to a description of capitalism’s historical development, even if it is more historically conscious than other economists’, undercuts the intellectual and political vitality of Marxist theory, even while trying to rescue it. Nicholson’s strategy clearly sees a need to apply theory from outside of Marx’s thought to elaborate what is only nascent in his writing, thus giving Marxism the kind of critical self-reflexivity historical materialism lacks and reconstructing it for a Marxist-feminist alliance. Again, it is not clear on these grounds why Marxism makes a specifically good, or necessary, candidate as an ally to feminism, since it makes few strong theoretical and political claims on its own. Nicholson is right to point out feminism’s important contribution in critiquing the weaknesses of a theory of materialist determinism, of the scientific application of the Base/Superstructure model that Marx is understood to voice. However, if it is assumed that this is the voice of Marx, that the philosophy of dialectical materialism is the exclusive distinguishing feature of Marxist theory, then it becomes hard to lay any grounds for a fruitful alliance. Thus it is that the feminist critique of Marxism, especially by these writers who are sympathetic to its general aims, underscores not only how the Marx–Hegel narrative has dominated reading strategies for understanding what Marx had to say, but also how this voice of Marx presently fails to sustain much intellectual or political relevance. This philosophical-scientific voice of Marx tends to ossify Marxist theory in its pastness or universalism, since his theory appears to lack the self-reflexivity necessary to recognize its own limits, and when claims are made in defense of his relevancy to, say, feminism, or I might add to any politics engaged with the understanding of subjectivity that emerged with the linguistic turn in theory, it seems to be at the expense of hollowing him out. Nicholson is right to locate a relevance in Marx’s attention to the way in which social relations are not a reflection of some natural order, however conceived, but are constructed in historically specific ways. Her strategy for “reconstructing” Marx to get at this aspect, though, seems a Pyrrhic victory to me. The feminist critique of the Marxian voice of materialist determinism near the end of the twentieth century raises substantial challenges for Marxist theory. A summary of the salient features of this critique can help to clarify why the theoretical relevance of Marxism has been thrown into

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such doubt over roughly the past twenty-five years, and perhaps suggest the kinds of questions Marxist theory must face if it is to sustain importance beyond its status in the history of ideas or its reputation as merely a description of the development of nineteenth-century western industrial capitalism. Crucial to the feminist critique of Marxism is its attention to the cross-cultural and trans-historical claims identified in what is understood to be the foundation of Marx’s thought—his materialist conception of history. This central tenet of Marxism, it is argued, proves inadequate because it produces a rather flat, if not contradictory, theory of subjectivity, and even more problematically, it projects this view onto all human relations through its scientific pretension to having discovered the “historico-philosphic” key to social theory. What is helpful about feminism’s critique of this feature of Marxism is that it is undertaken from the perspective of the politics of gender and its call for radical and democratic social change. Thus, the problem of revolutionary agency becomes central to this critique. One weakness detected in Marx is his tendency to ignore conceptual analysis in favor, as MacKinnon (1982) puts it, of “a reality outside thought which it considers to have an objective . . . content” (p. 543). As Donovan (1991) stresses, “The issue is not a matter of intellectual nit-picking, . . . for it entails fundamental questions of revolutionary strategy. At question is really the relationship between consciousness and reality, involving both how consciousness is formed and how it acts upon reality” (p. 87). Without enough attention to the role of linguistic-conceptual forms in the formation of subjectivity or social relations, Marx’s ideas on the development of the kind of revolutionary consciousness necessary to social transformation encounter numerous problems. If the relations of production have primary determinacy, then “true” revolutionary consciousness and activity seem to follow two possible trajectories, according to the feminist critique. For one, it seems that revolutionary struggle only develops, and is only meaningful, inside a class framework. From this perspective, consciousness and political struggle are thus reflections of economic forces outside human control; agency, as well as subject positions other than class, is swallowed up by Marx’s “logic of history.” The second option appears to be the antiparticipatory Leninist solution. With the master key of historical materialism, a party elite could formulate the interests of the proletariat and guide its activities to secure those interests. These criticisms raise important questions for Marxist theory: Is socialist transformation, then, actually an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary process, ultimately determined by the succession of various economic formations? If this is the foundation of Marxist theory, then how, as Nicholson implies, does Marxism differ from liberal theories of socio-historical development—which, as Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963/1996) comments, work “by a mythical concept of time . . . [that]  paternalistically believes . . . [it] 

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can set the timetable for another man’s [sic]  freedom” (p. 224)? What does the feeling that women have been betrayed by socialists and socialism say about the feasibility of understanding the historical relations of production as ultimately determining in terms of both consciousness and revolutionary activity? Is it useful to assume that other types of oppression and inequality will be solved through the socialist re-organization of capitalism’s productive forces? What does this assumption of materialist determinism say about the potential for alliances between Marxism and other struggles against multiple forms of oppression, especially if the only “truly” valuable struggles are those that strike at the heart of capitalism?14 In short, how effective can a political strategy be that sees itself, through some vanguard, as preventing the bourgeoisie from rolling back or stalling the wheels of history, which are heading ineluctably towards communism? Finally, what are the consequences of conceptualizing the economy as having an objective and determining existence outside thought? How could it ever be useful to separate it from ideological and political constructions and claim that it actually and exclusively determines them, that they are only distorted forms of consciousness of the material principles driving history? The questions raised by feminism’s critique of Marxism represent some of the crucial ones that Marxist theory must face if it is to remain relevant to contemporary political and cultural enterprises. In this respect, feminism is, as Nicholson persuasively argues, an important ally in elaborating the continuing significance of Marxism. However, the importance of the feminist critique does not lie so much in its uncovering of an epistemological flaw at the heart of Marx’s theory. Instead, its importance lies in pointing attention to the debilitating effects of the Marx–Hegel narrative dominating our understanding of what constitutes Marx’s theory, and it seems to me that this is where Marxists need to turn their attention if they are to effect the kind of reconstruction needed to make Marxism a good ally to the full range of democratic struggle. In this context, it is interesting to note the texts that Donovan (1991) and Nicholson (1987) draw upon to depict the centrality of the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Both cite Marx’s preface to his Critique of Political Economy, and Donovan adds to this Engels’s 1888 preface to The Communist Manifesto and Marx and Engels’s The German Ideology. The German Ideology is used to substantiate the Engelsian narrative about the key to Marx’s theory lying in his transformational critique of Hegel’s idealism. However, the passage that is cited never mentions Hegel but only “German philosophy” (Donovan, 1991, p. 66), leaving one to wonder if this passage represents a desire to system build like Hegel or to reject the feeble politics Marx (1888/1978) despised when, in his Theses on Feuerbach, he points out that, “The philosophers [emphasis added]  have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (p. 145).

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The use of Engels’s 1888 preface also seems odd in providing an illustration of Marx’s central doctrine, and it clearly presumes the Marx–Engels partnership motif that sanctions, and is sanctioned by, the Marx–Hegel narrative. Here, Engels speaks for Marx, and we forget that part of Engels’s selfdescribed purpose in the preface to this edition and in his notes to the 1890 one was to “reconcile the Manifesto with Marx’s critique of political economy and materialist conception of history—as [Engels]  understood them, writing . . . after Marx’s death” (Carver, 1998, p. 152). In any case, turning to a political-pamphlet-like publication such as the Manifesto—a document written, translated, footnoted, and re-published to intervene in different political contexts—does not look like a good place to turn to explicate the essence of Marx’s theory. A similar argument might be made about the use of the Preface to Critique of Political Economy. Is a preface a worthwhile place to locate fully the “essence” of any author? Since Capital is Marx’s most detailed theoretical argument and generally acknowledged as his magnum opus, it would seem more reasonable to look for the “core” of Marx’s theory in it or, for the more Hegelian inclined, in something like the Grundisse—a “floor plan” considered to link Marx’s early writing to Capital and a place where Marx may deal more directly with Hegel the philosopher (not the symbol of German philosophy) than he does in The German Ideology. 15 Donovan and Nicholson’s choice of texts, however, is not the only important issue at stake. In fact, the way that these texts are read is a more pertinent issue. Thus, turning to Capital may not matter if the reading strategy remains the same. It seems to me that the texts are read teleologically, with the projected end point being the voice of Marx constructed by the Marx– Hegel narrative. With this voice being fundamentally defined as philosopher-scientist, there is a tendency to see Marx as wrestling with universal “laws” and to eschew any political context that might be (re)constructed for his different writings. This tendency also leads to a reading that sees Marx using language in a scientific way, as the bearer of literal meaning. It is this view of Marx’s use of language that causes Nicholson to see Marx (and Engels) in The German Ideology as doing methodologically the same kind of science as the liberal political economists. Dominick La Capra (1983), in Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language, has pointed out the problems with seeing Marx using language in this way with respect to interpreting his writing, especially Capital: But if one moves to Capital—the locus classicus of the “mature” Marx for many commentators, even for those who would reinterpret it in the context of the Grundisse—one has what is probably the most crying case of a canonical text in need of rereading rather than straightforward, literal reading geared to a putatively unitary authorial voice. . . . The issue that should . . . guide a rereading is that of ‘double voicing’ in the argument of Capital. Of the utmost

The Crisis in Marxism    43 pertinence would be a set of related questions circulating around Marx’s indecision—at times calculated and at times seemingly blind—between a “positivistic” assertion of theses and a critical problematisation of them. Among these questions would be the following: To what extent is Marx putting forth certain propositions in his own voice (for example a labour theory of value) and to what extent does he furnish an ironic deconstruction of the system of classical economics and the capitalist practice it subtended . . . ? (pp. 270–271)

To read The German Ideology literally presents similar problems and means losing the complex ways that Marx (as well as Engels?) uses language to address different political situations, not to mention the irresolvable hermeneutical difficulties of deciding who is speaking and to whom in the ragged manuscript.16 A cursory glance at its opening paragraphs quickly reveals that it is highly steeped in political satire and irony. Marx’s main target in this work is the Young Hegelians and their pretensions to having superseded the philosopher who bears their name. As I read this text, which Marx says was “abandoned . . . to the gnawing criticism of the mice” anyway,17 Marx’s argument is similar to the one that I note above in his Theses on Feuerbach. His problem with the Young Hegelians is not so much that they have it wrong intellectually but that they mistake intellectualizing for political activity. “The most recent of them [the Young Hegelians] ,” Marx (1932/1978) writes, “have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against ‘phrases.’ They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world” (p. 149). The argument of The German Ideology looks even less like a definitive philosophical exposition of the science of dialectical materialism when we consider that Marx subjected materialists to almost the exact same criticism in his Theses on Feuerbach, which he wrote while beginning The German Ideology, and which some consider the outline for The German Ideology.18 Between these works, Marx at least invites a different reading of his approach to social transformation, one that suggests neither concepts nor materiality should be given exclusive priority when theorizing the politics of radical social change. Different political contexts may require giving ascendancy to one aspect over the other at times: for instance, inside the polemical debate against the idealist politics of the Young Hegelians in Germany, “to settle accounts with our erstwhile philosophical conscience,” after Engels and Marx broke with the Young Hegelians.19 However, a key point connecting these texts, especially if the Theses on Feuerbach is an outline for The German Ideology’s exposition of what Marx termed “our outlook,” is that no theory, idealist or materialist, is sufficient outside “revolutionising practice,” which requires placing both conceptual and materialist analysis in the context of political action. Placing Marx inside a biographical narrative that has him

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engaged in a lifelong battle to show that the Hegelian dialectic actually reveals the laws of materialist determinism obscures this point. As such, there is a tendency to overlook Marx’s political point in accusing materialist determinism of the same feeble politics as idealist philosophy when theory gets divorced from revolutionary agency and its connection to self-reflexive “thinking.” In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx (1888/1978) writes: The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man [sic]  must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice [emphasis added] . The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question. The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that it is essential to educate the educator himself [emphasis added] . . . . The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionising practice [emphasis added] . . . . Thus, for instance, after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be criticised in theory and revolutionised in practice. (p. 144)

I hope that this brief reading against the grain of a Hegelian narrative of Marx’s development as a theorist shows that feminism’s critique does not so much expose a rotten core in Marxist theory, but that it reveals the damaging effects of the traditional understanding of Marx’s “authoritative” voice. I also hope to show through this summary of feminism’s critique of Marxism that its persuasive criticisms do not result from feminism’s unique choice of Marx’s texts nor from detecting some epistemological contradiction that had gone overlooked. Instead, it is a critique of the Marxist tradition’s self-representations of what to read and of how to read and understand Marx. Hence, the call to resist what is seen as the defining characteristic of Marx—his materialist determinism—and to make him a fit ally by bringing his theory into contact with a perspective that, in the words of MacKinnon (1982) “inquires . . . into [the]  mixture of thought and materiality” (p. 543), seems to be the wrong strategy, because it appropriates Marx in spite of himself and so deprives him of any vitality if the heart of what he is saying must be scrapped. I am not sure that Marx has to be undercut at his core, if we recognize that the “core” is an interpretive narrative, to become a valuable ally to feminism and other democratic struggles. There is a voice for Marx, which I address in section III of this essay, that has a much stronger theory of how language, agency, and the socio-material world con-

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struct human relations and subjectivity than what the voice of dialectical materialism offers. In this sense, Marxism’s continuing relevance need not be salvaged by dismantling the supposed essence of Marxist theory and supplementing it from outside itself. As an alternative, Marxism might be usefully “reconstructed” from within, so to speak, through a reinterpretation of Marx’s writing that does not take the Marx–Hegel narrative as the defining reading strategy. Marxists will make much fitter allies this way. The Post-Structuralist and Postmodernist Critique of Marxism There are similarities between feminism’s critique of Marxism and the one launched by post-structuralist theories of language in the last part of the twentieth century.20 In particular, both critiques detect an inadequacy within dialectical materialism to theorize language and thereby agency in intellectually and politically persuasive ways. But, whereas feminism seeks, in some instances, to ally itself with Marxist politics and to find something of use in Marx’s theories, the critique at issue here seeks neither. Indeed, the theories of language and the logic of the simulacrum emerging after 1968 deny any kind of totalizing theory, as history, reality, the subject and other categories associated with western philosophy are fragmented into radical textuality and the slippery surfaces of postmodern images. Additionally, the kind of macro-politics that post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse locates in a “grand narrative” like Marxism is rejected in favor of spontaneous, local resistances appropriate to petit recits. For post-structuralism and postmodernism, the grand narratives beginning with the Enlightenment and reaching their apex with modernism have no credibility. These grand recits and the projects that they have been used to legitimate, it is argued, have resulted in social and political disaster: “from modern warfare, Auschwitz and the Gulag to nuclear threat and severe ecological crisis” (Selden, Widdowson & Brooker, 1997, p. 209).21 The “dialectic of Spirit” and the “emancipation of humanity,” what Lyotard sees as the two legitimating narratives of “modernization,” have not been able to deliver on the promise of the unity of all knowledge and human liberation, but have instead created misery, oppression, and the suffocating space of administered society. It is no surprise, then, that for post-structuralism and postmodernism, Marxism is a relic of an antiquated rationalism, bankrupt as a theory not only in the contemporary world of “postindustrial” consumerism but also in any time, since the history and the Cartesian subjectivity capable of becoming self-conscious within that history—both of which Marx is understood to champion—never existed in the first place. Marxism, it is argued, must be left to the museum before its dogmatism stimulates any more ty-

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rannical schemes. The worthlessness and danger of Marxism from this perspective are encapsulated in the words of one of the “new philosophers,” a group of French intellectuals who used the ideas of post-structuralism to debunk Marxism and socialist societies: I reproach Marx with having traced a certain number of intellectual routes: the cult of the total and final Revolution; of the State that terrorizes for the good of the collectivity; and of social science that permits the masses to be guided in spite of themselves. These paths do not lead directly to the Gulag but to non-resistance to the Gulag.22

Before elaborating the details of this critique and suggesting what Marxist theory might learn from it, it is important to explain why discussion of the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism is placed after that of feminism’s. Placing it here may seem strange to some. In many ways, I believe it is presumed that the critique initiated by post-structuralist linguistic theories is somehow definitive and sets the terms for contemporary critical engagements with Marx’s ideas. This critique is certainly more disparaging than feminism’s and more co-extensive with, say, Lyotard and Baudrillard’s development of postmodernist theoretical discourse than it is with any self-understanding of feminism. Moreover, it takes place inside what continues to be one of the most highly invested and influential terrains of present-day intellectual and political endeavor: one that has made land mines of phrases like “historical context” or “critical distance,” as well as of any gesture to a “depth” beyond the free-floating surface of signifiers. With all this in mind, I place it here for the following reasons. If Megan Morris (1988) is right to argue in The Pirate’s Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism, as I believe she is, that feminism should frame discussions of postmodernism, then feminism’s critique of Marxism might serve as an important context for examining the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism. What emerges most clearly with this type of framing is the way in which the voice of Marx the scientific-system builder, the one constructed through the Marx–Hegel reading strategy initiated by Engels, sets the terms for condemning Marx and, in this case, sending him off to the museum. This aspect of the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique, then, should seem quite odd: a voice, an essential message, where do these belong in a theory of the endless play of signifiers and fragmented identity? Finally, this framework enables the discussion of the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxist theory to take a different trajectory, to suggest that Marxists must learn in different ways from this particular critique. While it points out similarities between the two critiques, using feminism to set the terms of this critique allows a hermeneutical juxtaposition that points up a key distinction—whether it is empirically verifiable or not that feminism first set the terms within which dialectical materialism is

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currently criticized. It is one thing to critique Marxism from the perspective of a theory that highlights future-oriented political struggle, one that shares a commitment to collectivist politics on as large a scale imaginable and to evaluating political and theoretical efficacy against a dominant socio-historical category—gender in this case or class for Marxists. It is quite another from the perspective of a theory that dissolves temporality into sheer heterogeneity, into a space where random and distinct forces co-exist in incommensurable ways. Such a construction disarms, in advance, futureoriented and collectivist politics. For post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse, power is diffuse and ever-pervasive, and thus undecidable outside micro-contexts. From this perspective, the only legitimate forms of resistance left are local and provisional. As Madan Sarup (1993) emphasizes in summarizing the kinds of resistance favored by post-structuralist and postmodernist thought, “[t] he worst error is to believe that such local projects should be brought together” (p. 98). By depicting “reality” as a semiotic surface or space, and “experience” as something metaphorically akin to the perpetual present of the Lacanian schizophrenic,23 any grounds for collective, goal-oriented politics are undermined: “. . . the breakdown of temporality suddenly releases this present of time from all the activities and intentionalities that might focus it and make it a space of praxis” (Jameson, 1991, p. 27). Why the poststructuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism must be approached differently, and why it should be framed inside feminism’s critique, can be glimpsed in the following passage from Fredric Jameson’s (1991) influential book Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism: . . . no doubt the logic of the simulacrum, with its transformation of older realities into television images, does more than replicate the logic of late capitalism; it reinforces and intensifies it. Meanwhile, for political groups which seek actively to intervene in history or modify its otherwise passive momentum (whether with a view toward channeling it into a socialist transformation of society or diverting it into the regressive reestablishment of some simpler fantasy past), there cannot but be much that is deplorable and reprehensible in a cultural form of image addiction which, by transforming the past into visual mirages, stereotypes, or texts, effectively abolishes any practical sense of the future and of the collective project, thereby abandoning the thinking of future change to fantasies of sheer catastrophe and inexplicable cataclysm, from visions of “terrorism” on the social level to those of cancer on the personal. (p. 46)

Jameson’s comments suggest that when it comes to theorizing collective struggle postmodernist theoretical discourse is of little help. However, Jameson is right to point out that the kind of moralizing he presents in this passage is ultimately a “category mistake,” made impossible by virtue of im-

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mersion in this new postmodernist space which none of us can escape. What is needed instead of this moral denunciation, Jameson (1991) emphasizes, is the capacity “to think this development both positively and negatively all at once” (p. 47). While it may not be fully clear until my discussion of post-structuralism and postmodernism’s critique of Marxist theory has had the chance to unfold, this is precisely what framing this critique inside feminism’s critique of Marx’s theory accomplishes. This strategy allows us to see that while both critiques deploy the “classical” voice of Marx, they function differently. Post-structuralism and postmodernism use the terms of the critique to undermine Marxism and make it unavailable on the basis of Marx’s having been deceived, like his Enlightenment and modernist counterparts, into fantasies of progress and collective emancipation. Feminism sets these terms to think Marxist theory historically and politically, to clear the ground for resurrecting what is useful in Marx and for supplementing it with what he neglected in light of the democratic vision of feminist struggle. Thus it is that the feminist critique of Marxism foregrounds questions of political and theoretical efficacy by providing grounds upon which to judge its own inquiry into such questions. Because post-structuralism and postmodernism not only fail to provide but, in fact, deny such grounds, framing their critique of Marx inside feminism’s provides a way to scrutinize what important questions might be raised by their dismantling of dialectical materialism. If, as Sarup (1993) argues, “there is no place in Lyotard’s universe for critiques of relations of dominance and subordination along lines like gender, race and class” (p. 154), then it is certain that Marxists must learn from this critique differently than they might from feminism’s. Feminism does not need to be conceived “negatively” to learn from its critique, which, of course, is not the same thing as saying it could be approached uncritically. Its critique, though, implies the necessity and provides a model for thinking post-structuralism and postmodernism’s critique both “negatively” and “positively.” Put differently, framing the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism inside of feminism’s exposes a nihilism that makes the usefulness of the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique dubious, while also enabling us to think that critique historically and politically in an effort to see what demands it places on Marxism, if Marxism is to articulate its relevancy in ways that are persuasive in the contemporary context. Consequently, we are not so much looking at alliance making in this case, but at confronting a “dominant cultural logic,” so Jameson (1991) makes clear, that not only signals challenges that Marxist theory must face but also erects serious obstacles for realizing a qualitatively different society (p. 6). The feminist critique of Marxism that I have reviewed challenges the materialist conception of history by identifying problems in the universalizing

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tendencies of its determinism, which consequently lead to an inadequate theorization of the role of concepts in the construction of subjectivity and social relations. At issue primarily is the capacity to conceptualize revolutionary agency capable of effecting radically democratic social transformation. While I stress that what is disputed is not the voice of Marx, but a generally accepted narrative that explains Marx’s thought as teleologically driven towards what Engels conceived as a historico-philosphic key to all human history, I also stress that the persuasiveness of this critique is precisely that it is undertaken from the perspective of the future-oriented politics of gender. Such a perspective requires that relations of domination be articulated in terms of a complex ensemble of socio-historical, linguistic, and material conditions, not as random effects of a diffuse power that is always everywhere and nowhere. This sense of temporality and attention to the sociohistorical construction of relations of domination make praxis possible, for if relations of power are not socio-historically constituted, then the present is perpetual. In “Desire and Power: A Feminist Perspective,” Mackinnon (1988) explains the political necessity to be able to abstract those sociohistorical relations and, at the same time, to see them as the effect of what people do inside of time: If male power makes the world as it “is,” to theorize this reality requires its capture in order to subject it to critique, hence to change. Feminists say women are not individuals. To retort that we “are” will not make it so. It will obscure the need to make change so that it can be so. To the feminist charge that women “are” not equal, to retort, “Oh, you think women aren’t equal to men,” is to act as though saying we “are” will make it so. What it will do, instead, what it has done and is doing [emphasis added] , is legitimize the vision that we already “are” equal, that this, life as we live it now, is equality for us. It acts as if the purpose of speech is to say what we want reality to be like as if it is already that way, as if that will help move reality to that place. This may be true in fiction but it won’t work in theory. It suggests, instead, that if this is reality, nothing needs changing, that this is freedom, that we choose this. To me, this is about denial and the opposite of change. (p. 114)

A theory that stresses praxis inside of history, not outside of it or without it, produces a critique of Marxism that provides good grounds for deciding the political efficacy of formulations like dialectical materialism and for evaluating the critique itself. At the risk of oversimplifying, it might be useful for the moment to see feminism’s critique of Marxism as a kind of means/end analysis. This critique raises questions about the role of Marxist theory in building some dimly perceived future out of the disjunctions and baleful features of the past and present as well as out of their promises. In short, feminism’s critique asks if Marxist theory is up to the task of conceiving the kind of agency capable of addressing the complex ensemble of so-

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cio-historical, linguistic, and material conditions that must be transformed in the struggle for a just and democratic society. The post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism can effect no such analysis. With the breakdown of temporality into a heterogeneous space of textual surfaces and copies without an original, the end, “that place” MacKinnon suggests we might “move reality” to, is effaced: the disasters of the Enlightenment and modernism, for post-structuralism and postmodernism, clearly demonstrate that it is a dangerous fiction. History, reality, and any sense of depth or continuity, which are assumed by an interpretive analysis like the one MacKinnon offers above, lose all credibility as legitimating categories. As such, the means, that collective and conscious journey through time implied by her metaphor “move,” are compromised by the dangerous illusions endemic to the self-fulfilling prophecies of any meta-narrative of progress, to those interpretive systems based in the logic of Enlightenment progress or in modernist depth models that inevitably transform themselves into instruments of domination. The kind of political analysis that the feminist critique of Marxism encourages is eclipsed by the distrust in notions of “history,” “reality,” “truth,” and “interpretation” produced by the linguistic theories of post-structuralism and reiterated in the theory of the simulacrum developed by postmodernists. The conflict between appearance and reality; the gesture towards an interpretation or abstraction that can give us some kind of “truth” about what people used to do, what they do now, and what they might do in the future; and the belief that such an abstraction should guide the way individuals engage with the world in an effort to achieve some new kind of future society that will verge on the collective good—all of which are implied by the political strategy MacKinnon suggests in the passage above and by the feminist critique of Marxism—are disavowed by post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse. If “knowing” is only possible through discourse or, more broadly than this term suggests, through signifying systems, then all we can “know” is the semiotic surface of the present, which itself can only provide an endless deferral of “meaning.” For post-structuralism and postmodernism, the political analysis that I find in feminism’s critique of Marxism, and in Marx’s theory itself, actually cuts us off from “reality” and turns into its opposite through a violent repression of the differences produced by semiotic surfaces, convincing people that they can justify present means by the future end.24 Post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse replaces the kind of depth models on which political praxis has traditionally relied with a conception of localized practices, discourses, and textual play. It is not, then, that post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse denies that there is a “place;” it is that the “place” is what Mackinnon wants to avoid legitimizing, “this, life as we live it now.” That the radical sense of textuality underpinning post-structuralist and postmodernist

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theoretical discourse leads, for instance in the work of Foucault, Lyotard, and Baudrillard, to a capitulation to systemic forms of domination and exploitation is by now a well-rehearsed criticism.25 In the postmodern world of “language games,” the idea that people are subjugated by some centralized system of power is a misconception, since only the “rules” of particularized semiotic surfaces legitimize the “moves” made by participants. Relations of power, as well as how to struggle against them, become undecidable because of the unstable and slippery discourses that constitute and construct them, leaving recourse only to the search for efficiency and intensity in a discursive space where we are all ineluctably exploiters and exploited. Sarup (1993) states the position against this tendency of post-structuralism and postmodernism plainly enough: Basically, what the post-structuralists like Lyotard are saying is that there is more to life than politics. If we are totally immersed in the political, we miss what is going on here and now. Marxists are always criticizing the status quo in the name of an ideal. Militants are so inflexible that they have no time to enjoy life as it is now. Ideals cut us off from the present. Instead of having a nostalgia for an unalienated community that may have existed in the past we should celebrate aspects of contemporary life—its anonymity, its fragmentation, its consumptionism. . . . [I] t could be argued that if all that matters is intensity (the quest for “kicks”), then one can get as much intensity acting within the system as outside it. (pp. 100–101)

The tendency of post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse to disparage and evade politics aimed at analyzing and combating some total “system” owes much to the way that theoretical discourse has appropriated the events of May 1968 in France and Nietzschean philosophy. Foucault (1980) credits the emergence of localized struggles in the school, the prison, and the psychiatric hospital from May ’68 on with allowing him to take up explicitly the problem of the interrelation of power and knowledge.26 The plurality and spontaneity of May ’68, for Lyotard (1984), show that the class politics of Marxism had been eclipsed, as the student revolt expressed not class antagonism but an anarchist protest against bureaucratization and the depersonalized space of post-World War II culture. The content of the students’ protest—with slogans like “it is forbidden to forbid”—exposed a discrepancy between the rhetoric of Marxism and the “new social movements.”27 After 1968, any political theory, but especially Marxism, that sought to conceptualize and act upon the structures of society as a whole was suspect. Coherent belief-systems that attempted total, systematic analysis that might guide political struggle were feared to be repressive, in contrast to libidinal gesture and anarchist spontaneity. As the living falsification of theories that seek to legitimize political activity by reference to something

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outside the unstable dynamics of discourse and the multiplicity of subject positions that they generate, the events of May ’68 had a profound influence on the development of post-structuralism and postmodernism. As Terry Eagleton (1983) explains, “The student movement was flushed off the streets and driven underground into discourse” (p. 142). In the face of power that could only be understood in localized discursive contexts and that seemed to preclude any fantasies of collective progress, post-structuralists and postmodernists have turned to Nietzsche. Nietzsche, for them, provides a superior intellectual terrain to travel than that offered by Marx, one that might provide some clarification of the new de-centered, discontinuous landscape. Nietzsche, for many post-structuralist and postmodernist writers, had found a way to theorize power without getting ensnared in systems. Derrida often invokes him, and Nietzschean philosophy has a prominent place in the thought of Foucault, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guittari. In “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” for instance, Foucault (1977) acknowledges his indebtedness to Nietzsche for having outlined the genealogical concept of history. Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, for him, marks an effort to delegitimize the present by radically separating it from the past, and thus Foucault relies on this rhetorical separation in his own historiography. This genealogical perspective asserts that we can never acquire an objective knowledge of history: “Ultimately, man [sic]  finds in things nothing but what he himself has imported into them” (Nietzsche as quoted in Selden et al., 1997, p.185). Absolute truth and objective knowledge can never be spoken; all knowledge is an expression of the “Will to Power.” Using these ideas, Foucault espouses “a Nietzschean or genealogical perspective which treats all truth-claims as products of the ubiquitous will-to-power within language, discourse or representation” (Sarup, 1993, p. 75). Unlike Marx, who had focused on the productive relation and mistakenly systematized it, Nietzsche had grasped the power relation as a general philosophical focus for which no system could reveal the entire truth; it could only be understood by meticulous attention to “small stories.” Indeed, for Nietzsche, “[t] he will to a system is a lack of integrity” (as quoted in Sarup, 1993, p. 91). This skeptical stance toward systematizing is adopted by Foucault and other writers like Deleuze, Guattari, and Lyotard, and it is this skepticism that leads them to debunk the meta-narratives of the Enlightenment. In Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, these metanarratives or grand recits are understood by Deleuze and Guattari (1977) as an expression of the Nietzschean will to power. The totalizing explanation of these “large stories” transcodes complex realities into a “mastercode,” signaling what Deleuze and Guattari call “transcendent” interpretation. They are quick to point out that it is not interpretation as such that they oppose, but the kind of transcendent interpretation found in Marxism. Be-

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cause it goes outside the “text” to some set of norms said to exist independently of discourse, Marxism does violence to the complexity of reality by allegorizing it in terms of its mastercode, which it mistakes as a language that transparently describes an ultimate, material “reality.” It is a prime example of the kind of systematizing that ultimately represses difference and transforms itself into a mechanism of coercion, the kind of interpretation to which Deleuze and Guattari counter pose their idea of “immanent” interpretation. Immanent interpretation respects the complexity of a given reality by paying attention to the particularized norms of an infinite variety of discursive contexts, a vast plurality of wills to power. Another important theme that emerges out of the post-structuralist and postmodernist appropriation of Nietzsche is the idea of the eternal recurrence. Nietzsche denies that history evinces some kind of definite progress, that there can be any plan or goal to give significance to history or life. For him, “The goal of humanity cannot lie at the end of time but only in its highest specimens” (as quoted in Sarup, 1993, p. 92). Therefore, any faith in the future of humanity is as grand an illusion as believing it is possible to know the past; such a faith distracts individuals from the importance of self-realization in the present. Lyotard’s (1984) attack on the legitimating narratives of the Enlightenment and modernism in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge shares much of Nietzsche’s hypothesis. Modernization, for Lyotard, has led not to progress but to social and political disaster: bureaucracy, misery, the unbearable space of administered society. The Enlightenment narratives of progress, liberation, and equality have turned into their opposites. If not worse, the world is certainly no better than it was, though one would think post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse would by necessity forego such a value judgment. Thus it is that Marxism figures in his work as just another version, perhaps the most dangerous, of Enlightenment and modernist narratives of mastery that wish to create a homogeneous society through coercion. Resenting the totalizing claims of Marxism to provide explanations for all aspects of society and to point out the path to progress, Lyotard argues that fragmented, individualistic society is here to stay. Disencumbered of the repressive consensus assumed by such a universalizing theory and its “truth claims,” postmodern people could be free to pursue, as Selden, et al. (1997) suggest, “the technical and commercial aims of optimal performance” by investing in “more modest ‘petit recits’” (p. 209). Nietzschean themes run through post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse, and many of these themes are at the heart of its critique of Marxism. Nietzsche’s genealogical view of history and its articulation through Foucault, I would argue, provide the starting point for this critique. The discontinuity of history, the condemnation of the “illusion” of truth, the recognition of a vast plurality of wills to power, the need to pay at-

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tention to the “small story,” the subsequent distrust of totalizing and systematizing interpretation, and the extreme skepticism about collective progress make up the theoretical repertoire with which Marxism is condemned. It has been noted that with these themes “the leitmotiv of [Nietzsche’s]  life and thought is the anti-political individual who seeks self-perfection far from the modern world” (Sarup, 1993, p. 91). It has likewise been noted that, because it shares these themes, post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse appears to be a way of “evading” the political altogether in order to clear the way for Nietzschean self-realization (Sarup, 1993, p. 97). Marxism, from the perspective of post-structuralist and postmodernist theory, clearly needed to be neutralized, lest it stand in the way. However, to explain post-structuralism and postmodernism’s “clearing away” of Marxism in this manner seems inadequate. What happens is that the apolitical character of post-structuralism and postmodernism becomes the central feature in its polemic against Marxism. To see post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse as apolitical sidetracks any effort to think this discourse both negatively and positively at the same time, since our frame of reference becomes a diatribe of the apathetically non-political against the stubbornly political.28 While I think the Nietzschean context is crucial and want to explore it further, reducing it to this kind of opposition will distract from other important features of the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism, features that I believe Marxists must also confront. Two features of post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse that play a prominent role in the critique of Marxism, then, are the extreme skepticism towards totalizing theories of human progress and the dominance of particularized signifying systems, both of which consequently abolish any reference to the historically “real.” These two features are most closely associated with the thought of Foucault, Lyotard, and Baudrillard, and to be sure, they are highly inflected with Nietzschean themes. Marxist theorists have stressed that it is Marx who radically challenged the Hegelian dialectic by turning it right side up, but for post-structuralists and postmodernists, Marx did not dispense with the conservative content of Hegel’s dialectic but simply told the same kind of providential story about human progress using a different vocabulary. For these writers, it was Nietzsche who was the real critic of Hegel because he identified the ubiquitous nature of power and the “illusion” of truth.29 Nietzsche had effectively demonstrated that Hegel’s dialectic, and any theory relying on it, rested on a set of untenable truth claims about history, thereby duping its adherents into illusions of collective progress, which Nietzsche held hampered realizing that “[t] he goal of humanity . . . lie[s]  . . . only in its highest specimens.” The deployment of this view of the Nietzschean deconstruction of Hegel in a polemic against Marx points clearly to the way in which the post-structuralist

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and postmodernist critique relies heavily on the Marx–Hegel pairing that has traditionally defined Marxist theory. It is important, though, not to see this polemic too abstractly, as I stress above. If the engagement is reduced to a confrontation between the apolitical and political philosophies of two prominent thinkers, then it becomes hard to understand how Nietzsche is appropriated inside the political debates of late capitalism. Put differently, it becomes difficult to see how, in the words of Jameson (1991): The fundamental ideological task of the new concept [“postmodernism”]  . . . must remain that of coordinating new forms of practice and social and mental habits . . . with the new forms of economic production and organization thrown up by the modification of capitalism—the new global division of labor—in recent years. . . . [T] he “postmodern” is to be seen as the production of postmodern people capable of functioning in a very peculiar socioeconomic world . . . , one whose structure and objective features and requirements—if we had a proper account of them—would constitute the situation to which “postmodernism” is a response and would give us something a little more decisive than mere postmodernism theory. (pp. xiv–xv)

The ideological-political enterprise that Jameson describes is co-extensive with the critique of Marxist theory; therefore, the use of Nietzschean themes against Marxist theory is best understood in the context of the attempt to coordinate subjective experience with the global space of multinational capital. On the one hand, this context, unlike the one which posits a grudge match between philosophical giants, provides a way of thinking historically and politically the challenges offered to critical uses of Marxism if they are to connect effectively with the contemporary political landscape. On the other hand, it directs attention to how Marxists are not looking at alliance making in this case. Because the critique of Marxism is so much a part of the political character of post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse, conceiving a different kind of voice for Marx would have a very different effect than in the case of feminism. Instead of serving to connect with a political project, it would raise intractable difficulties that would rearrange the dialogue between postmodernist theory and Marxism. The post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of grand narratives is conceived inside the notion of a radical rupture with the past.30 Labeled in various ways—“consumer society,” “post-industrial society,” “postmodernist society”—the new society is thoroughly post-Marxist. Because consumption is the chief basis of postmodern society, as Baudrillard (1968) argues in The System of Objects, Marx’s productivist metaphor can no longer explain life in the post-World War II period. While I more fully develop the radical notion of textuality held by this theoretical discourse below, it should be noted here that Baudrillard and other writers invalidate Marxism’s ability to describe this

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new reality by shifting the basis of power from political economy to semiotic surfaces; consumption is not the consumption of value but of signs. It is Lyotard, however, who most directly takes to task the grand narratives of the Enlightenment and modernism, of which Hegelianized Marxism is seen as the last attempt to systematize knowledge. As totalizing theories that pass themselves off as “science,” the grand narratives lose credibility in a fragmented society where all truth-claims exist at the level of rhetoric. Claims of truth subsist inside Foucauldian discursive contexts that exist by their oppositions and differences, inside context-dependent “language games” where, as Sarup (1993) remarks, “no single claimant can assert itself at the expense of any other” (p. 150). In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Lyotard (1984) explains that sciences like Marxism legitimate themselves through two narrative patterns: the Hegelian dialectical unity of all knowledge and the project of human liberation associated with the Enlightenment and the revolutionary tradition. The “modern,” then, functions for Lyotard “to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse . . . making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject or the creation of wealth” (p. xxiii). In the context of semiotic surfaces that produce contingency and ambivalence, Lyotard argues, “We no longer have recourse to the grand narrative—we can resort neither to the dialectic of Spirit nor even to the emancipation of humanity as a validation for postmodern scientific discourse” (p. 60). Marxist theory, unlike the Nietzschean genealogical approach, assumes it can become conscious of history, and according to Lyotard, Marxism unwittingly validates such knowledge in terms of Enlightenment metadiscourses. The result, for Lyotard and other postmodernists, is that Marxism becomes a metaphysics. As such, it cuts us off from reality by emptying it of its differences and filling the void with a totalizing narrative. Because Lyotard’s argument is similar to Deleuze and Guittari’s (1977) critique of Marxism as “transcendent interpretation” outlined above, I will not recount its specific theoretical maneuvers. Instead, I would like to turn to how the poststructuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism as a grand narrative is grounded itself in the narrative that weds Marx and Hegel; it is grounded, that is, in the voice of Marx the philosopher-scientist. What has most annoyed post-structuralists and postmodernists about Marxist theory is its teleological narrative and its scientific pretensions to having discovered the path to progress. From Foucault and the “new philosophers” through Lyotard and Baudrillard, post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse has resented Marxism’s claim to explain all of social reality. Such grand narratives, these theorists contend, can no longer compel consensus in the fragmented world of the postmodern. They are

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narratives of mastery, not sciences, and thus they necessarily lead to a politics that attempts to create a homogeneous society through coercion. The post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of the path of the Marxian narrative is usefully summarized by Sarup (1993): The stages are these: first of all there is Hegel’s invention of the notion of Absolute Spirit with its teleology of history. Then Marx relocates this teleology within history conceived in materialist terms. Finally, the annulment of contradiction at the end of the teleological process becomes (with Stalinism) an abolition of differences through sheer force. The Absolute Spirit becomes the knock at the door, in the name of history, of the secret police. (p. 92)

In Discourse/Figure, for example, Lyotard (1971) attacks Marxist theory’s claim that Marx purged the Hegelian dialectic of its idealism and discovered the materialist key to social history. By promulgating itself as the scientific inversion of Hegelian dialectics, Marxism, according to Lyotard, is unable to see that it is grounded in the metadiscourses of the Enlightenment and modernism, that it is just more coercive ideology and not science. Thus, Lyotard “sees Marxism as a form of religious discourse: the suffering proletariat is supposed to bring about, sometime in the future, the redemption of the world” (Sarup, 1993, p. 106). As a salvational narrative, Marxism, according to Lyotard, not only cuts us off from reality by transcoding it into its own mastercode, but is even more dangerous, since that mastercode becomes an instrument of political domination: Marxism is responsible for the terror of the Soviet camps. Ultimately, Lyotard (1984) dispenses with Marxism by linking it conceptually to both the failure of the grand recit and Stalinism: In Stalinism, the sciences only figure as citations from the metanarrative of the march towards socialism, which is the equivalent of the life of the spirit. But on the other hand Marxism can . . . develop into a form of critical knowledge by declaring that socialism is nothing other than the constitution of the autonomous subject and that the only justification for the sciences is if they give the empirical subject (the proletariat) the means to emancipate itself from alienation and repression. (p. 37)

When will Marxists learn, Lyotard wonders, that the roots of Marx’s theory in the metadiscourses of the Enlightenment, specifically in the universal philosophy of Hegelian progress, undercut its credibility and condemn it to perpetuate the same miseries and failures as any revolutionary theory of salvation? In an interview with Christian Descamps, Lyotard wryly comments on the failure of the grand narratives that invalidates theories like Marxism: “The French Jacobins don’t speak like Hegel but the just and the good are always found caught up in a great progressive odyssey.”31 When

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will Marxists give up the Hegelian fantasy of progress and let people pursue Nietzschean desire, intensity, and spontaneity in the fragmented world that has been and will always be? When will they stop justifying present suffering by reference to some fictional future, supposedly guaranteed by the march of history, where relations of power and exploitation somehow miraculously disappear? Inseparable from the critique of Marxism as a variety of the moribund grand recits is the post-structuralist and postmodernist tendency to cancel out concepts like “reality” and “history” with a radical notion of textuality. “In faithful conformity to poststructuralist linguistic theory,” Jameson (1991) remarks, “the past as ‘referent’ finds itself gradually bracketed, and then effaced altogether, leaving us with nothing but texts” (p. 18). This radical textualization of everything is an intensification of some basic concepts of Derridian deconstruction by theorists who have sought to extend Derrida’s analysis.32 Derrida’s project hinges on a critical engagement with western philosophy that reveals that this philosophical tradition is based on a metaphysics of presence. Whether it is God, Idea, or Matter, western philosophy has been plagued with systems of thought that rest on what he calls a “transcendental signifier.” This unique signifier forms a center around which all other signs circulate and thereby achieve presence. Reflecting what Derrida calls “logocentrism,” this “transcendental signifier” does not need to refer beyond itself to other terms, but directly connects to a “transcendental signified.” Derrida, however, argues that such transcendent meaning is a fantasy engendered by humanist systems of thought, which understand language as a transparent medium through which selfconscious subjects convey truth, and by structuralist distinctions between signifier and signified. More careful attention to signification reveals that this kind of stability is impossible. Terms are always under “erasure;” there are always traces of other signifiers that logocentric thought evades. Ignoring the play of “differance” in language, the tradition of western thought thus overlooks the endless chain of signification where every signified functions in turn as a signifier. Notwithstanding Derrida’s ambivalent interest in Marxism,33 two corollaries important to post-structuralist and postmodernist ideas on signification emerge from Derrida’s critique of western philosophy. First, linguistic structures do not reflect but actually constitute and construct knowledge and subjects; “reality” cannot be known in itself and therefore cannot validate the language that we use. Second, it becomes impossible to maintain distinctions between different kinds of discourses, between say literal, “scientific” language and figurative language. For post-structuralism and postmodernism all that remains are the surfaces of signifiers, and gestures to “depth” or to a center, like those found in Marx and Freud, lose all credibility. As Jameson (1991) comments, these kinds of “depth models” are replaced by “a

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conception of practices, discourses, and textual play. . . . [D] epth is replaced by surface, or by multiple surfaces (what if often called intertextuality is in that sense no longer a matter of depth)” (p. 12). It is easy to see, then, how the Marx who discovered the key to history in relations of production via Hegel stands in unsophisticated contrast to the theme of the absent center so prominent in post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse. Post-structuralist and postmodernist theorists basically argue that Marxian analysis is myopically focused on an objective material world believed to exist independently of discourse, a world of metaphysical presence that supposedly gives credence to Marxist theory. By positing capitalist relations of production as a “base” against which all phenomena could be explained, Marx neglected the role of language in constructing knowledge and subjectivity, and this consequently leads to inexorable problems for Marxist theory. As a theory that posits a center—the economic—which gives “presence” to its “scientific” elaborations, Marxism actually distorts “reality” by obliterating the contingency and ambivalence created by discursive formations. Post-structuralists and postmodernists maintain that Marx’s totalizing theory is not up to the task of understanding agency and its place within power relations. First, Marx is understood to make an untenable distinction between science and ideology. In Power/Knowledge, Foucault (1980) is especially critical of the claim that “Marxism, as the science of sciences, can provide the theory of science and draw the boundary between science and ideology” (p. 65). The project of Marx’s writing, as Foucault understands it, is to cut through the false consciousness of ideology to the material truth of human relations throughout history. Thus, language is excluded from the purview of Marxist theory, but even more importantly, the language Marxists use cannot be reflected on since it is seen as readily describing this deeper truth about human existence. The Marxian distinction between science and ideology is troublesome because it places ideology in a secondary position relative to some determining material base, which itself turns out, Foucault argues, to be an ideological construction. Like the ideology it purports to determine, this economic base is grounded not in some objective reality that science can reveal but in the discursive moment that inaugurates it. This Marxian distinction, for Foucault, not only presumes the model of fully self-conscious identity provided by classical philosophy that he would like to do away with, but it also differentiates between what is true and what is false, thereby obscuring how effects of truth are produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false. Because it conceives of a center or a deeper reality from which all power is exercised, Marxism ultimately becomes as oppressive as the enemies it purports to oppose. On one hand, Foucault argues that in order to fight such a systematic organization of power Marxist revolutionaries must organize along similar lines. As in the Soviet Union, to fight this kind of

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battle the dictatorship of the proletariat must be ushered in and maintained through similar hierarchies and mechanisms of power. On the other hand, Marxism’s totalizing approach disregards the smaller, discursive contexts where Foucault feels that power is most decisively exercised. Sarup (1993) explains that for Foucault Marxist revolution can never effect any kind of real change, since “power is not localized in the state apparatuses and nothing will be changed if the mechanisms of power that function outside, below and alongside the state apparatuses on a much more minute and everyday level are not also changed” (p. 78). Second, the positivist conception of science that Foucault locates in Marx’s work, post-structuralists and postmodernists argue, diverts attention from the vital place of human agency and consciousness in sociological analysis.34 A scientific application of the Base/Superstructure model ignores the indeterminancy and unpredictability of signifying practices that create equally unstable subject positions. The view of language embedded in this model—a model Marx is understood to have conceived by translating Hegelian dialectics into a materialist key to history—sees language as a transparent medium controlled by autonomous subjects. The consequence, post-structuralism and postmodernism contend, is that Marxist theory displaces the diversity of lived experience where subjects are infinitely reproduced by signifying events. Having emptied analysis of the unstable semiotic surfaces constituting human agency, Marx inserts the transhistorical category of class. Based in a depth model, the Marxian category of class reduces the multiplicity of subjective experience into symptoms of some deeper disease—the alienation of class society. Following the thread of the transformed Hegelian dialectic, Marx seeks to resolve the dilemma through a self-consciousness of the history of class struggle, by identifying the deeper truth of historically successive material formations that cause alienation. Post-structuralists and postmodernists criticize Freudian psychoanalysis for employing the same fiction of some “deeper truth,” and inside their Nietzchean repudiation of the totalizing narratives of the Enlightenment and modernism, Marx’s historical materialism is written as the same kind of self-deluded etiology. They contend that Marx has not only misfired with his salvational story of communism’s triumph over alienation through the material reorganization of society, but that he has misdiagnosed the disease. Once the ambivalent and contingent character of knowledge and subjectivity is recognized as an effect of unstable signifying systems, of the simulacra through which the world is experienced, there is a radical dispersion of the subject and an erasure of the temporal. The dialectical progress of history is just as much a fiction as the subjectivity capable of becoming fully conscious of it or itself. There is no deeper logic but only the random and incessant play of semiotic surfaces; there never was, nor will be, the fully

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self-realized consciousness a concept like alienation presupposes. Marx’s presumed evasion of language leads him to reduplicate the very model of the autonomous bourgeois individual, and his theory therefore precludes what post-structuralists and postmodernists see as the proper context for understanding agency. Constructed through the discontinuous and fragmented dynamics of localized discursive contexts, subjectivity can only be experienced as fragmentation. (What could possibly be a stable enough position from which to be alienated inside the unpredictable and relentless oppositions of signifiers?) Jameson (1991) comments, “[C] oncepts such as anxiety and alienation (and the experiences to which they correspond . . .) are no longer appropriate in the world of the postmodern. . . . This shift in the dynamics of cultural pathology can be characterized as one in which the alienation of the subject is displaced by the latter’s fragmentation” (p. 14). What is more, this fragmentation is no disease for which a cure is needed. For Lyotard, as I remarked earlier, fragmented society is here to stay. It is perhaps Baudrillard who provides the most sustained scrutiny of Marx’s failure to theorize agency, which post-structuralists and postmodernists locate in Marxism’s neglect of language. In his early writings, Baudrillard tries to extend the Marxist critique of capitalism by shifting attention from the metaphor of production to consumption. For Baudrillard, Marxist theory’s preoccupation with productive relations as a base from which to explain all social phenomena is incapable of understanding the radical changes in social life after the second world war. The System of Objects (1968) argues that consumption, not production, is the chief basis of this new social order, and Consumer Society (1970) extends his thesis in poststructuralist ways. He explains that Marxian categories like “use value” and “exchange value” are inadequate to elucidate the character of post-war consumption because consumer objects confront subjects not as the solution to some need but as a system of floating signifiers. Individuals, Baudrillard (1970) asserts, find their place in the social order by consuming the meanings emerging from the differential play of “commodity signs.” Advertising places consumer objects into a signifying chain where they are differentiated from other products in terms of this series. This system, like any semiotic system, precedes individuals, and therefore makes possible an endless play of signifiers and an incessant stimulation of desire. The consciousness of individuals is constituted by this unstable system of commodity-signs, and therefore Baudrillard maintains that the self-contained individual is impossible. Baudrillard is still writing within a Marxist tradition at this time; for example, he concludes that this system relates individuals to the social order in ways favorable to capitalism while at the same time giving them an erroneous sense of freedom. However, this early engagement with Marx lays the groundwork for his repudiation of Marxist theory, as it eventually

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leads him to the disavowal of any type of depth model and his declaration of the reign of the simulacra. In the mid- and late-seventies, Baudrillard intensified his attack on Marxism. The Mirror of Production (1975) completely distances Baudrillard from any Marxist tradition by elaborating how major Marxian categories, like the dialectic and the determining role of the mode of production, are not only mirror images of capitalism but their highest justification. The concepts that Marx developed through his adherence to Hegelian paradigms, despite claims that Marx radically transformed Hegel’s method, Baudrillard argues, prevent Marx from understanding the crucial role of linguistic systems in constructing subjectivity. Thus, Marx’s emphasis on production leads him to underestimate the importance of advertising, media, and communication and to replicate the oppressive nature of capitalist production in his “revolutionary” theory. Having counted these as inessential aspects of capital, Marx ignores what Baudrillard feels are exciting potentials for human agency created by the symbolic exchange that he identifies in a network of commodity-signs. Marx represses the differences fashioned by the consumption of these signs through a totalizing theory that simply mirrors the subjugation people already face. In this consumption, Baudrillard finds a mode of interaction that subverts western society, one where subjects upset the order of things by passively consuming and failing to respond to what is thrown at them. Class politics have become obsolete.35 By the time Baudrillard develops the theory of the simulacrum, he has become increasingly distrustful of theories that ground themselves in some deeper truth and exceedingly apocalyptic. What depth models like Marxism represent is a repressive denial of difference, as they coerce the multiplicity of subject positions into some unifying, supposedly objective totality. The idea that there is some deeper structure that gives meaning to life and points the way to progress is invalidated by the sovereignty of the simulacra and its corresponding hyper-reality—a concept Baudrillard shares with Umberto Eco.36 In the reign of the copy without an original, the subject’s experience has become essentially derivative and literally superficial. Subjectivity is experienced on semiotic surfaces, and diverting attention from these surfaces to some illusory deeper logic only curbs the infinite variety of desires that people might experience on theses surfaces. Baudrillard’s critique here echoes the neo-conservativism of post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse in its claim that Marxian theories of progress hamper enjoying the here and now. The world of hyper-reality, as Sarup (1993) comments, “is a new condition in which the old tension between reality and illusion, between reality as it is and reality as it should be, has been dissipated” (p. 165). For Baudrillard, people should surrender to the triumph of the simulacra. All possibilities of transformation have been

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exhausted; fully self-conscious identity is impossible, has always been impossible, inside the incommensurable play of signification. It is interesting to note how far Baudrillard has come from his antithesis between production and radically subversive consumption; all that is left is reproduction with no hope of ever changing the way things are. Agency in this formulation is no longer revolutionary agency—as it was at least vaguely conceived in his idea of a subversive symbolic exchange. What theories like Marxism fail to recognize about human agency, for Baudrillard and other postmodernists, is that the fragmented character of discursive contexts creates schizophrenic subjects. Marxism thus hampers the kind of Nietzchean exhilaration that would result from leaving subjects free of the delusion of progress to enjoy a world with no absolutes, a world of surfaces. Whereas Marxism diagnoses such a division of the self as disease, because of Marx’s inadequate attention to language and Hegelian belief in the end of alienation, postmodernist theoretical discourse locates in the fragmentation of signifying events the horizon of human experience. As Jameson (1991) explains, “[S] chizophrenic disjunction or ecriture, when it becomes generalized as a cultural style, ceases to entertain a necessary relationship to the morbid content we associate with terms like schizophrenia and becomes available for more joyous intensities, for precisely that euphoria which we saw displacing the older affects of anxiety and alienation” (p. 29). In the end, Marx has not inadequately theorized revolutionary agency as feminists argue. Instead, Marxian theories of progress posit an illusory revolutionary consciousness that leaves no room to explore the contours of Nietzchean consciousness and self-realization that post-structuralists and postmodernists celebrate. In a theoretical discourse that supposedly eschews all essences, Marx is oddly accused of missing the point that subjectivity is essentially fragmented. Third, post-structuralists and postmodernists contend that Marx’s insufficient theorization of agency produces a misunderstanding of the nature of power. Because agency emerges from the unstable matrix of concentrated discursive contexts, relationships themselves are dispersed. There is no center from which power operates; relationships of power are, at one and the same time, ubiquitous and undecidable. The dialectical formulation of class struggle posits a class of oppressors who control the material resources of society and a class of the oppressed who can only acquire power by seizing control of those resources. Marx’s (1848/1978) minimization of relationships of power in the bourgeois epoch “into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other” (p. 474), misses the point, for someone like Foucault, that there can be no escape, no locus of resistance, because power has no specific origin.37 For Foucault, power need not find its legitimation in some center or economic structure; discourses are already powers. In the analysis of power, class consciousness and class strug-

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gle, Foucault contends, are misleading categories that make possible the totalitarian aims of a totalizing theory like Marxism. Foucault (1980) writes, “[O] ne should not assume a massive and primal condition of domination, a binary structure with ‘dominators’ on one side and ‘dominated’ on the other, but rather a multiform production of relations of domination . . .” (p. 142). Theoretical models grounded in the idea of some deeper structure around which relationships form and can be understood and acted upon lose credibility in the face of a pluralism of power/discourse formations. Inside this multiplicity of formations, effectivity becomes uncertain as it is interrupted by the endless deferral of meaning that attends signifying practices. In Madness and Civilization, Foucault (1967) writes: “These formations intersect and succeed one another and can be differentiated according to their style and intensity. They cannot, however, be judged in terms of validity” (p. 247). Post-structuralist and postmodernist theories of the discursive construction of subject relationships demonstrate to their own relief that no system as a whole exists. If there is no overall system against which to direct struggle, then the Marxian theory of class struggle effectively does nothing more than coerce a vast plurality of wills to power into its delusional belief that there is only one kind of struggle with any value. The result of such a theory of emancipation, post-structuralists and postmodernists conclude, is Stalinism. Hence, Foucault expresses antipathy towards the claim that through Hegel, Marx had discovered the secret of historical progress. Under this rubric, subjects have no choice but to choose sides, and Marx can thus only conceive power inside this limited binary structure. Marxism deflects attention from the reality that power is everywhere.38 Asked about who was struggling against whom in an interview, Foucault made the following remark: This is just a hypothesis, but I would say it’s all against all. There aren’t immediately given subjects of the struggle, one the proletariat, the other the bourgeoisie. Who fights against whom? We all fight each other. And there is always within each of us something that fights something else.39

Foucault ultimately stigmatizes Marxian theory as ideological and unnecessarily suppressive of a multiplicity of subject positions. Against the unifying call to struggle against the bourgeoisie, Foucault announces that the only acceptable struggle is local, diffuse, and spontaneous. Against Marx’s intellectual claim to have defined the only kind of struggle to get at “real” power, Foucault (1980) writes: “The project, tactics, and goals to be adopted are a matter for those who do the fighting. What the intellectual can do is to provide instruments of analysis, and at present this is the historian’s role” (p. 62). Foucault seems to maintain some sense that struggle is important, even though the object and goal of struggle may be ambiguous in his writing.

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Writers like Lyotard and Baudrillard, however, make different sense of the dissolution of grand-scale theory. Whether it is Lyotard’s notion of language games or Baudrillard’s call for passive, schizophrenic consumption, struggle to transform power relations in any lasting way tends to be evaded altogether. Theories that use general categories like class, gender, and race are abandoned for playful deconstruction and a capitulation to the triumphant reign of the simulacra. Marxism, now conceived as one of a variety of wills-to-power, can never effect what it sets out to do. Having misconceived the nature of power, Marxist theory traps individuals in an idealistic odyssey of progress that distracts them from enjoying the intensity of the present. In some sense, what we must face, Sarup (1993) astutely concludes about the claims of postmodernist politics, is that “we are all oppressors and we are all oppressed” (p. 103). This critique of Marxism’s efficacy in theorizing power, despite claims that judgments about effect are always suspended, should cause us to pause before considering what democratic struggle has to gain from this critique. Why, if we follow the logic of the incommensurability and indeterminacy of discursive events, is Marxist discourse an invalid explanation of power in contradistinction to a Nietzschean explanation of power? It is clear that something in Nietzsche is superior to Marx’s analysis because “[a]  s they [post-structuralists and postmodernists]  assert . . . Marx’s story under Hegel’s inspiration clearly exhibits a providential plot” (Sarup, 1993, p. 178). How can Stalinism be the truth of Marxism, and what are the grounds for saying that Stalinist society is worse than the western world of unbridled consumption, which theorists like Lyotard and Baudrillard claim opens so many exciting possibilities for subjective experience? I raise these questions here, I hope it is clear, not to imply that Stalinism is a desirable alternative within an undecidable and completely relative contest among competing political discourses. I raise them here for two reasons. First, for all the rejection of grand narratives and value judgments, it has been observed that there is an irony in post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse. It seems that there is the deployment of a general theory to claim that general theories are no longer credible. Sarup (1993), for example, asserts that “the argument of Lyotard (and some other poststructuralists) is this: big stories are bad, little stories are good. Instead of a truth/falsity distinction Lyotard adopts a small/grand narrative criterion” (p. 146). This observation leads Sarup to wonder on the same page “why are the post-structuralists so frightened of the universal? And why is Lyotard telling us yet another grand narrative at the end of grand narrative?” In trying to make sense of these questions, Sarup makes some crucial observations about the post-structuralist and postmodernist attack on Marxism. Lyotard assumes the dissolution of grand narratives “without describing how and why this theoretical collapse has taken place and why he is

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polemicizing against these discourses” (Sarup, 1993, p. 153). Given the rejection of depth models and their attendant notions of history and the real, it is clear that it becomes difficult to detail the rupture in society that led to this dissolution. Having rejected grand narratives as simplistic, the kind of narrative that would specify the radical dissociation postmodernity entertains from the past seems unattainable. “But surely,” Sarup (1993) asks, “the concept of postmodernism presupposes a master narrative, a totalizing perspective?” (p. 154). It seems hard to resist the supposition that a theory of the postmodern necessarily relies on such a narrative. Sarup concludes, then, that post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse leads to a politically ineffective “form of relativism. . . . [It]  offer[s]  us no theoretical reason to move in one social direction rather than another” (p. 155). Sarup’s observations, however, point to more than this relativism. Throughout his discussion, there is the unavoidable inference that value judgments are being made in the post-structuralist and postmodernist condemnation of Marx’s theories, and this brings me to the second reason that I raise the previous questions. The critique of Marxist theory occupies a special place in post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse. The extraordinary status of this critique points toward the importance of not overstressing the relativism and rejection of politics with which poststructuralism and postmodernism are often reproached. Without stressing these aspects, the place of May 1968 and Nietzschean philosophy in poststructuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse takes on a little different significance. It is not that this discourse is driven out of political life with the events of May ‘68, as Eagleton (1983) suggests, or that the use of Nietzsche points to an abstract dialogue between apolitical and political philosophies. The radical break from the modernist past that May ‘68 confirms for these theorists and the use of Nietzschean themes to undermine the supposed Hegelian underpinnings of Marxism both indicate a political position in the present. Their deployment against Marx inescapably says something about what is valuable in this new postmodern world. As Jameson (1991) shrewdly argues, “every position on postmodernism in culture—whether apologia or stigmatization—is also at one and the same time, and necessarily, an implicitly or explicitly political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today” (p. 3). The postmodernist assertion that contemporary society no longer obeys the laws of capitalism as Marx described—that class politics are obsolete—is a significant political position in the present, and if we overlook such a situation, we frustrate the attempt to think post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse both negatively and positively. We risk seceding from a dialogue profoundly influencing contemporary political struggle, a dialogue where not only differences among the range of political positions are constituted but where overlaps occur and insights crossover as well.

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The strategic value of using feminism’s critique of Marxism to frame the one by post-structuralism and postmodernism, I think, now becomes fully clear. Feminism evaluates Marxist theory to assess whether it is capable of addressing the complex social relations that must be collectively transformed if democracy is to be realized. By situating Marxism within what it understands to be the socio-historical production of meaning and power relations, it highlights the deleterious effect that Marxism’s neglect of concepts has on theorizing the kind of revolutionary agency important to democratic struggle, thereby questioning its validity as critical theory. Despite some references to May ‘68 and Stalinism, the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique provides no such grounds for evaluating Marxism or its own critique of Marxist theory. Having denied the legitimacy of political categories that operate by reference to some knowable social reality and to a future-oriented perspective, this critique mainly attempts to abstract Marxism into a debate between Nietzsche and Hegel, between petit and grand recits. Even though it is tempting to dismiss post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse for avoiding politics, such an abstraction, of course, should not be construed as apolitical. The argument that Nietzsche’s critique of Hegel reveals that Marxist theory suffers the universal failure of all grand narratives is the correlative of the claim that the fragmentation produced by signifying practices is the inevitable condition of human experience. The erasure of categories like “reality,” “truth,” and “history”—the repudiation of depth in favor of surfaces—entails that the fragmentation of the postmodern subject and the inconclusive power relations postmodern culture generates are here to stay. Marxism is a dangerous story of salvation that distracts us from making the most of what is possible in these circumstances: playful deconstruction, efficiency, consumeristic ecstasy. By positing itself as the horizon of human knowledge and subjective experience, the linguistic theory guiding the critique of Marxism places analysis and agency outside socio-historical constructs. I would argue that post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse makes the perpetual differences of semiotic exchange, using the Marxian sense of the word, into a fetish: something that humans construct but that takes on an objective reality which comes back to imprison them. I would argue further that the fetishization of signification not only serves to invalidate grand recits like Marxism but also that it abolishes the only means for creating a new social order—collective struggle towards a more just, democratic world. Feminism’s critique of Marxism enables us to provide constructive grounds—given post-structuralism and postmodernism’s evasion of any foundation from which to decide efficacy—for learning from the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxist theory. The feminist critique, that is, can allow us to raise questions about whether

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this critique might usefully assist in building a democratic society and/or whether it is just another form of bourgeois recuperation and domination. The emphasis that feminism’s critique of Marxism places on the sociohistorical construction of power relations challenges us to think about the fetishization of language that I describe above in similar terms. The critique of Marxism offered by post-structuralism and postmodernism is at one with the political position that current society is so saturated with discontinuous relations of power that any attempt to get beyond them collectively is doomed.40 Why Marx has for them a single voice, an essential message, and an unsurprisingly ineffective political analysis—despite theoretical disavowals of such “reductive” categories—is not only because they uncritically absorb the Marx–Hegel pairing but also because their critique of Marxism is a fundamental aspect of their place in the political scene of our own socio-historical moment. The fetishization of signifying practices inside what is understood as a complete break with the capitalist past is eerily close to Fukuyama’s pronouncement of the end of history. It seems obvious to me that any commitment to collective democratic struggle must respond to such a view by insisting on a historical narrative that periodizes post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse as a culturally unique phenomenon, while still stressing its relation to, not dissociation from, the struggles of the past. The ideas of Ernest Mandel (1978) in his book Late Capitalism are significant in this respect. For Mandel, the debates over postindustrial society indicate that a systemic transformation within capitalism has occurred, not a drastic detachment from the capitalist past. Late or multinational capitalism is part of a tripartite scheme, according to Mandel, marking a third and “purer” expansion of capital beyond the earlier stages of mercantile and industrial-imperialist capitalism. Mandel’s argument helps us meet what feminist methodology challenges us to do. His argument encourages us to see post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse situated within a significant mutation and extension of the processes of the sociohistorical development of contemporary capitalist society. “Appropriately enough,” Jameson (1991) writes, “the culture of the simulacrum comes to life in a society where exchange value has been generalized to the point at which the very memory of use value is effaced, a society of which Guy Debord has observed . . . that in it ‘the image has become the final form of commodity reification’” (p. 18). From such a vantage point, post-structuralists and postmodernists have the virtue of directing our attention to major transformations taking place in contemporary society. Using Mandel’s periodization, Jameson (1991) claims: What we must now affirm is that it is precisely this whole extraordinary demoralizing and depressing original new global space which is the “moment of truth” of postmodernism. . . . [P] ostmodern (or multinational) space is not

The Crisis in Marxism    69 merely a cultural ideology or fantasy but has genuine historical (and socioeconomic) reality as a third great expansion of capitalism around the globe (after the earlier expansions of the national market and the older imperialist system, which each had their own cultural specificity and generated new types of space appropriate to their dynamics). (p. 49)

Certainly, critical uses of Marxism must take into account the very different dynamics of writing in a consumeristic, media-driven society. The importance of communicative practices in shaping agency and power relations is made apparent by the vast communicational networks and parade of images overwhelming late capitalist society.41 Thus, the neglect of the semiotic in the traditional narrative of Marx’s philosophical-scientific voice criticized by post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse is a significant reason for the disrepute into which Marxist theory had fallen as the twentieth century came to a close. The role of linguistic-conceptual structures in shaping subjective experience is something Marxists must take into account when developing analyses of socio-historical phenomena and the place of revolutionary agency within them. Post-structuralism and postmodernism’s critique of Marxism provides an opportunity to reassess the voice of Marx that dominates our understanding of his theories. The narrative of Marx’s discovery of the historico-materialist determination of society through a lifelong engagement with Hegelian philosophy deflects our attention from finding another voice in Marx that might speak to the discursive contours of capitalist power relations. Their critique should get us to raise questions about Marx’s views on language and on his own linguistic practices: Is the sharp distinction between science and ideology, which Althusser wants to maintain, really useful?42 How important of a role does it play in Marx’s writing? Does Marx, despite his prolific use of metaphor, irony, and hyperbole, maintain a positivistic view of language? Does Marx’s critical engagement with the political economists simply reduplicate their belief in an objective world outside of discourse, or might it actually develop a socio-historical analysis of capitalist relations by attending to the political nature of the language of capitalist practice that they take as neutral? Post-structuralism and postmodernism’s critique of Marxism has the virtue of pointing our attention to important changes in society and potentially to the questions raised above; however, its emphasis on the ubiquity and undecidability of power relations inside the perpetual and ambivalent play of signifiers may, as I’ve been suggesting all along, present serious obstacles to realizing a qualitatively different kind of society. Dissolving temporality into semiotic surfaces—and thereby debunking notions of progress, hope for the future, and coordinated effort to achieve some more just society—causes post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse to avert our attention from a vital point Jameson (1991) makes about social

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transformation. “Despite the delirium of some of its [postmodernist theory’s]  celebrants and apologists,” he writes, “. . . a truly new culture could only emerge through the collective struggle to create a new social system” (p. xii). This is where framing its critique of Marxism inside the feminist critique enables us to think this theoretical discourse “as catastrophe and progress all together” (Jameson, 1991, p. 47). Post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse is helpful in directing attention to the disregard of language in the traditional formula of dialectical materialism. Unlike feminism’s critique of Marxism, though, the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique fetishizes signifying systems to such an extent that the disparagement of Marx’s articulation of agency is conceived inside a theory of language where subjects are without history. As such, the poststructuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism obliterates any notion of the kind of revolutionary agency feminists pursue and Jameson suggests above. The Nietzschean themes deployed against Marx’s theorization of power make the fragmentation of signifying practices a transhistorical condition of human experience—not a peculiar condition of the highly abstract and fragmented commodity relations of late capitalism to which these theorists are responding. Once relations of power and exploitation are divorced from socio-historical constructs, they become inevitable. With no way of deciding and therefore escaping these ubiquitous relations, the only option left is the individualized Nietzschean will-to-power. While the traditional Marxian antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie may be inadequate to theorize the full scope of revolutionary democratic struggle, the reduction of subjective relations to inconclusive moments of domination and manipulation means that there is only one class—that of the slaves. To see humans as perpetually fighting a situation where they are all exploiters and exploited, where power is exclusively the indeterminate and uneven result of discursive events, obscures crucial distinctions that are still worth making, even if those distinctions take place at the “surfaces” of our political discourse. Whether it is Christopher Norris’s (1992) appeal to good, common sense in his attack on Baudrillard “that inequality, oppression, unemployment, urban decay, destruction and death in war are manifestly real forms of social experience,”43 or Foucault’s own irregular attempts to specify “non-discursive domains,”44 the first important distinction to maintain is that power is also exercised at a material and physical level. I believe that Jameson (1991) is right to remind us “that this whole global, yet American, postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world: in this sense, as throughout class history, the underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and terror” (p. 5). If power is diffuse and circulates randomly—in other words, if it is merely a product of unstable discourses—then it becomes impossible to

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say that it works in the favor of some and to the detriment of others in any systematic way. Such a formulation, it seems to me, flies in the face of concrete and conspicuous disparities in the distribution of material resources and decision making throughout history and around the world, disparities that have reached a crisis phase in the early twenty-first century. The popularity of the term “postindustrial” for postmodernist discourse provides one instance of the kinds of problems that arise for political praxis when power is understood to be entirely an effect of semiotic surfaces. Is the flight—not the disappearance—of industry from “First World” countries a matter of the random circulation of power? Does it not serve to maximize exchange value for the owners of those industries? Does it not increase the misery of “Third World” subjects and decrease their control over the human and material resources of their own countries? Has western military policy in Southeast Asia, Southern and Central America, and the Middle East—and its staunch support of repressive dictatorships—been the exclusive result of illogical discursive play, or does it seek to preserve a system where capital can move “freely” and penetrate any enclave?45 A. Belden Fields (1988), I think, poses the difficulties with an entirely discursive conception of power succinctly: While there is always a message (threat, attempted intimidation) attached to severe material and physical punishment, does it really advance us to see everything as discourse—including driving peasants off the lands, forcing them to work on large plantations at low wages, torturing and killing them when they attempt to organize? This is a material and physical chain of events that is, indeed, designed to send messages, but for the final aim of preserving a certain mode of production and the set of privileges that attaches to it. (p. 150)

Once any sense of an overall system, whether it is class, gender, race, or some complex alignment of these categories, has disappeared inside of discourse, other important distinctions disappear as well. Foucault (1977) once said “power is exercised the way it is in order to maintain capitalist exploitation” (“Intellectuals in Power,” p. 216), but because of his fear of the totalitarian aims of totalizing thought, he also holds that “to imagine another system is to extend our participation in the present system” (“Revolutionary Action: ‘Until Now,’” 1977, p. 230). His inescapable conclusion is that resistance can only take place in localized contexts. But, as Chantal Mouffe (1988) asks in her essay “Hegemony and New Political Subjects: Toward a New Concept of Democracy,” can it be said that all resistance to the exercise of power under capitalism is progressive and democratic? Are there no distinctions to be made between the fight to keep McDonalds off of Martha’s Vineyard and the perilous struggle of migrant workers to receive fair wages, safe working conditions, and adequate health care? Ad-

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ditionally, is all utopian aspiration, as Foucault maintains, simply a replication of the system that it might seek to replace with another, and therefore dangerous? Turning to Fields (1988) again may suggest something about the consequences of such a blanket assumption about utopianism and a celebration of the local: . . . the point is missed that an emancipatory group must to a certain extent be utopian but can be utopian without attempting to go from the present to “the new socialist man [sic] .” It can, indeed, be engaged in a project for the creation of a more humane world respecting “difference.” But it cannot do this unless it transcends its own boundaries, or “territory,” in two ways: (1) it comes to an understanding of the systemic impediments to its project, and (2) it reaches out to other groups and engages in mutual expressions of solidarity and strategic networking. (p. 152)

Fields’s comments also lead to another implication of the discursive theory of power once it is divorced from the material and physical, or from what people do inside of time. What happens to connections among different struggles? How could it be useful to democratic struggle, for instance, to appropriate the events in France in 1968 in such a way that the student protests signal not only the death knoll of traditional class politics but also the coming of age of a superior form of spontaneous local resistance? Why select only the students when millions of workers took over their plants? What, in short, is to be gained by not stressing the links between the student protests and the more traditional form of class politics that marked the experience of May ’68? It seems to me that much more is lost by not stressing the systemic connections between struggles against the oppressive and inhuman conditions of capitalism, administrative bureaucracy, patriarchy, racism, and environmental degradation. The post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism, unlike feminism’s, provides minimal help in coming to grips with the kind of revolutionary agency that might lead to a qualitatively different society. The theory of language guiding this critique makes the fragmentation of particularized signifying events the scope of human experience and relations. Semiotic surfaces, as I have argued, become a fetish in the Marxian sense; having been constructed by people, they come back to dominate lives in an omnipresent fashion. In short, the fragmentation of signifying practices is seen by this theoretical discourse not as the effect of a particular configuration emerging from socio-historical processes but as a transhistorical reality. As such, fragmentation is inescapable. All that is left is localized and fleeting struggle against pervasive yet dispersed relations of power. Struggles against power, therefore, can only be dispersed themselves, with no way of connecting them to one another or mediating their relationship to some

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overall system in an effort to judge whether they are progressive or simply reinforce the status quo. The influence that post-structuralist and postmodernist discourse exercises in contemporary critical-theoretical dialogue makes categories like “progressive” and “status quo” taboo; nonetheless, it is important to resist steering clear of such categories in order to keep theoretical discourse in the realm of praxis. Critical theory is best articulated in the context of socio-historically constituted relations of power. In any case, avoiding such categories would mean circumventing a crucial political point about poststructuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse, which must be made if critical uses of Marxism are to learn from its critique of dialectical materialism. The fetishistic articulation of signifying practices, which sees the fragmentation of signification as the defining moment of human experience, reinforces and intensifies the social relations of late capitalism. It conceives agency in such a way that it synchronizes subjective experience with the abstract and fragmented commodity relations of multinational capitalism instead of regarding agency as something capable of imagining a better way of living, of being able to resist the degrading relations that could only emerge through the socio-historically specific human activity that makes commodity exchange the economic metabolism of the planet. A theory that posits a realm outside of human control—whether that realm is material or discursive—forgets the possibility that human agency collectively creates, and by implication can change, the society that it inhabits. The post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism should point attention to the debilitating effects of the narrative of Marx’s philosophical-scientific voice that has traditionally depicted Marxist politics as the byproduct of Marx’s mastery of the truth of the Hegelian dialectic. The rigid economic determinism that emerges as the defining voice of Marx inside this narrative has compromised critical uses of Marxism in contemporary intellectual and political fields. The claim—whether it comes from theorists sympathetic or hostile to Marxism—that Marx forswears linguistic-conceptual analysis and finds it essentially deceptive, unless it is contained within a philosophy of materialist determinism, must be addressed for Marxism to answer the disrepute into which it has fallen. “[I] s there not,” Jameson (1991) rightly asks, “something ultimately paralyzing in the dialectical view of historical development [. . .] ; does it not tend to demobilize us and to surrender us to passivity and helplessness by systematically obliterating possibilities of action under the impenetrable fog of historical inevitability?” (p. 47). The post-structuralist and postmodernist critique, however, cannot point us to a way of theorizing the linguistic in Marxist theory. The vilification of Marxism is so co-extensive with post-structuralist and postmodernist politics that it should not be surprising to find little help in this respect. More im-

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portantly, the fetishistic character of the post-structuralist and postmodernist view of signifying practices is unhelpful because it locates the linguistic construction of agency outside of human activity. Terry Eagleton (1983) provides beneficial insight on this type of radical deconstruction of the linguistic: Meaning may well be ultimately undecidable if we view language contemplatively, as a chain of signifiers on a page; it becomes “decidable” and words like “truth,” “reality,” “knowledge,” and “certainty” have something of their force restored to them when we think of language rather as something we do, as indissociably interwoven with our practical forms of life. (p. 147)

Conceiving a Marxian voice capable of analyzing the role of language in constructing agency, as Eagleton’s comments suggest, necessarily entails a confrontation with post-structuralist and postmodernist theoretical discourse. Its critique of Marxism relies on a theory of the discursive constitution of subjects that ultimately attempts not only to make Marxism unavailable but to make revolutionary agency unavailable as well. A Marx who might voice a sophisticated analysis of the socio-historical role language plays in agency would, in many ways, significantly challenge the linguistic theories occupying such an exceptional place in current theoretical and political debates. Response to the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism, if it takes the trajectory for which I have been arguing, would not involve alliance making. It would involve developing a significant political alternative to the postmodernist stance vis a vis late capitalist culture. The feminist critique of the neglect of linguistic-conceptual analysis in the traditional narrative of Marxism, on the other hand, not only provides a useful framework for learning from the post-structuralist and postmodernist critique of Marxism, but also invites us to investigate Marx’s writing to see if it presents a socio-historical conception of language congruent with the political injunction that capitalist society must be collectively transformed because it is incompatible with democracy. Marx’s Political-Democratic Voice The crisis in Marxist theory that reached its peak at the end of the twentieth century provides an important opportunity to return to Marx’s writing in a way that reads against the grain of the traditional narrative of Marx’s philosophical-scientific voice, to investigate with rigor Terry Eagleton’s (1996) claim that it is “no longer possible . . . to take the word ‘Marxist’ in the phrase ‘Marxist Criticism’ for granted” (p. 1). Marx’s own writings provide strong evidence that his theories are not circumscribed within a rigid Base/Superstructure paradigm. They also suggest that the theoretical

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discourse that bears his name is not exclusively a philosophy of materialist determinism. The main problem that I see with the narrative of Marx’s materialist interpretation of history is that it has deflected attention from theorizing the place of linguistic-conceptual analysis in Marx’s political explanation of agency. This narrative encourages either rejecting Marx’s conceptual analysis as a theoretical lapse, as a remnant of naïve idealism that the young Marx eventually outgrew, or rewriting his statements on the relationship between concepts and agents to fit the narrative. Marx’s theorization of the agents who act out the social relations of capitalism, or who struggle against them, is thus primarily valued in terms of his philosophical designation of the objective forces that determine the fragmentation and alienation subjectively experienced under capitalism. The consequence is that the narrative of Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism tends to remove the hegemonic influence of capitalism from a political and ideological context and place it in a more decidedly philosophical interpretation of historical development. The contradictions and fissures of capitalism are, in this sense, historically specific and, by implication, not permanent. However, the crisis that might topple the hegemonic influence of capitalism does not result from agents struggling against its threat to justice and equality but from a dialectical momentum outside of their control. Likewise, capitalist hegemony does not establish itself through the ideas and political activities of agents; instead, Marxian materialism encourages a view through which politics lags behind economic conditions. If the capitalist economy is determined by material forces of history antecedent to politics, then it is hard to see how change will come until, as George Plekhanov comments, “[t] he objective social conditions of production necessary for socialist organization have . . . matured” (quoted in LeBlanc, 1996, p. 29). Marxist analyses assuming the voice of materialist determinism are inclined to steer clear of any implication that ideas and the subjects who wield them can significantly influence social conditions of existence. It might be argued, though, that this is only the most “vulgar” form of Marxism,46 and I think it is clear that the power of ideas is granted in many Marxist analyses using the voice of dialectical materialism. It might also be argued that I have neglected important distinctions between different strands of Marxism, often using the phrases “dialectical materialism” and “historical materialism” as if they are interchangeable. What I wish to point out, however, is the overwhelming influence of the narrative of Marx’s philosophical-scientific mastery of the Hegelian dialectic in almost all conceptions of what constitutes Marxist theory. This situation limits Marxist critical-theoretical practice to the only two questions that dialectical materialist theory can provide for Marxian Kritik: how do the material conditions of capitalism determine the dehumanizing character of capitalism, and how do those

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conditions create its inevitable collapse? Marx’s engagement with political economy in a work like Capital raises other kinds of questions, ones that ask how capitalist hegemony is constructed through ideology and politics and how revolutionary agency might develop in this context. In fact, I think that a crucial point Marx makes is that capitalism is not just an historical phenomenon but also a political one, and he asks, for instance in his definition of commodity fetishism in Volume 1 of Capital, how it is that agents act out sociopolitical relations through the concepts that they inherit and develop. As long as the philosophical-scientific voice of Marx muffles the voice of a theorist of democratic politics, however, these questions remain outside the ken of Marxist analyses. Marx’s insistence that the economy is political and should be subject to democratic control is often lost in the narrative of his materialist theory of agency or takes a backseat to the deeper philosophical truths thought to explain Marx’s politics. Consequently, social phenomena tend to be treated as a record of the dialectical development of history that determines ideology and politics, rather than appropriated as part and parcel of the struggle to maintain and resist hegemonic forces. From this perspective, it is perhaps worth recalling Marx’s comments about transforming his theory into a “historico-philosophical theory of the general course [of history]  fatally imposed on all peoples.” In this letter written to a Russian journal in 1877, he warns: “But success will never come with the master-key of a general historico-philosophical theory, whose supreme virtue consists in being supra-historical” (quoted in Le Blanc, 1996, pp. 29–30). Marx’s analysis of the commodity, I think, avoids the strict materialist determinism often attributed to him. His political analysis of commodity society emphasizes the need to bring together an explanation of the linguistic-conceptual forms through which agents act out their social relations and an explanation of the organization, production, and distribution of a society’s material resources. Subjectivity, for Marx, is not simply a reflex to conditions objectively antecedent to human thought and activity, and there is a voice in Marx’s theory of agency that does not necessarily run into the problems the narrative of his materialist voice erects for political analysis. Exploring this alternative voice, however, means breaking down some rather cumbersome barriers put up between Marx’s philosophicalscientific materialism and a kind of idealism against which his theory has been rigorously distinguished. Marx’s analysis of the relationship between concepts and agents, though, is worth exploring even if it means making these boundaries more blurry. It is also worth exploring in terms of how Marxism might engage current debates about relationships between language and agency. Primarily, this means reading his texts without assuming that their teleological tendency is the theory of dialectical materialism, that each is simply a step towards the historico-philosophical master key that Marx was working out. It also means claiming Marx as an important

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theorist in a tradition of democratic politics at the risk of minimizing his philosophical stature. The critiques that threw Marxism into crisis in the last part of the twentieth century have convincingly drawn attention to the problems that scientific materialism erects for revolutionary democratic politics. The materialist neglect of linguistic-conceptual forms and their relationship to agency, critics argue, abandons revolutionary struggle in favor of a philosophical faith in forces independent of human thought and activity. Theorists who would like to preserve what they see as some of Marx’s most important insights, however, tend to emphasize the need to reject his “philosophical anthropology or cross-cultural theory of the nature of human life and social organization” (Nicholson, 1987, p. 16). From this point of view, Marx’s theory is mainly valued as a description of the historical specificity of nineteenth-century socio-economic conditions. As far as getting at the important place of conceptual analysis in democratic struggle, Marx seems to have little to offer; therefore, it is necessary, these theorists argue, to look outside Marx’s writing to fill in the holes of his well-intentioned, but erroneous, theory of revolutionary change. Socialist feminists, like Linda Nicholson, advocate approaching Marx in this way, and at the close of his opening chapter of Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson (1991) gives similar advice. He recommends combining the Althusserian formulation of Marxism with the Lacanian notion of the Symbolic. The Marxian-Althusserian model, which posits an opposition between ideology and science, he argues, is “dualistic,” and “omit[s]  the dimension of the Lacanian Symbolic itself” (pp. 53–54). As I argue in relation to feminism’s attempts to realign Marxism, this approach to Marx’s theory seems a Pyrrhic victory. It is an approach that reads Marx’s writing as teleologically driven toward Engels’s portrayal of Marx as the philosopher to have scientifically mastered the Hegelian dialectic. The teleological aspect of this narrative preempts the dialogism of Marx’s work by turning it into a mental history of the discovery of the laws of dialectical materialism. Any political context we might (re)construct for Marx’s writing, a context that might, for instance, see Marx engaging in dialogue and debate that required many “voices,” is precluded. As a result, Marx is given a single voice, which becomes the origin of “true” socialism or communism. One tendency that emerges from this understanding of Marx is to read his work literally and to see him as using language as the bearer of literal meaning. Distanced from the context of the political debates and activities of Marx’s time, and likewise from a tradition of communism that dates back to Plato and that was especially vibrant from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century, a text like Capital, for example, reads like a philosophical-scientific treatise instead of the work of a democraticpolitical theorist.

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The mainly biographical-philosophical context for understanding Marx’s writing neglects dimensions of his theory that do not fit well with the voice of a philosopher-scientist. Inside contemporary debates about language and agency, then, the “core” of Marxist theory is highly suspect. What I am arguing, however, is that this “core” is a fiction erected by the conventional narrative of Marx’s materialist determinism, a narrative permeating both hostile and sympathetic reactions to Marx’s work. This narrative has created a philosophical-scientific voice for Marx that circumscribes the way that his work is read. Thus, as I suggest earlier, it is not just the texts that feminists highlight in their critique of Marxism that keep us from seeing dialectical materialism as anything other than the essence of Marx’s scholarship, but the interpretive strategy that they apply to those texts as well—an interpretive strategy based in the self-representations of the Marxist tradition itself. I also suggest that Marx’s often ironical and metaphorical use of language, as well as some of the political contexts to which he was responding, indicates another kind of voice for Marx not easily contained by interpretation of his work as essentially philosophical and scientific. The view that he follows a rigid materialist approach is, I think, also called into question by his articulation of the important relationship between conceptual forms and the way agents construct social relations, which is highlighted in his definition of the fetishism of commodities. All of my comments imply a different reading strategy for Marx’s writing, one that stresses Marx’s interest in theorizing democratic politics, not in mastering Hegel or in discovering the key to socio-historical development. A different approach to Marx, which begins from the assumption that whatever might be the “essence” of his work depends on the way it is narrativized, can reveal that Marx offers a persuasive political explanation of the relationship between linguistic-conceptual structures and agency. Thus, it might not be the case that Marxist theory has to be supplemented by more sophisticated theories of language; instead, Marx may contribute significantly to how we understand the relationship between language and agency. His writing, that is, can open up unique ways in which we think about that relationship, and therefore, offer important strategies for the political interpretation of social phenomena and for engaging in contemporary debates about the relationship between concepts and democratic agency. My argument that there is something to be gained by the Marxist project of Kritik from reading Marx in contradiction to the voice constructed by the conventional narrative of his thought is strongly influenced by the writings of Terrell Carver and Paul Le Blanc. Both emphasize the place of Marx’s theory in a broad tradition of democratic struggle and place less emphasis on his development as a philosopher. Additionally, they accentuate the important role of concepts in Marx’s understanding of the politics of capitalism and the kind of agency that might initiate democratic change.

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The Marxist paradigm, Le Blanc (1996) explains, “was developed” to explore the conceptual forms that agents might construct to effect revolutionary change. For Marxist theory, Le Blanc argues, “[t] he way that people perceive and analyze reality, the cluster of conceptions and definitions—or the theoretical framework—with which they make sense of their world, ultimately becomes a material force which can change the world” (p. 3). While Le Blanc is mainly concerned with explicating a broad tradition of Marxism in relationship to democratic struggle, Carver provides a close reading of Marx’s writing in the context of his rhetorical strategies, textual history, and—most importantly—his political commitments. Carver explains that the voice of dialectical materialism obscures the crucial place of conceptual forms in Marx’s most important theoretical statements about capitalist hegemony and the subjects occupying its political space. Marx was well aware of the contradictions for revolutionary struggle inside a strict theoretical materialism, according to Carver, and developed a theory of democratic politics emphasizing the linguistic-conceptual construction of agents, and through that, the socio-material relations that they bring into being. “[T] he strength of Marx’s account,” Carver (1998) argues, “is that it sits precisely on the nexus between interlinked ideas and meaningful activities, without any presumption that . . . analysis must push factitiously to distinguish one from the other” (p. 200). Marx’s approach thus avoids the obvious conflict between the notion that the commodity structure of society is an independent, determining reality and the call for people to be agents of social transformation. Marx’s analysis of the conceptual structure of the commodity “bridge[s]  the gap” between the hegemonic influence of commodity production—its conditioning of individuals—and his “categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man [sic]  is a degraded, enslaved, neglected, contemptible being” (Le Blanc, 1996, p. 3). Carver explicates Marx’s theory of agency in a way that is at odds with the philosophical-scientific voice of materialist determinism, but in a way that I believe complements the project of Kritik and opens up the kinds of theoretical inquiry that the voice of materialist determinism undervalues. Carver (1998) paraphrases Marx’s theorization of agency in a passage that is worth considering in this context: Whilst on the one hand individuals are virtual prisoners of the concepts that earlier generations have created in their progress from barter to capitalism, on the other hand, individuals have potential access to a realm of creative thought from which three things might emerge:   1. An analysis of our current position as prisoners.   2. A specification of the conceptual forms which arguably keep us trapped in disadvantageous ways.

80    B. HOLLINGSHEAD   3. An alternative array of concepts with a quite different inherent structure according to which new social forms could be progressively constructed. (p. 57)

Carver recognizes that it might be “slightly embarrassing” for Marx’s theory of agency to contain such an “idealism,” but argues that giving more weight to Marx’s analysis of agency inside the conceptual structure of the commodity is worthwhile. “Some critical reconstruction of concepts,” Carver writes, “may yet be possible in politics, and some social reconstruction of individuals and of our view of individual agency in actual practice. Individualism is very much what we make it, and Marx offers a theory [of]  how this is done” (pp. 58–59). I agree with Carver that pursuing this different voice of Marx is important and think that his reading of Marx can point Marxist criticaltheoretical practice in important political directions. Carver’s reading of Marx highlights the theoretical codes and categories to emerge from Marx’s conceptual analysis of the commodity in relation to agency, and it demonstrates that returning to Marx without assuming his conventional voice is a good starting point, not simply because Marxist theory must go back to its “origins,” but because Marx offers a persuasive articulation of the role of conceptual forms in maintaining or opposing capitalist hegemony. While Carver mentions several works, including those coauthored with Engels, his narrative of Marx’s voice relies heavily on Marx’s chief work, Capital. Carver emphasizes the political rather than the philosophical orientation of this centerpiece of Marx’s theorization of capitalist society. His “reading of Marx’s work in Capital takes the text as an extended political argument against capitalism, rather than as a deductive and mechanistic ‘proof’ that its collapse is inevitable” (Carver, 1998, p. 87). Marx’s dissatisfaction with the way that political economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo theorize capitalist economics as a reflection of human nature and instinct lays the groundwork for his own theory of capitalist economics as political practice. The political economists characterize the language of capitalism—“exchange value,” “commodity,” “markets,” etc.—from a positivist viewpoint wherein the language of capitalism simply models or records the economic behavior of individual wills. The rhetorical function of metaphor in Marx’s argument, Carver (1998) contends, suggests that the language of capitalism represents constituent concepts within capitalist society. The conceptual categories of political economy, as Marx understood them, are not merely “traces” of some deeper principle underlying human behavior, whether it is psychological or material; rather, they “‘bear the unmistakable stamp’ of capitalist society as concepts in common use” (p. 66). Marx’s use of metaphor links the language of the political economists with the language of religion and the occult, which gives social validity to

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the conceptualization of mystical phenomena. For Carver, Marx’s use of metaphor—his capitalist vampires and dead labor, for instance—is meant to explain how certain concepts and symbols attain a social validity that haunt people’s lives as really existing phenomena. Despite not having a rational basis, belief in the reality of mystical phenomena makes those concepts constitutive features of social relations. The commodity constructs human relations in ways analogous to the conceptual structures found in religious belief and the occult, and Marx’s analysis of the commodity form uses metaphor to place it in the same kind of relation to social institutions. The commodity world, in other words, “though intangible as a world of commodity-values . . . is not just imaginary or symbolic. Rather it has social validity, since that world and its languages are generally accepted as given features of our society, indeed of an aggressive global society. It is in terms of these features that claims are made—and decisions taken” (Carver, 1998, p. 18). In the same way that the Romantic artist William Blake famously saw superstitions sustaining social authority and allowing some members of society to take advantage of others, Marx sees the linguistic-conceptual forms of capitalism—namely, the commodity—as a constituent feature of its oppressive institutions and hegemonic sway. Carver’s (1998) interpretation of Marx’s use of metaphor sees his critique of political economy as laying the foundation for a conceptual analysis of agency not granted by the materialist voice normally designated as the essence of Marx’s thought: For Marx a metaphor may sometimes work in both directions between the object and the thing or idea likened to it. The commodity as fetish, for instance, tells us something important about fetishism (it is oppressive and exploitive), as well as something very striking about the commodity (it is mysterious and conventional). The capitalist as vampire reveals the exploitive character of vampirism as a real social institution, as well as the contrived and sinister nature of the social role of “capitalist.” (p. 19)

Where Smith and Ricardo understand the language of capitalism as a reflection of economic reality, Marx counters with a theory that understands concepts like exchange value, money, capital, and commodity as constitutive of the agents who generate the political landscape of capitalist society. “[H] e seems to be saying,” Carver (1998) contends, “that a thorough critical exposition of contemporary economic science (not a rejection, nor a series of straightforward corrections) would lay bare the ‘anatomy of bourgeois society,’ for which these [conceptual]  categories are constitutive” (p. 66). Marx’s use of metaphor, that is, places capitalist concepts in the same realm as other social institutions, which function according to shared assumptions and definitions. The commodity, for example, defines the way that we regard the world’s resources and the kind of behavior necessary to

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gain access to them. Carver thus claims that the early part of Capital “takes political economy as a textual surface, and by means of a thorough, and thoroughly linguistic analysis [Marx]  refigures, in a parodic text, a supposedly familiar and uncontentious world as strange (requiring explanation) and problematic (requiring political action)” (p. 20). The economic theory of Smith and Ricardo is not only the object of Marx’s disapproval but also the textual surface upon which he articulates the political nature of the capitalist economy. “Commodity-producing societies,” as Carver reads Marx, “. . . are distinct from other types of society [because in them]  there are socially constructed categories of commodity production and socially constructed individuals. . . . These categories are not a mere manifestation of instinct . . . or historically or culturally developed in some superficial way. Rather they are constitutive of individuals and of society” (p. 35). Marx re-presents political economy not as an empirical science but as a discursive construction of capitalism’s anatomy. The writings of political economists like Smith and Ricardo lay bare the concepts that make it possible for some agents to behave as capitalists. Marx’s critique of political economy, for Carver (1998), distinguishes his theory from any kind of reductive materialist determinism. He “aimed to re-present the economic theory of his day in order to reveal the constituent conceptions of capitalist society” (p. 63). Marx’s parodic presentation of political economy leads Carver to assert that Marx “was primarily interested in the language employed ordinarily within capitalist and commodity-producing societies.” Carver explains: In my view Capital is an analytical work proceeding from that ordinary language, through a critique of the “science” of political economy which purported to explain it, ascending ultimately to a realm in which conceptual relationships, deemed “logical” or “conceptual,” can be traced out. That realm relates to meaning, rather than to “matter” or anything “material,” in so far as “the material” is conceived as something apart from and indifferent to language. This leads me to see Marx’s analysis as profoundly alterior to common sense, something which he regarded as in any case pretty commonly misleading. More startlingly it also leads to a Marx who is highly “idealist” in the philosophical sense, that is, holding a view that concepts construct or determine reality, and even give rise to it. (p. 27)

Marx’s critique of the transparent conception of language found in the economic theory of his day, as well as his alternative view that the conceptual categories of capitalism provide trajectories for the activities of agents who produce socio-material relations, helps him to bridge the gap between traditional idealism and his “new materialism.” It provides Marx with an analytical approach that emphasizes the political character of socioeconomic relations. Marx’s approach to the politics of capitalism holds that agents are

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prisoners of concepts and relations developed by previous generations and the activities made possible by them. At the same time, agents may or may not use the concepts and execute the actions through which social relations are developed and sustained over time. Thus, it is that agency is not determined in some uni-directional fashion from a material base; instead, agents enter into some roles and relations, in a sense, independent of their wills, but they also have access to a realm of creative and critical thought through which they might alter, or reinforce, the conceptual structures through which agents construct themselves and their relations. Marx’s politics—his utopian hope that agents could become conscious of the social structures which oppress them and collectively create new structures through which agents democratized institutions, especially the economy—cannot permit subjects to be monolithically determined by forces independent of them. Whether those forces are within us (the “instincts” classical political economy theorizes) or outside of us (the dialectical progression of material reality held by the conventional voice of Marx), the political character of socio-material relations tends to dissipate. Marx’s analysis of the relationship between the conceptual form of the commodity and agency understood this well, in my opinion. Carver’s reading of Marx’s critique of political economy and the rhetorical function of his figurative language suggests that there is a voice that does not simply reduplicate the politics of liberal economic theory from a materialist perspective. For this voice, the social relations of capitalism are constructed through the political activity of agents, and that activity is complexly related not only to the material relations but also to the linguistic-conceptual forms agents inherit and develop. In this way, Marx could present the hegemonic reality of commodity production and the way that it bars democratic access to most material resources, while also emphasizing the political constructed-ness of capitalist relations and thus the possibility and necessity of changing them. Marx’s attention to the language of capitalism used by individuals in his critique of political economy that begins Capital, as Carver (1998) argues, establishes his method for theorizing the commodity. His analysis of the commodity, then, does not see it as an object in itself, so to speak. More accurately, he is interested in the human behavior related to the commodity and the kinds of socio-material relations that result. Marx (1867/1981) writes, “Commodities cannot themselves go to market and perform exchanges in their own right. We must, therefore, have recourse to their guardians, who are the possessors of commodities” (vol. 1, p. 178). Marx feels that the nature of the commodity can only be explained through the behavior of individuals because the commodity—as exchange value—is only objectively manifest as a social construction, like idols fetishized by religion. The commodity contains both “use value” and “exchange value,” which Marx sees as the central tension in the conceptual structure of the commodity. I will

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return to the importance of this tension in Marx’s theory of the commodity below. What matters for now is that the exchange value of a commodity is its definitional feature in capitalist society; the phenomenon of reification attaches quantitative values to commodities that through capitalist relations, as well as classical political economy, appear to be inherent properties of the commodity: Exchange-value appears first of all as the quantitative relation, the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind. This relation changes constantly with time and place. Hence, exchange-value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic value, i.e., an exchange-value that is inseparably connected with the commodity, inherent in it, seems a contradiction in terms. (Marx, 1867/1981, vol. 1, p. 126)

In Marx’s account, as Carver (1998) points out, “the labour-product is closer to the whole substance of things . . . , whereas the commodity-value has an objectivity that is ‘purely social’—not based on the full socio-material nature of things, but abstract, conventional, and subject to alteration by humanity” (p. 78). Since the commodity, “qua commodity,” is a “production . . . of the human brain [that]  appear[s]  as [an]  independent being . . . endowed with life,” as Marx (1867/1981) comments in the section on the fetishism of commodities in Volume 1 of Capital, his analysis of the commodity focuses on agents and how the conceptual structure of the commodity relates to their behaviors. Marx explains: In order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as commodities, their guardians must place themselves in relation to one another as persons whose will resides in those objects, and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity of the other, and alienate his own, except through an act to which both parties consent. The guardians must therefore recognise each other as owners of private property. This juridical relation, whose form is the contract, whether as part of a developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills. (vol. 1, p. 178)

Marx tries to clarify his approach to the commodity in the Preface to the first edition of Capital, and his comments reflect his emphasis on the way in which the conceptual structure of the commodity provides the potential for individual and social development in certain directions when agents become bearers of its language. “To prevent possible misunderstandings,” Marx states, “let me say this. I do not by any means depict the capitalist and the landowner in rosy colours. But individuals are dealt with here only in so far as they are the personification of economic categories . . .” (vol. 1, p. 92).

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Individuals “use” economic concepts in particular kinds of practices, and it is these practices that Marx attempts to theorize in a way that presents them in terms politically different from the economic theories of Smith and Ricardo. As Paul Mattick, Jr. (1986) argues, Marx was attempting to see the categories of capitalist society as alien and unnatural. His critique of classical political economy, then, is crucial to understanding his political stance on capitalism. For him, “The ‘strangeness’ of the commodity is not noticed by the economists who study it” (Mattick, 1986, p. 88). The fetishistic nature of the commodity that Marx identified politicizes the linguistic-conceptual forms of capitalism, which Smith and Ricardo had presented as inconsequential traces of deeper principles of human behavior. The concepts of capitalist society, for Marx, are constituent of the kinds of individual behavior through which the commodity appears to take on an objective existence. Using these concepts means that individuals enter into social roles and relationships in ways determined by the concepts themselves, but people for Marx are not complete prisoners of these conceptual structures; they have the capacity to change these structures because of the very fact that it is agents who construct and use these conceptual forms. Economic categories, in this sense, play a role in constructing agency. That Marx does not specifically consider other concepts and social relations which play a role in the variety of individualities which may be constructed, however, does not mean that his theory precludes their possibility. Diverse kinds of agency might result from the role individual agents play in such constructions. “[W] e know incontrovertibly,” Carver (1998) writes, “that Marx accepted such a concept of agency from his voluminous ‘political’ writings. In all those works, individual agency and indeterminancy are all too manifest” (p. 30). Of course, the “incontrovertibly” is open to question if we assume that Marx was developing a philosophical master key to socio-historical development. In understanding Capital as an attempt to theorize politically the capitalist social order, and not as a philosophical-scientific explication of the materialist construction of individual agents, Marx does seem to open the ideological space that the narrative of his materialist voice closes off. On one hand, subjectivity is not simply a reflex to the material conditions of reification. On another, though, Marx is specifically considering “what has to be true in order for ‘capitalist’ to be a way in which individuality can be constructed by some individuals” (Carver, 1998, p. 30). For Marx, the everyday language of capitalist practice glossed over by the political economists is the starting point for understanding the political character of the capitalist economy. Carver (1998) provides a useful summation of this voice of Marx: Very crudely his argument is that economic concepts as they arise in the consciousness of social individuals are not best understood as mere effects of

86    B. HOLLINGSHEAD deeper “desires” or feelings, or as neutral forms through which behaviour patterns or “interests” are manifested and described. The concepts “commodity,” “value,” and “capitalist” are not mere labels. While they were derived (somehow) from deeper elements of conscious behaviour (unspecified), they have a further, distinctly formative effect on human behaviour and individuality. . . . His starting point is not biological or behavioural in any important degree, but conceptual, in that the important transformations in behaviour that have produced a world where there is “Benthamite behaviour” are only possible because of the concepts through which individuals are constructed, as they learn to use them. (pp. 33 & 49)

In order to understand how the concepts of capitalism give rise to “Benthamite behaviour,” Marx focuses on the conceptual structure of the commodity in Capital. His critique of classical political economy provides the framework for his theory of the commodity, and the theory of the commodity supplies the political model of capitalism that Marx develops. The conceptual structure of the commodity is formed by the antithesis between use value and exchange value contained in the use of the term “commodity.” The exchange of commodities requires that they be represented as equalizable quantities, despite any qualitative differences that they may have. Marx uses a series of algebraic equations to denote the development of the concept of the commodity in historical practice, emphasizing that language is something that we do. What these equations illustrate is that the exchange value of commodities in its earliest development was represented by one commodity expressing its relativity to another commodity which provided its equivalent. Commodity exchange, however, is hampered by these early attempts to represent exchange value as such, and therefore the conceptual structure of the commodity pushes towards the development of an independent form of value, a commodity that functions as the equivalent of all others. Marx (1867/1981) explains what he hopes to illustrate by tracing these algebraic formulations: Firstly, the relative expression of value of the commodity is incomplete, because the series of its representations never comes to an end. The chain, of which each equation of value is a link, is liable at any moment to be lengthened by a newly created commodity, which will provide the material for a fresh expression of value. Secondly, it is a motley mosaic of disparate and unconnected expressions of value. And lastly, if, as must be the case, the relative value of each commodity is expressed in this expanded form, it follows that the relative form of value of each commodity is an endless series of expressions of value which are all different from the relative form of value of every other commodity. (vol. 1, p. 156)

The independent value that is developed by agents is, for Marx, the moneycommodity, and thus it is worth remembering that the title of Part I of Capi-

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tal is “Commodities and Money.” According to Marx, money is the external expression of the tension between use value and exchange value contained in the commodity form. Carver, however, stresses that what is unique about Marx’s argument about money is that money is not simply a means of circulating commodities. The money-commodity confronts other commodities as their equivalents. Although money has a special status among other commodities, it is itself a commodity because it contains both poles, use value and exchange value. Once the equivalent form of exchange value is restricted to a single commodity, for instance gold, Marx (1867/1981) explains that it confronts other commodities “as money only because it previously confronted them as a commodity” (vol. 1, p. 162). His explanation of this development elucidates how money contains the “microscopic anatomy” of the tension forming the conceptual structure of the commodity: This is the alternating relation between the poles: the commodity is in reality a use-value; its existence as [an exchange]  value appears only ideally, in its price, through which it is related to the real embodiment of its value, the gold which confronts it as its opposite. Inversely, the material of gold ranks only as the materialisation of value, as money. It is therefore in reality exchangevalue. Its use-value appears only ideally in the series of expressions of relative value within which it confronts all the other commodities as the totality of real embodiments of its utility. These antagonistic forms of the commodities are the real forms of motion of the process of exchange. (vol. 1, p. 199)

As the external expression of the tension between use value and exchange value, Marx concludes, in spite of his materialist voice, “Its [money’s]  mode of existence becomes adequate to its concept” (vol. 1, p. 241). Marx’s explanation of the money-commodity equation represents his theoretical model of the political character of the capitalist economy. The conceptual structure that it contains allows him to theorize the kind of agency necessary for the hegemonic sway of commodity-producing societies. Carver’s (1998) reading of Marx’s theory of the commodity offers a persuasive account of how Marx connects the conceptual form of the commodity to the behavior that makes capitalist practice possible. He writes, “The conceptual structure of the commodity specifies behavioural ‘tensions’ that are possible between persons. This is because it is the relations amongst concepts that define the commodity itself, particularly contradictions or oppositions, that make these ‘tensions’ a possibility in human practice” (p. 48). The fetishism of the commodity—the phenomenon of reification—is from this perspective a result of concepts put into action. Carver’s interpretation of Capital, while not putting it exactly as such, highlights this crucial dimension of Marx’s political presentation of reification. The money-commodity is fundamental to his critical model of capitalism in his chief theoretical

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work because, according to Carver, the argument of Capital is that “it is only when money is established that capitalism becomes possible in practice, and conversely, it is from the logic inherent in money as a concept that the practical possibility of capitalism arises” (p. 40). The political dimension of capitalism for Marx is located in agents who construct and reconstruct the sphere of commodity exchange, that “Eden of the innate rights of man,” the “exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham.” This is the realm where advantage can be calculated—“the selfishness, the gain and private interest of each”—where agents incessantly accumulate capital and concentrate wealth and resources into the hands of a few (p. 40). This type of “Benthamite behaviour” is made possible by the conceptual structure of the money-commodity, and it is this conceptual structure that accounts for the political construction of capitalist socio-material relations. Smith and Ricardo use scientific prose to portray capitalist concepts as reflections of capitalist society, but for Marx the figurative language that he employs reveals that these concepts are constituent of the kind of agency that constitutes capitalist society. According to Marx (1941/1973) in the Grundrisse, the conceptual structure of the money-commodity, because it contains the contradictions between use value and exchange value, shows that “profit-yielding employment lies in the very concept of capital” (p. 270). His development of this idea in the Grundrisse is worth turning to for a moment to clarify his arguments in Capital. In this “floor plan,” Marx demonstrates, contrary to classical economic theory which understands accumulation as an accident or result of “instinctual” behavior, that the “expansion” of capital is fundamental to the commodity form. It is not a choice or psychological imperative but inherent to the conceptual structure of the money-commodity as agents act it out. Money, as exchange value, represents the qualitative expression of all forms of wealth to infinitude, but as use value, it exists as quantifiably specific amounts in actual practice: The sole utility which an object can generally have for capital can only be to maintain or to increase it. We have already seen in the case of money, how value differentiated as such—or the general form of wealth—is capable of no other motion than quantitative; of increasing itself. According to its concept it is the epitome of all use-values; but as always but a specific quantity of money (here capital) its quantitative limitation is in contradiction with its quality. (p. 270)

To maintain its function as exchange value, then, money must continually increase itself as use value. This is the room to move, or the social framework, wherein Marx identifies the possibility and inevitability of capitalist crisis. It is interesting to return to Capital in this context, because its argument takes the connections that Marx establishes here for granted. The political character of capitalist accumulation missed by the political economists is

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contained in the incessant drive for capital to expand itself, which Marx locates in the conceptual structure of the money-commodity. The conceptual structure of money, like the fetishistic concepts around which other institutions are built, makes it possible for individuals to behave in certain ways, according to his analysis in Capital (1867/1981): The hoarding drive is boundless in its nature. Qualitatively or formally considered, money is independent of all limits, that is, it is the universal representative of material wealth because it is directly convertible into any other commodity. But at the same time every actual sum of money is limited in amount, and therefore has only a limited efficacy as a means of purchase. This contradiction between the quantitative limitation and the qualitative lack of limitation of money keeps driving the hoarder back to his Sisyphean task: accumulation. (vol. 1, pp. 230–231)

Moreover, the behavior of individual agents appears to have a kind of cumulative social effect. Marx writes, “There is a contradiction immanent in the function of money as the means of payment. . . . This contradiction bursts forth in that aspect of an industrial and commercial crisis which is known as a monetary crisis. . . . As the heart pants after fresh water, so pants his [the capitalist’s]  after money, the only wealth” (vol. 1, pp. 235–236). The commodity has, for Marx, a discernible conceptual structure, best seen in the money-commodity. It is this structure that allows Marx to see individuals as being constructed in socially predictable ways and to identify the kind of crisis that might prompt social agents to change collectively the concepts through which they make and re-make their lives. While we may not accept that the conceptual structure of the commodity will generate the decisive crisis Marx believed inevitable, his analysis of the fetishism of the commodity offers a sophisticated theory of the relationship between linguistic-conceptual forms and agency. This theory significantly contributes to understanding the political nature of capitalism and how revolutionary agency might develop in opposition to it. Agency, for Marx, is neither a reflex to determining material conditions nor a schizophrenic mishmash of indeterminate linguistic surfaces. Agents construct and reconstruct the social world that they occupy through their concepts and the purposive behavior that these concepts make possible, and any reconstruction of social relationships, Marx seems to argue, must take this into account. The narrative of Marx’s philosophical-scientific voice overlooks these dimensions of Marx’s theorization of reification, as his texts are read inside the story of his development of the historico-philosophical key to social history through renovating the Hegelian dialectic.47 The voice that emerges from a narrative of his participation in democratic politics, such as Carver presents, seems to me to be important not only to enriching the Marxist project of Kritik, but also to engaging in contemporary debates about re-

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lationships between language and agency and their connection to democratic struggle. The anti-participatory nature of the capitalist economy and the unwarranted waste and inequality of wealth it generates, while not the sole sources of democratic antagonism, are still relevant to contemporary struggles for peace, justice, and equality. Carver (1998) provides a convincing argument for the political-democratic voice of Marx that I believe can best get at these issues: . . . Marx is committed to a view that a commodity-producing society is by definition one in which useful goods are valued for exchange in accordance with some measure—money, a standard of price. For Marx, concept anticipates action, indeed creates the possibility for actions of certain types that simply could not exist other than as an instance of the concept he claims to discern. This conceptual structure is said to have been initiated in the rudimentary exchanges of social groups he could not observe, and because they were presumably pre-literate, it seems unlikely that evidence of the earliest kinds of exchanges could ever be found against which his view might be challenged. The upshot of this is that Marx’s social theory is crucially dependent on a structure alleged to inhere in concepts such as money, and the way those concepts provide possibilities for individual and social development along certain lines, as and when agents undertake it. (pp. 140–141)

Marx’s analysis of how agents construct or resist the injustices of capitalist society, it seems to me, is most usefully accessed through his political-democratic voice, which makes language and the people who construct and put it to use a central issue in the struggle to create a more just, democratic society. Closing Remarks The passage from Drew Milne that I have selected as the epigraph for this chapter indicates that the ongoing vitality of Marxist theory hinges on a dynamic relationship between reading Marx and responding to the disjunctions and dislocations of a society whose metabolism is the commodity. An important part of the challenge implied by Milne’s argument is the struggle to articulate Marx’s ideas in the context of a specific political and historical moment. Marx opened the theoretical terrain for understanding and transforming commodity-producing society, but he understood well, as have later Marxists, that capitalism is tenacious, adaptable, and anything but monolithic. Building a more just, democratic society, in other words, can only be done in the here and now, and any effort to bring Marx into the classroom must confront the struggle between reading Marx and attempts to interpret and change the current state of global capitalism.

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Just as importantly, though, efforts to engage students with Marx’s ideas must also confront the dialogical context of the present, a context within which theories compete and complement one another, some attempting to understand and change the status quo, others to maintain and intensify it. The aim of this essay has been to examine that context and the problem of Marx’s voice that it underscores. If Marxists are going to meet the challenge that Milne presents, one crucial to the place of Marxism in higher education, then the voice of Marx is central to such a challenge. The feminist and post-structuralist and post-modernist critiques of Marxist theory provide an opportunity to reexamine the conventional voice of Marx as philosopher-scientist, the voice of dialectical materialism. While each provides a different way of facilitating this examination, together they indicate that the traditional narrative of Marx’s materialist renovation of the Hegelian dialectic fails to sustain much political or intellectual interest as a theory of revolutionary change. This, of course, does not mean that we should entirely dismiss the voice of dialectical materialism. It has, after all, kept alive the ethical foundation of Marx’s politics—that people are the proper object of love, care, and worship, and that the historical development of the productive forces of capitalism has made realizing this ethical ideal materially possible for the first time in history. Marx’s materialism, as Terry Eagleton (2003) brilliantly elucidates in his book After Theory, is largely about the human body and its material needs, and this ethical dimension of Marxism is crucially dependent on Marx’s engagement with philosophy, through both Hegel and the Aristotelian tradition. For Marx, this materialist ethic is the reason for engaging in political struggle that would make “the free selfdevelopment of each . . . the condition of the free self-development of all,” as he says in the Manifesto. When it comes to engaging in the struggle for revolutionary democratic change, however, the political-democratic voice of Marx, which relies crucially on an analysis of the relationship between language and agency, has much to say about what people can do to contest the dehumanizing effects of a society organized around the commodity. I think that this voice is up to the challenge that Milne identifies. In the United States, capitalism and its apologists are threatening the last vestiges of democracy in what has been a largely plutocratic arrangement of “America’s democratic experiment,” anyway. The political policy to result from the right-wing narrative about protecting the “job creators” in the early twenty-first century, as well as the rapid privatization of what public space still exists, has disempowered a large majority of citizens in historically unprecedented ways. Higher education in the United States is itself caught up in this intensification of the accumulation of capital, and a recent report of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (2012), A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future, reveals that the democratic mission of higher education

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is in serious trouble. Getting Marx “back on the agenda,” as Eagleton puts it, is vitally important. Such an effort can help to revive the democratic mission of higher education, and Marxist theory can provide important resources for understanding and challenging the commodity fetishism behind the severe economic crises of the early twenty-first century, while a few channels left for peaceful, collective change still exist. Notes 1. Eagleton’s essay is archived electronically at http://chronicle.com/article/ In-Praise-of-Marx/127027/. 2. For a concise overview of challenges to Marxism up until the early 1980s, see Tom Bottomore’s (1983) eminently useful A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, pp. 105–109. 3. Part One of Paul Le Blanc’s (1996) From Marx to Gramsci: A Reader in Revolutionary Marxist Politics provides a balanced and critical look at the relationship between Stalinism and Marx’s theory; see especially chapters 3–6. 4. Fukuyama made these proclamations in 1989; see his essay “The End of History” in The National Interest, 16 (Summer 1989): 3–18. 5. The work of Michel Foucault, Francis Lyotard, and Jean Baudrillard provide important challenges to Marxism well before the collapse of Soviet Communism. 6. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) offers a different approach to the potential alliance between Marxism and feminism. In her essay “Feminism and Critical Theory,” she explores Marx’s theories on use-value, exchange value, and surplus-value and argues that they can enhance feminist theory by supplementing it. She writes, “I would reemphasize the need to interpret reproduction within a Marxian problematic” (p. 79). She does not argue for feminists to dismantle and supplement Marxism; therefore, my survey of the feminist critique of Marxism later in this essay does not consider her brilliant explanation of the relationship between Marxism and feminism. My argument is concerned with a feminist critique more closely related to the current crisis in Marxism. See also her essay “Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value” (1988) for an excellent reading of Marx’s analysis of the development of money; both essays are published in Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. Another essay of interest in terms of the relationship between Marxism and feminism that I do not consider later in the chapter is Heidi Hartman’s (1981) “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism” in Women and Revolution. 7. In a discussion following the presentation of Fredric Jameson’s paper “Cognitive Mapping,” given at an international conference originating from a group of courses taught in the summer of 1983 through the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Darko Suvin remarked: “I want to remind people of the strange origins of the connotations of the word ‘totalitarianism.’ They arose after the war, propagated

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8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

by the Congress of Cultural Freedom, which was associated with such names as Stephen Spender and Irving Kristol and with journals such as the Encounter, funded by the CIA as it turns out. This is admittedly not a conclusive argument; even people funded by the CIA can come up with intelligent ideas now and then. But it should make us wary of such an equation” (Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, 1988, p. 359). See Carver’s Engels (1981), chapter 5, for an excellent commentary on the history of the Marx–Hegel pairing. See also Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship (1983) and The Postmodern Marx (1998). These include The Holy Family, The German Ideology, and The Communist Manifesto. Another important reason for Engels to develop the Marx–Hegel relationship was because the political and intellectual codes of Germany shifted after 1850, as the autocratic German states of the 1830s and 1840s were transitioning into the constitutionalism of the 1860s. For Marx’s potential audience, the highly coded language of Hegelianism had lost meaning, as the overtly repressive conditions that made it necessary had faded. It was, therefore, important to clarify the Hegelian context and, through it, Marx’s difficult Young Hegelian idiom. Leon Trotsky accepts the philosophical emphasis of dialectical materialism, but urges us not to separate it from the revolutionary activity it aims to uncover: “The essence of Marx and Engels’ activity was that they theoretically anticipated and prepared the way for the age of proletarian revolution. If this is set aside, we end up with nothing but academic Marxism, that is, the most repulsive caricature” (“Philosophical Tendencies of Bureaucratism,” 1993– 1935/1981, p. 404). The texts Donovan cites specifically in her overview are Barrett’s Women’s Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis (1980); MacKinnon’s “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory” (1982); and Harstock’s “Staying Alive (1981),” Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (1983), and “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism (1987).” See also MacKinnon’s “Desire and Power: A Feminist Perspective,” in which she argues that feminism must be “post-Marxist (1988).” Feminists have, of course, criticized Marxism from many other perspectives, some of which are not particularly helpful in getting at the sociopolitical construction of agents. Shulamith Firestone (1970), for example, argues against Marxism by invoking the biological differences between men and women to claim gender is the most basic form of human conflict and oppression in The Dialectic of Sex. More sociologically-oriented feminists, it seems to me, provide the strongest critique of Marxism and offer a useful model for rethinking Marxist theory, and it is their critique that I mainly have in mind. Donovan (1991) explains how Engels’s ideas on the “‘woman question’” and those of other “‘first wave’ Marxist theorists” assumed that gender inequality would be solved by class politics. She writes, “Engels’ two-pronged program— let women enter into the public sphere of production and communalize the realm of private production—became the central tenet of the Marxist, and

94    B. HOLLINGSHEAD eventually communist, program for the emancipation of women. . . . [A] s August Bebel put it, the ‘solution of the woman question [was]  identical with the solution of the social question.’ Lenin, Alexandra Kollotai, Clara Zetkin, and Rosa Luxemburg all generally adhered to this position” (p. 76). 15. Grundrisse is the compilation of seven of Marx’s notebooks and was first published by the Institute of Marx–Engels–Lenin in Moscow in 1939–1941 as Foundations (Grundrisse) of the Critique of Political Economy. The Grundrisse, Tucker (1978) explains, “has attracted growing attention because of the intrinsic interests of various parts, because it forms an important link between the early writings and Capital, and because the very rawness of much of the text enhances its value as a revelation of Marx’s creative mental process” (p. 221). 16. The German Ideology was never completed by Marx and Engels, and the manuscript is riddled with interpretive difficulties; it was first published in 1932 in Moscow. These difficulties do not lessen the value of the manuscript, but do make it hard to capture the single voice of Marx claimed to be inaugurated in this work. Carver (1998) finds debate and dialogue in the manuscript and points out the range of problems when the text is imputed to a single authorial voice: “When is Engels speaking for himself? When is Marx speaking through him, together with him (and vice versa)? When is Marx speaking for himself against Engels (was there ever any vice versa)? In any case there is now no way to order the various starts, re-starts and re-writes that reside on the surface of the manuscript sheets, which were themselves divided up in various ways (usually into two large columns) and then filled in at different times in what appears to be a set of odd sequences, accompanied by much crossing out” (p. 168). 17. Marx makes this comment in Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, as quoted in Tucker, 1978, p. 146. 18. Tucker (1978), for instance, connects the two texts inside the narrative of Marx’s development of the “materialist conception of history” inaugurated by Engels, though I am suggesting they might be usefully related in different ways. He reads The German Ideology as “basically a work of exposition [emphasis added] ,” seeing it as the expression of a singular authorial voice. “It gives every appearance of being the work for which the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ served as an outline; hence we may infer that it was written by Marx. It is, in essence, a restatement, minus much of the German philosophical terminology, of the theory of history adumbrated in the manuscripts of 1844. Marx now calls it the ‘materialist conception of history.’ It is particularly valuable and important to the student of Marxist thought because Marx never again set down a comprehensive statement of his theory of history at such length and in such detail. This point is not contradicted by Engels’ remark in the 1888 foreword that the exposition of the materialist conception of history in The German Ideology ‘proves only how incomplete our knowledge of economic history still was at that time [emphasis added throughout] ’” (p. 146). Tucker’s comments gloss over important hermeneutical difficulties in the manuscript, as the passages I emphasize suggest some contradictions with a single authorial voice, and it may be useful to explore connections between the Theses and The German Ideology without assuming Marx is developing a universal philosophy of history. Both

The Crisis in Marxism    95

19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

texts, I would suggest, are linked more importantly by an emphasis on theory and its connection to political activity, which pushes to understand how agents construct their socio-material world and might change it by transforming the structures, both material and conceptual, through which they operate. The dialogue that might be discerned throughout the manuscript of The German Ideology often reveals Marx humorously challenging Engels when he seems to be straying from the political task at hand into general philosophizing. See especially Carver’s (1998) reading of the manuscript in The Postmodern Marx, pp. 104–107 & 213–223. Quote from Marx taken from Tucker, 1978, p. 146. Throughout this section I treat post-structuralism and postmodernism as a common (though by no means identical) theoretical discourse, especially in the critique of Marxism. While this may oversimplify important distinctions in some respects, I follow the suit of some other critics of post-structuralist and postmodernist theory. The connections between Derrida’s theories of language, as well as Foucault’s theory of power, and postmodernist theories of the constitutive feature of unstable signifying surfaces in the lives of subjects have led others to treat them interchangeably—See, for example, Madan Sarup’s An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism (1993) and Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) . Jurgen Habermas is a noteworthy exception to this view inside the debate about Marxism’s relevancy. Habermas claims that the project of modernity and the values of the Enlightenment should not be abandoned. See Selden, et al. (1997), A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, chapter 8, “Postmodernist Theories,” for a discussion of Habermas’s place in the postmodern debate. Andre Glucksmann makes this comment in Les Maitres penseurs; as quoted in Sarup, 1993, p. 104. Sarup (1993) provides a useful overview of Lacan’s contributions to poststructuralism and postmodernism in his chapter “Lacan and Psychoanalysis.” See also Jane Gallop’s Reading Lacan (1985), which provides an accessible overview of Lacan’s writing, and S. Turkle’s Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud’s French Revolution (1979) for the social and political context of Lacan’s thought. In general, the argument that Marxist theory uses the end to justify the means can be found in the “new philosophers.” See, in particular, Bernard-Henri Levy’s La Barbarie a visage humain (1977), a work of one of the group’s leading publicists. Both Jameson and Eagleton, as early as 1984 and 1985 respectively, see the work of postmodernist theorists as a mirror and acquiescence to the commodity culture of capitalism. Their essays originally appeared in New Left Review; Eagleton’s was later reprinted in Against the Grain: Selected Essays, 1975–85 (1986), and Jameson’s was extended into his introductory chapter of Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991). Sarup (1993) follows the lead of Jameson and Eagleton in his portrayal of postmodernist theoretical discourse. For Sarup, it embodies a political relativism that extends and sanctions the capitalist status quo.

96    B. HOLLINGSHEAD 26. See Foucault’s Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972– 1977 (1980). Sarup (1993) connects Foucault’s emphasis on these events in developing his theory of power with the anti-Marxist politics developed by the “new philosophers” in France (p. 104). See also Peter Dews’s “The Nouvelle Philosophie and Foucault” (1979). 27. Sarup (1993), for instance, notes that “[d] uring the events of 1968 Lyotard was a professor of philosophy at Vincennes. He has written that the preoccupations of Socialisme ou Barbarie were expressed in ’68. . . . In Lyotard’s view people began to feel that there was a discrepancy between the rhetoric of Marxism and the actual content of the students’ movement. In 1968 many people turned away from Marxism” (p. 99). Mouffe (1988) uses the phrase “new social movements” in “Hegemony and New Political Subjects: Toward a New Concept of Democracy.” 28. Avoiding such a perspective seems to me to be precisely Jameson’s (1991) point in conceiving postmodernism as “a dominant cultural logic” in Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (p. 6). 29. Sarup (1993) writes, “Many writers suggest that Marx sublates Hegel by appropriating the radical form (the dialectical method) and dispensing with the conservative content. Deleuze rejects completely both the form and content of Hegel’s philosophy and claims that Nietzsche was the first real critic of Hegel and dialectical thought” (p. 90). 30. This rupture is conceived variously by postmodernist theory, if not in contradictory ways. Lyotard (1985), for instance, argues that the “‘post-’ in the term ‘postmodernist’ . . . in the sense of a simple succession, of a diachrony of periods, each of them clearly indentifiable . . . [is]  totally modern. . . . Since we are beginning something completely new, we have to re-set the hands of the clock at zero” (p. 6). Elsewhere, however, he says that “postmodernism is undoubtedly part of the modern” (Lyotard, 1984, p. 79). 31. Lyotard’s remarks from this interview are quoted in Sarup, 1993, p. 145. 32. My discussion of Derrida’s theoretical positions mainly relies on “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1984) and Of Grammatology (1976). 33. Derrida has never completely rejected Marxism but, in fact, has shown interest, albeit ambivalent, in Marx’s work. See, for instance, his Specters of Marx (1994). 34. Thompson (1978) points this out in The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays. 35. Madan Sarup (1993) remarks that in “Baudrillard’s writings, the masses, the silent majorities, passively consume commodities, television, sports, politics, mass-produced simulations to such an extent that traditional politics and class struggle become obsolete” (p. 166). 36. See, for instance, Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality (1987). 37. Although he acknowledges significant contributions from Foucault, Nico Poulantzas (1978) provides an incisive critique of his theory of power in State, Power, Socialism. For Poulantzas, Foucault fails to account for the domination springing from the modern form of the state and its relationship to capitalist production; as such, his theory of power finds itself at a loss to articulate “resistance.” My own summary of Foucault’s theory of power relies on Pou-

The Crisis in Marxism    97 lantzas’s analysis, which offers an in-depth exploration of the implications of Foucault’s work for Marxism. 38. See Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (1981), especially pp. 92–102. 39. Foucault’s remarks from this interview are quoted in Sarup (1993), p. 81. 40. In Against Postmodernism, Alex Callinicos (1989) explains postmodern fatalism in relation to the failure of socialist revolution in particular: “Not only does belief in a postmodern epoch generally go along with rejection of socialist revolution as either feasible or desirable, but it is the perceived failure of revolution which has helped to gain widespread acceptance of this belief [. . .] Lyotard treats the rejection of revolution as an instance of a more general phenomenon constitutive of the postmodern, namely the collapse of the ‘grand narratives’” (p. 9). 41. For an interesting analysis of the influence of communicative media on subjective experience, see Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), wherein he traces the epistemological impact of media from the print culture of nineteenth-century America to late-twentieth-century television culture. 42. See Althusser’s Reading Capital (1970) and “Ideology and State Apparatuses” (1971) for this distinction. 43. Christopher Norris (1992) makes this critique of Baurillard in Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War. The quote given here is not from Norris but taken from the summary of his views offered by Selden, et al. (1997), p. 206. 44. See The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), p. 162. 45. See Michael Parenti’s The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution, and the Arms Race (1989) for a brilliant Marxist analysis of the “contradictions” of western policy toward these regions. Focusing mainly on U.S. foreign policy, especially the contradictions between its claim to legitimacy based on adherence to democratic principles and its propping up of dictatorships around the globe, Parenti argues that there is a logic underpinning imperialist policy based not only in the accumulation of capital but also in the protection of the systemic conditions necessary to the accumulation process. Western military policy, from this perspective, is anything but “contradictory” or “random.” 46. Engels wrote a letter to Joseph Bloch warning against “vulgar” Marxism. This letter is reprinted in Eagleton’s Marxist Literary Theory (1996), p. 39. 47. Marx’s engagements with Hegel’s philosophy are, as I have noted earlier, not to be ignored; it is the biographical-philosophical narrative and how it portrays the Marx–Hegel relationship that is at issue. Carver (1998) provides a lucid explanation of Marx’s relationship to Hegel that does not take this narrative for granted; see especially pp. 181–205 in The Postmodern Marx.

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The Crisis in Marxism    99 Foucault, M. (1981). The history of sexuality: An introduction. (Vol. 1). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. Intellectuals in power. In D.F. Bouchard. (Ed.), Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews. (pp. 215–228). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Foucault, M. (1967). Madness and civilization. London: Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1977). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In D.F. Bouchard. (Ed.), Language, counter-memory ,practice: Selected essays and interviews. (pp. 34–61). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things. London: Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. Brighton: Harvester Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Revolutionary action: ‘Until now.’ In D.F. Bouchard. (Ed.), Language, counter-memory ,practice: Selected essays and interviews. (pp. 229–241). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Fukuyama, F. (1989, summer). The end of history.” The National Interest, 16, 3–18. Gallop, J. (1985). Reading Lacan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Glucksmann, A. (1977). Les Maitres penseurs. Paris: Grasset. Harstock, N. (1987). The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism.” In Harding & Hintikka (Eds.), Discovering reality. (pp. 23–54). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harstock, N. (1981). Money, sex and power: Toward a feminist historical materialism. New York, NY: Longman. Harstock, N. (1981). Staying alive.” Building feminist theory. (pp. 110–122). The Quest Staff. (Eds.) New York, NY: Longman. Hartman, H. (1981). The unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism.” In L. Sargent. (Ed.), Women and revolution: A discussion of the unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism (pp. 2–29). Boston: South End. Heilbroner, R. L. (1981). Marxism: For and against. New York, NY: Norton. Jameson, F. (1988). Cognitive mapping. In C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture. (pp. 347–357). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, Or, The cultural logic of late capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Kaplan, C. (1991). Pandora’s box: Subjectivity, class and sexuality in socialist feminist criticism.” In R. R. Warhol & D. P. Herndal (Eds.), Feminisms: An anthology of literary theory and criticism. (pp. 857–877). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. King, M. L., Jr. (1963/1996). Letter from Birmingham jail. In J.D. Lester (Ed.), Diverse identities: classic multicultural essays. (pp. 216–232). Lincolnwood, IL: NTC, 1996. La Capra, D. (1983). Rethinking intellectual history: Texts, contexts, language. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Le Blanc, P. (1996). From Marx to Gramsci: A reader in revolutionary Marxist politics. Part one: Introduction to revolutionary Marxist politics. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Levy, B. (1977). La Barbarie a visage humain. Paris: Gasset.

100    B. HOLLINGSHEAD Lubasz, H. (1976). Marx’s initial problematic: The problem of poverty. Political Studies, 24(1), 10–31. Lyotard, J. F. (1985). Defining the Postmodern. ICA Documents, 4, 76–98. Lyotard, J. F. (1971) Discourse/figure. Paris: Klincksiek. Lyotard, J. F. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press. MacKinnon, C. A. (1988). Desire and power: A feminist perspective.” In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture. (pp. 105–117). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. MacKinnon, C. A. 1982). Feminism, Marxism, method and the state: An agenda for theory. Signs, 3(7), 526–549. Mandel, E. (1978). Late Capitalism. London: Verso. Marx, K. (1867/1981). Capital. (Vol. 1., B. Fowkes, Trans.) Harmondsworth: Penguin. Marx, K. (1941/1973). Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy. (M. Nicolaus, Trans.) Harmondsworth: Penguin. Marx, K. (1859/1978). Preface, A contribution to the critique of political economy. In R. C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx–Engels reader. (2nd ed., pp. 3–6), New York, NY: Norton. Marx, K. (1888/1978) Theses on Feuerbach. In R.C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx–Engels reader. (2nd ed., pp. 143–145), New York, NY: Norton. Marx, K., & F. Engels. (1848/1978). Manifesto of the communist party. In R.  C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx–Engels reader. (2nd ed., pp. 469–501), New York, NY: Norton. Marx, K., & F. Engels. (1932/1973). The German ideology. Part 1. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Marx, K., & F. Engels. (1845/1975). The holy family. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Mattick, P., Jr. (1986). Social knowledge: An essay on the nature and limits of social science. London: Hutchinson. Milne, D. (Ed.) (1996). Introduction Part II. In Marxist literary theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Morris, M. (1988). The pirate’s fiancée: Feminism, reading, postmodernism. London: Verso. Mouffe, C. (1988). Hegemony and new political subjects: Toward a new concept of democracy. In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture. (pp. 89–101), Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Nicholson, L. (1987). Feminism and Marx: Integrating kinship with the economic. In S. Benhabib & D. Cornell (Eds.), Feminism as critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Norris, C. (1992). Uncritical theory: Postmodernism, intellectuals and the Gulf War. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Parenti, M. (1989). The sword and the dollar: Imperialism, revolution, and the arms race. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Perelman, M. (2000). The invention of capitalism: Classical political economy and the secret history of primitive accumulation. Durham: Duke University Press. Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. New York, NY: Penguin. Poulantzas, N. (1978). State, power, socialism. London, New Left Books.

The Crisis in Marxism    101 Sarup, M. (1993). An introductory guide to post-structuralism and postmodernism. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Selden, R., Widdowson, P., & Brooker, P. (1997). A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. London: Prentice Hall. Spivak, G. C. (1988). Feminism and critical theory. In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics. New York, NY: Routledge. Spivak, G. C. (1988). Scattered speculations on the question of value.” In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics. New York, NY: Routledge. Thompson, E.P. (1978). The poverty of theory and other essays. London: Merlin. Trotsky, Leon. (1933–1935/1981) Philosophical tendencies of bureaucratism. In N. Allen & G. Sanders (Eds.), The challenge of the left opposition. (pp. 145–162), New York, NY: Pathfinder Press. Tucker, R. C. (Ed.) (1978). Introduction. The Marx–Engels reader. New York, NY: Norton. Turkle, S. (1979). Psychoanalytic politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud’s French revolution. London: Burnett. West, C. (1991). The ethical dimensions of Marxist thought. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.

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Chapter 3

Class Consciousness and Teacher Education The Socialist Challenge and The Historical Context1 Curry Stephenson Malott

In this chapter, I situate one of the most significant current trends in teacher education, the absence of class consciousness, within the normalizing impulse of capitalism, which Deb Kelsh and Dave Hill (2006) brilliantly problematize in “The Culturalization of Class and the Occluding of Class Consciousness: The Knowledge Industry in/of Education.” In the process, I trace this tendency to distort the class-based nature of social existence to the birth of large-scale industrial capitalism and the reorganization of Western-based societies, and eventually the whole planet, into the unimaginably rich and the equally unthinkably poor and exploited, and the subsequent need to manufacture consent to this barbaric project and process. Robinson (2008) characterizes this period of the development of global capitalism as the third period, which began in the 1870s and is marked by the corporate form of capitalism and class struggle, and the subsequent emergence of widespread class-consciousness. As a result, this period is also Teaching Marx, pages 103–139 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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the beginning of large-scale, compulsory common schooling, which the capitalist class eventually came to understand to be a necessary cost of production needed for social control. Marx’s historical work on the development of capital is crucial here as it laid the foundation for a tradition of revolutionary class-consciousness from Lenin, to Vygotsky, to Freire, respectively. Drawing on these insights regarding class-consciousness, I outline the debilitating tendencies of a Weberian conception of social class in U.S. teacher education programs and beyond situated in the current context of neo-colonialism/neo-liberalism, that is, the most current period of global capitalism. In the final section, I expand on the argument for a revolutionary education, not as a prescription, but as a place of departure for the vast diversity of global contexts within the ever-expanding, ever-deepening social universe of capital. Within this context, I argue that Joe L. Kincheloe’s idea of the epistemological bazaar and his postformal approach to educational psychology are particularly relevant (Malott, 2011a). That is, because the challenges for creating a twenty-first century global socialism are so intense and immense (see for example, Callinicos, 2010), such a multifaceted, complex approach is needed where anarchists, Eco-pedagogues, critical indigenous sovereign-ists, and Marxists are able to build a genuine challenge and alternative vision and practice to global capitalism. Through this movement revolutionary change agents are able to develop, in radical communion and solidarity with others, the ontologically necessary feeling of relevancy having become a genuine contributor/participant/revolutionary transformer: against the property relations of capital (see Kelsh & Hill, 2006, for a discussion on the central significance of property relations within Marx’s theory of and against class); against the White-stream settler-state (Grande, 2004); against the monoculturalism of capitalist society (Darder, 2011); which, as I argue below, are all parts of the larger, totalizing, social universe of capital. Again, this Hegelian Marxist position places me in sharp contrast with many people on the left I consider comrades. The solution to this dilemma is still very much a hotly contested debate. The Second Industrial Revolution, The Creation of a Working-Class, and The Emergence of Class Consciousness As suggested above, the period of the historical development of capitalism that has had the largest influence on the contemporary era began during the second industrial revolution around 1870. Before this period, in the United States, the country (acquired from many indigenous Native American nations through unintentional genocide from infectious diseases, in-

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tentional genocide through military conquest including the slaughtering of non-combatants such as women, the elderly and children, and biological warfare, and from deceptive legal maneuvers and the breaking of treaty agreements) was largely rural and land, at least within the White-male settler-state, was relatively evenly distributed, and wealth, as a result, was also not so dramatically unequal (unless you were an enslaved African, indentured European servant, or a member of a displaced Native American nation). However, the ruling class, and therefore the country, was capitalist and therefore governed by a highly educated, elite ruling class paternalistically overseeing the largely uneducated population. What led to this period of capitalist expansion and the co-existence of extreme wealth and poverty, in the United States—a period American author Mark Twain coined the gilded age because it looked beautiful from the outside, but was in fact rotten and diseased at the core—is a mix of equally important factors, from immigration, urbanization, Westward Expansion, mass schooling, and the advances in science that made the technological innovations a reality. It was during this period that the labor movement emerged and the first real crisis or breakdown in the cycle of capitalist production, called a depression, transpired. At the heart of what influenced the labor movement and caused the depression, the tendency of capital toward over-accumulation, is the same force that has led to the most recent crisis of capital and the flowering of an international anti-capitalist movement (i.e., Occupy Wall Street). * * * As we enter our discussion of the second industrial revolution, let us pause for a moment and briefly explain that our discussion here is based on Marx’s recognition that the primary difference between the European feudalist system that was torn asunder by capitalism is that feudalism is an economic system based on simple reproduction whereas capitalism is a model based on perpetual growth and expansion—two to three percent annual growth for a capitalist economy to be considered healthy, somewhat of an oxymoron. From this early history, as Marx and Engels (1848/1972) remind us, the capitalist class has positioned itself as doing workers a favor by liberating them from feudalism. This paternalism continues—a paternalism where the capitalist class advances a discourse that portrays labor as dependent on the generosity and assumed superior intelligence of the bosses to create and provide jobs. It is, therefore, not surprising that the dominant version of history fails to give much importance to the fact that under feudalism the means of production, or the land, is not fully owned by the feudal lords rendering sizable regions in the hands of the peasant class. With capitalism, these commons, or common lands that peasants supple-

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mented their incomes with under feudalism, are violently abolished and turned into private property controlled by the capitalist class transforming, with deadly force, the peasant classes into a working class, under capitalism. Challenging the dominant view that portrays the emergence of capitalism as a favor that raised the standard of living for all of humanity, the transition from feudalism, from a Marxist perspective, represents “one of capitalism’s first major conflicts with the existing feudal system” driven by “the quest for labor” (Klobby, 1999, p. 13). Making this point in the opening pages of The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels (1848/1978) note that “the modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones” (Marx & Engles, 1848/1978, p. 474). Laying these foundations for the capitalist property relations of production a series of enclosure acts, alluded to above, were passed throughout Europe making it nearly impossible for people to remain on their ancestral lands. That is, disconnected from the land, and, therefore, with nothing left to survive on but one’s ability to labor, the peasant is forced to relocate to urban areas to sell his or her labor power for a wage far less than the value it produces. No longer in control of one’s own creative capacities, the alienated wage slave is born paving the way for the creation of large reserve pools of labor needed to create competition between workers for a scarcity of jobs as a way to keep wages low and returns or profits high. For example, in People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn (2003) notes that “between 1860 and 1910, New York grew from 850 thousand to 4 million, Chicago from 110 thousand to 2 million, Philadelphia from 650 thousand to 1.5 million” (Zinn, 2003, p. 254). Again, the vast majority of this population explosion was the result of European peasants seeking a means of survival after being disconnected from their traditional European land-bases. While capitalism is not possible without a large pool of potential workers with no land and thus no means to survive other than ones’ ability to labor, the large-scale manufacturing of the second industrial revolution would not have been possible without particular advances in science and the necessary engineers to put them to work for industry. Summarizing this period of rapid expansion, Foner (2009) notes that: Between the end of the Civil War and the early twentieth century, the United States underwent one of the most rapid economic shifts any country has ever experienced. There were numerous causes . . . Abundant natural resources, a growing supply of labor, an expanding market for manufactured goods, and the availability of capital for investment. In addition, the federal government actively promoted industrial and agricultural development. It granted land to railroad companies to encourage construction, and used the army to re-

Class Consciousness and Teacher Education     107 move Indians from Western lands desired by farmers and mining companies. (Foner, pp. 557–558)

At the center of this innovation is arguably the Bessemer process of turning iron into steel reducing what could be accomplished in an entire day to fifteen minutes (Zinn, 2003). Summarizing this history, which is the history of how steel and oil propelled machines to new heights, Zinn (2003) comments: Between the Civil War and 1900, steam and electricity replaced human muscle, iron replaced wood, and steel replaced iron . . . Machines could now drive steel tools. Oil could lubricate machines, light homes, streets and factories. People and goods could move by railroad, propelled by steam along steel rails . . . Machines changed farming. Before the Civil War, it took 61 hours of labor to produce an acre of wheat. By 1900, it took 3 hours . . . in 1860, 14 million tons of coal were mined; by 1884 it was 100 million tons. More coal meant more steel . . . (Zinn, p. 253)

Of particular importance during this time, as alluded to above by Zinn, was the role of not only the increased availability of steel, but the role the railroad played in bringing raw materials, including food, from around the United States, the Great Plains and the mid-west in particular, to Eastern centers of manufacturing. As a result of the aforementioned creation of a working-class manifesting itself as a population explosion in urban centers from Europe to North America, new sources of food were needed to fuel the labor power being exploited in the burgeoning manufacturing centers. It is therefore not surprising that investment capitalists moved quickly to profit from this expanding market. However, this market would not have been as ripe or open as a source of fortune generation without the federal government intervening in the economy on behalf of capitalists. That is, in the 1860s the federal U.S. government gave millions of acres of stolen Native American land to Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies. The Central Pacific Railroad, for example, “spent $200,000 in Washington on bribes to get 9 million acres of free land and $24 million in bonds, and paid $79 million, an overpayment of $36 million, to a construction company which really was its own” (Zinn, 2003, p. 254). At the same time, the Union Pacific got: 12 million acres of free land and 27 million in government bonds. It created the Credit Mobilier company and gave them $94 million for construction when the actual cost was 44 million. Shares were sold cheaply to Congressmen to prevent investigation. This was at the suggestion of Massachusetts Congressman Oaks Ames, a shovel manufacturer and director of Credit Mobilier, who said: ‘There is no difficulty in getting men to look after their own property’. (Zinn, 2003, p. 254)

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So much for the common myth that the U.S. Empire was built from the honest, hard work, and ingenuity of the Master Race free to excel in a free market. Not only were millions of dollars and acres of land given to two major corporations, the cheap labor that built the railroad primarily came from Irish and Chinese immigrants. One of these profiteers, for example, “Cyrus Holliday, founder of Topeka, Kansas, pushed his Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe line west to Dodge City. Holliday was determined to tap the growing cattle market by running his railroad nearer to the cattle country of Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico” (Smith, 1984, p. 97). Consequently, when Kansas Pacific began shipping cattle out of Abilene, Kansas in 1867 they started with twenty carloads of longhorn the first year. A year later that number rose to 1,000 carloads and by 1871 it had exploded to 700,000 carloads (Smith, 1984). The workingclass tradition of Philly Cheese Steaks in Philadelphia, PA can be traced back to this time. Of course, the romanticized American heroes, the cowboys, contrary to Hollywood characterizations, were not the already-Americanized, ruling-class-supporting, White-males, toiling in the interests of their own self-direction, but rather tended to come from the most oppressed segments of society, from Irish immigrants, escaped and recently freed African Americans, and Mexican nationals displaced from their homelands as a result of the Mexican American War, and were, therefore, low-paid wage earners, who, collectively, have played a counter-hegemonic role in the history of labor activism. Early on in this process of industrialization and westward expansion the federal government invested in universities to fulfill the purpose of making such advancements in the technologies of economic innovation and capitalist expansion (i.e., the railroad). Making this point in their introductory American Education: A History text, Urban and Wagoner (2009) note that the “largest universities . . . were translating [the] latest scientific advances into technology that would support America’s new industries” (p. 274). For example, the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 granted states land for agricultural, mechanical, and military colleges. Similarly, the Hatch Act of 1887 funded agricultural experiment stations for research on farming, animal diseases, etc., (Foner, 2009; Smith, 1984; Urban & Wagoner, 2009). New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM is one of these institutions playing a significant role in both agricultural science and military science. So committed to policing the official pro-capitalist purpose of the university, the institution has developed an “NMSU Position on Animals in Research and Emergency Preparedness Plan.” The following excerpt is telling: An important part of the mission of a land-grant university is to conduct appropriate research to optimize the use of animals in the service of man . . . NMSU defends the right of free speech . . . regarding the use of ani-

Class Consciousness and Teacher Education     109 mals in research . . . however, coercion, intimidation, and unlawful acts will not be allowed . . . Any organization using animals should be prepared for various protests . . . from animal rights’ groups . . . Appropriate steps will be taken to limit disruption of NMSU activities.

What this policy alludes to is the interconnectedness between the technologies of capitalist expansion (i.e., military science and agricultural science and engineering) and the technologies of social control (i.e., controlling the ideas of labor through ideological indoctrination as well as physically censoring ideas through policy and police). Economically integrating the North American continent from East to West required not only the methods of social control and other university-inspired technologies and capitalist worldview informing the railroad and the human labor-power to make it a reality, but also the subjugation of the Plains Indians. Making this connection in, The Rise of Industrial America: A People’s History of the Post-Reconstruction Era Page Smith (1984) notes that: The principle obstacle to peace on the Great Plains was the issue of the railroads bi- and trisecting their hunting grounds. On this issue . . . there could be no compromise. The rails must run their irresistible way through the heart of Indian country. (Smith, p. 89)

Consequently, the discourse of Manifest Destiny, that is, the idea that it was God’s will to spread European civilization (i.e., capitalism) from the East coast to the West coast of the United States, and across the world, became a fundamentally important tool in convincing labor to willingly do the military work of westward expansion. That and the promise of free land denationalized from Native Americans. During this period of rapid growth in industrial output there were virtually no regulations restricting capitals’ ability to extract surplus value from human labor power. As a result, “by 1890 the richest 1% of Americans received the same total wealth as the bottom half of the population and owned more property than the remaining 99%” (Foner, 2009, p. 567). During this time the life of the working class consisted of long hours, low wages, no pensions, no compensation for injuries, and the most dangerous working conditions in the industrial world with more than 35,000 deaths a year between 1880 and 1900 (Foner, 2009). It was within this context that the labor movement was born, first emerging in Philadelphia, PA. The membership of the Knights of Labor exploded during this time. However, this more mainstream or nativist (i.e., U.S. born Whites) branch of labor had a reputation for being anti-Chinese (Urban & Wagoner, 2009) as they had not been able to overcome their own White-supremacist indoctrination as White, male Americans. The Industrial Workers of the World, on the other hand, represented a more counter-hegemonic, and thus anti-racist branch

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of the revolutionary labor movement (discussed below). What is particularly striking about this early era of labor organizing is its vast militancy and revolutionary fervor. Placing this militancy in a larger context Marx highlights the inherent savageness of competitive, market capitalism. Dramatizing the barbarism of capital’s insatiable quest for profit, and the speed at which the first and second industrial revolutions subsumed the social universe within which they emerged (i.e., the accumulation of surplus value or unpaid labor hours) in volume 1 of Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production (edited by Frederick Engels, 1867/1967), Karl Marx, in chapter four, focuses on the length of the working day, which he divides into two components: “. . . the working-time required for the reproduction of the labor-power of the laborer himself” (p. 232), and the amount dedicated to the capitalist class’ accumulation of surplus labor. Marx (1867/1967) hones in on the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class’ determination for the length of the working day because at the dawn of the second industrial revolution “the capitalist has bought the labor-power at its day-rate” (p. 232). This is significant because when the laborer sells his commodity (i.e., his labor power) on the market to a capitalist, he forfeits control of this commodity (i.e., himself) during the time purchased. If the working day is three times longer than the amount of time needed to reproduce himself, then he or she can protest that they are being robbed of two thirds of the value of their commodity, their own capacity to labor (Marx, 1867/1967). Because the capitalist is driven by the need to perpetually expand the rate of profit obtained from the purchasing of commodities such as labor power, it is in the interest of capital to extend the length of the work day as long as possible. Asking, “What is the length of time during which capital may consume the labor-power whose daily value it buys?” Marx (1867/1967) observes that, “it has been seen that to these questions capital replies: the working-day contains the full 24 hours” (p. 264). As a result, the laborer is “nothing else, his whole life, than labor-power” and all his or her time is therefore dedicated to “the self-expansion of capital” leaving no time for “education, intellectual development, for the fulfilling of social functions and for social intercourse, for the free-play of his bodily and mental activity” (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 264), and even for the necessary time to rest and rejuvenate the body for another days’ work. The historical development of capitalism, especially during the second industrial revolution, has proven unequivocally, that “capital cares nothing for the length of life of labor-power” (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 265). Communicating this destructive impulse of capital Marx (1867/1967) summarizes: The capitalistic mode of production (essentially the production of surplus value, the absorption of surplus-labor), produces thus, with the extension of

Class Consciousness and Teacher Education     111 the working day, not only the deterioration of human labor-power by robbing it of its normal, moral and physical, conditions of development and function. It produces also the premature exhaustion and death of this labor-power itself. It extends the laborer’s time of production during a given period by shortening his actual life-time. (p. 265)

Marx (1867/1967) reminds us that this impulse toward barbarism has nothing to do with the specific personalities of market profiteers/capitalists. That is, it is not a matter of the “good or ill will of individual capitalists,” but rather, “free competition brings out the inherent laws of capitalist production” (p. 270) trumping any generous impulse a human capitalist or CEO may or may not posses. What determines then the length of the normal working day or the rate of exploitation in an hourly wage system is “the result of centuries of struggle between capitalist and laborer” (p. 270). The key factor determining the course of history in capitalism is, therefore, class-consciousness. It was within this context of industrial capitalist barbarism and workingclass awakening that Horace Mann set out on a Protestant-inspired crusade for a system of Common Schooling. Mann, working as the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education in the 1840s, saw educating the working class as an effective way to discipline labor and prevent rebellions and other “crimes.” Mann, in fact, wrote reports outlining the merits of educated versus uneducated workers. His primary audience was industrial capitalists whom he had to gain their skeptical approval. Essentially, Mann sought to convince them that a basic or common education was a necessary cost of production more effective in controlling labor than police, that is, physical force. In school workers would learn “respect for property, for the work ethic, and for the wisdom of the property owners” (Urban & Wagoner, 2009, p. 121). It was within this context of the need to discipline labor and the emergence of science as a theory of everything that the managers of industry and academics sought to develop a human science as effective as predicting and controlling human behavior as biology and physics were at conquering the natural world. From here it makes sense why teachers’ colleges would open to ensure future teachers were sufficiently trained with the most up-to-date techniques of social control and behaviorist pedagogy. Zinn (2003) accurately describes teachers, managers, engineers, and other constructors and regulators of the system as “loyal buffers against trouble” (p. 263). These college educated middle buffers against trouble have been so important to the perpetuation of the ruling class because of the cyclical nature of crisis at the heart of the internal laws of accumulation. That is, because capitalism is driven by an insatiable appetite for wealth, the capitalist manager or corporate CEO is forever searching for new ways to reduce the cost of production. The variable cost of labor has historically been one of

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those areas capitalists have sought to cut costs or extract more wealth from. As a result, there is a built in drive that pushes wages down, deeper and deeper, until labor is no longer able to purchase the commodities flooding the market place. At this point when the potential value embedded within commodities is not realized, the cycle of capitalist production breaks down and the system goes into crisis. It is at these moments of increased suffering and hardships within labor that the potential for revolutionary change heightens. Often, it is technological innovation that leads to major reductions in the cost of labor by eliminating the cost of labor. For example, one of the factors leading to the first major crisis in the globalizing capitalist system of production in the 1890s was the mechanization of harvesting grains, mentioned above. While it took over sixty one man-hours to produce an acre of wheat, with machines that number was slashed to less than three hours. Between 1870 and 1890 the number of farms in the United States increased 80% due to the Homestead Act of 1862, which essentially gave millions and millions of Native American lands to European immigrants disconnected from their European ancestral lands as a result of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. However, while mechanization doubled the output of grains, the population grew by only three quarters. Coupled with international competition, the prices of grain dropped to half the cost of production leaving thousands of small farmers bankrupt and thus contributing to the emerging crisis and additionally paving the way for the corporate farm (Foner, 2003; Smith, 1984). Again, within this context of urban squalor and suffering and rural poverty and displacement, emerged a strong tradition of revolutionary fervor and a spirit of transformation that rocked the capitalist class to their core. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) rose and nearly overturned the negative relationship between labor and capital at the heart of capitalism. We now know that the B of I (later changed to the FBI) waged a secret illegal war against the IWW arresting leaders on trumped up charges costing the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees effectively bankrupting the IWW. The federal government went so far as bombing buildings and leaving anarchist literature at the crime scene to damage the favorable reputation of the revolutionary-oriented industrial labor movement in the publics’ eye. It was during this era in which the Haymarket Massacre happened. That is, on May fourth 1886 the Chicago Police Department opened fire on a crowd of anarchist and socialist labor activist revolutionaries rallying in support of striking union members. Apparently, what started the bloodbath was an unknown protestor lobbing a dynamite bomb at the police, eight of whom died in the ensuing gunfight, mostly from friendly fire. Consequently, five activists were arrested, charged and convicted of murder and subsequently executed. What is particularly striking about this incident is

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that the defendants were executed despite the fact that the prosecutor acknowledged that there was no evidence connecting the bombing to any of the defendants. These events, in part, are what have inspired the international day of observing the lives and sacrifices of labor, that is, May Day. This state-inflicted violence and tendency toward persecuting labor only intensified after the first major depression of 1893. During WWI, for example, this repression was legitimized by the creation of a new propaganda machine designed to demonize any opposition to capitalism and war as un-American. Supporting this move against labor, the U.S. federal government had passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. The Alien Act was designed to expel foreign radicals from the country while the Sedition Act made illegal “false, scandalous, or malicious” writing against the United States (Foner, 2009; Smith, 1984; Zinn, 2003). Drawing on the Sedition Act during WWI, the anti-war movement, which was intimately connected to the labor movement, was criminalized. That is, the IWW and other radical, left, revolutionaries had spread the analysis that soldiers were nothing more than performing a job designed to benefit the capitalist class at the expense of labor, both in terms of all possible outcomes of said conflict and in terms of the loss of life or the casualties of war. Protesting war was, therefore, part and parcel of challenging the domination and exploitation of the ruling class. In 1918, for example, socialist presidential candidate and labor leader, Eugene Debs, was arrested and imprisoned for ten years for an anti-war speech in which he challenged the working-class to engage in revolutionary struggle against capitalism and for socialism. While this example, to some, may seem like an extreme and rare case, in November of 2011, through the National Defense Authorization Act, which has a budget of more than six hundred and sixty-two billion dollars, overwhelmingly passed legislation bypassing due-process for U.S. citizens suspected of being enemy combatants or un-American. Bill Van Auken (2011), writing for the International Committee of the Fourth International, connects this recent legislation to the example of Eugene Debs: In 1918, the socialist leader Eugene V. Debs was thrown into prison under the draconian Sedition Act for delivering a speech opposing the First World War and calling for the working class to take power and carry out the socialist transformation of society. Even then, however, the government had to try him before a jury. The legislation passed Thursday renders such democratic niceties superfluous. Now, such an offense would be punishable by disappearance into a military-run concentration camp. http://wsws.org/articles/2011/ dec2011/pers-d03.shtml

This recent increase in state-sanctioned repression can best be understood within the context of growing poverty and an international crisis in the global capitalist system (see below). After the fist crisis (i.e., depression)

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of 1893, which was partially overcome by the United States’ small role in WWI, but never really resolved, was more or less displaced until the even greater crisis of the Great Depression of 1929, the role of government in intervening in the economy on behalf of capital became more and more widespread. This was the era of the New Deal where the government put unemployed surplus labor to work building roads, bridges, and schools, that is, the infrastructure that capital needed to expand. While these efforts were able to partially help capital recover to continue exploiting human labor power through accumulation, they were not sufficient by themselves. That is, it was shifting into a full-scale war-economy during WWII that allowed the American capitalist to survive to exploit and plunder another day. This shift subsidized industrial production transforming manufacturing from civilian consumer items to the machinery of death and large-scale warfare. For the capitalist, it is not the content of the commodity that matters, it is the rate of return at the end of the business cycle, and death has proven to be one of the most stable and lucrative investments, for capitalism, as an ever-expanding system, is driven by an internal need for new markets, and thus, deadly competition (i.e., war) for access to profitable markets and resources. After WWII the United States emerged as the sole capitalist superpower as a result of many of the major centers of industrial production in Europe and Japan having been nearly bombed out of existence. The United States, therefore, experienced a postwar boom in industrial output and growth. However, around the 1970s most of Europe and Japan had recovered and were thriving centers of industrial output. The post-war Fordist compromise therefore became too costly for the U.S. capitalist class, and was subsequently abandoned as a sustainable policy. Abandoning Fordism, or the idea that a livable wage will be guaranteed in exchange for the obedience and loyalty of labor, meant, of course, abandoning the American workingclass and their wages, nearly the highest in the world by the 1970s; the beginning of a new down-turn or crisis in the cyclical nature of the historical development of capital. What was continued and advanced during the neo-liberal era was the policy of militarily intervening in the so-called third world to ensure the tendency toward a leveling effect, or democratic socialism, was not successful. The United States therefore has a long history of toppling democratically elected governments from Chile to Haiti, to ensure puppet-dictatorships are in place to discipline labor and guarantee profits flow to the West (Chomsky, 1999). This enabled U.S. corporations to not just reduce the cost of labor a little, but it enabled them to nearly completely eliminate it. The policies that made transnational trade—that is, trade where centers of production and centers of consumption and management are divided by national borders—profitable are policies made by transnational orga-

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nizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that eliminated many of the regulations that imposed taxes on corporations when moving capital and goods across borders. The North American Free Trade Agreement was one of the most famous of these as it led to the indigenous Zapatista uprising of central Mexico. More recently, the United States has signed a new series of free trade policies with Columbia, South Korea, and Panama, which will lead to further reductions in the middleclass. From these understandings of how capitalism itself, under its normal operating conditions, is a form of class warfare and terrorism, it becomes clear why education has played such a consistent role in manipulating the ideas and worldviews held by the population. We might therefore conclude that the current purpose of public schooling, reproducing the working and middle classes, was forged during the second industrial revolution as Horace Mann saw the rising tide of workingclass discontent that threatened the elite class from which he came. Colleges and universities, many of which in the United States were founded during this time, embodied a related purpose: that is, advancements in the technologies of social control. In this context of increasing indoctrination, Marx’s approach to class-consciousness and a serious discussion about a socialist alternative is imperative. Marx and Class Consciousness After Marx the theorization of consciousness became deeply embroiled with the question of revolution. —(Carpenter & Mojab, 2011, p. 125)

There exists a common belief that Marx viewed Hegel’s dialectics as aChallenging the decontexualized, non-materialist largely a-historical form of idealism, which fails to challenge concrete reality because it reduces freedom to a mental act. Marxist professor Peter Hudis (2005) argues this belief is fundamentally wrong.m In “Marx’s Critical Appropriation and Transcendence of Hegel’s Theory of Alienation” Hudis (2005) argues that “Marx does not critique Hegel for failing to deal with reality” (p. 2) but rather is fundamentally influenced by Hegel’s deep interest in labor and the alienation that engenders a self-consciousness that is “at home in his other-being as such” (Marx, 1988, p. 158).of According to Hudis (2005), one of Marx’s primary objections to Hegel was not that he failed to grasp reality, but that he abandons it concluding that the absolute essence of reality is the Idea belittling the object of the idea as “merely external” (Marx, 1988, p. 167) and thus inferior to the absolute idea or God. Consequently, in abstract-

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ing thought from reality, and failing to reunite abstraction to the sensuous world, Hegel stops short of the last act: The man estranged from himself is also the thinker estranged from his essence—that is, from the natural and human essence. His thoughts are therefore fixed mental shapes or ghosts dwelling outside nature and man. Hegel has locked up all these fixed mental forms together in his Logic, laying hold of them first as negation—that is, as an alienation of human thought—and then as the negation of the negation—that is, as a superseding of this alienation, as a real expression of human thought. But as even this still takes place within the confines of the estrangement, this negation of the negation is in part the restoring of these fixed forms in their estrangement; in part a stopping-short at the last act—the act of self-reference in alienation—as the true mode of being of these fixed mental forms; and in part, to the extend that this abstraction apprehends itself and experiences an infinite weariness with itself, there makes its appearance in Hegel, in the form of the resolution to recognize nature as the essential being and to go over to intuition, the abandonment of abstract thought . . . devoid of eyes, of teeth, of ears, of everything. (Marx, 1988, pp. 164–165)

Again, we might therefore summarize Marx’s central critique of Hegel in the following way: the Hegelian dialectical movement begins with the recognition of an initial negation—the negation of human subjectivity— which stems from the realization that the human is alienated from herself as a result of abstract knowledge; this first negation leads to the conscious or deliberate negation of the cause of the alienation; however, Hegel’s negation of the negation, the dialectical movement, ends with the reaffirmation of the alienation from consciousness by positioning the abstract idea as the ultimate essence or truth, rather than nature or the physical objects external to the Idea of it. Marx’s reconfiguration of Hegel’s dialectic therefore serves as a decisive outline of how we might understand historical change as a collective, allencompassing, material and ideological development where the economic base of capitalism serves as the primary source of human negation giving way to a complex and contradictory cultural context of false consciousness and critical consciousness (i.e. racism, sexism, homophobia as well as counterhegemonic, revolutionary social movements with well established traditions of artistic, musical, discursive and tactical approaches). For Marx (1988) then, a naturalist interpretation of the negation of the negation can be expressed as follows: “communism is humanism mediated by itself through the annulment of private property” (p. 161). In other words, not stopping short as Marx accuses Hegel of, means abandoning abstract thought (i.e. fixed ideas and categories) or the absolute idea in exchange for a perpetually moving and shifting natural world and the revolutionary implications

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of negating the property relations of capitalist production, which includes the social universe of capitalist society in its entirety because it is at the root of alienation and human suffering. From this totalizing perspective it is impossible to separate the historical development of the working classes and the capitalist classes from the racializations and gender politics and the international relations of competing capitalists from the economic base of the capitalist mode of production—it is the social universe of capital that alienates humanity from itself. In his summary of the intellectual roots of Marx’s historical materialism Alex Callinicos (2011) argues that for Hegel (1993) it is contradiction that lies at the heart of all change and movement and therefore propels history since all entities embody contradiction. In the opening paragraphs of Hegel’s (1993) Science of Logic the German philosopher sets the parameters of this basic contradiction as, “pure being and pure nothing are the same” (p. 82) but are also “absolutely distinct.” Consequently, they are “inseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is, therefore, this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one in the other: becoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which has equally immediately resolved itself” (Hegel, 1993, p. 83). Callinicos (2011) describes this relationship between being and nothing using the example of the acorn and the oak tree. Consider: The acorn, in becoming an oak, has itself ceased to be. The oak is different from the acorn. The oak is not that acorn. Hegel would say that the oak is the negation of the acorn. Yet implicit within the acorn is the potential to become an oak. The acorn contains within itself its own negation, and is thus contradictory. It is this contradiction . . . that allows it to grow . . . Hegel then takes this a step further. When something negates itself it turns into its opposite. (p. 63)

Applied to society, as alluded to above, capitalism is not the end, but a stage in the development of humanity containing within it its own contradiction and thus negation. In capitalism, the central contradiction is the relationship between labor and capital, which simultaneously constitute a larger whole of antagonistically relates parts. The two parts dissolve into the other; the more labor toils, the stronger and more powerful capital becomes. But when one breaks free, the other ceases to exist as such. Again, it is labor who suffers under capital as commodified and thus alienated and exploited being, whose collective negation as labor, a free and non-alienated class for itself, becomes its opposite, not capital, for labor is capital, but the opposite of capital, democratic socialism. Where Hegel abstracted consciousness from the sensuous world of suffering and exploitationian dialectics Marx reunited knowledge to the body disputinged the notion that truth only exists in the realm of pure thought

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unhindered by the sensual experience of the material world. Hegel achieved his abstractionthis by replacing that which is concrete with the idea of it, discursively transforming that which is finite into the infinite. Summarizing this inversion tendency in Hegel’s thought, Marx (1843/1978) notes how he “. . . gives the predicates an independent existence and subsequently transforms them in a mystical fashion into their subjects” (p. 18). The implications of Hegel’s idealism were simply not adequate or acceptable for Marx’s revision of Hegel. That is, the notion an awareness that it is not only ideas that prevent men and women from achieving an assumed absolute truth and their subsequent full potential and that the struggle against oppression does not exclusively exists at the level of discourse, was a dangerous proposition. Marx and Engels (1932/1996), critiquing this idealismmaking this point, comment that the “phrases” Hegelians fight “. . . are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world” (p. 41). In order to combat the real existing world Marx held that it was necessary to rescue consciousness from the fantasy world of Hegelian abstraction and examine its as internally related nature in the context ofto actual material existence, which, for Marx (like Hegel), begins when humans first began to produce their own means of subsistence, when they begin to create their own material reality based on their immediate geographical surroundings. What humans are therefore first and foremost is defined by what they produce and how they produce it. Hegelian abstraction, while conscious of this historical development,idealism disconnects consciousness from the us from this material reality of the labor/capital relationship forever in motionreality. Summarizing Marx’s conceptualization of consciousness Carpenter and Mojab (2011) note that, Marx is entering the German Idealism debate about the relationships between matter and consciousness. He is demonstrating how consciousness is dialectically related to social organization of life and exists in both subjective and objective forms. (p. 127)

We might, therefore, note that, for Marx, class-consciousness involves being aware of one’s structural/material location within capitalism (Cole, 2011; Kelsh & Hill, 2006; McLaren, 2005). Allman, McLaren, and Rikowski (2005) argue that, “Marx takes great pains to explain that it is not the type of concrete labor one performs that determines one’s class position, but rather one’s internal/dialectical relation with capital” (p. 145). Reflecting on the place of educators within the social universe of capital as a prelude to an extended discussion of Marx’s conceptions of class and class consciousness, Deb Kelsh and Dave Hill (2006), begin by clarifying that the working class/ labor consists of all those “who do not own the means of production and

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are, therefore, compelled to sell their labor power to survive” (p. 2). In explaining the nature of the relationship that education has with capital, Marx conceptualized two kinds of labor, both of which are embodied in all labor: labor that manufactures other commodities or services and labor that produces labor as a commodity (i.e., teachers) (Allman, McLaren, & Rikowski, 2005). Whatever type of work one does it remains constant that, “a central feature of the worker’s life under capitalism is alienation, or the removal of one’s labor from one’s self” (Allman, et al., 2005, p. 88), as Faith Agostinone-Wilson (2010) reminds us. Making her point in the context of the family AgostinoneWilson (2010) quotes Marx (1867/1967) from Volume 1, Capital: They alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they deform the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor process to the despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working time, and drag his wife and child under the juggernaut of capital. (Marx, p. 88)

Again, even pro-capitalist, mainstream economists are beginning to concede that given the current downward spiral of capital Marx seems to have been correct on many key issues such as the alienating nature of wage labor. For example, Umair Haque (2011), author of The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business, argues in “Was Marx Right?” which appeared in the Harvard Business Review (September 7, 2011), that while he is a “staunch supporter of capitalism” (p. 1), he acknowledges that there are some relevant insights in Marx’s analyses of the dangers of industrial capitalism. Regarding the alienating nature of capitalism Haque (2011) comments: As workers were divorced from the output of their labor, Marx claimed, their sense of self-determination dwindled, alienating them from a sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment. How’s Marx doing on this score? I’d say quite well: even the most self-proclaimed humane modern workplaces, for all their creature comforts, are bastions of bone-crushing tedium and soul-sucking mediocrity, filled with dreary meetings, dismal tasks, and pointless objectives that are well, just a little bit alienating. If sweating over the font in a PowerPoint deck for the mega-leveraged buyout of a line of designer diapers is the portrait of modern “work,” then call me—and I’d bet most of you—alienated: disengaged, demoralized, [and] unmotivated. (Haque, p. 2)

Clearly, Haque (2011) is referring here to work typically classified as “middle-class.” If the most privileged wage labor is alienating, then we can say with certainty that there are no exceptions or save-havens within capital-

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ism—it is all, to one degree or another, alienating. The teaching profession as well has become increasingly deskilled and mechanized, although, as outlined above, teaching has always been implicated in the programs and interests of the ruling-class. While it is clear that racial disparities and discrimination are exacerbated during times of crisis, and the continued stagnation of capital are going to have the most devastating consequences for people of color, the creation of jobs within capitalism can only take us to the next crisis. Revolution and a post-capitalist society are our only hope. Risking unnecessary repetition, it is, therefore, extremely important for teacher education programs to develop within their students a Marxist class-consciousness, as argued throughout. More specifically, this Marxist class-consciousness must also be situated in a global context. That is, William I. Robinson (2005), outlining the parameters of a critical globalization studies, makes this point noting that “social arrangements in the early twenty-first century must increasingly be understood—indeed, can only be understood—in the context of global-level structures and processes” (p. 12). However, because not all global thinking and practices are critical (i.e., promote progressive or revolutionary transformation), our global class-consciousness must transcend the mainstream global perspective that encourages teacher education students to become technologically savvy and multiculturally sensitive in order to compete in the global market for a shrinking supply of middle-class paying professional career opportunities. Rather, the global class-consciousness of teacher education programs must be informed by the insight that the increasing poverty in the United States is connected to the increasing poverty globally and the neoliberal policies of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the resulting practices of multinational mega-corporations. This awareness must also be coupled with a dedication to overcoming such structural poverty, which requires pushing beyond the limits of reform efforts and abandoning capitalism and a market economy in general. Again, because labor tends not to be class conscious, working-class workers with middle-class culture and White privilege have a tendency to discriminate or disrespect colleagues of color who do not possess middleclass cultural capital, which implicitly includes Whiteness. Consequently, notions of what it means to be articulate are firmly grounded in the cultural capital of middle-class Whiteness. Reflecting on her own experiences with middle-class workers as a self-identified working-class woman of color, Antonia Darder (2011), notes that “middle class liberals . . . seem to love our presence, but are often ambivalent about our participation, particularly when our expressed concerns fall outside of the exceptional notions of the ideal” (pp. 6–7). Essentially, Darder (2011) is documenting the tendency of White, middle-class colleagues to commodify colleagues of color as either evidence of the existence of meritocracy, or as remarkable exceptions to

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the usual stories of failure. Such dominant society views are unable to situate the experiences and journeys of individuals in a larger historical context of European empire, colonialism, slavery, institutional White privilege, and neo-liberal capitalism. This phenomena can be best understood within the history of Whiteness as a mechanism employed by the seventeenth century plantocracy to build a larger base of support for themselves ensuring the perpetuation of the basic structure of class power. Whiteness has worked brilliantly, in the most devious, deceitful sense, in ensuring the hegemony of capitalism. Consequently, White middle-class workers, embodying the false consciousness that leads them to believe their interests are one in the same as capitalists, manifests itself in the ways Darder (2011) explains above. It has been documented that middle-class professionals have internalized a capitalist class identity so thoroughly that there is a tendency for them to actively seek to maintain their place of privilege by emerging as the primary supporters of oppressive educational devices such as testing professionals. Situated in the context of a shrinking middle-class (Pressman, 2007, 2010), these professionals, whom Au (2009) traces back to the emergence of the social efficiency model advanced through Taylorism (see also, Malott, 2010), it is not surprising that “the professional and managerial new middle class not only justify their own existence within educational processes and policies and maintain their own social and economic upward mobility, but they also create the room to align themselves with the interests of neoliberals” (Au, 2009, pp. 58–59). However, Au (2009) makes this argument to challenge the position that the primary driving force behind the neo-liberalization of education is the capitalist class. While it is clear enough that middle-class workers independently advocate for their own survival and necessity without external coercion from the capitalist class, a more useful interpretation, in my opinion, would be that this is simply the product of how workers’ identities are informed by capitalism and how Whiteness is designed to encourage White workers to see their own interests as one in the same as the capitalist class, especially middle-class workers whose intellectual and managerial labor is significantly less physical than the workers their work is designed to control and manage. Transcending this middle-class indoctrination and the false sense of class position it fosters what follows are some major points that outline what a class conscious educator might look like in practice. The Class Conscious Educator in the Twenty-First Century First and foremost, the class-conscious educator understands that capitalists have traditionally valued the existence of a middle-class because it serves

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their own interests. For example, Steven Pressman (2007), making the case for the survival of the middle-class, seemingly writing from a global middleclass perspective, argues that, “a large and vibrant middle class is important to every nation. It contributes to economic growth, as well as to social and political stability” (p. 181). Making no mistake about his own alignment with the capitalist class, Pressman (2007) argues that, The middle class helps mitigate class warfare. Marx believed that economic history was a class struggle between haves and have-nots, and that the havenots would eventually band together and overthrow the capitalist system. What Marx missed was that a middle class might arise and serve as a buffer between the poor and the wealthy. (p. 181)

A class-conscious educator is able to identify the errors in Pressman’s (2007) arguments aware that Marx was intimately conscious of the division of labor and labor’s role in self-reproduction; that is, in managements’ role in policing and enforcing the laws and policies accepted by capital. A class-conscious educator is also aware of the fallacy behind one of the primary reasons that has been put forth for supporting the middle class, which is that “people do care about their relative standing and that relative standing is correlated with subjective assessments of well-being” (Pressman, 2007, p. 181). Educators with a critical point of view are also aware that the middle-class has traditionally served the function of not only racially dividing workers through White privilege, but that the middle-class is needed so the cycle of capitalist production can be completed. That is, without a large pool of active consumers to purchase the commodities made by unknown workers in unknown foreign lands, value realization, the last stage in the cycle before accumulation, would not happen leading to over-production and economic crisis, as we are currently experiencing. Class-conscious education workers also know that the system of mass compulsory education that middle-class workers have designed and supported has always been intended to serve the interests not of pupils or teachers, but of the capitalist class for which students are trained to obediently serve. This helps to explain why the captains of industry, as noted above, supported it since Horace Mann’s crusade for mass schooling in the mid1800s. For example, these educators know that Mann’s crusade to educate the masses of peasant immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy, and other European countries, was successful because the industrial capitalists of the time needed a more regimented and subdued pool of labor power to fuel the booming industrial revolution, so they supported it. Critical educators also understand that the Indian Boarding School Project was an extended government-funded effort designed to both disconnect Native Americans from their ancestral lands by obliterating Native American cultures, customs, economies, and languages, and replacing them with a worldview

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conducive to industrial capitalism. That is, the effort to kill the Indian and save the man inside, was an effort to disrupt the Native American systems of cultural and social reproduction by creating consenting low-level wage workers. Industrialist politicians supported the funding of Christian-based schools over sending military out into the field to exterminate communities outright because it was deemed less costly, that is, it was not a moral decision but rather one based upon cost-effectiveness. The model of education for African Americans after the Civil War, designed to transform enslaved Africans into law-abiding low-level wage earners is a history many critically class-conscious educators are also well aware of (Malott, 2008, 2010). What is more, education workers who are intimately aware of their class position within capitalism understand with precise clarity that they are increasingly used as scapegoats to turn public education dollars over to forprofit management companies eager to cut costs (i.e., lowering teacher wages and/or increasing productivity—longer hours, same pay). Educators who know that high stakes standardized exams degrade the control they have over their own labor power damaging the possibility for critical, rigorous thought, are conscious of how their occupation is being increasingly implicated in serving the needs of capital and are, thus, class conscious. These class-conscious educators, quite simply, are aware that they are part of the working class, which is why they depend on a wage to survive, that is, because they do not own the means of production and the private property it represents. Critical educators are also conscious of the fact that in North America the resource-rich land that has fuelled industrial capitalism and enriched not only industrialists, but investment bankers and profiteers in general, for the past three hundred years, was acquired through brutal militarization, violent conquest, and the vast tradition of deception and cultural genocide previously mentioned—a process Marx (1867/1967) referred to as primitive accumulation. Self-aware of how educators are implicated in this process, Marxist teachers realize that this forceful acquisition of resources is more than just an early stage of industrial capitalism, but that it is an on-going requirement of capital since human labor power alone is not enough to fuel the ever-expanding model of capitalist accumulation. Because the process of value production is the process that enriches capital and exploits labor in an ever-deepening downward spiral of crisis as the laws of capital drives capitalists toward perpetual expansion leading to schemes to drive down the cost of production by neo-liberalizing trade laws enabling capitalists to globally drive down wages, reduce environmental regulations, and privatize the commons, the inevitable resistance against capital by labor is an ever-expanding problem and concern for capitalists. It, therefore, follows that capital requires a system of social control and reproduction to ensure the on-going existence of the most important commodity needed for

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both primitive and wealth accumulation, that is, willing labor to be purchased for both war and commodity/service production. Teachers are, therefore, needed as part of the process of indoctrinating students with the fundamentalist worldview that claims capitalism is inevitable and the backbone that makes democracy and civil rights possible. I use the notion of fundamentalism here in the sense of blindly and uncritically accepting universal truths because there is plenty of evidence that more than suggests capital is anything but inevitable. Educators with class-consciousness understand that their own consent in reproducing labor, ultimately, prevents their own liberation (along with the rest of labor) (Allman, McLaren, & Rikowski, 2005). Where Marx laid the material foundation for a concrete understanding of consciousness, Lenin, on the other hand, situates the notion of consciousness in terms of developing a “political agenda necessary for revolution” (Carpenter & Mojab, 2011, p. 127). Underscoring this line of reasoning Carpenter and Mojab elaborate, . . . To be “conscious” is to have the kind of consciousness that relates to revolutionary practice. Lenin is moving into the theorization of how to organize thinking and ideas in a revolutionary manner based on the dialectical theorization of Marx. (Carpenter & Mojab, 2011, p. 127)

From this point of view, it is clear that the state of being conscious, for educators and labor in general, refers to a critical, class-consciousness conducive to revolutionary transformation. However, for Lenin, the conscious struggle toward revolutionary social democracy or socialism is not likely to emerge within the working-class’ spontaneous uprisings and rebellions without outside intervention. Lenin (1902/1975) argues that the experience of being exploited as a wageworker or a peasant by itself is not enough to stimulate a critical awareness of class and its historical development and transformation. Because of the ruling class’ use of ideological indoctrination as a form of social control, and because the ruling-class’ ideology or worldview is far older and more completely developed and entrenched than socialist ideology, the labor movement, when operating independently, has tended toward the reformist tradition of trade unionism, negatively referred to by Lenin (1902/1975) as economism. At the same time, Lenin acknowledges that it is not only labor who is systematically miss-educated. That is, “the entire younger generation of the educated classes has been systematically reared for decades on . . . [the] turn towards bourgeois criticism of all the fundamental ideas of Marxism” (Lenin, 1902/1975, p. 13). Because, socialist ideology has been developed by intellectuals the revolutionary leaders, or the vanguard (those at the front of the class struggle), are most likely to come from internal resistance

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within the propertied class, according to Lenin (1902/1975). Lenin comes to this conclusion because he is convinced that there are only two ideologies, bourgeois and socialist, therefore rendering the possibility of a “middle course” impossible because “mankind has not created a ‘third’ ideology” (Lenin, pp. 28–29). Consequently, “to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology” (Lenin, p. 29). Lenin discounts the history and legacy of anarchist theory and practice here, thereby setting himself up for critique. By arguing that there are only two ideologies Lenin also affirms the Western idea that the world’s indigenous people’s are in fact primitive, backgrounds, underdeveloped, and thus, constitute no non-Western ideologies of their own. This critique aside, assuming there is any legitimacy to the conclusion that socialist leaders will most likely emerge from intellectuals, since the post-WWII years in the United States, when capital needed a more highly educated and trained working-class to manage and expand the industrial machine, significant numbers of labor entered universities. Consequently, thousands upon thousands of workers came into contact with the philosophical traditions of academia. Because higher education has always been designed to serve the interests and needs of capital, much of this new middle-class became “loyal buffers against trouble” (Zinn, 2003). However, a sizable segment of this new intelligensia, coming from the working class rather than from the propertied class, have played a central role in developing Marxist theory through the shifting nature of capital. To say that, “there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses” (Lenin, 1902/1975, p. 28) is even less true today than it was in 1901. At the same time, to say that those who rely on a wage to survive are not likely to develop a socialist consciousness on their own, the position of Lenin, should not be interpreted as a disdain for labor, which has been a common reason to reject both Lenin and Marx. The very existence of critical pedagogy and critical theory more generally, from critical race theory to postmodernism, is testament to the need for externally introducing critical analysis and class-consciousness to workers (from teachers, professors, to store clerks). However, Lenin, drawing on Marx, rejects eclecticism (i.e., drawing on many theories) because that could only mean moving away from socialist and toward bourgeois ideology. Embracing Joe L. Kincheloe’s postformalism, as I have done above and elsewhere (Malott, 2011a), must contribute to socialism and never endorse the reformist drive of bourgeois ideology. Another common critique of Lenin is that his pedagogy is authoritarian and thus anti-democratic. However, in “The Tasks of the Youth League” Lenin (1920/1975) argues against the mindless banking model of capitalist schooling making the case for socialist theory to always be represented

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in revolutionary practice. While Lenin supports the revolutionary position that “the old schools” should be done away with, he warns that they do contain some knowledge useful to the building of socialist society, such as the knowledge of agriculture, engineering, etc. Unlike the old schools, however, Lenin argues that these doctrines should be assimilated critically. Summarizing his position and vision of a socialist education Lenin notes: . . . We must realize that we must replace the old system of instruction, the old cramming and the old drill, with an ability to acquire the sum total of human knowledge, and to acquire it in such a way that communism shall not be something to be learned by rote, but something that you yourselves have thought over, something that will embody conclusions inevitable from the standpoint of present-day education. (Lenin, 1920/1975, p. 666)

Lending legitimacy to this work and legacy of Lenin, in a groundbreaking essay demonstrating how Vygotsky’s socially situated interpretive framework is based on Lenin’s Marxist conceptualization of the development of class consciousness Wayne Au (2007), in this instance, extends the arguments for Marxism in the twenty-first century. Lenin’s interest in a Russian revolution drew him to an analysis of the process of how the working class becomes conscious of their position within capitalism reflecting on the St. Petersburg strikes of 1896 as an example of what he called spontaneity. These studies led Lenin to an acknowledgement of how spontaneous consciousness and thought can be encouraged and developed into deliberate, revolutionary consciousness. Lenin described these examples of spontaneous consciousness, where labor, in acts of frustration and revenge, rose up in riots and destroyed the machinery of production. Theorizing this phenomenon Lenin described it as an emergent class consciousness. The more planned out and organized actions of the working class against capitalists, such as strikes, Lenin described as “the class struggle in embryo” (Lenin quoted in Au, 2007, p. 276). Similarly, Vygotsky theorized the dialectical relationship between “everyday” concepts (i.e., Lenin’s spontaneous) and “scientific” concepts (i.e., Lenin’s conscious) where the complex interchange between the two, with the assistance of an intervening educator (or revolutionary), could result in purposeful growth and development (Au, 2007, 2009). Evoking Vygotsky’s famous methodological construct, the zone of proximal development (ZPD), Au (2007) argues that Lenin’s theorization of these two types of consciousness was intended to identify and limit the distance between spontaneous revolt and purposeful revolutionary struggle against the commodification of human labor power and the creation of abstract labor. Au (2007) stresses the significance of Vygotsky’s concept of conscious awareness as informing his whole framework including the ZPD. Where Lenin was interested in the working class achieving an understanding of

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the whole system in order to transform it, Vygotsky stressed the importance of one being conscious of one’s consciousness situated in a larger social context. Following Vygotsky and Lenin’s Marxism here the heart of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy is the process of becoming conscious of one’s own consciousness as one of the first and on-going processes of developing a class consciousness and becoming an active participant in revolutionary movement building (Malott, 2011a). Freire’s (2005) reliance on Vygotsky is brought to light in Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach where he comments that, “it is undeniably important to read the works of . . . Vygotsky” because he understands “the relationship between reading and writing” as “processes that cannot be separated” and should thus be “organized” by educators “in such a way as to create the perception that they are needed for something” (Freire, 2005, pp. 43–45) because knowledge is not separate from the social worlds in which it emerges. That something Freire refers to, of course, is class-consciousness. That is, reading and writing are important for developing a critical lens and uncovering the ways we are shaped by capitalist schooling as a place of departure for getting to more purposeful, organized, planned out, tactical revolutionary struggle against what Freire calls domestication or indoctrination where workers see their own interests as one in the same with capitalists leading labor to support their own on-going exploitation and commodification as abstract labor. Weber and Teacher Education While Marx’s focus on class-consciousness has had a lasting impact on revolutionary education into the twenty-first century, as alluded to above, Marxism’s transformative potential has been stunted by the dominance of a Weberian conception of class and the outright ridicule and belittling of Marxist work in general. These trends have been especially severe at the center of contemporary imperialist power—in the United States in particular (Cole, 2011; Hill, McLaren, Cole, & Rikowski, 2002; Kelsh & Hill, 2006; Malott, 2011b; McLaren & Jaramillo, 2010). The most deleterious aspects of the use of Max Weber’s sociological conception of class can be summarized as follows: • In their previously mentioned essay, “The Culturalization of Class and the Occluding of Class Consciousness: The Knowledge Industry in/of Education,” Deb Kelsh and Dave Hill (2006) offer an enlightening comparison between Marx and Weber. They begin their investigation noting that for both writers “class determination involves property” (p. 5). However, Marx’s conception of how property

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•

• • •

•

•

determines class position is based on the realization that those who do not own property or the means of production are forced out of necessity to sell their labor for a wage while those who do own property live off the profit or surplus value extracted or exploited from labor. Weber, on the other hand, does not connect his theory of property to capital, but to consumption patterns and culture (Kelsh & Hill, 2006). We might therefore say that unlike Marx’s theory of class Weber’s is not relational. That is, Weber does not situate class in the context of one’s relation to private property. Making this point Kelsh and Hill (2006) conclude that “Weberian-based formulations of class serve the interests of the capitalist class . . . insofar as they erase both the proletariat and the capitalist classes as antagonistic entities unified in the contradictory and exploitative social (property) relations of capitalist production” (Kelsh & Hill, 2006, p. 6). Again, because Weber’s theory is not relational, it conceals the antagonistic relationship between the working class and capitalists. Weberian conceptions of social class, therefore, present class as a series of disconnected categories determined by one’s skills, market appeal, and institutional privilege. Failing to grasp the root of inequality under capitalism, Weberian approaches only appear radical because they mention class and transforming capital. However, transforming is not overthrowing. Consequently, because this model is reformist and not revolutionary, some have argued that it, by default, supports capitalism by creating an opportunity to become more multicultural and equal in its’ exploitation (Kelsh & Hill, 2006; McLaren & Jaramillo, 2010). Social class, for Weber, is therefore not a tool to explain one’s relationship to capital, but rather a way to classify and manage different classes whose life chances are determined by market situation (Kelsh & Hill, 2006, p. 7). The significance here resides in the fact that Weber’s theory of class leads to pseudo radicalism and confusion about what the problem is and what needs to be done to end class oppression and exploitation. Weber’s theory can only ever lead to reform when it is revolution that is needed.

Following these insights it seems reasonable to argue that the major limitation of multicultural foci on White privilege and consumption patterns resides within the fact that they are informed by a Weberian conception of social class thereby treating capitalism as something to equalize access to rather than something to overcome. As a result, teacher education students tend not to be challenged to situate White privilege in a larger historical con-

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text that demonstrates that even the most privileged “middle-class” ranks of labor would be far better off, psychologically, emotionally, cognitively, and even economically (especially considering the rapid deterioration of this exalted sub-set of the working class), in a democratic socialist life after capital. In solidifying this analysis it is necessary to restate the fact that one’s class position is not determined by the type of work one does, but rather by one’s relationship to capital—if you must sell your labor for a wage to survive, you are not a capitalist, you are part of the working class, even if you have White privilege and middle-class consumer culture. The system of institutionalized White privilege was created to maintain the system of class exploitation by convincing poor Europeans that their interests were the same as the capitalists rather than with workers whose identities fell outside the conceptual boundaries of whiteness. It has worked extraordinarily well. However, while the human mind can be conditioned, it is never predetermined or fixed, leading to a complex series of fractures and counter-hegemonies rendering the hegemonic project a never-ending process. Critically class-conscious educators are conscious that middle-class privilege and middle-class consumer culture are elaborate schemes designed to ensure the continued support for capitalism by a significant proportion of the working-class. A Weberian conception of social class with its overemphasis on disconnected categories represents a significant barrier to class-consciousness. Teacher Education and a Revolutionary Class Consciousness What Marx’s historical analysis of social development is particularly good at, as demonstrated by the likes of Peter McLaren, is the shallowness of socially acceptable notions of social justice in places such as the center of the global capitalist empire, the United States of America. That is, while it is safe to mildly speak of social justice, it tends not to be deemed as harmless when the discussion ventures into notions of economic justice. Teachers are, therefore, not permitted by democratic institutions to question the economic system in which they live and work (McLaren & Jaramillo, 2007). Therefore, it is not surprising that Weber’s conception of social class dominates teacher education, leading, as argued above, to a widespread lack of class-consciousness in classroom teachers, teacher educators, and teacher education students. Despite the lack of support from democratic institutions, Marxist educators, such as Peter McLaren, Deb Kelsh, Dave Hill, Glenn Rikowski, Ramin Farahmandpur, Antonia Darder, Gregory Martin, Rich Gibson, Faith Agostinone-Wilson, Shahrzad Mojab, the contributors of this volume, and

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others, have named the destination for humanity in the twenty-first century democratic socialism for a post-capitalist society. Mike Cole, for example, has noted that while this goal may seem prescriptive, and while there is opportunity for “making concrete suggestions for practice in educational institutions that might move the project forward,” “Marxists do not have a blueprint for the future” (Cole, pp. 41–44). For these educators decolonizing education means, paraphrasing McLaren (2005), refusing to ensure the supremacy of international financial capital; troubling the investment and market prerogatives of transnational corporations; and putting corporations under the popular control of the people. Revolutionary education here is informed by a deep understanding that education is always political. It is of the utmost importance that students be provided the experiences where they can truly imagine a life outside the laws of capital and the social reproduction of abstract labor; where students can debate the shortcomings of past revolutions and tactics; and where educators and students can discuss and experiment with the notion of capacity building where the quest is for social institutions, human relationships and other arrangements that are best suited for human growth and development enabling us to reach our full potential (McLaren & Jaramillo, 2007). Because of the alienating nature of capitalism that suppresses human creativity and capacity leading to psychological health issues and other disorders, a new life-affirming system is needed which way very well be a sort of democratic, post-capitalist socialism. Challenging students to consider a Marxist-informed analysis of labor situated in an historical and contemporary global context is one of the first steps in engaging them in the process of becoming class conscious and therefore a future anti-capitalist educator, as a matter of self-preservation and not as a paternalistic gesture (thereby avoiding the pitfalls of Weberian examples of reformist social justice service work). Because there are only two ways in which one can be situated in relation to capital—as its creator or its accumulator—there are only two classes in capitalist society. The middle-class is a rouse. Again, a class-conscious educator understands that it is the false sense of security and belonging and the consumer privileges that have historically accompanied it that have seduced the working class into striving to achieve access to its ranks. Marxist educators have dedicated a tremendous amount of time and energy over the past twenty years combating the Weberian plague sapping the revolutionary potential from the educational left leaving progressive educators unable to locate their own position within capitalism. Through two of his most recent books Mike Cole (2009, 2011) has made tremendous strides in challenging not only the Weberian mistakes mentioned above, but challenging the false separation of race from class and the retreat from class that has dominated the advent of critical race theory (CRT).

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Cole’s work here has been far more constructive than simply dismissing CRT. Rather, Cole rigorously highlights the many valuable contributions of CRT while challenging its weaknesses regarding Marxist analysis. In the process, Cole presents a thoroughly global analysis of capitalism and the hegemonic role that race has traditionally played. Consequently, Cole’s socialist alternative is grounded on a vision of a post-capitalist, anti-racist, democratic, socialism. Making the case for the possibility of socialism has required Marxists to challenge the idea that capitalism is inevitable. It is therefore not surprising that Cole and many other Marxist educators have been outspoken proponents of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and somewhat socialist Cuba because their very existence of their headway toward democratic socialism provides strong evidence against the inevitability of capitalism thesis (Cole, 2011). While the work of Cole and others reminds us of what is possible by pointing to that which exists, the work of Freud helps labor understand why we suffer so frequently from psychological ailments reminding the most privileged workers immersed in middle-class consumer culture that life after capital is a destination not just for the most oppressed or excluded. Again, these insights have been and continue to be of major importance and value to critical pedagogy. Writing and conducting research in the midst of the Great Depression of 1929, and, therefore, witnessing, even if he never fully named it as such, the psychological damage of an alienating capitalist system that views the individual, and ultimately the student, as passive receiver of commands and direction, and, thus, expected to repress fundamental human drives of creativity directly connected to the production and creation of life through the natural employment of one’s own human labor power. Freud calls his work here, “the theory of repression” (Freud, 1938/1995, p. 907). Consequently, we might say that repression, in the Freudian sense, is the idea that in a capitalist society, which, by definition, demands obedience in work and other relationships, certain natural human drives and desires, such as the creative and free use of language and labor, are subjugated, rendering the individual alienated from self, other, the natural world, and their own labor. As a result, the sources of labor’s repression remain buried in the subconscious because the individual is “trying to repress” something to which they “object” (Freud, 1938/1995, p. 190). That is, the realization that to be driven, out of necessity, to sell one’s labor power for a wage far less than the value it produces, renders one exploited and dehumanized— externally commanded and therefore creatively repressed. Therefore, the repressed worker represses this realization and resists any external attempt to bring it to the surface, that is, confronting ones’ material conditions. Leaving the repressed wage earner a psychological way out of mental, and ultimately material, enslavement, Freud acknowledges that within the re-

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pressed individual the “psychic mechanism” that allows “suppressed wishes to force their way to realization,” despite indoctrination and oppression, “is retained in being and in working order” (Freud, 1938/1995, p. 256). For Giroux (2009), “Freud’s metapsychology provided an important theoretical foundation for revealing the interplay between the individual and society,” and therefore, “the antagonistic character of social reality” (p. 41). The significance of Freud here, argues Giroux, is that he reveals the processes through which “society reproduced its power in and over the individual” (p. 41). Giroux outlines how these insights informed members of Germany’s critical Frankfurt School, such as Marcuse and Adorno, around WWII and after, to help them understand how both capitalist and socialist societies operated according to authoritarian principles of governance and enforcement. Frankfurt School scholars argued, in their more liberatory moments, that only through a detailed understanding of how power is reproduced psychologically that it could be subverted and transformed. Herbert Marcuse, for example, in One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, observes that, “Freud’s fundamental insight that the patient’s trouble is rooted in a general sickness which cannot be cured by analytic analysis” and therefore suggesting that “the patient’s disease is a protest reaction against the sick world in which he lives” was a groundbreaking insight paving the way for more contextualized understandings of mental illness (Marcuse, 1964, p. 183). Again, Freud argued that whenever human desires and drives are suppressed or subjugated, such as the creative use of language and labor, people suffer, become psychologically and physically ill, and develop disorders. This holds true for segments of the working-class that are the most privileged and, therefore, part of middle-class consumer culture as well as the most exploited and oppressed parts of labor. As the middle-class shrinks, especially the White middle class, and as they increasingly fall victim to the housing market crash that African American and Latino families have been subjected to for far longer, the sense of stability and security of middle-class families suffers leading to stress, obesity, and a plethora of ailments. Even in times of relative prosperity, the life satisfaction of the middle-class tends not to be significantly higher than workers who are not able to sell their labor power for as a high a wage. Lending support to this conclusion recent studies have found that the correlation between income and happiness is primarily an unfounded myth (Pressman, 2010). The call for a democratic socialist future is, therefore, not only a call for a relatively high, constant standard of living globally, but it is a call for the sense of security and peace of mind that comes with knowing ones’ voice actually has equal weight in all the important decisions concerning economics and politics that are currently monopolized by a hand full of multinational corporate entities/corporations/capitalist governments.

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* * * While there is widespread consensus among much of the radical left (a small subset within an already marginal left) that capitalism is a deeply flawed and inherently unequal and pathologizing system that must be abolished, there is little agreement about how this might happen. One of the age-old centers of debate, traced back most famously to Marx and his anarchist rival, Mikhail Bakunin, is the role of the state in a post-capitalist revolutionary society. Marxists argue that in the transition from capitalism to socialism, the working class must not only take control of the means of production and the schools, but the nation or government as well. The idea is to use the capitalist state to destroy itself as well as to transition out of a market economy. Anarchists, on the other hand, argue that government itself is an inherently repressive apparatus or tool, and any attempt to take control of it will inevitably lead to the reproduction of some form of oppression. Predictably enough, it is most commonly Stalinism, that inescapable stain that has irrevocably attached itself to the history of Marxism, that anarchist scholarship has focused on as a reason to reject the idea of the possible role of the state in creating real, paradigm-shifting change. That is, executing and sentencing peasants to labor prison camps in the name of progress for the Communist Party and educating its citizenry to uncritically support the state and to even sacrifice their lives for it, have led to great skepticism among the world’s post-WWII left in seizing control of the state and even the means of production as outdated forms of revolutionary practice or pedagogy. Similarly, pro-capitalist forces draw on the 1989 fall of Soviet Communism as evidence against the relevancy of Marx’s work. However, offering a more complex understanding of the failure of the Russian Revolution (as well as Mao’s China) in Why Marx was Right, Terry Eagleton (2011) begins by reminding his pro-capitalist readers that capitalism “was forged in blood and tears” (p. 12) just as deeply, and perhaps more so, as Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s Communist China. In other words, while capitalism has worked “some of the time” it has done so, like Stalin and Mao’s projects, “at a staggering human cost” (p. 15). Consequently, capitalism has “proved incapable of breeding affluence without creating huge swaths of deprivation alongside it” (Eagleton, 2011, p. 15). Since the second industrial revolution, global capitalism, outlined above, has, therefore, created a world of elite wealth and widespread poverty. Explaining the global structural reasons behind the failure of the Soviet Union Eagleton notes that “Marx himself never imagined that socialism could be achieved in impoverished conditions” (Eagleton, 2011, p. 16). Not only Marx but Lenin and Trotsky, according to Eagleton were quite aware that:

134   C. S. MALOTT You cannot reorganize wealth for the benefit of all if there is precious little wealth to reorganize . . . You cannot abolish social classes in conditions of scarcity, since conflicts over a material surplus too meager to meet everyone’s needs will revive them again . . . All you will get is socialized scarcity. If you need to accumulate capital . . . from scratch, then the most effective way of doing so, however brutal, is through the profit motive. Nor did Marxists ever imagine that it was possible to achieve socialism in one country alone. The movement was international or it was nothing. This was a hardheaded materialist claim, not a piously idealist one. If a socialist nation failed to win international support in a world where production was specialized and divided among different nations, it would be unable to draw upon the global resources needed to abolish scarcity . . . The outlandish notion of socialism in one country was invented by Stalin in the 1920s, partly as a cynical rationalization of the fact that other nations had been unable to come to the aid of the Soviet Union. It has no warrant in Marx himself. (Eagleton, 2011, pp. 16–17)

Eagleton goes on to point out that global isolation and the resulting poverty are not the only barriers to socialism. That is, he argues that for socialism to emerge what is required is a highly educated and “politically sophisticated” citizenry with “enlightened liberal traditions and the habit of democracy” (p. 18). Given the fact that much of the world, to one extent or another, has been under colonial rule for the past 500 years (since Columbus washed up on the shores of what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 1492), and, therefore, indoctrinated through capitalist schooling, religion, and/or authoritarian regimes with uncritical dogmatic thinking, the possibility and likelihood for a global socialism seems, to an extent, dependent upon the current effectiveness of critical pedagogy challenging the capitalist present. Consequently, this debate is no longer purely theoretical but now has a complex history of failed states to inform it. British Marxist Alex Callinicos (2010) in Bonfire of Illusions summarizes this debate brilliantly. Making a case for the use of government in working-class, anti-capitalist revolution Callinicos argues that the state, since at least the 1930s (the Great Depression of 1929) has played an increasing role in intervening in the economy, both on behalf of capital, and when labor can demand it, on behalf of workers, or the vast majority. Callinicos then looks to the global South, as it were—that part of the world generally agreed upon by today’s left that has been the center of the global anti-capitalist movement since at least the 1990s, and possibly since the end of WWII (Chomsky, 1999)—as especially conscious of the expanding complexity of the global capitalist system and the subsequent necessity of an increasing role of state intervention. However, while this movement has been significant and has led to the nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry in places such as Bolivia under Evo Morales due to his connection to the real demands of the orga-

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nized, indigenous population that put him in office, Callinicos argues that it has, nevertheless, “often seemed reluctant to see an expansion in the state’s economic power” (Callinicos, 2010, p. 135). Placing this tendency in context, Callinicos’ insights are instructive: “Behind the suspicion of nationalization lies the memory of the bureaucratic state ownership introduced by Stalinism in the East and social democracy in the West” (Callinicos, 2010, p. 135). However, Callinicos argues that more recently it has been the theory of “autonomism” that has posed the biggest challenge to nationalization because it is based on the belief that “we should forget about the state and try to develop localized alternatives to neoliberalism” (p. 135). While it seems reasonable that some degree of government intervention will likely be necessary in the transition out of capitalism, without the simultaneous anarchist or indigenous community building embodied in autonomism, indigeneity, and critical pedagogy more generally, then a truly democratic socialist life after capital will not likely emerge. Consequently, I would agree with Callinicos that by itself autonomism is “hopeless” because it is not able to provide a solution to reversing “the privatization of hydrocarbons,” for example, which, in Bolivia, was the will of the people. However, I would also argue that nationalization, too, is hopeless without sufficient autonomous movement work and community building to counter the ways our identities have been shaped by capital. For Callinicos, what this debate does is focuses on the question of who will own particular industries when the people liberate them from corporate control? Callinicos comes to the conclusion here that there is no alternative to nationalization because “the state is a national organization with both the coercive power and political legitimacy to carry through with something as ambitious as the takeover of the hydrocarbon industry” (Callinicos, 2010, p. 135). If this is true, then in the nationalization process, we must never lose cite of our Anarchist Pedagogies (Haworth, 2012). Proceeding cautiously, however, Callinicos does warn against not repeating “the old mistake of traditional social democracy and identifying the existing state as the main agency of progressive social change” (p. 136) because the bureaucratic, hierarchical state will “seek to maintain the domination of capital” even after nationalization. Consequently, “nationalization is not enough” (Callinicos, 2010, p. 136). Offering a framework for a revolutionary pedagogy Callinicos explains: Indeed, really to break with the logic of capital, any extension of the boundaries of state ownership would have to involve the introduction of forms of democratic self-management through which the workers of the nationalized industry together with the consumers of the products could collectively decide on how it should be run for the common benefit. Seriously addressing this question means breaking another taboo and talking, not just about state ownership, but also about planning. (Callinicos, 2010, pp. 136–137)

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From here, Callinicos briefly outlines some of the work being done that attempts to theorize what a possible global life after capital could actually look like in practice and, therefore, addressing the issue of planning. For example, Michael Albert’s anarchist work on what he has called Participatory Economics or Parecon is outlined. Callinicos argues that while Albert’s work is part of a very important discussion about planning or a planned economy, his proposal still represents a market approach and will, nevertheless, eventually fall victim to the same kind of austerity measures any competitive capitalist system will always tend toward. What a post-capitalist society will look like, of course, depends on the values and assumptions about human nature and what kind of relationships are desirable that inform it. This, in turn, will depend on how strong or weak the democratic impulse is or is not. A truly post-capitalist society will, therefore, depend on maximal participation. Therefore, critical pedagogy still has lots of important work to do assisting people in becoming conscious of their own consciousness that has been shaped by the social institutions of capitalist society, from schools to the mass corporate media. If nothing else, what I hope to be clear from this complexity and the enormity of the task at hand—transcending a market economy and state— is that the challenges posed by creating a socialist alternative demand that the global left embrace all our critical tools from anarchists, feminists, critical race theorists, critical postmodernists, animal rights activists, Earth First! Eco-pedagogues, critical indigenous sovereign-ists, orthodox Marxists, neoMarxists, humanist Marxists, and others. This is no easy task since many of our approaches are theoretically at odds with each other. For example, the call for the democratization of culture and reforming capitalism is, theoretically, at odds with challenging capitalist property relations as argued throughout this chapter. How we might come together despite our many ideological differences is no easy task, especially for those of us who are academics with our academic egos and senses of self-importance and righteousness. It is within this context that the importance of self-reflection and the need to become conscious of our consciousness and the ways in which we are shaped by schooling becomes apparent. Notes 1. This essay was first published in Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory & Practice,

2013, pp. 1–34.

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References Agostinone-Wilson, F. (2010). Marxism and education beyond identity: Sexuality and schooling. New York, NY: Palgrave. Allman, P., McLaren, P., & Rikowski, G. (2005). After the box people: The labor-capital relation as class constitution and its consequences for Marxist educational theory and human resistance. In P. McLaren (Ed.) Capitalists and conquerors: A critical pedagogy against empire. (pp. 135–165), New York: Roman & Littlefield. Au, W. (2007). Vygotsky and Lenin on learning: The parallel structures of individual and social development. Science & Society, 71(3), 273–298. Au, W. (2009). Unequal by design: High-stakes testing and the standardization of inequality. New York: Routledge. Callinicos, A. (2010). Bonfire of illusions: The twin crises of the liberal world. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity. Callinicos, A. (2011). The revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx. Chicago, IL: Haymarket. Carpenter, S., & Mojab, S. (2011). Adult education and the “matter” of consciousness in Marxist feminism. In P. Jones (Ed)., Marxism and education: Renewing the dialogue, pedagogy, and culture (pp. 117–140). New York: Palgrave. Chomsky, N. (1999). Profit over people: Neoliberalism & global order. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press. Cole, M. (2009). Critical race theory and education: A Marxist response. New York: Palgrave. Cole, M. (2011). Racism and education in the U.K. and the U.S.: Towards a socialist alternative. New York: Palgrave. Darder, A. (2011). A dissident voice: Essays on culture, pedagogy, and power. New York: Peter Lang. Foner, E. (2009). Give me liberty! An American history. From 1865 (Vol. 2, 2nd ed.). New York: Norton. Freire, P. (2005). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. Boulder, CO: Westview. Freud, S. (1938/1995). The basic writings of Sigmund Freud. (A. A. Brill, Trans., Ed.), New York: The Modern Library. Giroux, H. (2009). Critical theory and educational practice. In A. Darder, M. Baltodano, & R. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (2nd ed.), New York: Routledge. Grande, S. (2004). Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought. New York: Roman & Littlefield. Haque, U. (2011). Was Marx right? Harvard Business Review. 9/7/2011. http:// blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/09/was_marx_right.html Haworth, R. (2012). Anarchist pedagogies: Collective actions, theories, and reflections on education. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Hegel, G. W. F. (1993). Science of logic. Translated by A.V. Miller. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Paperback Library. Hill, D., McLaren, P., Cole, M., & Rikowski, G. (2002). Marxism against postmodernism in educational theory. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Hudis, P. (2005). “Marx’s Critical Appropriation and Transcendence of Hegel’s Theory of Alienation.” Presented at Brecht Forum, New York City.

138   C. S. MALOTT Kelsh, D., & Hill, D. (2006). The culturalization of class and the occluding of class consciousness: The knowledge industry in/of education. Journal for Crutucal Education Policy Studies. 4(1). http://www.jceps.com/?pageID=article&articleID=59 Klobby, (1999). Inequality, power, and development: The task of political sociology. New York: Humanity Books. Lenin, V. I. (1902/1975). What is to be done: Burning questions of our movement. In R. C. Tucker (Ed.). The Lenin anthology. New York: Norton. Lenin, V. I. (1920/1975). The tasks of the youth leagues. In R. C. Tucker (Ed.), The Lenin anthology. New York: Norton. Malott, C. (2008). A call to action: An introduction to education, philosophy and native North America. New York: Peter Lang. Malott, C. (2010). Policy and research in education: A critical pedagogy for educational leadership. New York: Peter Lang. Malott, C. (2011a). Critical pedagogy and cognition: An introduction to a postformal educational psychology. New York: Springer. Malott, C. (2011b). Pseudo-Marxism and the reformist retreat from revolution: A critical essay review of Marx and Education. The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies. 9(1). http://www.jceps.com/?pageID=article&articleID=206 Marcuse, H. (1964). One-dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Boston: Beacon Press. McLaren, P. (2005). Capitalists and conquerors: A critical pedagogy against empire. New York: Roman & Littlefield. McLaren, P., & Jaramillo, N. (2007). Pedagogy and praxis in the age of empire: Towards a new humanism. New York: Sense. McLaren, P., & Jaramillo, N. (2010). Not neo-Marxist, not post-Marxist, not Marxian, not autonomous Marxism: Reflections on a revolutionary (Marxist) critical pedagogy. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 10(3), 251–262. Marx, K. (1843/1978). Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s, “Philosophy of Right”. In R. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels reader (2nd ed.) New York: W.W. Norton. Marx, K. (1844/1978). Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s, “Philosophy of right: Introduction. In R. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx–Engels Reader (2nd ed.) New York: W.W. Norton. Marx, K. (1867/1967). Capital: A critique of political economy: The process of capitalist production (Vol. 1). New York: International Publishers. Marx, K. (1988). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1848/1972). The manifesto of the communist party. In R. C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed., pp. 469–500. New York: Norton. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1932/1996). The German ideology. New York: International Publishers. New Mexico State University. (accessed January, 12 2012). NMSU Position on animals in research and emergency preparedness plan. http://www.nmsu.edu/. Pressman, S. (2007). The decline of the middle class: An international perspective. Journal of Economic Issues, XLI(1), 181–200. Pressman, S. (2010). Notes and communications: The middle class throughout the world in the mid-2000s. Journal of Economic Issues, XLI(1), 181–200.

Class Consciousness and Teacher Education     139 Robinson, W. I. (2005). What is a critical globalization studies? Intellectual labor and global society. In R. P. Appelbaum & W. I. Robinson (Eds.), Critical globalization studies. New York: Routledge. Robinson, W. I. (2008). Latin America and global capitalism: A critical globalization perspective. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Smith, P. (1984). The rise of industrial America: A people’s history of the post-reconstruction era. New York: Penguin. Urban, W., & Wagoner, J. (2009). American education: A history (4th ed.), New York: Routlege. Van Auken, B. (2011). U.S. senate backs military detention of U.S. citizens. International Committee of the Fourth International. http://wsws.org/articles/2011/ dec2011/pers-d03.shtml. Zinn, H. (2003). People’s history of the United States: 1492–Present. New York: Perennial Classics.

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Section II A Marxist Challenge to Capitalist Schooling

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Chapter 4

Marx, Teacher Education, and the Corporate University John M. Elmore

We can educate and liberate or we can mis-educate and oppress. However, true education must always lead to liberation. —P. Freire

If Freire’s statement is used to frame an analysis of the current state of education within the United States, one baleful truth clearly emerges; miseducation resulting in oppression defines the schooling experience of the vast majority of American youth. This is not a natural phenomena, it is a necessary circumstance dictated by advanced capitalism. Developing the criticality to recognize, and the agency to challenge, systems of political, cultural, and economic domination have always been pre-requisites to creating a society in which human freedom is fully realized, but such an agenda seems especially necessary in a society where the bottom 40% of the population (120 million people) owns just 0.3% of the wealth and the average net worth of the richest 1% has doubled (to $18.5 million) since 1982 (Domhoff, 2012). To teach for liberation is to teach students to see these inequities and, more importantly, to comprehend the social, political, and economic systems that generate them. Put directly, for education to exist as

Teaching Marx, pages 143–159 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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a critical pathway to liberation students must be provided with the opportunity to critique the anti-democratic hegemony that is produced by capitalism. Without this capacity, schools are surely to produce yet another generation of citizens that willfully march into the corporate slaughter house with nothing to defend themselves but the look of pleased ignorance upon their faces; mindless geese simply awaiting the plucking. Only when teachers are equipped and inspired to fully realize the transformative power of education, by engaging students in the realities of their own lives, can liberation truly take place. Given this circumstance, the constant effort by the Bourgeoisie to de-professionalize teachers, vocationalize the school curricula, and destroy public education through various neoliberal privitization schemes, should come as no surprise. Exposing future teachers to the work of Karl Marx has never been more critical. Marx believed that one of the primary purposes of education was to develop and exercise the practice of challenging assumptions so to fully comprehend the potential for self-determination; the capacity to not only understand his/her world, but to change it (Strike, 1989). This realization, Marx (1848/1967) argued, is especially critical for the teacher: The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men, and that it is essential to educate the educator himself . . . the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice. (p. 14)

Marx also argued that by such constant critique and engagement, the seeds of injustice and tyranny would be sought out and destroyed and the proletariat could “seek to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class” (Marx & Engels, 1848/1967, p. 71). In a democratic society, it is far more important that students learn to identify and challenge conditions that oppress them than it is to learn how to accommodate themselves to those conditions. Therefore, a true democratic education must enlighten students to these critical ways of thinking, and foster within them the confidence to seek out the tools to build a more just society. As Peter McLaren (2006) questioned: Do we want to accommodate students to the existing social order by making them merely functional within it, or do we want to make students uncomfortable in a society that exploits workers, that demonizes people of color, that privileges the rich, that commits acts of imperialistic aggression against other countries, that colonizes the spirit and wrings the national soul clean of a collective social conscience? Or, do we want to create spaces of freedom in our classrooms and invite students to become agents of transformation and hope? (p. 131)

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To offer an education that coerces citizens into accommodating themselves to a society that marginalizes or ignores their voices is not preparation for democratic citizenry, it is preparation for submission. Such mental despotism promotes apathy, hopelessness, and a worldview in which progress is no longer necessary because we have achieved all that can be achieved. This domineering methodology is the result of an authoritarian philosophy of education in which success is defined in terms of the students’ ability to accommodate to, rather than reconstruct, the world in which they live. The result of such training virtually assures that education in the United States acts as a tool of social reproduction rather than the “great equalizer” that Horace Mann envisioned it to be. Most recently, the monologue of standardized, authoritarian education practices have left students voiceless, hopeless, and being taught to value a version of the “good life” they did not have any part in defining (Guttman, 1999). True liberatory education is only possible when educators are allowed the opportunity, and gain the tools, to transform their classrooms into laboratories of social justice (Giroux, 1988). In spite of this, with every low testscore a school produces the authoritarian constraints are tightened and educators are further de-professionalized. The frequent use of the term “teacher-proof curricula” in describing state mandated standardized education leaves little doubt about the respect afforded teachers in U.S. education today. The public attitude that this type of proclamation creates and the rigid control that follow, virtually guarantee that the practice of what John Dewey called “reflective teaching” cannot take place. Educating the Transformative Educator The transformative educator celebrates the true revolutionary character of education; one whose mission is firmly grounded in the words of Paulo Freire (1973): Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. (p. 21)

For the transformative educator, much of this liberation stems from the promotion of ‘visionary pragmatism’ within future citizens. It is visionary pragmatism, or the ability to envision a future world more equitable and just then the one in which we now exist, which is fundamental to transformative education. Visionary pragmatism becomes the fuel for fire, igniting hopes and dreams in students, encouraging them to become critical demo-

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cratic citizens, or what Giroux so aptly termed “agents of hope.” Among many distinctive tendencies that these agents of hope maintain, is the fact that they see the world as an unfinished work and teaching and learning as an endless opportunity to not only comprehend the world but reshape its reality. As Karl Marx (1846/1939) wrote “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it” (p. 13). In fact, this is precisely the point of transformative education; it is in effect, revolutionary Marxism made visible in the modern world. Pedagogically speaking, transformative education asks us to take a step back and examine what is truly important in the lives of our students. As Freire (1970) wrote, “we must begin teaching where our students actually are, not where we believe they should be” (p. 81). Such deep connections to our students allow us to make a judgment of what education should truly provide in order for lifelong, independent thinking to occur, while producing active and conscious democratic thinking students. In brief, what education is most liberating to this child, in this place, at this time? Maxine Green (1988) discussed the persuasions of becoming a transformative educator and the definition of the term itself: This is what we shall look for as we move: freedom developed by human beings who have acted to make a space for themselves in the presence of others, human beings become “challengers” ready for alternatives, alternatives that include caring and community. And we shall seek, as we go, implications for emancipatory education conducted by and for those willing to take responsibility for themselves and for each other. We want to discover how to open spaces for persons in the plurality, spaces where they can become different, where they can grow. (p. 181)

Green encouraged the reader to comprehend the most rudimentary ideals of transformative education, while giving an insight into the true meaning of what it means to radicalize. Green’s words embody the ideas and teachings of many critical theorists and philosophers in the field of education and make clear the primary goal of transformative education, which is to open the “crawl spaces” in people’s minds in order for independent and critical thinking to occur. Unfortunately, after, potentially years of authoritarian and jingoistic classrooms, students must often be unschooled, or deprogrammed, in order to accomplish such an emancipatory goal. However, once accomplished, this concept of freethinking allows transformative education to become a reality and a fundamental component of the openminded, critical, and democratic citizen. Such a transformation can be seen as even more critical within the minds of prospective educators. According to Henderson and Hawthorne (2000), educational visionaries recognize that “potential transformative curriculum leaders have a keen sense of the big picture” (p. 187). Such visionaries recognize and value the

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inter-connectedness of the world around them and, therefore, embrace the power of teaching and learning to change that world. As Freire stated in The Politics of Education, “In a critical vision things happen differently: A reader feels challenged by the entire text and the reader’s goal is to appropriate its deeper meaning” (Freire, 1985, p. 2). Freire argued that a critical eye towards the world in general allows people to become empowered to cause change; it allows people to find a truly deeper explanation to what is taking place. Marx (1846/1939) argued that such dialectical materialism: . . . includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and, therefore, takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary. (p. 36)

Having an outlook in regards to the big picture and having a critical eye persuades educators to transform and communicate the “big picture” to their students while simultaneously creating independent and critical thinking students. As many of our students are subjected to narrow minded thinking along with a biased generalization of the world from the likes of educators, textbook companies, and hidden political ideas, the “wheels” in their heads are bound for destruction. As a transformative educator you must practice what you preach in your visions and outlooks, while allowing your students to witness this idea first hand. This allows the student to visualize how the overall picture looks and feels while allowing them to compare the difference between narrow-minded thinking, open-minded thinking, and independent stimulation. Transformative educators “. . . openly encourage challenges, questioning, and critical examination in hopes of creating something better for both children and adults in schools” (Henderson & Hawthorne, 2000, p. 188). This explanation allows educators the ability to focus on issues in schools and allows the idea of freethinking and critical thought to gain a foothold in their students’ heads. This enhances the idea of allowing students to take ideas and apply them to everyday democratic living and thinking. Paula Allman (1999), in her book, Revolutionary Social Transformation Democratic Hopes, Political Possibilities and Critical Education, focuses in on the ideas of capitalist thinking which allow us to treat humans as a commodity: Human beings often are treated and treat one another as commodities, possessions, and further, as easily disposable ones once their use has been consumed. Our needs and desires are defined, and so we tend to define them in terms of commodities. When the pursuit of “things” becomes the goal of

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Insisting to students that free thinking is a skill that all humans possess, which allows us to make choices that affect our lives. These ideas can encourage students to see the ultimate dehumanizing effects of capitalism on the world in which we live, and educate. An obvious pre-requisite to the possibility of such transformative education is the development of teachers who carry with them into their respective classroom the mission of liberation. As Jack Nelson (2003) so aptly questioned, If teacher education itself restricts teacher and student freedom, how can the teachers produced be expected to support that freedom? If professional socialization into teaching includes conditioning of students to accept serious restrictions on academic freedom, education suffers. (p. 71)

True democratic teacher education challenges the status quo, and has as its goal the training of educators as transformative intellectuals and agents of hope. It is the transformative educator and, by extension, the transformative teacher educator, that holds the fundamental key to education as liberation. Within teacher preparation programs throughout the United States, the effects of the corporate-model of education are multiple, some obvious and some subtle, but no place, aside from the relentless efforts in regard to assessment, do we see the results more clearly than in the disenfranchisement of the foundations of education. Fostering the Transformative Teacher: The Foundations of Education Just as the name implies, the area of foundations within education has historically been seen as providing a critical underpinning upon which future teachers could be educated. According to The Council of Learned Societies in Education (CLSE) (1996), “The purpose of foundations study is to bring these [history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, religion, political science, economics, etc. etc.] disciplinary resources to bear in developing interpretive, normative, and critical perspectives on education, both inside and outside of schools.” This mission was traditionally pursued via a core of three or four courses, which made up the foundations program, typically consisting of philosophy, sociology, history, and often a course in current issues of education or, more recently, multiculturalism. The general belief was (and is) that teachers needed to first develop a philosophical perspec-

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tive on education; they needed to be able to think about education before they did education. These purposes can be seen in the stated hope of Kohn (2004) that “. . . the next generation of teachers emerges from the university secure in the belief that one can and must fight what is wrong, rather than being inclined to put their heads down and hope it will go away by its self” (p. 71). In short, the role of the foundations of education is to not merely train teachers to accommodate themselves to fit within the current system of education, but to assist them in developing the confidence and perspectives to see themselves as “subjects” of that system rather than “objects” of that system; a system they can and should change. Butin (2005) clearly captures the goals held paramount by the foundations: We want prospective teachers to “think otherwise”, to “teach against the grain”, to develop “critical consciousness”, to be “public intellectuals”; we want them to make linkages to historical conditions and to philosophical and moral questions; we want them to engage in self-examination and self-critique about who they are and want to be as teachers and learners and the role of schools in society. (p. 219)

These are certainly not ideals that are unique to the foundations of education, they speak directly to the core values of a liberal arts education where the development of a critical mind, ability to reason, engage in logical argument, and embrace ones role as a democratic citizen are seen as the real assessments of a quality education. However, as teacher education has devolved into teacher training, the foundations have come to be viewed by many as unnecessary, archaic, and, often, a waste of precious time. Much of this perspective is fuelled by what has been termed the “technization” of teaching and, by extension, teacher education. In brief, from a technical perspective, teaching is reduced to nothing more than the execution of a pre-determined set of skills and, following logically, teacher education is reduced to merely training students to master those teaching skills. This side of teacher education has always existed, typically termed the “methods” component of teacher preparation; courses dealing with the question of how we teach versus the foundational coursework of why we teach. As CLSE put it, the foundations should “engage students in employing democratic values to assess educational beliefs, policies, and practices in light of their origins, influences, and consequences.” As most experts agree, future teachers need both theory and practice, and a program that heavily leans towards one side or the other will produce sideeffects; effects which can be easily anticipated. As Dewey in 1938 argued: Teacher training programs that emphasize only technical expertise do a disservice both to the nature of teaching and to their students. Instead of learning to reflect upon the principles that structure classroom life and practice,

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Unfortunately, Dewey’s warning has been ignored and as K–12 schooling has become far more aligned with educational systems that in the past were deemed authoritarian in nature, the critical-minded, autonomous teacher has come to be seen as not only unnecessary, but even problematic. In response to this change in the definition of, and expectations for, the teacher, and under constant pressures by accreditation agencies, teacher education institutions have slowly and systematically removed the foundations from teacher preparation programs. Where these courses still exist at all, they have often been reduced to a single course. It is often argued that there is simply no longer time to focus on what Neil Postman (1995) called the “metaphysical” questions of education when our primary focus is on a universally perfect solution to the “engineering” questions of education. It seems that the only critical thinking that is expected of teachers today is to find narrow variations in practical pedagogy that may result in the raising of student test scores. It is, therefore, more critical than ever that the foundations course within teacher preparation programs be as powerful, critical, and empowering as possible. In many programs, the foundations coursework exists as the last remaining bastion of criticality, and undoubtedly the only location where future teachers can be challenged to consider Marxism in preparing for their teaching career. A key reason that foundations is being de-emphasized and, in many cases, deleted all together, is the rise of neo-liberalism and the corporate model of higher education. Neo-liberalism and The Corporate Model of Education According to Gary Rhoades (1998), professor and director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education, University of Arizona: The trend throughout much of the world is movement toward a U.S., “market-based” model of higher education. A related development is an increased role for management within individual institutions. What is overlooked in the promotion of such public policy shifts, is the implications for social relations and social stratification in the academy and in society. Market models and managerial institutions bring with them a restructuring and renegotiation of social relations such that faculty are increasingly managed, stratified professionals. Moreover, this privatized, corporate model of American higher education has similar implications for social relations and social stratification in society at large. (p. 22)

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In deconstructing the characteristics of the neo-liberal, corporate model of education, it is necessary to examine its epistemological underpinnings that make it such a threat to the academy and, by extension, participatory democracy, and the potential of revolutionary praxis. As is the case within almost every field, some contrasting viewpoints diverge at such a fundamental point that finding any common ground thereafter becomes, at best, a futile effort. An example might be the mindnumbing “purpose of life” discussion between a devout Catholic and the committed atheist. To truly understand the ideology of the corporate model of higher education, one must anticipate just such a rudimentary division of perspective from the traditional perspective on education as a force for democracy. Paulo Freire (1973), using the language of psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, distinguished between two types of personalities that exist in society. The first is the “Biophilic” personality, which Freire characterized as a “lover of life” and one who is “driven by a pursuit of freedom and a desire to see all people free.” For the Biophilic person, justice, equity, and the democratic ideal can only truly exist when freedom reigns as the primary goal of any society or societal institution. Therefore, success from this perspective is usually gauged in degrees of freedom; freedom for themselves and their fellow citizens. On the other hand, Freire described the “Necrophilic” personality as one that is “driven by the desire to control and be controlled” and that the Necrophilic person is one who “fears freedom” because it undermines control. Freire stated that “Oppression—overwhelming control—is necrophilic; it is nourished by a love of death, not life.” Therefore, success from this perspective is usually gauged in degrees of control; as much control as possible over as many as possible. From this fundamental difference between the epistemology of the capitalistic-minded businessperson and that of the democratic-minded academic, the contradictory nature of contemporary higher education is birthed. The educational capitalist gauges the success or failure of institutions of higher education in degrees of growth, power, and the stockpiling of capital. The democratic academic gauges the success or failure of the same institutions by their ability to liberate their members, their students and communities as well as themselves. In other words, the typical perspective of the intellectual academic is biophilic in nature, while the perspective of the educational capitalist is necrophilic. It is at this basic philosophical level that the divergence occurs and makes common ground thereafter virtually impossible. With that groundwork laid, it becomes much easier to dissect the corporate model, identify its tactics, and anticipate the mission to which it subscribes. In short, the “corporatization of higher education” implies the application of managerial tactics that have proven effective in increasing

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the efficiency, cost effectiveness, and economic prowess of mass-production corporations (as well as their capacity to dominate and oppress). The basic assumption is, as the saying goes, “What’s good for business is good for America.” There is little doubt that such mechanisms are powerful tools in the efficient production of Chevrolets, toaster ovens, or widgets. However, the list of potential side effects when applying this model of production to the “business” of preparing critical democratic citizens in institutions of learning is as long as it is obvious. Ultimately, the culture fostered within the corporate university advances the redefinition of the basic tenets of the institution and by extension, the rudimentary purposes of civil and political society within the context of social democracy. In the spirit of neo-liberalism, where there is a general retreat from all public spheres, institutions that engage in dialogue, education, and learning for purposes other than wealth production are considered archaic, naïve, and idealistic. To this same end, faculty that use their classrooms to encourage a critique of the relationship between citizen and public life, that promote social and critical conscientiousness, political activism, and human agency are vilified as not being “team players” or liberal zealots and efforts are made to systematically silence any and every form of dissent. Redefining the Faculty One of the most apparent side effects of these pursuits, as described by Rhoades (1998), is a change “in the production process, in ways that make institutions increasingly managerial in their configuration” which ultimately leads to “a decentering of faculty” (p. 19). Furthermore, the relentless efforts to “streamline” the academy by making decisions based on a pursuit of efficiency rather than effectiveness has led to a decrease in “faculty’s share of professional positions on campus . . . from about 64% in 1977 to about 55% in 1989” and “managerial workforces are not cheap” (p. 19). The “elbowing out” of faculty from the power structure of colleges and universities is usually a priority for the educational capitalist. Rhoades (1998) stated: Moreover, social relations on campus are increasingly corporatized, as faculty find their time, work, and the products of their labor increasingly controlled by managers, who have extended their discretion at the expense of professional autonomy, and arguably of the public interest. Neither pattern is an easy fit for most Western democracies. (p. 23)

Certainly, one barrier to such intellectual despotism is the institution of tenure. The current trend in colleges and universities is to impose post-tenure review, or eliminate tenure altogether. Of course, from the necrophilic

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point of view, tenure limits control, but the language of such an argument tends to shift in the public argument against tenure. The typical call within the corporate model is that ending tenure will emphasize “accountability” and guarantee excellence in education. Unfortunately, the results are likely to have highly detrimental effects on the ability of faculty to do quality teaching. Once faculty are powerless, or are “out of the way,” the implementation of the corporate model can move forward virtually unfettered. University of Kansas professor, Raymond Pierotti (2002), described some of the immediate effects on faculty: emphasis is placed on increased productivity on the part of faculty, who are perceived as if they were mid-level sales personnel within a profit-based corporation. As a result, there is a demand for simultaneous increases in both number of courses taught and course enrolments. (p. 32)

The immediate reaction of faculty to these impositions, undoubtedly, goes a long way to deciding whether they will stem this tide, or end up subjugated beneath their new corporate master. Faculty must make it clear that gauging the “health” of institutions of higher education solely in economic terms is misguided and reprehensible. As John Dewey (1916) argued, democracy its self is dependent upon a rigorous defence of intellectual freedom and higher education is the final wall of defence. Perhaps, we should heed the warning issued by Patricia P. Brodsky (2002): Education is being “redefined” around us, but we are not genuinely part of that process. On the contrary, we are its victims. Make no mistake—the corporate university is not about providing an education. It is about image and PR; about corporate funding, grants, business partnerships, profit, and control. Anything that interferes with these goals will be reshaped, reduced, or eliminated. Targeted for elimination are the rights of faculty to choose their own teaching methodologies, to set academic standards, and to control the curriculum. (p. 8)

Specifically, in regard to the control of the curriculum, an area within higher education traditionally held as a faculty responsibility, the corporate model demands a shift in how programs are evaluated, added, and/ or deleted. In an ideal world, or the ideal world a massive endowment can provide, academic programs are evaluated first and foremost on their ability to serve the mission of the institution, which typically include promises of serving the community, encouraging student growth, enhancing freedom, and/or nourishing our democracy. For most institutions, if not all, these goals have always been balanced by economic realities. As one college president said to me “you can’t serve a mission if the college doors are padlocked shut.” However, in the new corporate model, wealth production

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becomes the only method of evaluating the worth of an academic program. At one institution, of which I am very familiar, the non-profitable degree programs are openly referred to as “boutique” programs, clearly sending the message to faculty that they are not a priority and always in risk of socalled “curriculum realignment”. I have described the result of such perversions previously: Curricula have been “re-aligned” according to pressures from corporations and authoritarian agencies, and safeguards of tenure and intellectual freedom have been slowly and systematically relinquished, bartered away in exchange for salary increases and healthcare premiums. Democratic pedagogy has been driven from classrooms to accommodate mandated quantitative assessments; intellectual freedom has been replaced with authoritative matrices and “professor-proof” rubrics. Entire courses have been deleted to accommodate a value system that faculty had no part in defining; our students now are defined as “customers,” our classrooms are “delivery mechanisms,” and the quality of our work is judged in terms of “productivity” and “efficiency.” (Elmore, 2010, p. 5)

Redefining the Student Just as the corporate model has a predetermined role for faculty, or at least a plan for which to minimize their inevitable dissention, so too there is a new corporate title specifically prepared for the unsuspecting student. However, unlike the “necessary” marginalization endured by their teachers, students are slated for systematic exploitation. According to Zuleyma Tang-Martinez (1998): As institutions of higher education throughout the U.S. and abroad have adopted the corporate model, “efficiency” and profit have been emphasized, while students have been redefined as “customers”, “consumers,” and “clients.” (p. 31)

Rather than being a potentially “subversive activity” that could lead students to question and challenge the power structure of the status quo, teaching is reduced to the communication of mechanical, suppressed, benign information that endorses the perspective and agenda of the dominant culture of society, rather than making visible the realities faced by its voiceless and oppressed members. We need look no further than the standardized, regimented, and alienating K-12 school system in the United States to see the role the teacher plays within the corporate model; it is what Giroux (1992) referred to as the “information clerk.” In short, while the corporate model

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of higher education may often create an oppressive, “factory feel” for faculty members, it would be a mistake to overlook the resulting atmosphere for our students. Although faculty often object to the corporate paradigm, because of what it does to our profession and to us as individuals, it is important to keep in mind that ultimately it is the students and their own path to critical consciousness that suffer the most and, in the end, have the most to lose. Without these critical capacities, teachers are unable to recognize the true sources of much of the domination and oppression of the contemporary world. As McLaren (2000) contended: Regardless of the personal, epistemological, ontological, and moral paths that we choose to take as educators, at some point we have to come face-toface with the naked reality of capitalist social relations in local and global contexts. We cannot ignore these relations, and if we are to engage in a revolutionary educational praxis, we need to do more than rail against the suffering and tribulations of the oppressed and instead seek ways of transforming them. (pp. 127–128)

If, as Freire (1985) suggested, education is to lead to liberation, fostering the development of teachers who engage in open critique of neo-liberal capitalism is vital. Such analysis is being systematically pushed from higher education in the name of corporate necessity. Certainly, the necrophilics who have burrowed their way into the academy proclaim that the corporate model is about efficiency and assuring the highest quality performance of faculty; “performance” in terms of efficiency in delivering their version of truth. The reality is that it is this relentless pursuit of the “perfect system” that is being used to manipulate faculty into creating “products”—the students—who will be defenders of the status quo, and who will generate more profits by taking their place as mindless consumers in the wheels of the Bourgeois corporate machinery. Privatization of Public Spaces The new roles being assigned both faculty and students within the new corporate university are also nurtured by a culture arising from changes to the physical reality of the college campus. Henry Giroux (2005) describes these changes: Strapped for money and increasingly defined in the language of corporate culture, many universities seem less interested in higher learning than in becoming licensed storefronts for brand name corporations—selling off space, buildings, and endowed chairs to rich corporate donors. (p. 135)

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Many components of the typical U.S. university campus that were once seen as merely essential services provided for tuition paying students, have now been prostituted out to the highest bidder. Bookstores, food services, and (most recently) even dormitories are now hot commodities for private companies seeing a captive audience to whom they can not only sell their own goods and services, but also sell their “insider” influence to outside corporations looking to gain access to the hot demographic of college-age super-consumers. The student union, once filled with shops run by various student groups and campus organizations now look like mini-malls with the logos of McDonalds and Pizza Hut illuminating the hallways. Bookstores once run by the university are now run by huge corporations or, in some cases, they have been deleted completely and replaced with profitable contracts with online book sellers such as Amazon or Barnes and Noble. The true optimist might assume that such outsourcing must lower the operating cost of the institution and, therefore, would allow for a lower tuition bill, or at least one that doesn’t increase annually. Needless to say, as we see U.S. tuition cost spiralling out of control, this is certainly not the case. As within the corporate world, cutbacks, outsourcing, downsizing, etc., are not necessarily code words for lower consumer prices; they are, in actuality, code words for higher corporate profits. In other words, as states cut back funding for higher education, most recently fuelled by the assault of the Bush administration on social and educational programs throughout the United States, colleges and universities are forced to look for nontraditional ways of supporting themselves. A cynical “profit first” collective social conscious begins to bleed into every aspect of the institution. Giroux (2004) describes it well: As democratic values give way to commercial values, intellectual ambitions are often reduced to an instrument of the entrepreneurial self, and social visions are dismissed as hopelessly out of date. Public space is portrayed exclusively as an investment opportunity, and the public good increasingly becomes a metaphor for public disorder. Within this discourse, anyone who does not believe that rapacious capitalism is the only road to freedom and the good life is dismissed as either a crank or worse. (p. 147)

As discussed previously, this often calls for a different type of leadership for the institution; university presidents become C.E.O.s and boards of trustees become corporate oversight boards where members are chosen for their fund-raising influence rather than for their professional integrity and commitment to the institution. Of most importance is that this new leadership brings with it a corporate mentality and a corporate definition of success and failure: profitability, efficiency, cost effectiveness, and the bottom line become the only terms that carry any meaning.

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Does it really matter if McDonalds is making the burgers in the student union instead of the traditional, public “lunch lady”? Is there a significant difference when a student pays the university for their tiny little dorm room versus a private corporation? As they say, “the devil is in the details” and it is these details that are changing the culture of our college and university campuses from places dedicated to missions that serve the common good to places that only serve to instil the logic of capital into every aspect of our lives and, most certainly, at the detriment of our democracy. If these attacks are to be repelled, education must play a foundational role in ensuring that revolutionary praxis is a common theme within our universities and that education is being provided to citizens that will equip them with the tools to transform their world. Inherent in this task is the tremendous need to rescue education from neo-liberalism and the corporate model of schooling, which has been used with much success to mold submissive conformity and selfish competitiveness into students rather than the democratic ideals of community and cooperation. In short, to pry free the neo-liberal grip on education, education itself must be employed as it provides the opportunity to illuminate alternatives and provide solutions that can unshackle the wider society from the repressive neo-liberal hegemony. Such a transformation depends heavily on the capacity and commitment of teachers. Marx, Teacher Education, and the Corporate University The potential of teacher education to provide fertile ground for revolutionary praxis within schools has been long sought by critical educators. Within critical teacher education programs, students define and examine their own philosophies and beliefs about the purpose of education in a democratic society and compare, contrast, reject, and borrow from the philosophies of others. The goals of the foundations of education, specifically, are to assist future teachers in developing a solid understanding of philosophical thought on education in democratic society and develop a perspective on the role of the teacher in assisting her or his students in developing critical consciousness that leads to critical and political engagement. To this end, there are, perhaps, no ideas more powerful than those found in the work of Karl Marx. If students are challenged to define what it means to be a critical, active democratic citizen and analyze the role schooling should play in fostering such development in future students, Marx work is fundamental. As Freire (1973) argued, education is inherently and unavoidably political and, in this spirit, the premise that guides the foundations of education is the perspective that education is a set of political, economic, and

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cultural relationships that reflect the dominant social arrangements in society; in brief, education is a political activity maintaining both the power to privilege and oppress. Within a world seized by global capitalism the capacity to see such injustices and engage in the struggle for their demise is paramount. Such issues of power and powerlessness are central to the foundations of education as they illuminate how social arrangements are imagined, constructed, and challenged within a society. Future teachers must consider questions such as who maintains the power to legitimize knowledge and why? Who is marginalized and left on the periphery of “official knowledge” decisions? What is the impact of center/periphery relations in a free and democratic society? What impact, if any, does the culture and logic of capital have on democratic citizenry? And these are precisely questions for which Marx provides a very effective lens. By encouraging students and future teachers to engage in a Marxist analysis of educational issues, they can develop both the capacity to understand the inherent contradictions of an education system that purports to serve both the interest of democracy and capitalism, and the confidences and encouragement to challenge those contradictions and change them. References Allman, P. (1999). Revolutionary social transformation democratic hopes political possibilities, and critical education. Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey. Brodsky, P. P. (2002). Shrunken heads: The humanities under the corporate model. Workplace, 4(1). Butin, D. W. (2005). How social foundations of education matters to teacher preparation: A policy brief. Educational Studies, 38(3), 214–227. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York, NY: MacMillan. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, NY: Macmillan. Domhoff, G. W. (2012). Who rules America.net: Power, politics, and social change. http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/ Elmore, J. M. (2010). Institutionalized attacks on academic freedom: The impact of mandates by state departments of education and national accreditation agencies on academic freedom. AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom, 1. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum Publishers. Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Giroux, H. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Giroux, H. (1992). Border crossings: Cultural workers and the politics of education. New York, NY: Routledge Giroux, H. (2005). Against the new authoritarianism. New York: Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

Marx, Teacher Education, and the Corporate University    159 Green, M. (1988). A dialectic of freedom. New York: Teachers College Press. Guttman, A. (1999). Democratic education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Henderson, J., & Hawthorne, R. D. (2000). Transformative curriculum. Leadership. New Jersey: Merrill. Kohn, A. (2004). What does it mean to be well educated? Boston: Beacon Press. McLaren, P. (2000). Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the pedagogy of revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. McLaren, P. (2006). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education (5th ed.), New York: Allyn & Bacon. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1846/1939). The German ideology. Moscow: The Marx-Engels Institute. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1848/1967). The communist manifesto. New York: Pocket Books. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1969). Marx and Engels: Selected Works. Moscow: Process Publishers. Marx, K. (1867/1906). Capital: A critique of political economy (Vol. 1). Moscow: Process Publishers. Nelson, J. L. (2003, Winter). Academic freedom, institutional integrity, and teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 65–72. Pierotti, R. (2002). The morale of faculty, students, and staff under a corporate model: The case of the university of Kansas. Workplace, 4(2). Postman, N. (1995). The end of education: Redefining the value of school. Knopf Publishers. Rhoades, G. (1998). Reviewing and rethinking administrative costs. In J. C. Smart (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. XIII). New York: Agathon. Strike, K. (1989). Liberal justice and the Marxist critique of education: A study of conflicting research programs. New York: Routledge Kegan & Paul. Zuleyma Tang-Martinez (1998). Higher education and the corporate paradigm: The students are the losers. Workplace, 4(2).

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Chapter 5

Critical Multicultural Social Studies and the Socialist Challenge Marc Pruyn Curry Stephenson Malott

In this chapter, we will focus on the iterative and potentially self-reinforcing relationship between Critical Multicultural Social Studies (CMSS) and Marxist/socialist ways of understanding society; and how this relationship—and the resultant pedagogical and larger struggles for justice and equity—might be fostered. First, however, we will provide readers with some background about ourselves such that they might understand how we came to believe in the importance, and the liberatory potential, of both CMSS and socialism; within and outside of educational contexts. * * * Marc grew-up as a working class White boy in neighborhoods across Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s; earned his official BA in Political Science and International Relations (his unofficial BA was in Marxism, literature, Bob Marley, and protesting the U.S. wars of the 1980s in Central America); taught for nine years as a bilingual primary school teacher in a refuTeaching Marx, pages 161–206 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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gee Latina/o community; was part of the community-based political Left in L.A.; earned a PhD in Curriculum (studying practical applications of Freirean pedagogy with Peter McLaren); and then worked as an academic and activist along the U.S./Mexico border for 14 years teaching social and multicultural education. In 2010, Marc took an academic position in Melbourne, Australia, doing very similar work. * * * Curry grew-up in a working class White family in Ohio and Oregon in the 1970s and 1980s; worked as a laborer for many years after graduating from high school on a vocational track, nearly earned an associate degree in fine arts at Linn-Benton Community College, earned a BA in health and sports studies at Miami of Ohio, and an MA in sociology at New Mexico State University (his unofficial degrees were in sk8ing, punk rock and radical community engagement); worked as a community activist against war, neo-liberal capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and police/university harassment and oppression, and for free speech; earned a PhD in curriculum and instruction (studying Chicana/o identity, Marxism, resistance, and critical pedagogy along the U.S./Mexico border); taught as an instructor of social studies in a teacher education program; worked in primary and secondary classrooms with Chicana/o and Mexicana/o students in the areas of social and multicultural education and identity; and then labored as an academic and activist at various institutions in the State of New York. In 2011, Curry took an academic position at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, teaching educational foundations and Marxism, and organized and co-hosted (with John Elmore) a news conference, “Critical Theories in the Twenty-first Century: A Conference of Transformative Pedagogies” early in his tenure there. * * * Our experiences as working class kids (from families that relied on wages to survive), early engagements with oppression, political organizing and struggle, official and un-official pedagogical histories as learners (reading both the “word” and the “world,” Freire & Macedo, 1987), battles within formal institutions of higher learning, and work as researchers and writers, lead us, eventually, down similar paths. These paths, fortunately, converged, and we began learning with, and from, one another in synergistic ways that valued socialism (in its various Marxist and anarchist forms), critical pedagogy, multicultural education (writ large), artistic/musical expression, and a deep devotion to the Hatch chile. More specifically, we met within the Department of Pedagogy & Learning at Southwest University1, taught in the

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same teacher education program, began theorizing CMSS, created Punk Rock music along with some really talented folks, and ate many bowls of Curry & Jacquie’s Homemade Jalapeño Salsa with Roberto’s tortilla chips down on Durazno Avenue. As this chapter unfolds,2 we hope to make clear—both through academic narrative and personal story—how we, based on these separate, shared, and co-constructed experiences, have come to understand Critical Multicultural Social Studies (CMSS), and the role and potential of socialism, to be effective teaching, analytical, organizing, and action tools in the struggle to advance critical pedagogy, social justice, and the concrete working and living conditions of plain folk. The chapter begins with the section, Social Education, which describes the current state of things relevant to social studies; moves on to, CMSS & Thick Democracy Education, in which a critical paradigm for the practice of social studies is elaborated; continues with the section, Neo-liberal Capitalism & Its Pedagogical Storm Troopers; to understand our present economic times and what this means for teachers and academics, is given empirical depth in the section, Headmasters of Hegemony; and, concludes with the section, CMSS & The Socialist Challenge. Social Education “Democracy” and “Social Studies”: Some Caveats How can any society that accepts, supports, and perpetuates the systematic theft of the surplus value produced by workers—the productive lifeblood of society—and gives it to an inherited class—the bourgeoisie—be considered “democratic”? This is tantamount to rule by plutocratic highwaymen. Yet, hegemony has so normalized this activity, this process, that to merely question it is “radical.” We would like readers to keep in mind, as we reference and discuss “democracy,” “democracy education,” and “democratic education” in this chapter, to look beyond hegemony, to understand that un-problematized notions of “democracy” in western capitalist countries (or, in any country for that matter; mix and match freely: capitalist, socialist, democratic, dictatorial, industrial, agrarian, urban, rural) are troublesome. Yes, the more liberty a society has, the better; and here we are using largely socialist libertarian (anarchist) notions of freedom. But “democracy” can be defined in any number of ways: direct control by working people (the original Russian soviets or anarchist Spain or modern collectives), “representative democracy” (the Westminster, and other, Parliamentary systems) or the “several steps removed” system of the United States. However, as we proceed from the first through the third of these examples, “economic democracy” is

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taken more and more out of the hands of the working people who create wealth and surplus. If we focus only on freedoms associated with “western capitalist ‘representative’ democracies” (speech, assembly, press, worship)—important indeed—and stop there, we have conceded much of the debate. Unless workers have direct control over their work and the fruits of their labor, how true is any given “democracy”? Further, as we discuss the history, ins-and-outs, current directions, future trends, and our own aspirations, for the field of “social studies,” we want to cautions readers—and indeed, ourselves—not to be overly drawn into a framing of social education that is, by its very nature, extremely ideologically conservative. We are engaging in these debates and discussion because we believe it is important to do so. But, even the fence bordering the lefthand side of this discussion is to the right of our own analytical, ideological, and political frames. So, for example, yes, Clinton and Obama have held better positions than Reagan/Papa Bush/Baby Bush. But, the two Democrats were, and remain, unapologetically neo-liberal in their orientations and policies. As a matter of fact, the U.S. Democrats of the post-1980s would make the Republicans of the pre-1980s blush; at least based on economic policy. So dramatic was the rightward shift of Reagan that mainstream Democratic ideology leaped over what used to be mainstream Republican ideology. While there are important differences between neo-conservatives (Reagan, the Bush Dynasty), neo-liberals (Clinton, Obama) and “liberals” (FDR, Eisenhower, Kennedy), all fundamentally serve the same master, the plutocracy, at the expense of the majority, the working class. The larger point here is, don’t let the frame fool you. Think beyond the bi-polarity. It is not just A versus B. It’s A versus B . . . versus C and D, and L, W, V, å, Z, Y, b and @. We need not be bamboozled, dumbed-down, and diverted by the more oppressive elements of mainstream, hegemonic socialization and normalization (normalization processes that are anything but “normal” or “natural”). As human beings, as producers of all wealth and knowledge, we get to set our own ontological, political, and epistemological parameters for what is important and how we want to talk about it. Social Studies Social education (the “social studies”) in the United States is the area of formal study explicitly dedicated to the process of “citizen formation.” It was introduced by the Committee on Social Studies in 1913, and was, from the start, a discipline of contestation between progressives, such as John Dewey and George Counts, and conservatives, such as David Snedden, whose corporate-sponsored campaign successfully defined the official purpose of the social studies (Hursh & Ross, 2000). However, it is

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important to note that while Dewey posed a progressive challenge to traditional social studies instruction, he conducted his famous laboratory schools at the University of Chicago at a time when professors at that institution were being terminated for publishing challenges to the industrial capitalist model of society; a society that was remaking the world into two opposing classes of extremely exploited wage slaves, and an equally wealthy elite capitalist class (Smith, 1984). In other words, we might say that the limitations of Dewey’s work can be estimated by the fact that he was deemed safe by the University of Chicago’s primary private funder, John D. Rockefeller. Forty-two years old when Lenin (1902/1975) published, What Is to Be Done?, Dewey was surely representative of what Lenin was rallying against: the move away from socialist ideology and toward bourgeois ideology. In the context of the social studies, we might extrapolate from Lenin (1902/1975) and observe that any approach that is not firmly grounded in overthrowing capitalism and capitalist institutions contributes to the creation of bourgeois citizens. Since its foundation, the century-long struggle within social studies has been over what type of citizens, and ultimately, what type of society, it officially seeks to engender (Hursh & Ross, 2000; Kincheloe, 2001). That is, should the social studies perpetuate status quo inequalities through the production of an obedient and complacent citizenry, or should it actively work to transgress the dominant social order for a society based on the free association of humans in the reproduction of their world? That is, citizenry for the reproduction of capitalist property relations or citizenry for an international socialism (contrary to statements made by Stalin, really existing socialism cannot exist in isolation or in a single country). The social studies emerged during a high point of radical labor organizing in the United States as a response to extreme poverty, making possible extreme wealth, mediated by a history curriculum that was designed to mold people to be “industrious” and “thrifty”—using the “banking” education model critiqued by Freire (1970)—which assumed that students were devoid of “valuable” knowledge (Saxe, 1991). Conservatives were interested in reducing the cost of educational assimilation in order to increase the pool of surplus workers needed to fill the growing industrial economy (Kincheloe, Slattery, & Steinberg, 2000). Reformist progressives such as John Dewey, on the other hand, sought a more civics-oriented, democratic alternative to replace and combat the conservative educational curriculum (Dewey, 1916; Hursh & Ross, 2000; Kincheloe, Slattery, & Steinberg, 2000; Saxe, 1991). Again, while this was part of the larger social struggle for equality and justice within capitalism, it did not pose a serious threat to the basic structure of capitalist power over labor. Traditionally—and even today—however, social education, rather than embracing even a mild dialogic and liberatory perspective, tends to be de-

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void of even the most basic elements of either humanist or critical ways of thinking and teaching (Kincheloe, 2001; Loewen, 1995; Ross, 2000). Rather, the social studies are too often geared toward fostering obedience to authority through the memorization of disconnected facts in the preparation of standardized tests based on the values and beliefs of the powerful in our society (Kincheloe, 2001; Loewen, 1995; Ross, 2000). In a discussion of today’s social studies, we like to cite the official “primary purpose” of the social studies offered by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) in the United States. The NCSS states that the goal of the social studies is, “to help . . . young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.” We argue that “many in the criticalist tradition of social education . . . would consider [this definition] traditional, even ‘conservative’” (Pruyn, 2003, p. 5). As criticalists who draw inspiration and analytical tools from both Marxism and anarchism, we make the case that the social studies should not just develop “informed citizens,” but should also foster the development of, “cultural/political social activists who are encouraged to manifest their beliefs with the ultimate goal of fighting oppression and furthering social justice” (Pruyn, 2003, p. 5). Wayne Ross (2000) describes the social studies taught today throughout the United States as dominated by Traditional Social Studies Instruction (TSSI), which he posits is based on such characteristics as memorizing disconnected facts, preparing students for standardized tests, treating learners as passive, normalizing White, middle-class culture, and putting teachers at the center of learning. As a result, Ross argues that because of “conservative” teacher education programs, the institutional pressures schools place on teachers and the traditional curriculum, the social studies tend to teach a spectator-oriented conception of democracy; one that helps to create “spectator citizens” unequipped to participate actively in a democracy (p. 55). TSSI does not even foster the development of “informed citizens” as put forth by the NCSS. Similarly, in Getting beyond the Facts, Joe Kincheloe argues that the current body of research on the social studies suggests that classroom instruction is more geared toward controlling student actions than engaging them in real learning (Kincheloe, 2001, p. 17). This, by and large, is both the definition and current practice, at least in the United States, of the social studies. What other approaches exist to teaching about society (with the goal of creating a more justice and equity), and how might they assist those of us who are interested in breaking with TSSI? This is taken-up in the next section.

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Civics and Citizenship Education “Social education,” and the “social studies,” are more commonly understood in the context of Australia (where Marc now works and teaches), as “Civics and Citizenship Education” (CCE). What actually comprises CCE? How is it similar or different to social studies in the United States or elsewhere? Is it a practice of “thin” democracy, one that encourages us to choose our political leaders every few years from pre-selected groups of wealthy White males? Is CCE about being “good consumers” and regularly frequenting Costco, Meyer, Tim Horton or KFC? We believe it is all of these things. CCE is contested terrain. It is a diverse grouping of understandings of the “civic” (morality, community involvement, political literacy), how we might attain a “civil society” (as it were), and, how this might be promoted in teacher education programs, schools and through participation in direct democratic action (Tudball, 2010; Tudball & Forsyth, 2009). Through research into civics and citizenship education, and its practice, Tudball and Forsyth (2009) found that Australian teachers believed CCE should be core in the work that schools do, and that it should be about empowering students to be active and informed citizens. Mellor, Kennedy and Greenwood (2001), argue that through a vigorous CCE, young people might become more connected with community, contemporary issues and changes in society. Specifically, they found that 98% of the Australian teachers surveyed felt that, “teaching civics makes a difference for students’ political and civic development” in a positive way, and was of great import for the nation. In the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, civics and citizenship education is becoming more central in the curriculum (Craig, et al., 2005; Torney-Purta, Wilkenfeld & Barber, 2008; Zadja, 2009)—and is now often required—in response to both national and growing global social justice challenges associated with current economic times (Grossman, 2002; Lund & Carr, 2008). The personal, social, economic, temporal, spatial, ecological, and ethical must be incorporated in CCE for it to be truly engaging (Tudball, 2011; Reynolds, 2009); otherwise, it is just an exercise in, in essence, “thin democracy.” Tudball (2010, 2011) argues that CCE needs to engage youngsters to more deeply understand, connect with, and be at the forefront—within their communities, countries, regions and in the world—in addressing and solving social issues that they themselves identify (individually and collectively). In essence, CCE needs to radicalize. These young people should be encouraged to ask themselves questions such as:

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• Who am I and where do I belong? • How do I connect with and participate in my local community? • What are my core values and what are shared values and beliefs in my country? • How can I be engaged politically? • How can my peers address issues of alienation, social problems and youth dissatisfaction, and take a positive view on my locality and the world? • How can I develop a “critical consciousness” of what is happening in communities, so I can work to ensure social justice and equity? • How do I relate to my nation, and what is my place in the wider world? • What skills, behaviors and capacities do I need to face the growing challenges of climate change and issues of ecological sustainability, global financial crises and global inequities? • How can students take action to help to create a better world? (Tudball, 2010, 2011.) To facilitate youngsters in asking questions such as these, schools and teacher education programs need to develop multi-dimensional citizenship education (Grossman, 2002) that tackles issues of true and meaningful import to them (Cary, 2001, 2006). There is division, confusion, and contestation within the field of civics and citizenship education; between federal and state/territorial governments, within ministries of education and amongst practitioners of CCE— especially in light of a renewed interest in, and movement towards, a national curriculum (in Australia, and in other nations). But, within these political, policy and practical fissures exists rich opportunities to inject critical, and even socialist/Marxist, ways of understanding and practicing CCE. There is the potential that CCE can, and should, be taken in more critical directions, as Zyngier (2007, 2008, 2009) and Tudball (Dejaeghere & Tudball, 2007; Tudball, 2010) have argued. All that being said, however, there currently exists a dearth of research on the teaching of civics and citizenship education within teacher education contexts in Australia; although a number of us are working hard to fill this empirical gap. Additionally, more research is needed to understand how we might make CCE more “critical,” social-change oriented and driven by the same impulses as “thick” understandings and practices of democracy; something others of us are keen to philosophically, theoretically and empirically address (Zyngier, 2003, 2009).

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CMSS & “Thick” Democracy Education “Democracy education” can have several goals; it can be several things. One goal can be education about democracy and its formal, institutional trappings. We call this “thin” democracy education. Another goal can be education for democracy and the engaged, participatory practice of it. We call this “thick” democracy. In this section of the chapter, we will detail the concept of Critical Multicultural Social Studies (CMSS), how it relates to democracy education and how it might connect with its “thick” incarnations. CMSS is as simple as it sounds: an approach to the social studies that integrates both critical pedagogy and multicultural education. But, it’s also a lot more than that. CMSS is about breaking from traditional social studies; it’s about reclaiming our centrality as agentive humans in the educative process (Pruyn, 1999); it’s about celebrating a living social content and employing an engaged pedagogy; it’s about completely embracing diversity; it’s about critiquing power and authority; it’s about living a “thick” democracy; and, finally, it’s about taking risks for social change. In the section below, we will elaborate on these aspects of CMSS, while, at the same time, drawing connections between them and the potential represented by a democracy education guided by “thick” and participatory impulses. But first, we will speak to the geneses of CMSS as a concept. It began with the two of us sitting in the closet-sized office we shared at Southwest University3 (SU)4 around the time the world was anxiously anticipating the approaching “Y2K problem.” In the little free time we had—as a PhD student and assistant professor—we enjoyed philosophizing our way through many topics. Often at the top of this list of professional discussions was what to make of the social studies. Together, we taught the primarylevel social studies “methods” courses—and multicultural education courses—at our institution. Our pedagogy and content was generally guided by critical pedagogy, Marxism, libertarian socialism (anarchism), and the work of alternative/radical U.S. historians like Howard Zinn (1980, 2002) and James Loewen (1995). At the time, this approach tended to get the two of us in trouble from time to time (more on this below); usually with either conservative colleagues, or with the very small—yet impressively vocal—numeric minority of our students who self-identified as conservative Christians. There weren’t many of them, but they knew how to complain and write letters to the powers that be. Despite this, Curry and I remained very popular amongst our working class White, Chicana/o, Latina/o, LGBTI, and female students. So, there we were, sitting in our tiny office, surrounded by books, listening to music, sharing our lunches, and talking about radical ways to teach the social studies. After joking about the misconception that academics simply “make-up” new terminology to suit their needs and advance their

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careers (we don’t really believe this to be the situation in most cases, but that discussion is for elsewhere), we began to do just that. We were pondering what we might call a social studies informed by our multiple radical ideologies; a social studies that worked against what Ross (2000) came to label TSSI. We began by listing the absolute basics: social studies, critical pedagogy, and multicultural education. There, in that cramped office, eating South Asian and Mexican food, listening to The Coup and trying to “bring it all together,” the notion—indeed the necessity—of a CMSS first took theoretical shape for us. After these philosophical and theoretical beginnings, we began to more formally develop CMSS in both teaching and academic contexts. We began using CMSS as a philosophical construct to explore—with our students and in our writing—exactly how we saw the potential for creating liberatory spaces in social studies classrooms (both at the university and in schooling contexts). Marc first introduced CMSS at the American Educational Research Association (Pruyn, 1999, 2001). In the years that followed, we published several CMSS pieces: • Malott, C. & Pruyn, M. (2007). Critical pedagogy, Marxism and burning tires: Schooling in an era of corporate dominance. In D. Gabbard (Ed.), Knowledge and power in the global economy: The effects of school reform in a neo-liberal/neo-conservative age (2nd ed.) New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. • Malott, C. & Pruyn, M. (2006). Critical multicultural social studies: Marx and critical pedagogy. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems and possibilities (3rd ed.), New York: SUNY. • Pruyn, M. (2003). Paulo Freire and critical multicultural social studies: One case from the teacher education Borderlands. Taboo: The Journal of Culture & Education. • Pruyn, M., & the Borderlands Collective for Social Justice (2006). Critical multicultural social studies in the Borderlands. In O. Pang & W. Ross (Eds.), Race, ethnicity and education: Principles of multicultural education. New York: Greenwood. One of the most effective publications from that lot, in terms of impact, has been the chapter in Ooka Pang’s 2006 book. The chapter, “Critical multicultural social studies in the Borderlands,” has been used extensively in teacher education programs in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Some of the reasons for the chapter’s popularity, we believe, are its approachableness (it was written as a “dialogue piece”), the fact that it was written by a group of educators ranging from novice to experienced, and that it dealt head-on with some of the trickier aspects of teaching social

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studies from an honest and open critical stance. While arguably helpful, this piece of scholarship was introductory. It was organized around three central questions: What is CMSS? What does it look like in practice? and, What are potential challenges to using a CMSS? We believe it is time to further analyze, theorize, and advance the framework of CMSS. In the paragraphs below, we will highlight (through quote and critique) what we see as the central tenants of CMSS. But, we will also attempt to reflect back on this work that has proven so pivotal in our thinking and development, now several years on. This process will not be as elegant or significant as that followed by McLaren when he re-analyzed the un-theorized ethnographic data he first presented in, Cries from the Corridor (1980) and in Life in Schools (1989), but it is this model we aspire to. To begin this process of analysis, theorization, and connection, let us first start with a description of the nature of the piece, from the original text: This . . . is a dialogue, a discussion. But, it is a discussion of a particular nature. Nine of us from the Borderlands Collective for Social Justice (BCSJ)—a group of pre-service teachers, new teachers, veteran teachers and professors of education living and working within the Southwest . . . wrote this chapter based on a dialogue we recorded in which we explored a way of understanding and teaching that, for us, might help in creating better, more equitable classrooms, schools and communities; an approach to pedagogy we call “Critical Multicultural Social Studies.” (CMSS, p. 67)

Breaking From Traditional Social Studies The first necessity of a CMSS is to break with the social studies practices of the past; at least those kinds that are guided by what Marc calls—to his teacher education students—a DWM pedagogy and content. DWM is not an acronym invented by George W. Bush to rationalize another invasion or war, but rather, “Dead White Men.” Too often, “TSSI” (Ross, 2000) and content focuses almost exclusively on memorizing timelines, dates, battles, factoids and the names of dead White men; that is, the focus is on male, wealthy, White, straight, English speakers, and their “accomplishments.” To break with traditional social studies, we need more engaging and connected content. Rebecca (one of the “CMSS in the Borderlands” authors) notes the following, in relation to how a CMSS content would differ from a TSSI content: The proposal is simple. Turn hegemonic textbooks against themselves and valorize and incorporate the cultural capital, histories and wisdom of our students into our curricula. In this way, we can offer students multiple perspectives via our curricular content. We can use these standardized textbooks if

172    M. PRUYN and C. S. MALOTT strategically necessary; if only to demonstrate to students how easy it is to pass-off one perspective as the only perspective. We can guide our students in learning research skills using the web, alternative media, brick-and-mortar and virtual libraries and universities, and mentor them in the fine (and learnable) art of critique. They are already half-way there. Our students are wonderful “bullshit detectors.” They know what rings “true” and what stinks. They can spot a racist or homophobic teacher at a hundred yards—and we need to be honest with ourselves, there are racists and homophobes amongst our ranks. And they know we are probably in Iraq for the oil. Ask them. And they are fine nascent intellectuals in development. They, and their communities, are up to this task. CMSS pedagogues need just to facilitate and encourage this work and these kinds of classroom communities for social justice. (CMSS, p. 80)

As we know from reading the work of critical U.S. historians like Zinn (1980) and Loewen (1995), or of progressive Australian historians such as Reynolds (1999) and Hill (2008) (amongst many others), history is written by the winners. So, it should really be no surprise that the traditional oppressors write themselves favorably and more frequently into the curriculum; they control the economy, and most other modes of power. Not only does an almost exclusive focus on DWMs falsely characterize history, and the struggles, efforts, and accomplishments of a majority of the world’s population (or ignore them all together), it’s boring; rote, boring, dull and ineffective. Therefore, it is important to also reject monological, teacher-centered, “banking” approaches to social studies pedagogy (Freire, 1970). Charity, another author and dialogue participant, recounts her youthful experiences as a student with the pedagogical approach of TSSI: Recollecting my own experience with the social studies, no action or activity comes to mind [where we were engaged]. It was simply reading, doing the chapter review, and closing the book. The work was prescriptive, and that’s really about it. I don’t feel like I had the opportunity to get a lot out of my social studies education. (CMSS, p. 72)

As Charity further notes, speaking to a potential counter-pedagogical narrative that might be the focus of a CMSS classroom: Teachers must let down their guard together with the traditional, positivist attitude that “the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing.” In an unsteady world of such richness, not only monetarily, but in terms of diversity as well, we have the potential to end or change the oppressive system we live under if we recognize and validate our individual and collective voices. (CMSS, p. 72)

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These ideas and suggestions on how and why we need to leave traditional approaches to social studies behind, and forge new ways to teach social studies that embrace diversity and social justice, seem to mirror, to us, the calls proffered regarding the efficacy, and moral imperative, of a “thick” and participatory democracy. Reclaiming Our Centrality in the Process Another essential element of CMSS is the idea that we as human beings (and our lives, experiences and desires) need to be at the center of the educative process. This is a basic tenant of critical pedagogy; a tenant Paulo Freire traced from his philosophical roots in existentialism and Marxism through to his work starting in the 1960s/1970s in the African-Brazilian villages of rural Brazil and the working-class favelas of Rio and São Paulo (1970, 1973, 2000). Fully understanding and then realizing human kind’s transformative potential—both in terms of a state of being and consciousness, and as potential revolutionary actors (i.e., the “new man” [sic]; Guevara, 1967)—was at the heart of much of Freire’s early work (1970). CMSS takes this up. We who work within this traditional belief that humans are unique as a collection of creatures on this planet (as far as we know), in terms of our ability to be self-aware, to meta-cognate, and to reach higher and higher levels of consciousness; and that through this we have the potential to establish increasingly more just forms of social organization.5 This, therefore, needs to be fully understood by CMSS educators. As Rebecca (from the dialogue) notes: CMSS begins with a process of reclamation. Through this process, people begin to examine and think about the historical reality that has shaped who they are. People who engage in Critical Multicultural Social Studies can better understand their own place in connection to history, to economics, to contemporary issues, to popular culture. (CMSS, p. 68)

This is an understanding and belief about the importance of reclaiming our position within classrooms and other pedagogical spaces as true agentive “subjects” who create their own history, present and future (Freire, 1970). In these ways, both CMSS and “thick” democracy seek to re-claim the center of the educational endeavor. Education needs to serve the needs of girls, boys, women, and men—human beings—and should be connected to their real lives, concerns, and desires. It should not exist to serve textbook companies, capitalists, patriarchy, homophobia, classism, or the neoliberal imperative.

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Promoting a Living Content To return to the importance of content to the CMSS pedagogue (beyond simply rejecting the often superficial, indoctrinaire, and disconnected content of the oppressor as represented in TSSI), and building upon the points above, it is vital for us to promote a true living content in the work that we do. This means drawing on themes and topics represented by groups that are usually marginalized in mainstream texts, but also including themes, subjects, and content that are of interest, import, and problematic to the students in our classrooms and the communities within which we work. Rob, from the CMSS Collective, argues that we need to actively take-up these counter-narratives, even if it is controversial to do so, “CMSS asks social studies and history teachers to actively engage with students around current events, even those seen as ‘controversial’” (CMSS, p. 69). Rocio echoes and expands upon Rob’s comment: Often, educators don’t think that their students can handle the topics that we are talking about right now, especially at the elementary level. Some teachers think they should save this until later when they feel students will be more mature. But, honestly, even kindergarteners know what is going on around them; they are in a state of making meaning. Because of social pressure, and the current status of education, we begin to become afraid, because we don’t want to lose our jobs. We don’t want to upset the parents. We don’t want to anger the community. We really need to remind ourselves about why we are coming to school. And also who we are trying to impact at school. We must try to put the students first. (CMSS, p. 74)

Critical educators—those engaged in CMSS or “thick” explorations of democracy—attempt to resist hegemonic (Gramsci, 1971), panopticonic (Foucault, 1977), or spectacular (Debord, 1977) forces of conformity that lead us to fear stretching the envelope in our classrooms; that have us surveilling ourselves more effectively that the state ever could. This is not to say that governments have not grown frighteningly efficient at doing just that. But, how large would a bureaucracy have to be to put a person of “authority” behind every monitor attached to every public camera (despite what we see on CSI or Law & Order), or to have a cadre of programmers able to effectively keep-up with the shenanigans of Anonymous and LulzSec? In all actuality, it’s much more efficient to find ways to convince us to surveil ourselves; to put empty, disconnected camera boxes on every street corner. (More on this below, in the section, “Taking Risks and Taking Action.”) Robert, from the CMSS Collective, brings us back from the notion of fear in enacting a living engaged content, and elaborates both the importance of turning to students and the community for this content, and suggesting

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an elegant way to use the actual texts of the oppressors as liberatory tools. He notes: The other way to deal with biased and largely meaningless textbooks is to turn directly to students, their parents, and the community for content. For the various state “benchmarks” and “standards” that teachers are often now “required” to follow under No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—as they slog through the official textbooks of their school district—are vague and general and have also gone through a similar dumbing-down, lowest common denominator, White/male/wealthy/straight-ifying process. The end result is that they are not only often biased and ill-conceived, but also so wildly vague and general that it does not take a rocket scientist to be able to creatively fit more progressive content under them; content that comes from students, parents, and school communities—more authentic, connected, meaningful content that can be a starting point from which to begin discussions of oppression, hegemony, social justice and counter-hegemony. (CMSS, p. 79)

Finding ways to side-step or circumvent authoritarian schemes like NCLB is crucial if a living and democratic curricular content is our goal. CMSS and “thick” democracy, ask us to do more. Content should come from students and the community; from their lives and interests. One way to do this is through the use of popular culture; forms of popular culture that students and teachers feel connected to. Nori, from the Collective, shares an example of how she did this as a teacher education student in Rob’s class (and could see doing this as a classroom teacher). She tells the story of how she came to see the potential use of popular cultural artifacts, like songs, as a way to teach critically, in the following (slightly lengthy) narrative: I attempted this myself just this semester in Rob’s social studies pedagogy course. We had the assignment of bringing in a song, playing it, and sharing how we would use that song to spark a critical social studies lesson with kids. I brought in Immortal Technique’s “The Poverty of Philosophy.” Immortal Technique is an Afro-Latino hip-hop artist from the east coast, and his songs definitely have a critical analytical edge. In “The Poverty of Philosophy” he talks about how a Marxist and socialist perspective helps him understand contemporary racism towards Raza and imperialism against Latin America, and how this economic-centered analysis most clearly defines the politics of our country. Well, needless to say, many of my teacher education classmates were a little shocked! Some were into it (some you wouldn’t expect), and one even cried. I mean, here is a Black/Latino man, with a hard-core and honest analysis, who is not pulling any punches as he analyzes current society, taking aim at capitalism, racism, and imperialism. And you know, if you’re a White man, with a strong opinion, you’re a “go getter.” But, if you’re a woman with a strong opinion, you’re a “bitch.” If you’re a man of color with a strong opinion, you’re “angry.” I’m sick of that! So, some of my

176    M. PRUYN and C. S. MALOTT classmates had that kind of reaction. But, overall, it sparked some cool discussion within the class. And as a teacher, I will encourage students to share and discuss what speaks to them from popular culture: a song, a poem, a piece of art, a movie, a novel, a TV show. It’s one of the things that appeals to me about CMSS. I was really surprised that one woman, an older student, wanted to borrow it (the song). I was like, “Wow, I wouldn’t even think she would let her kids listen to this!” She is Latina, she was a house wife. I was just blown away! This was also an opportunity for me to learn. It showed me how using hip-hop, which is what speaks to me from popular culture, can be used to make political and cultural connections to other people—and to draw us together as we try to understand and critique our society—even me as an Asian/Latina in my early twenties and this older Latina sister in her late fifties. Yea, it worked! And it rocked! (p. 75)

A living content and connected curriculum are the first two pieces of the CMSS puzzle. The next, is an engaged pedagogy that respects the learner and has as its goal both the development of new knowledge and social justice. Using an Engaged Pedagogy Without a vigorously engaged pedagogy, a CMSS cannot exist. It is central to the CMSS project that we view and understand all teachers as “teachers/students” and all students as “students/teachers” (Freire, 1970); the learning must be iterative and flow in all directions (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). For, if we are to take seriously Freire’s assertions that critical pedagogy must view all learners as “subjects” who write their own worlds, and not “objects” who are written by others (1970, 2000), we must stand firm in our rejection of authoritarian, “banking” or exclusively teachercentered forms of pedagogy. This is imperative not just in terms of avoiding TSSI, but what drives us morally and ethically as practitioners of CMSS and “thick” democratic education. In elaborating more on these points, CMSS Collective member, Rebecca, comments on the neo-liberal approaches to education that have us employing regimentation in classrooms: I think of CMSS as an act against regimentation. Unfortunately, when I reflect on schooling practices right now, I see prescriptive approaches: education is tied to the needs and dictates of big business and corporate profit. In describing what CMSS is and might look like, I find it helpful to describe what it isn’t. I know it isn’t regimented, it isn’t purchasable and it isn’t for sale; or, at least, it shouldn’t be. To me, that’s the starting point. (p. 71)

Rob makes a similar point as Rebecca, and sees CMSS educators struggling against the notion of teachers-as-enforcers-of-hegemony in classrooms:

Critical Multicultural Social Studies and the Socialist Challenge    177 We need to be active participants within pedagogical contexts, creating spaces of and for social justice. This redefines, I think, the notion of, “Read the chapter, answer the questions at the end of the chapter, and stay away from my desk” that some social studies (and other) pedagogues sometimes fall into. NCLB testing mania and over-kill only makes this worse. (p. 69)

However, neo-liberal banking pedagogy remains the norm. These practices need to change if we are to supplant the current “neo-liberal” imperative with a “critical” one driven by CMSS or “thick” democratic education. Promoting Diversity Crucial to CMSS is a firm belief in multicultural education (MCE). MCE should inform what we do curricularly, pedagogically, in schools, in the community, and in society; but a “multiculturalism” writ large, one that goes beyond the “romp, stomp and chomp” or “foods, festivals and folklore.” MCE should include not just deeper and more meaningful understandings of “ethnicity” (beyond the above), but also should examine gender, sexual identity, language, class, origin/nationality and faith/theism/ atheism (amongst other themes). CMSS sides with those who believe that MCE should be both a stand-alone discipline, and one to be incorporated into every subject, within teacher education programs. Bonnie, in “CMSS in the Borderlands,” makes this point well, when she says: We want students to become knowers of their realities, of their “words” and “worlds” within the classroom (Freire & Macedo, 1987), and learning to become social, political and cultural activists both within and outside of those classrooms, we (teachers and students) must get to know ourselves in deeper, more profound ways. I’m talking here about identity politics. About knowing who we are as women, as working people, as people of color, as queers and straights, as large and small, as theists and atheists. We need to learn how to act together, in solidarity, for the benefit of all; and how the economically, gendered, racialized, and heteroized powerful and privileged benefit from both these targeted oppressions, and from our frequent lack of drawing together as oppressed people—our lack of solidarity. This is what distinguishes a non-critical from a critical multiculturalism; this finding common ground and collective struggle against oppression and for social justice is what is critical, what is CMSS. (pp. 72–73)

For us, a CMSS first has students (teacher education students and youngsters in schools) examine how we are similar and different as human beings, and then celebrates those differences. Pushing us to look deeply and profoundly at the differences and similarities in the human family is something multicultural education is very good at; in this way, it’s one of the core

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pillars of CMSS. But, that’s just the beginning. CMSS asks that we not just explore and celebrate difference, but that we critically examine how, based on these similarities and differences, we are often either advantaged or disadvantaged; liberated or oppressed; validated or dismissed. Here, a critical multicultural approach becomes key (Darder, 1991; McLaren, 1997; Steinberg, 2009); an MCE that demands we interrogate the power relationships that produce either oppressive or liberatory outcomes. Once we as teachers can facilitate the development of this type of critical analytical orientation in our students—indeed, the development of their and our “critical consciousness” (Freire, 1970)—an orientation to understanding how the exercise of power in relation to difference has definite outcomes, we have well begun the critical pedagogical process. The next step would be the mutual planning and collective execution of social action that can lead to more socially just outcomes for all; a reconstruction of an oppressive “hegemony” into a more liberatory “counter-hegemony” (Gramsci, 1971). This whole process starts with an unwavering exploration of diversity, and a commitment to bringing the culturally sidelined onto the field; opening-up the curriculum and the pedagogical spaces to those who are not the subjects of mainstream textbooks. If we do not do this, similar patterns of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia remain uncontested. As Rocio, from the Collective, notes: Instead of feeling joy when I go to schools, I actually feel sorry for students. Many of them are disregarded and ignored altogether, because they are viewed as “Mexicans who just crossed over the border” with nothing to offer the classroom, school, or community . . . By utilizing a CMSS approach, the teachers and administrators, for example, could see these students as resources with different knowledge, experiences and views to share. These kids have a lot to contribute to everybody’s education. (pp. 71–72)

A CMSS acknowledges the cultural capital, experiences and “funds of knowledge” (Moll et al., 1992) of all students of a classroom and within a society. Students understand oppression; they know when their individual and collective experiences are either ignored, or, indeed, disrespected in lieu of those of the powerful. And, it makes them resentful—to the educational system that passively (or actively) supports this, and to the “mainstream” society within which this is occurring. The Latina/o students in the classroom referred to above by Rocio (a classroom we knew, and one very similar, although at the primary level, where Curry did his doctoral research) were ordered not to use Spanish or to speak of revolutionary Mexican heroes they admired, like Francisco “Pancho” Villa. They were told this was “un-American” (despite the fact that they spoke fluent English and were forced to study and celebrate U.S. and European “heroes” and genocidal murders like Christopher Columbus and Don Juan

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de Oñate). And, they resisted this. Students know this is not right, that their exclusion from the curriculum and from pedagogical spaces is undemocratic, and disrespectful; especially traditionally oppressed groups of students. For a CMSS to be enacted, diversity—the study, embracing and celebration of diversity—must be fully integrated within our work; be that work in educating for and doing “thick” democracy, citizenship, and civics education, or multicultural education. But to truly move the project of social change forward, it needs to be a critical multiculturalism; one that examines the roots and causes of oppression based on difference. If not, we will be unsuccessful in co-constructing counter-hegemonic solutions and, rather, be stuck in a “Kumbaya”/“It’s-a-Small-World” mentality of cultural tourism. Critiquing Power and Authority A full, honest and unapologetic analysis of power and authority, in all its guises, is not only extremely important to CMSS, but to other forms of liberatory practice such as “thick” democracy, socialism, Marxism, and socialist libertarianism (Day, 2005; Goldman, 1998; Rocker, 2004); the latter, anarchism, asks us to carefully ferret-out, critique, and problematize all uses of power, on the right and left, and to create counter-hegemonies when this power is authoritarian, abusive or illegitimate (a very healthy practice). This focus on analyses and deconstruction of power relationships is what sets critical pedagogy apart from a Dewean humanism; CMSS apart from TSSI; and, “thin” procedural from “thick” participatory studies and practices of democracy. And, certainly, analyzing and critiquing power—and the inequities it engenders—is at the very root of CMSS and the critical pedagogy that thoroughly informs it. Rocio, from the CMSS Collective, notes the import of this approach in classrooms: Our kids need to be able to make connections between what they see happening in the world, and how power and domination by the powerful over the “oppressed” impacts the lives of us all. (p. 69)

Rebecca shares a similar sentiment: If students have the opportunity, through critical studies of the social, to make connections to their own lives and situatedness within structures of power, then they can potentially claim—and, indeed, reclaim!—their own learning. (p. 68)

Marc, along with Zyngier, Carr and Lund, remind us that “thick” democracy encourages us to explore why there is suffering, and, significantly,

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to act to change the root causes of that suffering (Carr, Zyngier, & Pruyn, 2012; Lund & Carr, 2008). If we don’t systematically question why things happen—and what forces are behind those happenings—we are complacent in allowing them to continue to happen. Looking for the whys, then brainstorming and taking concrete and real action on potential challenges to these whys, is how CMSS and “thick” studies and practices of democracy become enacted in our classrooms and societies. Teaching For “Thick” Democracy Central to CMSS is the practice of democracy; a democracy that is engaged and participatory, one that values the journey as well as the destination, as we seek to “thickly” practice it in our classrooms, communities and society. Rob, from “CMSS in the Borderlands,” describes his pedagogical attempts at democratic praxis: Most of my experiences have been in high school and junior high classrooms. And “democracy” was one of the core themes that helped drive my nascent practice of CMSS as a radical secondary social studies teacher in California. We fundamentally explored the notion of democracy, especially in the context of U.S. history. And, over time, we constructed within our classroom a safe place, a small “Temporary Autonomous Zone” (TAZ), if you will, drawing on the anarchist tradition (Bey, 1991), where we could learn to use and flex our collective critical wings, a place where we could become “critical agents” (Pruyn, 1999) to nurture our collective critical conscience. And, despite the oppressive power structures within which we were nestled, we were successful. And, it all started with a discussion and consideration of “democracy.” What is it? What is majority rule? What does consensus mean? What does it, or could it, mean in terms of this classroom? Does democracy mean that people who aren’t part of the majority don’t have a voice? And, we went at it. We talked about democracy, ways to practice it more authentically, and then we problematized it in relation to Iraq, to being second language learners, to economics, to politics, to culture. And we re-defined our space. We created our own, functioning, TAZ. (p. 73)

Charity takes this point up: We need to show students from a young age what democracy is, true democracy. The best way to gain an understanding of something is by using it, doing it, personifying it. Democracy is about the people; it is a practice of the people. In democracy, people use their voices. People discuss their thoughts, their actions, and use their voices to make a difference. It is not about us as individuals, it’s about how we can facilitate real critical and en-

Critical Multicultural Social Studies and the Socialist Challenge    181 gaged thinking about taking action to solve problems and issues in today’s world. (p. 74)

Rob references an example of democracy in use by a revolutionary movement, the Zapatistas in Mexico, and how this might inspire and guide our instantiations of it in classrooms: I would like to come back to the notion of democracy. I am inspired and intrigued as to how the Zapatista movement has made that a focus of their work in Mexico. And how they have been trying to understand what that means in the communities and territories they control. They have drawn on feminist, indigenous, socialist and anarchist ways of knowing and acting in bringing their notion of democracy to life. It is inspirational! But some folks argue that we in the United States are not politically mature enough for that yet. We can use Zinn, Sleeter, Ross, Gibson, Loewen, Pang. We can use these resources to educate ourselves, and then to educate our students out of the fog of false and inaccurate socializations (what Antonio Gramsci calls “hegemony”) and not the clarity of a student- and community-generated “counter-hegemony.” It’s doable, liberating, fun and exciting. (pp. 80–81)

For CMSS—or, the project for “thick” democracy—to be successful, we need to further foster the explicit teaching of radical forms and practices of democracy amongst those who may already be inclined to do so within our teacher education—and other—programs. Taking Risks and Taking Action Finally, CMSS advocates know, and potential CMSS practitioners need to understand, that practicing this form of pedagogy in schools and communities is not without risk; nor is teaching to, and for “thick” democracy without challenge. Rocio, from the Collective, articulates this concern well: How do we do CMSS? Well, carefully. It’s kind of sad to think that we have to go around sneakily and subversively trying to see how we are going to really educate. And Marc has talked, before tonight, in our teacher education class, of what Shirley Steinberg said once, that we have to be, “creatively subversive.” And, it’s true. But, it’s a challenge. How are we going to educate our future leaders when our current government is not letting us do it? We are learning all of these great ways to implement critical pedagogy into our classrooms, but when we go out to the schools it’s like, “Yeah, you learned that in college, but it’s not going to happen here.” (p. 78)

Unfortunately, the powers of hegemonic pressure and conformity, and the potential threats of punishment and sanction associated with them, are

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both imagined and real, imposed from within and without (Debord, 1977; Foucault, 1977; Gramsci, 1971). Freire (1970) also takes very seriously the issue of risk-taking. He argues that while it is essential to take risks in attempting to challenge and re-structure oppressive power relationships, we need to be completely honest with ourselves and our students about the potential risks; especially for those who are the most vulnerable. But, CMSS asks us to strive as teachers and teacher educators—as the reference to Steinberg (noted by Rocio) indicates—to be creatively subversive risk-takers; especially those of us in positions of power. It’s the obligation of those of us with institutional and social power to “pay it forward” in terms of social justice, to take risks so that others may have the spaces to create zones of liberty, justice, and self-determination; as a faculty member, an administrator, a classroom teacher, a community member, a parent, or a student. And, the more collectively we do this, the easier (and more effective) this will be. Charity, from the CMSS Collective, recognizes this challenge, and this call, to metaphorical arms: {exs}The government often places itself as the omniscient arbiter of “truth” (content) and sanctifier of acceptable pedagogical processes. Thus, certain content is allowed. For example, Thomas Jefferson was swell and helped form our republic; and this republic was founded on principles that many have tried to emulate over the past 230 years. And, other content is not allowed. For example, Thomas Jefferson was a pedophile and rapist. Certain methodologies, in terms of pedagogy, are allowed. For example, NCLB puts an emphasis on memorization, pre-testing, testing, and posttesting. Yet, other pedagogical methodologies and ideologies are not. For example, connective, constructivist, humanist, or transformative approaches to the teaching and learning enterprise are most usually a no-no and unacceptable. From a CMSS perspective, it is vital that teachers and students use their own authority and freedom in the classroom—as Hinchey (2004) reminds us—to find their own truths, instead of having them dictated from on high (p. 78–79). Taking action helps to move the critical process forward into the realm of praxis. Critical students/teachers and teachers/students have studied how we are similar and different as human beings; how, based on these similarities and differences, we are treated differentially; how relationships of power create and sustain this differential treatment such that some are advantaged and others are oppressed; and, how we might collectively and individually challenge these authoritarian and illegitimate relations of power when and where they exist. Now, the action-taking. Through taking concrete action in the real world to test-out the hypotheses we’ve created in our critical pedagogical spaces we become critical social scientists: we problem-pose, we reflect and hypothesize, and we take action. The step after (and during) action-taking is reflection and evaluation; this completes a

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true critical praxis. Rocio calls for this process to begin, “Students need to be prepared to act and make positive changes in their own lives and in the lives of others” (p. 69), and Robert elaborates: The focus of CMSS has to be on action. That’s what I think about all the time when I reflect on a critical and multicultural approach to social studies. I think about ways to find contemporary examples (not just from the past, which is so common in the social studies) and moments of oppression within the community; having students link into that, and then become involved in actually transforming society through exploring those instances of oppression. Trying to be aware of what’s going on in the community, and how I can get my students (and myself) involved. (p. 70)

This section of the chapter called for (and explored the philosophical groundings and need for) a CMSS and “thick” practices of democracy education to juxtapose against TSSI and its oppressive, hegemonic and dehumanizing practice. In the next section, we elaborate the socio-political context within which TSSI is bolstered and CMSS (and other liberatory practices) are discouraged: neo-liberal capitalism. Neo-Liberal Capitalism and Its Pedagogical Storm Troopers The connections between teacher education and public school policy— and the pedagogies that are its result—are as clear as the connection between the process of value production and White supremacy. While capitalists rely on a divided, and thus a weakened working class unable to mount a unified resistance against their oppression, capitalist education is dependent on teacher education programs that will train teachers to support the capitalist imperative so they in turn teach their students to uncritically work within the system that exists. Leading the neo-liberal charge to ensure public education serves the needs of capital through their business plan for education (Hill, 2003) is the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2004). While NCLB has changed and (slightly) morphed over time, and under the Obama administration, the focus and direction of national educational policy in the United States has remained firmly on neo-liberal rails (with “Race to the Top” and other Duncan/Obama initiatives leading the way) (Carr & Porfilio, 2011). NCLB continues to function as the educational policy beacon, and current U.S. policy (and educational policy in Australia, Europe and elsewhere) continues to be drawn towards it light; despite is proven failures (McLaren & Jaramillo, 2010).

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It is argued by its creators and proponents that NCLB was a policy to increase the academic performance of underperforming schools, which disproportionately serve working class and minority students, through an increase in high-stakes standardized tests to ensure accountability. Such tests not only have high stakes for students who face being held back if they do not pass, but the stakes are high for entire schools as they face privatization if their student bodies do not pass at high enough levels. Such has been the fate of many “failing” schools. The focus of NCLB testing is on math and reading, which has meant that if it is not on the test, it is not taught. In many classrooms the social studies have therefore been marginalized. Unlike other subjects, within the social studies there resides an overt potential for counter-hegemony because it is the subject that directly concerns itself with citizenship formation. A CMSS (see Malott & Pruyn, 2006, 2007; Malott, 2005; Pruyn, 2003) is designed to counter the business plan for education through socialist pedagogy where market forces are problematized as inherently undemocratic, challenging students to understand the role we play in our own oppression as workers, who produce, through our labor, that which oppresses us: capital. However, a focus on standardized testing limits teachers’ ability to creatively employ their professionalism and potential counter-hegemony as they are forced to “teach to the tests.” In addition to the testing craze, NCLB also endorses “choice” and “vouchers” where students can opt-out of attending “failing” schools and invest their state and federal education monies into privately run charter schools, contributing to the privatization and commodification of public schools. School choice effectively transfers much-needed funds away from already under-funded schools that tend to serve working class and minority students. In New York City, for example, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Chancellor, Joel Klein, head of the City’s Department of Education, in a 2004 address to the New York Charter School Association Conference, made it clear that, “Charter Schools present a tremendous opportunity. I want them at the forefront of our reform effort here . . .” The “tremendous opportunity” referred to by Klein becomes clear when one looks at his background. Klein, a transnational capitalist, was Chief Executive Officer of Bertelsmann Incorporated, one of the world’s largest media companies (based in Germany), with annual revenue of twenty billion dollars employing over 76,000 people in 54 countries. Mayor Bloomberg is also of the ruling class, making billions through media interests such as TV, radio, print, and computer software. To be sure of the corporate influence in NYC’s current education programs, one need only to look at the members of the Mayor’s Panel for Educational Policy, the majority of whom have business backgrounds ranging

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from Alan Aviles, CEO/President of Health and Hospitals Corporation to Philip Berry, the Divisional Vice President of the Colgate-Palmolive Company. Outlining the extent to which ruling classes dominate every aspect of the material and cultural lives of the populations they rule, Marx and Engels (1996), in The German Ideology, explain in some detail worth quoting at length, that: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas (i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force). The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are no more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. (pp. 64–65)

It is, therefore, not surprising that Bloomberg and Klein’s ideas about education, among other things, represent the interests of their class; the ruling capitalist class. Likewise, it is similarly predictable that President Obama’s (and former President, George Bush’s) ideas about and subsequent policies for education serve the interests of his class, the ruling class, which is to maintain existing material relationships “. . . expressed as an ‘eternal law’” (Marx & Engels, 1996, p. 65). Every normalizing, oppressive and reductionist neo-liberal policy in education needs its apologists, it storm troopers and its headmasters; and these actors—as we well know from the work of Fanon (2005)—can come from among the oppressed themselves. And they can be students, teachers or administrators. In the next section we take this up directly, sharing illustrative examples from our attempts at practicing socialist- and CMSS-guided attempts at teaching for social justice and against capitalist (and other) forms of oppression, and how the empire fought back. Headmasters of Hegemony The purpose of this section is to make this at times abstract discussion more concrete; to elaborate what mainstream resistance to Marxist- and

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socialist-driven CMSS has looked like for us, and to analyze what this has meant as we attempt to continue to teach in radical ways. We will do this by sharing four vignettes of “critical incidents” (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2011; Tripp, 1994) that have marked our work and growth as teachers/learners across the years. The first vignette, “‘The Communist and The Two Mexicans’: Mentoring Marc,” explores Marc’s early years in teacher education (as a graduate student) through a story of conservative student resistance to progressive approaches to pedagogy. The second, “The Justice Stand: Curry’s Lived Praxis,” guides us through Curry’s development of critical consciousness as a graduate student through the oppression of a free speech movement he helped to lead at Southwest University (SU). The third and fourth vignettes—“‘Extreme Beliefs’ and ‘Extreme Profanity’: Students Resist CMSS,” and “‘Dirty Music’ and ‘Questionable Activities’: Neo-liberal Discipline”—also take place at SU and mark the mature and purposeful application of CMSS to our teacher education classes and document conservative Christian student resistance to that application. All told, these vignettes of critical incidents, and their analyses, represent for us examples of how neo-liberal and conservative educational institutions and students—“headmasters of hegemony”—resist forms of socialist-informed pedagogy, and what we might learn from this. Critical Incident 1: “The Communist and The Two Mexicans”: Mentoring Marc While working on his doctorate from the Graduate School of Education of “California University, Brentwood” (CUB), Marc worked as a teaching assistant in their Teacher Education Program. In this vignette, he leads us through one particular critical incident. Classes in this program were structured in the following way. There was one large lecture that was taught by faculty members, that all students attended, and then several smaller break-out groups run by graduate students. I remember these TEP students being described as the “cream-of-the-crop.” They had competed nationally for spots at this prestigious Southern Californian university; competed on the basis of GPA and scores on high-stakes standardized, norm-referenced tests—both dubious markers of “cream-ofthe-crop”-ness. Teaching these young, White, economically privileged women—who had earned “good” grades in high school and done “well” on the SAT—was a great introduction to what I would encounter well into the future while working in teacher ed. Mostly, things were fine. The faculty members would lecture on both the theory and practice of being teachers, make connections to real-life classrooms, pose thoughtful and meaningful questions, and then

Critical Multicultural Social Studies and the Socialist Challenge    187 we graduate students would hash it out with students in the smaller groups. Besides the typical grumblings about having to do readings or turn in assignments on-time that I would come to expect as par for the course student “whiging” in teacher ed., things mostly went pretty well.

Spoiler alert . . . Remember the Mexican boy and older gentleman from the end of “Terminator” (1984)? As Sarah Connor stopped for gas on her way out of the country, they noted, “Allá, ¡Viene una tormenta!” (“There’s a storm coming in . . . ”). It soon became public that a small group of students—this always seems to be the case—wrote, signed and then circulated a petition speaking out against their “Communist and Mexican” teachers (the faculty members that delivered their lectures) and asking for them to be fired. In retrospect, and almost 20 years later, this is pretty funny. But, not in a “ha ha” kind of way; more like a, “this-is-really-misinformed-and-sad” kind of way. This small group of conservative TEP students noted that they would be teaching rich White children (therefore obviating the need for talk of bilingual or multicultural education from the “Mexican” professors) in West LA private schools (therefore, forestalling any crazy talk of economic equity from the “Communist” professor). The “Communist” they were referring to was Peter McLaren and the “Mexicans” were Kris Gutierrez (a Chicana, and now immediate Past-President of AERA) and Alfredo Artilles (a Guatemalan-American). Their labeling, and the underlying concerns behind those labels, was both accurate and inaccurate. Peter self-describes as has having been at least a socialist since his beginning days as a teacher in Toronto’s suburban, working-class schools (citations); and is now, arguably, one of the world’s leading Marxist scholars (McLaren, 2005; McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2004). But, I don’t think he has ever self-label as “Communist”; how gauche and passé! But, point well taken. He was most definitely addressing issues of economic oppression; issues this group of students did not want to hear about. And, ethnically speaking, I never heard Kris or Alfredo talk about being “Mexican”; they weren’t. But, again, point well taken. When Kris or Alfredo addressed issues of linguistic or cultural relevance or, connection with the plurality of the children of Los Angeles (Latinas/os), these conservative White female students did not want to hear about it. This petition to the dean, which garnered a hefty number of signatures—and, even more importantly, its implications (that the working-class and brown children would have to endure its signatories)—was quite the talk of our graduate student-run sections. We re-explored with the TEP students in our smaller discussion groups the connections between diversity, culture, and language, and how to authentically engage learners and their communities. There were debates, citations of research, and applications

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to classroom settings. Ultimately, the whole thing ended up turning into an interesting learning prompt. And as a veteran primary school teacher at the time, and a novice teacher educator, I learned much from this experience. It struck me, for the first time very concretely as a pedagogue, just how privileged hegemonic U.S. society had made me. Because I appeared male (true enough), middleclass, White, straight, and spoke English with an acceptable accent,6 I was attended to by my adult students; to a shocking degree. Having been a bilingual primary classroom teacher gave me even extra cache. However, I was also an avid and up-and-coming “criticalist” at the time. This was a heady mix, and made it challenging for many of my TEP students to figure out how to “place” and deal with me. It turned out to be both a slight hindrance, and a major advantage, as I sought to reiterate and reinforce the messages conveyed in the readings and lectures of Peter, Kris, and Alfredo. “Who the hell is this bilingual White boy doctoral student, and why is he agreeing with the Communist and Mexicans?!” (To be read in the accent noted in footnote 7), I imagined the few obvious conservatives thinking as they rolled their eyes at me. But, because of the hegemonic socialization that gave me the unearned cultural capital of a White, male graduate student, most student listened and engaged. Those few who disagreed either disengaged after a while, or sighed as if put-upon.7 Luckily, the Dean of the Graduate School of Education at CUB, no radical, gave this petition about as much attention as it deserved; that is to say, very little. And things soon blew over. But, under the surface, of course, the same tensions continued; and have since, across institutions, countries and continents, in my two decades of work in teacher ed. For this small group of conservative teacher education students was not just objecting to the “Communist” and the “Mexicans”—that, actually, was probably the least of it. Slowly and carefully problematizing and unpeeling their concerns revealed that they were actually objecting to the pedagogy, the content, the philosophy, and the ideology behind what their three professors were collectively encouraging them to take with them into their future classrooms; a pedagogy/content/philosophy/ideology that asked them to take the needs, knowledges, hopes, fears, contributions, and cultural capital of their future students seriously; the heart of teaching. Upon transcription, analysis, and reflection of this critical incident, what worries me the most? The fact that those petition signers, those “cream of the crop” who made it through the program and found jobs as teachers, have been unleashing their racism and classism—and, maybe even worse, apathetic disconnection and contempt—on generations of working class and brown kids for over 20 years. Yikes!

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Critical Incident 2: The Justice Stand: Curry’s Lived Praxis In this vignette, Curry leads us through a critical incident of how, hegemonically, capital attempted to assert its cultural, political, and punitive logic in response to his attempts to subvert it as a post-graduate and pedagogical worker at SU. After earning an MA in Sociology at Southwest University in 1998, I began teaching the weekend college section of Introduction to Sociology. While my class was not explicitly taught from a Marxist perspective, I did engage students in radical inquiry, examining the role of the prison-industrial-complex in U.S. White supremacist capitalist society. I used texts such as All Things Censored by Mumia Abu-Jamal (2000), former Minister of Information of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Panther Party, renowned journalist, and former death row inmate, which celebrates the spirit of resistance that has become a tradition in a society built on actual slavery and perpetuated on wage slavery. The semester I began teaching this class I also started what I called The Justice Stand. The Justice Stand was modeled after an organizing strategy I observed and participated in for a summer in Oakland, CA. The hub of organizing was a literature table/political sticker stand. “John,” the organizer of the “Eyes of Telegraph,” sold political stickers as a street vendor as his sole source of income, which also funded his leaflet, which reported police attacks on the homeless population; which the cops dubbed “Operation Ave. Watch.” I used my teaching income to pay my monthly student loan bill and supply the Justice Stand with free literature rather than rent an apartment. So, I was forced to live in my 1971 Volkswagen bus. The Justice Stand was a huge success. It grew with incredible force as people began to show up daily to hang out, play drums, read literature, discuss politics, casually socialize, play hacky-sac; in short, to create and occupy a space that looked and felt unlike mainstream capitalist society. Even though we had a permit to distribute literature, our activities were terminated by the Student Activities Administration after only a few months of operation. Once we had tasted the freedom that grew out of the Justice Stand, we were in no state to go away quietly. So we fought, and refused to go away, developing a free speech campaign that went far beyond the original Justice Stand. During this time of activism, I was in constant threat of termination as an employee, which went as far as having an armed university police officer visit my class. This was a direct result of my refusal, both inside and outside the classroom, to compromise my beliefs and position. The Justice Stand free speech campaign developed into such a powerful movement, that my position as a sociology instructor, oddly enough, remained somewhat stable. When the free speech/Justice Stand movement eventually subsided, as a result of internal conflict stemming from external pressure, I was finally dismissed; under flimsy pretense. Despite the fact that

190    M. PRUYN and C. S. MALOTT my students both consistently passed my class with high marks and gave me positive evaluations—reporting how much they learned in my class as a result of being challenged to think deeply and critically the entire semester—I was asked to leave the position. That tradition would continue (see below). Despite my termination, and the fading-out of the Justice Stand movement, the story, while still in process, for the purposes of this chapter, ends on a positive note. Eventually, and as a direct result of the movement, the “free speech” policy at SU was rewritten to truly allow for more free expression on campus than had been the case before. And, students, faculty, and staff continue to use the campus to organize against war, the militarization of the border, and for the unionization of workers, among countless other Justice Stand issues. To quote the late Joe Strummer, “the future is unwritten.”

Critical Incident 3: “Extreme Beliefs” and “Extreme Profanity”: Students Resist CMSS This vignette, re-counted by Marc, also takes place at SU. At SU, I taught both social studies “methods” (along with, for a time, Curry; more below) and multicultural education courses within our TEP. As part of these classes I would regularly screen Lee Mun Wah’s documentary, The Color of Fear, which chronicles a week-end encounter group of men from different ethnic groups. They discuss Whiteness, oppression, “Americanness,” and liberation. I felt I was successfully able to use this film as a way to have students reflect and dialogue on issues of ethnicity, privilege, and social justice. Throughout the film, one of the most eloquent participants is Victor, an African American man with Cherokee heritage. During one very memorable moment in the documentary, while he is convincingly arguing against the U.S.’s “meritocracy myth,” he says, “I pulled so hard on those God-damn bootstraps, they came right the fuck off!” The Color of Fear has many other poignant moments that I successfully used, over the years, to prompt discussions around CMSS approaches to both social studies and multicultural education. When the occasional student would object to watch the documentary—it is very direct in its dealings with privilege, racism, and Whiteness, although eloquently so—and ask if they could step-out, or if this was “optional,” I would say, “Feel free to do what you like, but this film is not optional; it’s central to the ideas of this course.” All told, I saw very few straight-up walk-out during my years at SU. When I did, they usually revolved around films, music or readings we were collectively analyzing.

One year, “Lydia” (Curry and I call her “Aunt Lydia” in our research), took great exception to the The Color of Fear and its themes, specifically, and to my CMSS approach to the social studies in general. At the end of the semes-

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ter, in the course evaluation, and in reference, in part, to being “forced” to watch this film, Lydia wrote: This class has been an excellent example of how . . . to create an “us vs. them” atmosphere . . . [and to] promote a very narrow and extreme set of beliefs . . . [Is] there no longer any respect at all for students who do not use, and who avoid those who do use, extreme profanity? . . . Most importantly, much of the language we’re subjected to mocks the belief of some of us that the words “God” and “Jesus Christ” are sacred.

Never, however, did Lydia actually up-take and deal squarely and directly (whether in agreement or opposition) with the substantive issues raised by Victor with in film, with The Color of Fear, itself, or with the themes highlighted by my CMSS social studies course. Again, as my research (with Curry) has found so common, the extremely conservative religious students (we call them the, “fundimentalistas” in our research), who are in the vast numeric minority, that object to justice-oriented approaches to social studies usually do not seize upon what is probably their true objection: ideology, politics, philosophy. These are fair game for discussion, debate and critique. As Freire has noted (1970), no pedagogical method or approach should be above analysis and criticism. What the fundimentalistas (in this case, Lydia) usually do is find other grounds upon which to object to our pedagogy or content: in this case, a naughty word, and what that supposedly implies for our respect of her faith. This theme is to be taken up again in our final vignette. Critical Incident 4: “Dirty Music” and “Questionable Activities”: Neo-Liberal Discipline This final vignette, narrated by Curry, picks up, chronologically, from where the second vignette (the story of the Justice Stand) leaves off. After leaving the Justice Stand, I moved across campus to the department of Pedagogy & Learning at SU. There, I sharpened my skills at educating against oppression and for humanity, which, it turned out, required a lot of critical self-reflection (see Malott & Peña, 2004). I began working in the Teacher Education Program with Marc, teaching social studies “methods” courses. One morning, as a result of, and to follow up on, a previous class discussion that dealt with the historically specific interconnectedness of the social construction of race and capitalism in U.S. society, I played the song “Body Count” by rapper Ice-T’s hard-rock band, also named Body Count. This discussion engendered different points of view regarding the existence of in-

192    M. PRUYN and C. S. MALOTT stitutionalized racism and economic exploitation. The activities of police in various neighborhoods emerged as a focal point of contestation, where some people of privilege took the position that there is less racism today and more opportunities for “minorities” because of the social gains made during the 1960s and 1970s, suggesting that current cries for “justice” reflected “laziness and intellectual inferiority,” while others held that racist police brutality and job opportunities in many impoverished neighborhoods are as bad or worse today than they were 20 or 30 years ago. The song asks, “What? I gotta die? Before you realize, I was a brother with open eyes . . . The world is insane, while you sip champagne, and I’m living in black rain.” After listening to the song, and following along with the printed lyrics, the class had a healthy discussion. However . . . 

Can you see what’s coming?, we ask now in 2012. Several days later, one particular student, “Serena” (Marc and I call her “Serena Joy” in our research), wrote in her reflective journal, . . . I have very strong religious beliefs. I feel that it is compromising my beliefs, values, and morals to be a part of listening to ‘dirty music’ and/or doing questionable activities. As it turns out, this state has a sizeable “landed-gentry,” as it were. Such gentry—namely, large land-holders, farmers and ranchers—are most powerful and also happen to make up the majority of those who sit on SU’s Board of Regents; the ultimate governing body of the institution. Serena was so disturbed by the words in “Body Count” that she wrote a letter to the president of SU and the head of the Board of Regents; thus bypassing me, the head of the social studies program (Marc), and the entire college of education. (Actually, it came out later that Serena’s mother had written the letter.) In it, she/they complained not only that I had committed the sin of wearing “shorts to class,” but also that I had played a song in class which contained the word “fuck.” (They weren’t too thrilled, either, that I had tattoos, piercings and a shaved head.) Nothing in the letter, of course, touched on the larger message that had been raised in our collective discussions as a class—lead by a majority of the students (of the interconnectedness of the social construction of race and class)—that was largely the focus of Ice-T’s song and our analyses. This one letter of complaint was enough to get me “reassigned” to a teacher/ research assistant position (“fired”), and effectively banned as an instructor from teacher education at SU by the dean of the college of education; despite the protestations of Marc and the department head. This reassigning occurred after I let all my supervisors and bosses know (the majority of who were and remain close allies) that I did not intend to water-down my classes in anyway.

Critical Multicultural Social Studies and the Socialist Challenge    193 The “official” reason given to me for not being allowed to teach social studies methods courses was that I was not a certified public school teacher, which violated NCATE’s (see above) rule of who was allowed to teacher classes required for certification, such as social studies methods.8 Even though I had experience working with youth in public schools, I was deemed “unfit” because my work did not require that I become a certified public school teacher. However, such concerns were never an issue until I was put under scrutiny. It was no secret that the complaining student never liked the focus of the course, which critiqued TSSI (Ross, 2000) and advocated for a CMSS, spending a considerable amount of time on what that CMSS might look like in practice. It was also no secret that Serena had no compunction in using naughty words herself, often heard in the hallways outside of class using the word “fuck” in connection to a boyfriend who, it appeared, did not “truly appreciate her.” In the end, this is an example of how NCATE was used as the “law of the land” and interpreted to exclude an instructor (who happened to be a multicultural, anti-racist, Marxist) from instructing.

In a dialogue about this situation between Curry and the head of the American Civil Liberties Union, executive director of the state chapter, William Kunstler, wrote Curry: As a cultural anthropologist, I concur with your perspectives on race and class and have no doubt that you were using perfectly legitimate popular cultural materials to convey these ideas to students. My experience has been that power will not sit and be told what it’s doing wrong unless you have some leverage (legal or otherwise) to make it do so. In a teaching setting, I think you’ve accomplished a lot just by planting a seed of doubt. (Personal Communication, 2001)

Curry concludes this Critical Incident Vignette by drawing a connection between the actions of Serena and those within the larger conservative censorship movement of the time (now fully integrated, along with other hegemonic instantiations of oppression, within the global neo-liberal, capitalist project) against politically active musicians: Kunstler’s analysis of “power” applies equally well to those members of the ruling class in the White House. Lynne Cheney, in particular, following in the footsteps of Tipper Gore, has taken it upon herself to attack those cultural forms and perspectives she doesn’t like. Recently Cheney addressed Eminem’s label, SEAGRAMS, about the White rapper’s “violence” and “hatred of women” in his music, which she used to apply pressure to the music industry in general to intensify their self-imposed censorship of music content.

In the central example in this final vignette, again, the ultra-conservative, the religious “fundimentalista” (today she would probably self-label as a “Tea Party Patriot”), seizes upon the low-lying fruit; the easy pickings. She does not voice her objection to the ideology, politics, or philosophy Curry’s

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socialist and CMSS pedagogy, Serena objects to a word. Rather, she objects that Curry permitted a song by Ice-T to be played in class that contained a word. And, for good measure, she (and her mom) throw in concerns about Curry wearing shorts and having tattoos. Can you imagine the negative impact that was likely to have on Serena’s development as a novice teacher? Neither can we. CMSS and the Socialist Challenge In the pages above we have asked, in relation to social studies instruction, questions such as: What are social studies, civics and citizenship, and democracy education? How are they taught? What does it mean to teach and do “thick,” participatory democracy? What does it mean to approach the educative process from a perspective of CMSS? And, above all, how do we do this as guided by our Marxist- and social justice-oriented understandings and ideals? And we have had a go at answering these questions—especially by drawing on the work of (Carr, Zyngier, & Pruyn, 2012; Dejaeghere & Tudball, 2007; and, Goodman,1989; amongst others)—through the pedagogical and philosophical lens of a CMSS with emphases on embracing diversity while doggedly pursuing the restructuring of inequitable power relationships into counter-hegemonies of justice. But, there is more to it than that. Who are the intellectuals? How do we function? What do we call ourselves? What are we allowed to call ourselves? And, what are the ramifications of that self-naming? The fact of the matter is that most of us arrive at critical-, CMSS-, and justice-oriented approaches to teaching and learning because we are Marxists; or socialists; or anarchists; or Critical Race Theorists; or feminists, etc. Yet, we often shy away from discussing these meta-ideological markers that help us shape our understandings of the world, how it functions and how we might collectively make it better. Why? Because this can get us in trouble (as can the application of such; see Headmasters of Hegemony, above). But openly discussing these meta-ideological markers—and teasing-out how they can help us advance causes of justice and equity amongst and with those we “teach”—is exactly what this book is about. Being a Marxist Academic Bourgeois liberal educational theorists in the United States have enjoyed a long-standing apostolic advantage over Marxist scholars who, for the most part, are characterized as political extremists, idealists, untrustworthy and intransigent intellectuals, and rouges and renegades. The works of Marx

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and his heirs have been placed on the librorum prohibitorium. Regrettably, too few Marxist analyses are published in U.S. educational journals, and even fewer works by Marxist educators appear in the syllabuses of teacher education programs in the United States (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2004, pp. 75–76). The boundaries for free expression in the university, though broader than in the larger society, are still watched carefully. When that freedom is used, even by a small minority, to support social change considered dangerous by the guardians of the status quo, the alarm goes out: “The communists are infiltrating our institutions” . . . The axes then get sharpened (Zinn, 2005, p. 93). Once again, if we are “out” non-tenured Marxists, and stick to our principles through our work as educators/scholars, we are in constant danger of termination. This is the danger any revolutionary faces, a true soldier for the people, to paraphrase Huey P. Newton (1973/1995), co-founder and former defense minister of the revolutionary Black Panther Party, whose central focus was to “. . . raise the consciousness of the masses through educational programs . . .” (p. 16). That is, it is the responsibility of the radical teachers to co-construct with the masses the tools for our collective liberation, critical thinking (way beyond Bloom), and class consciousness. As Marxists, these are the basic indispensable tools in the global struggle for emancipation from private property, the process of value production and its divisive tendencies, such as White supremacy (Hill, 2003; Ignatiev, 1995; McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2004; Rikowski, 2005). Otherwise, following state mandates, teachers serve the interests not of the many, but the few, and are, therefore, at best naïve bystanders, and, at worst, acting as enemies of the people, and thus not educators but indoctrinators. It is because true education is the freedom to question and to seek answers (Hill, 2003) that this is so. Without such opportunity for critical analysis, education becomes indoctrination and a hindrance to the liberation of people from the relationships that oppress them—namely, the labor/capital relationship. Outlining capitalism’s deleterious impact on education, focusing on how educations’ public language, traditionally couched in hymns of duty and service, increasingly resemble the discourse of private capital, dominated by rantings on “outcomes” and “performance,” Dave Hill (2003) argues that: Education as a social institution has been subordinated to international market goals including the language and self-conceptualization of educators themselves . . . Within Universities . . . the language of education has been very widely replaced by the language of the market, where lecturers “deliver the product,” “operationalize delivery,” and “facilitate clients’ learning,” within a regime of “quality management and enhancement,” where students have

196    M. PRUYN and C. S. MALOTT become “customers” selecting “modules” on a pick-’n’-mix basis, where “skill development” at Universities has surged in importance to the derogation of the development of critical thought. (p. 7)

While Hill takes aim at capital’s influence on education in general, we will now focus on teacher education programs in particular. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education: He Who Shall Be Named Even a superficial examination of the discourse of NCATE quickly reveals the predominance of market rhetoric and the systems’ business plan for teacher education. In a classic essay on the responsibility of academics Chomsky (1966/1987) argues that: Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology, and class interest through which the events of current history are presented to us. . . . It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. (p. 60)

While the freedom of academics that Chomsky highlights is currently under attack by right wing corporate forces such as NCATE, it, nevertheless, remains true that professors within the United States and Australia, as well as other industrialized nations, remain in positions of privilege and, therefore, have a moral responsibility to use their power to academically rebel against the social form of value that has resulted in a material reality where “. . . 34.6 million Americans are living in poverty . . . [and] 43.6 million Americans are lacking any access to health insurance” (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2004, p. 8). While it is true that it is increasingly dangerous to be an untenured Marxist educator who makes no pretensions about the obvious connection between global capitalism and education, even if we get “moved-on” from time to time, we remain professors with PhDs and can usually always find part-time and even full-time teaching work that provides a standard of living well above the world’s oppressed relegated to the bowls of sweat shop misery. In “Under Surveillance: NCATE and the Impoverishment of Education” (draft manuscript) Peter Taubman offers a rare and timely critique of the corporatizing impact of NCATE on teacher education programs. Summa-

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rizing the replacement of the language of education with the language of business, Taubman argues that: It is a system that translates students into “candidates,” ways of evaluating and understanding students’ and our own work into “targets,” and “objectives,” teaching into “delivery systems,” intellectual engagement into “performances,” understanding into “data aggregation” and “accountability,” and schools of education and the colleges or universities in which they reside into “units.” (p. 3)

In his analysis, Taubman takes special care to highlight NCATE’s support for NCLB—a policy that has proved to serve the interests of the wealthy and the powerful, not the masses of people who comprise the working and middle classes. For example, Taubman cites Arthur E. Wise, who took control of NCATE in 1991, as arguing “accountability and high standards are empty promises without quality teaching . . . NCATE welcomed [former] President Bush’s call that every child in America deserves a quality teacher” (p. 8). It has been well documented that the underlying motive behind NCLB is to hand public education over to private management companies for profit (see Coles, 2003; Karp, 2003; Miner, 2003). What such foci have ultimately meant for teacher education through NCATE is the dominance of the business plan for education. Other than turning public schools into direct-profit-generating institutions, what is it that business is interested in getting out of education and training that have them acting so punitively, as suggested above? In a cutting-edge overview of capitalist schooling and the criticality of the role of radical educators in transforming our social realities, Glenn Rikowski (2005) lays bare the motivating force behind such endeavors arguing that: The substance of capital’s social universe is value. Labour-power produces value, and education and training in capitalist society are heavily implicated in the social production of labour-power: the commodity that generates the social universe of capital. Furthermore, labour-power is capital’s weakest link, as it resides within us . . . and is hence subject to our wills. Hence, education and training in capitalist society have massive strategic significance for the maintenance and expansion of capital . . . Of course governments instinctively sense this . . . On the back of these instincts, they attempt to control and regulate the labour of teachers and education researchers. (p. 39)

Because education is arguably the primary method for creating indirect surplus value by creating workers willing to sell their labor power for a wage less than the value it produces, that is, as an ideological force of production, radicals tend not to be welcome “candidates” as future teachers. This is the driving force behind education policy for all levels; that is, the development

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of future workers willing to do whatever the job is required of them without talking back or asking the wrong questions. Highlighting this indoctrinating tendency of education Chomsky (2000) notes: Early on in your education you are socialized to understand the need to support the power structure, primarily corporations—the business class. The lesson you learn in the socialization through education is that if you don’t support the interests of the people who have wealth and power, you don’t survive very long. You are just weeded out of the system or marginalized. And schools succeed in the “indoctrination of the youth”—borrowing the Trilateral Commission’s phrasing—by operating within a propaganda framework that has the effect of distorting or suppressing unwanted ideas and information. (p. 17)

The idea Chomsky brings to the fore of being “weeded-out,” if one does not take to capital’s indoctrinating tendencies, is particularly relevant in the context of NCATE as Taubman stresses when he argues that, “NCATE accreditation is all that stands between us and extinction” (p. 2). In other words, if schools of education do not comply with the terms NCATE has established, and are not granted accreditation, then such teacher preparation programs could be weeded-out; made redundant. The underlying message: follow the party line or you will not be allowed to play the game. The hidden curriculum of NCATE, therefore, has a chilling effect, and is engendering a culture of fear where professors tend to feel powerless at mounting an effective anti-NCATE resistance. This situation poses a challenge to radical teacher educators who, following Freire (1998) and others, teach their students to fight against oppression in general, and unjust administrations and educational policies, in particular, while they themselves are failing to do so. Freire (1998) argues that the relationship between students and teachers breaks down when there is too big a gap between what educators say and what they do. “University professor” is a relatively good job, the price of which seems to be increasing as business interests invade more areas of the public sphere. Given educators’ relative economic privilege in capitalist societies, it is not surprising that few, fearful of termination, choose the path of resistance. The power of the state therefore creates the conditions for selfcensorship, which, in the long run. In this context, the question posed by Marxist educator Rich Gibson (2000), “How do I keep my ideals and still teach?” makes increasing sense. In other words, how do Marxist educators stay safe in increasingly impoverished business-dominated teacher education programs without surrendering one’s values and beliefs? For many Marxist educators, the answer is, we move from job to job, surviving often with the help of public assistance, on pieced-together part-time adjunct work, juggling various teaching loads across a wide range of ur-

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ban universities and colleges. Resting just beneath the surface of the many short-term appointments littering our vitae are bruise patterns, the trace marks of the heavy-hand of capital. “If there ever was a time . . . ” (Third Eye Blind) Never has there been a more urgent time for teachers to refuse to heed the challenge posed by capital’s new imperialism threatening the democratic potential of a yet to be realized public education uninfluenced by market forces and politics. A message needs to go out to radical/socialist/Marxist-friendly comrades able to give refuge to those professors and teachers who have been pushed out of universities and public schools for what seem to be politically motivated reasons, as the system of education, under pressure from national accreditation associations such as NCATE and federal policies such as NCLB, restructure to fit the needs of global capital. While continuing to support each other in whatever ways we can, we also need to continue to reiterate and expand on the reasons why it is important to be a radical teacher and uncompromisingly refuse to burn tires in this era of new imperialism (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2004). As a fundamental aspect of our professional and moral responsibility as academics and teachers through our pedagogy and curricula, both in and outside of the classroom, we need to also support those people throughout the world who produce the clothes we dress ourselves with in the morning, who build the cars and trains we travel to work in, who grow the food that sustain our daily existence, who assemble the computers we write these very papers on; in short, those who directly produce all value. It is labor power that produces all value, the commodity that Rikowski (2005) argues is capitals’ weakest link, that is the substance of the social universe of capital. Because it resides in the hands of those relegated to the status of worker, it is capital’s potential downfall. It is capital’s business plan for education that requires future workers not to get the idea that they can unite with other oppressed people and take control of their labor power, and use it to create relationships and labor not based on creating value, but fulfilling human need in our own vision; that is, to create non-alienated labor. Such materialization requires a humanizing education that will not materialize as long as tenured and non-tenured radical educators alike, concerned with their own self-interests, allow their labor power to be contaminated with commodification and therefore alienation. Glen Rikowski (2005) argues that rather than abandon schools, universities, and colleges because, with few exceptions, they serve as capital’s training ground for their future labor force, Marxist educators, in particular,

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should work within them as agents of counter-hegemony in an effort to transform their purpose against capital (refusing to serve as capital’s hegemonists and propagandists); whether or not this risks our “redundancy.” It has long been noted that Marxist and radical educators have been kept out of schools of education (and higher education generally), whenever possible, in an attempt to purposefully limit the range of possible discussion and debate on the efficacy of differing choices in terms economic structures and political systems we might consider and advocate for amongst our students (Chomsky, 2000). In a discussion on freedom within universities, and the lack thereof, Howard Zinn (2005) argues that the “pluralism in thought that is required for truly free expression in higher education has never been realized. Its crucial elements—[such as] an ideologically diverse faculty . . . have always been under attack from outside and from inside the colleges and universities” (p. 91). Radicals, such as Marxists, according to Zinn (2005), have had only limited stable access to higher education through the “. . . control of faculty appointments, contract renewals, and tenure” (p. 91). In addition, we would add what Curry refers to as the “adjunctization” of the professoriate to Zinn’s list of tactics used to keep counter-hegemonic curricula and pedagogy out of higher education. In many colleges and universities throughout the United States adjuncts currently teach as many as 50% to 80% of all undergraduate and graduate courses. Adjuncts are particularly vulnerable to punitive measures because they tend to work semester-to-semester, with no long-term contracts. Not only are adjuncts easy to dismiss, they are also “cost effective,” earning far less than their tenured and tenure-track colleagues for comparable work. Radical and revolutionary educators who make “class antagonisms” a focus of analysis in their teaching and scholarship, and who identify their politics with Marxism, are in constant danger of termination. But, more specifically, these scholars are also often viewed by both neo-liberals, and even many on the non-Marxist educational the left as being “naïve,” using “outdated” analyses. These critics often argue that “class” no longer exists, and that Marxism is inherently undemocratic and oppressive (see McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2004). If Marxist-based class analyses are no longer relevant, and that class is no longer a central feature of contemporary global society, we would like to draw readers’ attention to current levels of world poverty, and the concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. For example, McLaren & Farahmandpur (2004) note that “in the 1960s, the overall income of the richest 20% of the world’s population was thirty times that of the poorest 20%. ‘Today, it is 224 times larger!’” (pp. 8–9). If class were fading away, as some would like us to believe, such trends would, in fact, be

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reversing. Rather than fading away, the existence of social classes is becoming more pronounced. Having established a rudimentary argument for the current relevance of class analysis—and its inclusion in a vigorous, democratic CMSS—we now place the existence of Marxist teacher educators in the context of the current business plan for teacher education programs, with the NCATE (and other such neo-liberal schemes for education) as the driving force. Notes 1. We use pseudonyms for both institutions and participants thought this chapter. 2. Some of the ideas and argumentation in this chapter also appear in: a. Malott, C. & Pruyn, M. (2006). Critical multicultural social studies: Marx & critical pedagogy. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems & possibilities (3rd ed.). New York: SUNY b. Malott, C. & Pruyn, M. (2007). Critical pedagogy, Marxism & burning tires: Schooling in an era of corporate dominance. In D. Gabbard (Ed.), Knowledge & power in the global economy: The effects of school reform in a neoliberal/neoconservative age (2nd ed.), New York: Lawrence Erlbaum; and c. Pruyn, M. (2012). Critical multicultural social studies for “thick” democracy: Theory and practice. In P. Carr, D. Zyngier, & M. Pruyn, (Eds.), Can teachers make a difference? Experimenting with, and experiencing, democracy in education. New York: Information Age Publishing. 3. We will be using pseudonyms to discuss institutions and individuals at the center of our analyses. 4. Southwest University (SU)—and its Department of Pedagogy & Learning— was where our political and pedagogical paths originally crossed in the late 1990s and early oughts. The department was (and remains) an interesting and atypical place. It is located within an hour of the Mexico/U.S. border; most members of the larger community could be described as the “working poor”; and, it is situated in what’s called a “majority minority” state (Orwell would spin in his grave at that terminology); that is, most people are Latina/o. While the overall university and College of Education faculty could be described as neo-liberal or conservative, the same could not be said for those within the Department of Pedagogy & Learning; where all but a few, including the department heads, were either liberal (sans the “neo”), or radical left—of one stripe or another—over the past 15 years. This was a department where the rhetoric and outward pedagogical hegemony was counter-hegemony. Instructors were encouraged to use critical pedagogy/social justice approaches. The department was not without its contradictions, of course, with varying levels of congruence/incongruence, in-fighting, and contradiction. But, for the most part, it was a place where CMSS was at least tolerated; the same cannot be said of either the College of Education or SU itself. The

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5.

6.

7.

8.

majority of our students, as is the case in most TEPs, were White middle class women. We did, though, have a higher than average percentage of women of color (Chicanas, Mexicanas and “Hispanic” [sic] women, mostly) and working class students. Additionally, we would classify the majority of our students as “liberal” (not neo-liberal or conservative); and a very small but vocal group were even burgeoning Left radicals. We believe this, and do our work as inspired by these undersandings, while trying at the same time trying to avoid being chauvinistic or species-ist against other forms of life with which we share the planet; not just in terms of mutual sustainability, but also in terms of deeper scientific understandings of the cognitive abilities of other species. This is a very important point that needs exploration amongst the educational left, but we defer here to the philosophers, biologists, zoologists, brain researchers, eco-activists/scholars and ethicists for whom this is of central import. The point is, we as humans needn’t be arrogant or assume that similar, or even higher, forms of cognition don’t necessarily already exist on, or off, our planet. This was another concern: Alfredo (originally a native of Guatemala) spoke English with an “unacceptable” accent (this was both implicit and explicit in comments from conservative students), even thought his grammar was superior to mine, a native English speaker. Kris, on the other hand, used too many “big words.” “What do you mean this theory ‘informs’ what we do in the classroom?” (Best read in an annoyed “Valley Girl”/adolescent accent.) This was not the last I would see of conservative student resistance; it was just the start (even as a White middle-class man that spoke the “Queen’s English,” as it were). In coming years as an academic, I would be called a “race traitor” a “nigger lover” and more by a vocal minority of my students; fun! Although this technically was true, there were many other instructors throughout the College of Education who also did not meet a strict interpretation of this rule. Yet, I was the only one against which it was used during the period I worked teaching social studies there.

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204    M. PRUYN and C. S. MALOTT Kincheloe, J., Slattery, P., & Steinberg, S. (2000). Contextualizing teaching. New York: Longman. Lenin, V. I. (1902/1975). What is to be done? Burning questions of our movement. In R. C. Tucker (Ed.), The Lenin anthology. New York: Norton. Loewen, J. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster. Lund, D. E., & Carr, P. R. (Eds.) (2008). Doing democracy: Striving for political literacy and social justice. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Malott, C. (2005). Karl Marx, radical education and Peter McLaren: Implications for the social studies. In M. Pruyn & L. Huerta-Charles (Eds.), Teaching Peter McLaren: Paths of dissent. New York: Peter Lang. Malott, C., & Peña, M. (2004). Punk rockers’ revolution: A pedagogy of race, class and gender. New York: Peter Lang. Malott, C., & Pruyn, M. (2007). Critical pedagogy, Marxism & burning tires: Schooling in an era of corporate dominance. In D. Gabbard (Ed.), Knowledge and power in the global economy: The effects of school reform in a neo-liberal/neo-conservative age (2nd ed.) New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. Malott, C., & Pruyn, M. (2006). Critical multicultural social studies: Marx & critical pedagogy. In E.W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems & possibilities (3rd ed.) New York: SUNY. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1996). The German ideology. New York, NY: Prometheus. McLaren, P. (2005). Capitalists and conquerors: A critical pedagogy against empire. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. McLaren, P. (1997). Revolutionary multiculturalism: Pedagogies of dissent for the new millennium. Boulder, CO: Westview. McLaren, P. (1989). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. New York: Longman. McLaren, P. (1980). Cries from the corridor: The new suburban ghettos. Ontario: Methuen. McLaren, P., & Farahmandpur, R. (2004). Teaching against global capitalism and the new imperialism: A critical pedagogy. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. McLaren, P., & Jaramillo, N. (2010). Not neo-Marxist, not Post-Marxist, not Marxian, not autonomous Marxism: Reflections on a revolutionary (Marxist) critical pedagogy. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 10(3), 251–262. Mellor, S., Kennedy, K., & Greenwood, L. (2001). Citizenship and democracy: Students’ knowledge and beliefs. Australian fourteen year olds and the IEA civic education study. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Miner, B. (2003). For profits target education. In L. Christensen & S. Karp (Eds.), Rethinking school reform: Views from the classroom. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Rethinking Schools. Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 132–141. Newton, H. (1973/1995). To die for the people: The writings of Huey P. Newton. New York: Writers and Readers Publishing Group. Pruyn, M. (2003). Paulo Freire and critical multicultural social studies: One case from the teacher education borderlands. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education.

Critical Multicultural Social Studies and the Socialist Challenge    205 Pruyn, M. (1999). Discourse wars in Gotham-west: A Latino immigrant urban tale of resistance & agency. Boulder: Westview. Pruyn, M., & The Borderlands Collective for Social Justice. (2006). Critical multicultural social studies in the Borderlands. In O. Pang & W. Ross (Eds.), Race, ethnicity and education: Principles of multicultural education. New York: Greenwood. Reynolds, H. (1999). Why weren’t we told? A personal search for the truth about our history. Sydney: Viking. Reynolds, R. (2009). Teaching history, geography and SOSE in the primary school. Sydney: Oxford University. Rikowski, G. (2005). The importance of being a radical educator in capitalism today. London: The Institute for Education Policy Studies: An eInstitute. Retrieved from http://www.ieps.org.uk/PDFs/rikowski2005a.pdf Rocker, R. (2004). Anarcho-syndicalism: Theory and practice. New York: AK Press. Ross, W. (2000). Diverting democracy: The curriculum standards movement and social studies education. In D. Hursh & W. Ross, W. (Eds.), Democratic social education: Social studies for social change. New York: Falmer Press. Saxe, D. (1991). Social studies in schools: A history of the early years. Albany: SUNY Press. Steinberg, S. (Ed.) (2009). Diversity and multiculturalism: A reader. New York: Lang. Taubman, P. (draft). Under surveillance: NCATE and the impoverishment of education. Torney-Purta, J., Wilkenfeld, B., & Barber, C. (2008). How adolescents in 27 countries understand, support and practice human rights. Journal of Social Issues, 64(4), 857–880. Tripp, D. (1994). Critical incidents in teaching: Developing professional judgment. New York: Routledge. Tudball, L., (2011). Multi-dimensional citizenship education reform: Is this the future trajectory for schools in China and Australia? In J. Ryan (Ed.), Understanding China’s education reform: Creating cross cultural knowledge, pedagogies and dialogue. London: Routledge. Tudball, L., (2010). Developing student well-being through education for sustainability: Learning from school experience. In, T. Lovat & R. Toomey (Eds.), International handbook on values education. New York: Springer. Tudball, L., & Forsyth, A. (2009). Effective practice in civics and citizenship education: A guide for pre-service teachers. Canberra: Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Zadja, J. (2009). Globalisation, nation building and cultural identity: The role of intercultural dialogue. In J. Zajda, H. Daun, & L. Saha (Eds.), Nation-building, identity and citizenship education. Frankfurt: Springer. Zinn, H. (2005). Howard Zinn on democratic education. London: Paradigm Publishers. Zinn, H. (2002). You can’t be neutral on a moving train: A personal history of our times. New York: Beacon Press. Zinn, H. (1980). A people’s history of the United States: 1492–present. New York: Perennial. Zyngier, D. (2009). Doing democracy: A comparative analysis of pre-service teacher educators in Australia, Canada and the USA. Pittsburgh: American Education Studies Association . Zyngier, D. (2008). (Re)conceptualising student engagement: Doing education not doing time. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(7), 1765–1776.

206    M. PRUYN and C. S. MALOTT Zyngier, D. (2007). Listening to teachers–listening to students: Substantive conversations about resistance, empowerment and engagement. Teachers and Teaching, 13(4), 327–347. Zyngier, D. (2003). Connectedness: Isn’t it time that education came out from behind the classroom door and rediscovered social justice? Social Alternatives, 22(3), 41–49.

Chapter 6

“Shut Up! He Might Hear You!” Teaching Marx in Social Studies Education E. Wayne Ross and Greg Queen

Ideology of Neutrality in Social Studies Education1 There is a misguided tendency in our society to believe that activities that strengthen or maintain the status quo are neutral, or at least non-political, while activities that critique or challenge the status quo are “political” and many times inappropriate. For example, for a company to advertise its product as a good thing, something consumers should buy, is not viewed as a political act. But, if a consumer group takes out an advertisement charging that the company’s product is not good, perhaps even harmful, this is often understood as political action. This type of thinking permeates our society, particularly when it comes to social studies education. “Stick to the facts.” “Guard against bias.” “Main-

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tain neutrality.” These are admonitions or goals expressed by some social studies teachers when asked about keys to successful teaching. Many of these same teachers (and teacher educators) conceive of their role as designing and teaching courses to ensure that students are prepared to function non-disruptively in the society as it exist. This is thought to be a desirable goal, in part, because it strengthens the status quo and is seen as being an “unbiased” or “neutral” position. Many of these same teachers view their work in school as apolitical, a matter of effectively covering the curriculum, imparting academic skills, and preparing students for whatever high-stakes tests they might face. Often these teachers have attended teacher education programs designed to ensure that they were prepared to adapt to the status quo in schools (Marker, 2000). Anyone who has paid attention to the debates on school reform over the past decade (and particularly social studies curriculum reform) knows that social studies reform has always been a decidedly political enterprise (Evans, 2004, 2007; Ross, 2006a; Ross & Marker, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2009). When in 1932 George Counts asked, “Dare the school build a new social order?” it wasn’t a question of whether it could or not, but whether people would strive to do so. Emphasizing the political character of the curriculum choices that are made Counts and other social reconstructionists did not ask whether to advocate or not, but rather focused on the nature and extent of their advocacy. For these educators, who were dedicated to the elimination of poverty, inequality and prejudice, the question was not whether or not to encourage a particular social vision in the classroom, but what kind of social vision it would be (Teitelbaum, 2007). It is widely believed that neutrality, objectivity, and unbiasedness are largely the same thing, and always good when it comes to teaching social studies. But, consider the following. Neutrality is a political category (i.e., not supporting any factions in a dispute). Holding a neutral stance in a conflict is no more likely to ensure rightness or objectivity than any other, and may be a sign of ignorance of the issues. Absence of bias in an area is not absence of conviction in an area, thus neutrality is not objectivity. To be objective is to be unbiased or unprejudiced. People are often misled to think that anyone who comes into a discussion with strong views about an issue cannot be unprejudiced. The key question is whether the views are justified (see Scriven, 1991). The ideology of neutrality that dominates current practices in social studies education (at the elementary and secondary levels as well as in teacher education and research) is sustained by theories of knowledge and conceptions of democracy that constrain rather than widen civic participation in our society (Marker, 2000). The next part of this chapter examines how the theory of knowledge and conceptions of democracy that support what has been called, “Traditional Social Studies Instruction” (TSSI), func-

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tion to obscure political and ideological consequences of mainstream social studies—passive learning; democratic citizenship as a spectator project; and ultimately the maintenance of status quo inequalities in society. Then, we described an alternative to TSSI and the ideology of neutrality and how one teacher has made Marxist analysis a central part of the curriculum in secondary social studies. Traditional Social Studies Instruction Accepting the Lines as Drawn The dominant pattern of classroom social studies pedagogy is characterized by text-oriented, whole group, teacher-centered instruction with an emphasis on memorization of factual information. This approach, labelled, “Traditional Social Studies Instruction” by Leming (1994), has persisted in social studies classrooms throughout the past century as a result of the organizational culture of schooling as well as long history of persistent (and effective) attacks by neo-conservatives on progressive approaches to social studies (e.g., Evans, 2004, 2007; Leming & Ellington, 2003; McKinley, 2010; Ravitch & Finn, 1988) and despite widespread criticism and alternatives (e.g., Cuban, 1991; Leahey, 2010; Ross, 2006a, 2006b; Ross & Marker, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2009; Selwyn, 2009; Selwyn & Maher, 2003; Vinson & Ross, 2001). As part of his argument defending TSSI, Leming presents a composite description of four Midwestern teachers via a fictional Mr. Jones in an effort to capture the common pattern of teacher behavior. The following description of a typical day in Mr. Jones’ class exemplifies TSSI. Lecture is the primary form of instruction; coverage of material in the textbook is the dominant factor in decisions about what to teach and how to teach it. The textbook is the primary source of assignments in the course. Typically, curricular decisions are justified to students [on] the basis of: “We have to finish chapter 6 this week because we need to get one more chapter in before the end of the semester.” Only rarely are controversial issues mentioned in class; when they are, it is usually in the form of a soliloquy by Mr. Jones. Students occasionally disagree with Mr. Jones, and he encourages and attentively listens to their perspectives. He appears reluctant to engage students in dialogue on such issues and quickly returns to the subject matter at hand. Depth is clearly sacrificed for breadth in Mr. Jones’ classroom; fostering higher order thinking skills is not an important objective in his classroom. This is reflected most obviously in his exams, which are focused entirely on low-level cognitive goals. When questioned about this Mr. Jones defends his teaching

210   E. W. ROSS and G. QUEEN style in terms of developing student’s understanding and appreciation of our nation’s history, its form of government, and the values upon which our society is based. Mr. Jones considers himself a loyal and patriotic American and wants his students to share that orientation. Students generally like Mr. Jones. . . . He believes deeply that his job is to teach content, and he tries to do so in the most interesting manner possible. He is an avid collector of historical memorabilia. The discharge of a flintlock rifle and a display of his extensive collection of Nazi Germany artifacts are highlights of the semester that students always remember. (Leming, 1994, p. 17–18)

In the balance of Leming’s description of Mr. Jones, we find that the part of his day that gives him most satisfaction comes after school, when he sponsors activities such as the “Youth in Government” program and takes teams to the Mock United Nations, Civics Bee, and Geography Bee competitions. Mr. Jones is also actively involved in local politics, serving as mayor of his town. Leming points out that Mr. Jones’ classroom teaching would receive low marks if commonly held standards were applied, but he argues that this bifurcated approach to social studies education is a commonly held and carefully considered approach among social studies teachers. Leming goes on to argue that focusing on “mastery of social science content in the classroom” and reserving activities aimed at developing the attributes of citizenship for outside of the classroom is the best possible approach for social studies teachers because: 1. “the reward structure in schools clearly focuses on the conventional pursuit of accepted education goals by teachers”; 2. a “realistic appraisal of teacher efficacy” illustrates that significant gains in higher order thinking, attitude change, and active citizenship skills are objectives that are “difficult, if not impossible to achieve”; and 3. teachers are expected to demonstrate disciplinary expertise because the “dominant socially accepted purpose” of schools is to transmit knowledge. (Leming, 1994, p. 19–20) In his explication of TSSI, Leming mounts both a bold defence for the status quo in social studies classroom, and an assault on those who advocate goals and methods of social studies education that emphasize outcomes that would move beyond the “neutrality” of the status quo. For Leming’s Mr. Jones, “peace,” “world hunger,” “poverty,” and “multiculturalism” are dismissed as possible organizing topics for social studies instruction because they represent “particular ideological perspective[s] . . . currently politically

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popular” (Leming, 1994, p. 20). Leming argues that the conventional wisdom of Mr. Jones (TSSI) is supported by evidence that shows social studies teachers are doing as well as their colleagues when it comes to achieving learning outcomes. The presumption is that routine or “traditional,” organization of topics for social studies instruction is objective, neutral, and apolitical. In TSSI, there is no place for self-consciousness or reflexivity regarding the politics and ethics of knowing the world and teaching about it. The ideological biases of TSSI go unquestioned. Mr. Jones most likely believes he’s merely presented the world as it is. By definition, the conventional wisdom of the day is widely accepted, continually reiterated and regarded not as ideological but as reality itself. Mr. Jones’ beliefs reflect the ideology of neutrality that has been internalized in the consciousness of many members of the social studies education community (teachers, teacher educators and researchers). For many, no doubt the majority, of social studies educators, the linkages between political agendas and pedagogy or research are blurred by the legitimation functions of schooling and educational research. For example, many educational research studies accept the objectives of pedagogical programs and are organized to “explain” how the objectives were reached. Research on “effective teaching” extols the value of direct instruction as opposed to teaching that promotes student-to-student interaction, democratic pedagogy, and a learning milieu that values caring and individual student’s self-esteem. Many researchers (and practitioners) do not question the assumed conception of student achievement represented in this research—efficient mastery of content as represented by test scores. As a result, issues such as: the criteria for content selection; the mystification and fragmentation of course content; linkages between improved test scores and national economic prosperity; and the ways in which the social conditions of schooling might unequally distribute knowledge remain unexamined. Uncritical acceptance of “traditional” educational objectives as the basis for action (in research studies or classroom pedagogy) is no less ideological than proposing that social studies instruction should be multicultural, anti-racist, and internationalist in its orientation. Resisting the status quo in education—rebelling against “reality”—is always difficult. A useful first step is to better understand the theories of knowledge and conceptions of citizenship that provide the foundation for the “reality” of TSSI. In his defence of TSSI, Leming argues that social studies educators should accept the “lines as drawn” as the inevitable nature of things and that any redrawing is “ideological” and to be avoided. If, however, one defines “ideology” as the frame in which people fit their understanding of how the world works, a view of one’s mission is as ideological for what it leaves out as for what it include.

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TSSI, as represented by Leming’s Mr. Jones, is based upon a doctrine of inevitability, in which the status quo is accepted without serious examination. Current circumstances are understood as merely the way the world is and reflective of the general consent of the populace. In this way of thinking, the conceptions of the roles of teachers and students in schools and the conventional goals of education must remain unchallenged. (Leming argues that social studies teacher educators are out of touch with the reality of classroom teaching, and should abandon critiques of practice and proposals for new curricula and focus instead on assisting teachers in solving the problems that arise for the current circumstances of their work.) TSSI accepts the lines as drawn and deflects questions about how education is used as a means of social control and to what ends. TSSI leaves no room to consider questions such as: What do we mean by democracy? What kind of democracy do we want? Mr. Jones’ bifurcation of the subject matter content of social studies education and “citizenship activities” is a manifestation of theories of knowledge and democracy that conceive of the model knower/ citizen as a detached “spectator” (Ross, 2006a). In the following sections we develop a rationale for integrating Marxist analysis—specifically teaching about class inequalities and class struggle— in secondary social studies education and describe how one teacher has successfully done so. Marxist Analysis in Secondary Social Studies Education: Why It Matters2 Class—and class-based analysis of capitalism—are clearly crucial topics to be included in the social studies curriculum. The content, purposes, and pedagogy of social studies education in North American schools has always been contested and the key element in the disputes is the relative emphasis of “cultural transmission” versus “critical thought” in the classroom (Ross 2006a). But, despite these historical (and ongoing debates), class issues are central to the content of social studies, even as it has been defined by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS): Social studies is the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence. Within the school program, social studies provides coordinated, systematic study drawing upon such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology, as well as appropriate content from the humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences. The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world. (NCSS 1994, n.p.)

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NCSS has also outlined ten thematic strands that form the basis of the social studies curriculum standards. These strands are: 1. Culture 2. Time, Continuity, and Change 3. People, Places, and Environments 4. Individual Development and Identity 5. Individuals, Groups, and Institutions 6. Power, Authority, and Governance 7. Production, Distribution, and Consumption 8. Science, Technology, and Society 9. Global Connections 10. Civic Ideals and Practices (NCSS 1994, n.p.) Based upon the definition and curriculum strands presented by NCSS, there is no doubt that class should be a central curricular topic. By “class,” we do not mean categories that merely group people on the basis of income level or status. This understanding of class is fundamentally Weberian, that is, descriptive of groups of people (Kelsh 2001; Kelsh & Hill 2006). In contrast, Marx conceptualizes class as a relation to property: the capitalist class owns property, understood as the means of production, while the working class does not; it owns only its labor power, which it must sell to the capitalist in exchange for wages that are less than the value of the commodities that workers produce. The capitalist class pockets the difference as profit, which means capitalists can live off the labor power of others. As Marx and Engels (1847/1986) argue, “The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour” (p. 93). In contrast to Weber, who uses class simply to describe groups of people, Marx’s theory of class is explanatory: it explains why inequity exists, why social change occurs, as well as the functions of the state, political power, and ideology, all key ideas within the social studies curriculum. Marx’s theory of class, based on the premise that the written “history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Marx & Engels 1847/1986, p. 79), illustrates how class interests and the confrontations of power that they the produce are the central determinant of social and historical processes. And, if one conceives of social studies as “the study of all human enterprise over time and space” (Stanley & Nelson, 1994, p. 26), the centrality of class to the social studies curriculum becomes ineluctable. Second, and more importantly, we should be teaching about class because, as the Occupy Wall Street movement has made clear to everyone, inequality—internationally and nationally—is intensifying.

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The gap between the richest and poorest countries is widening. In some countries, per-capita incomes are lower today in absolute dollar figures than they were 30 years ago. The gap between the world’s richest and poorest nations has progressively widened. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the gap between richest and poorest countries was perhaps 5 to 1, and the difference between Europe and, say, East or South Asia (China or India) was around 1.5 or 2 to 1 (Landes, 1999). By 1950, according to the United Nations Human Development Report (1999), the ratio was 35 to 1, and by 1992 the difference was 72 to 1. The latest figures from the World Bank and CIA World Factbook, indicate the purchasing power of the average person (Gross National Income) in Bermuda is 350 times the average person (Zimbabwe) (Countries by GNI per capita and PPP in international Dollars—2007, 2012). In North America, the income gap between the rich and poor is at an all time high. According to the U.S. Census Bureau: The top-earning 20% of Americans—those making more than $100,000 each year—received 49.4% of all income generated in the United States, compared with the 3.4% earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly released census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968. (Income gap between rich, poor the widest ever, 2010)

The highly respected, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report in the fall of 2011 that supports the fundamental claim of the Occupy Wall Street movement—the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. Wolff (2011) describes the CBO report as teaching the basic lessons of a class war of the rich on the poor, The last 30 years of ideological preaching about the superiority of private, deregulated, market-driven capitalism served to enable and mask one of the largest and fastest upward redistributions of income in modern history. . . . The CBO report concludes that the top 1% was the only portion of the total income-earning U.S. population to experience a sharp rise in its share of the total U.S. income taking into account all federal transfers and taxes. Indeed, the top 1%’s share of income rose further after all transfers and taxes are taken into account than before taking them into account.

While the wealth gap in Canada is not as extreme as that in the United States, it is growing quickly. The Canadian Centre on Policy Alternatives reports that in the first three hours of the first working day in 2012, the top Canadian CEOs earned $44,366—an amount it takes the average wageearner with a full-time job an entire year to earn (CCPA, 2012). In addition the CCPA reports that,

“Shut Up! He Might Hear You!”     215 By the end of 2010, Canada’s elite 100 CEOs had pocketed an average $8.38 million. That’s a 27% increase over the average $6.6 million they pocketed in 2009. At this rate, the average of Canada’s CEO elite 100 make 189 times more than Canadians earning the average wage. If you think that’s normal, it’s not. In 1998, the highest paid 100 Canadian CEOs earned 105 times more than the average wage. (CCPA, 2012)

And the U.S. income gap is color-coded: • While Blacks gained five cents to each White dollar of median family income from 1947 to 1977, they gained only one cent in the 32 years since. • Blacks earn 57 cents and Latinos earn 59 cents to each dollar of White median family income. The corresponding figures for median household income are 60 cents and 70 cents. • Blacks hold 10 cents and Latinos hold 12 cents of net wealth for every dollar of net wealth Whites hold. • Blacks are 2.7 times as likely as Whites to have zero or negative net worth. Latinos are two times as likely as Whites to have zero or negative net worth. (United for a Fair Economy, 2011) In 2001, the poverty rate for minors in the United States was the highest in the industrialized world, with 15% of all minors and 30% of African American minors living below the poverty threshold. Additionally, the standard of living for those in the bottom 10% was lower in the United States than in any other developed nation except the United Kingdom, which had the lowest standard of living for impoverished children (Williams, Sawyer, & Wahlstorm 2005). The education system equalizes the opportunity of all citizens and the individual can achieve success through hard work, intelligence, and creativity—or at least that is the rhetoric. Conservatives argue inequality that results in an impoverished class is the result of the inferiority of the poor compared to the rest of society (Herrnstein & Murray 1994). The inequalities that do exist in our society are not the result of the social, economic, and political institution of society, they argue, but the result of free and fair competition, and those who succeed have more merit and deserve more social rewards than those who were unable to successfully compete. The children who are unable to rise up and fit into the upper classes of society suffer from cultural deprivations that they experienced in their impoverished childhood. We reject the idea that inequality is a natural consequence of the genetic differences between humans. Rather, inequality is a result of the social relations of production of capitalism under which workers, beyond the wages they receive, do not have access to the social wealth they pro-

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duce. Luttwak (1999) describes the contemporary global capitalist system as turbo-capitalism: At present, almost all elite Americans, with corporate chiefs and fashionable economists in the lead, are utterly convinced that they have discovered the winning formula for economic success—he only formula—good for every country, rich or poor, good for all individuals willing and able to heed the message, and, of course, good for elite Americans: PRIVATIZATION + DEREGULATION + GLOBALIZATION = TURBOCAPITALISM = PROSPERITY.

Business people all over the world mostly agree with them—only a few, in a few countries have some reservations. . . . Increasingly, political leaders almost everywhere also accept this simple formula for economic success, ensuring its ever wider application in one country after another (Luttwak, 1999, p. 25). Historically, public education has used the capitalist/business model to assess the value of schools, teachers, students, communities in which the schools are located, and whole states. Standards Based Education Reform (SBER)—as embodied in the No Child Left Behind Act—is the current approach used by capitalist interests to shape the nature and aims of public education (Mathison & Ross, 2008; Vinson & Ross 2003). In SBER, school districts and teachers are to align their instruction with a set of state regulated standards of knowledge and skills. Standardized highstakes tests, tests that have “rewards” and “punishments” attached to the results, are regularly administered to determine the value of the implemented curriculum, teacher instruction, and student acquisition of the standard knowledge and skills. This model is based upon the idea that all children are vessels to be filled, that children are the same everywhere, and that education is apolitical. However, the reality is that children are creators of knowledge, are different, and education is a partisan activity. SBER is being used to justify and/or mask social inequalities that are not natural consequences, but rather the result of the economic, political, and social institutions and decisions of the elites in society (e.g., those who work to advance capitalist interests and often benefit handsomely from doing so.) It is important that educators, parents, children and community members recognize that the current education reform model is being used to increase elite control over society that inevitably leads to greater disparities in wealth and power. Students need to recognize their location in our class-based society to know when it is necessary to be an agent for change

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towards equality and democracy and a resister to inequality and authoritarianism. Secondly, it is necessary for teachers to read the social context in which they teach, and question the content of their classroom to assess the political consequences implied in their curriculum organization and their methods of instruction and assessment. We believe that teaching in general, and teaching the social studies in particular, necessitates a Marxist critique of capitalism and how capitalism affects the socioeconomic structure of society and the school within it. An important part of social studies is helping kids so they can understand the world, that things change, and that they can act upon the world to expand equality and democracy in the interest of the public and not the elite and the capitalist class. Marx (1992), Perlman (1969), Debord (1994), and others have discussed fetishism of commodities and the reification of social relations. What are really changing and changeable relations between people (capitalist and worker) appear unchanging and unchangeable. As many of our students say, “that is just the way it is, always has been and always will be.” Social studies, particularly history, can be, and is frequently taught as a commodity, a concrete and already completed thing, evacuated of the capitalist social relations that produced it. That is, social studies can be taught as a set of circumstances that had to happen, and that there was not much struggle over the outcomes being observed. Again, this is the result of teaching “history” in such a way that separates it—abstracts and reifies it—from the history of class struggle. In the former method, history is taught as a collection of observable facts that are to be consumed by students and reproduced for the teacher. One of our goals as social studies educators is to engage kids in such a manner that the fetishism and reification in their minds begin to break down, and they begin to look at things as a result of social relations where capitalists produce and use institutions to solidify their power over the working class for their own gain, that is exploitation, and the working class, in a quest for equality and liberation, organizes themselves to resist and abolish the class structure that enables this power. In other words, we believe history should be taught as a study of the struggle between those who own the means of production and those who must sell or hand over their labor power to capitalists to survive. Teaching history in this manner provides working class students, the folks who have the most at stake in creating a more equal democratic society, a compass to give them direction, to help them focus their observations of the world. The assumption is that the working class students we teach will know which side they are on, but of course it is not always that clear-cut, as you will see below.

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Class as the Organizing Principle for the Social Studies Curriculum: An Example In this section, Greg Queen, who is a social studies teacher at Fitzgerald High School in Warren, Michigan, describes how he has created a curriculum for his high school social studies classes that places issues of social relations of production and class front and center. When organizing the curriculum for an American Studies class that examines U.S. history from 1945 to the present (typically a required course in U.S. schools), I have identified five themes that are interwoven throughout one semester and fit within the NCSS strands. The five themes are: inequality, capitalism, racism, globalization, and the war in Iraq. The themes interpenetrate each other, but kids begin to realize that capitalism is the primary thread and when they understand this, the other themes make more sense for them. To introduce these themes to the students, I created an opening unit titled, What is History? Teaching about Inequality. On the first day of the semester, I open with a discussion of inequality by leading an activity called “Ten Chairs of Inequality” (Kellog 1998). This activity plays a central role in the curriculum, and I refer back to it throughout the semester. The activity visually demonstrates the distribution of wealth in the United States. Ten students volunteer and each represent 10% of society. They each sit in their own desk that represents 10% of the nation’s wealth. This shows students wealth that is equally distributed. Next, I explain that wealth is not equally distributed and in fact its distribution changes over time. By moving desks and students around, I show them that in 1976, 10% of the nation, one person, controlled 50% of the nation’s wealth, five desks. Hence, four students needed to get out of their desks and sit on top of the five desks that remain with the other 90%. I tell them that today, at least 70% of the nation’s wealth is controlled by 10% of the population and the other 90% share the remaining 30% of the wealth. One of the most important lessons within this activity is when I explain (simplistically) how the capitalist system works. I tell them that the working class wakes up and does their morning routines. Next, they travel to the capitalist class’ work sites. The working class stays there for eight hours, minimally. At the end of the day, the capitalists pay the workers. The workers travel back home to rest, eat, clean, etc. Next, the working class goes to the stores (owned by the capitalists), and buys the products they made that day. The money the boss paid the workers goes back into the hands of the capitalists. I then ask, “But, how do the capitalists ‘make’ money in this exchange?” At this point, I present the class with a cartoon strip (Figure 6.1) by Fred Wright (1975).3

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Figure 6.1  Fred Wright cartoon, “So Long Partner!” Fred Wright: © UE, Used with permission.

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The cartoon depicts the following: A capitalist is walking through his factory with a friend. Friend asks, “What did you tell that man just now?” “I told him to work faster,” answers the capitalist. “How much do you pay him?” asks the friend. “Twenty-five dollars a day,” answers the capitalist. “Where do you get the money to pay him?” asks the friend. “I sell products,” answers the capitalist. ”Who makes the products?” asks the friend. “He does,” answers the capitalist. “How many products does he make in a day?” asks the friend. “One hundred dollars worth,” answers the capitalist. “Then,” concludes the friend, “Instead of you paying him, he pays you $75 a day to tell him to work faster.” “Huh,” and the capitalist quickly adds, “Well, I own the machines.” “How did you get the machines?” asks the friend. “I sold products and bought them,” answers the capitalist. “And who made those products?” asks friend. To which the capitalist can only respond—to his friend, but also to the media and to the schools—“Shut up! He might hear you.”

At the end of the lesson, I ask various questions. For example: Who are the super rich? Where do the super rich get their wealth? Why does wealth concentrate into the few hands of the super rich? What do the super rich tell others to justify their wealth and the inequality that exists? When times are tough for workers (e.g., low wages, unemployment, increased work) who might the super rich blame for the tough times? Why might workers accept inequality? How can workers increase equality?” This lesson dramatically brings forward many issues and creates more questions than answers. The next class activity, also on the theme of inequality, is called “Give Me the Facts.” In this activity, I use material from a book called A Field Guide to the U.S. Economy (Teller-Elsberg, Folbre, Heintz, & The Center for Popular Economics 2006). Students examine charts and graphs displaying poverty statistics and illustrating the disparities of wealth and privilege in society. Various graphics show that many rich people are born into their wealth, that workers’ pay checks are getting smaller, benefits are shrinking, more

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people per household work to make the same amount of income, taxes on businesses have decreased, social spending has decreased, and minorities are over-represented in the lower wage jobs. I point out to students that the 1970s was a decade where major shifts began to occur in the standard of living of the working class; from the high standard of living enjoyed by many in the 1960s, largely owing to labor struggles in the 1930s and 1940s, the working class in the 1970s began to experience a decline in their standard of living. This fact is connected to the shift in wealth discussed in the “Ten Chairs of Inequality” activity. These two activities conclude the opening discussion of inequality and we move on to look at a Marxist critique of the processes of capitalism. Teaching about Capitalism The presentations and discussions of capitalism are complex and some students do have difficulty digesting the material. I open by pointing out the similarities and differences among slavery, feudalism, and capitalism, comparing the master/slave, king/serf and capitalist/worker relations. Students read the chapter on capitalism from Mick Brooks’ (1983) outline of historical materialism. Using three sets of questions, which I created, students work through this material. In summary, the Brooks’ chapter explains that capitalists measure their wealth in money, whereas other systems measured wealth in land or slaves. Unlike the slave system or feudalism, in capitalism, the capitalists must take a large portion of their wealth and put it back into production to increase the productivity of labor, or find ways to make the same amount of products in less time, or make more products in the same amount of time. The reason that capitalists try to increase the productivity of labor is because the capitalists try to decrease the amount of time it takes to make a product. By saving time in the production of a commodity (including labor power), the capitalist creates wealth—capital—for herself/himself. The reason that the capitalist creates wealth is because s/he does not have to pay a worker for the time saved. If this capitalist does not improve the productivity of labor, another capitalist will. The latter capitalist will survive the competition and the former capitalist will not. This is why it is necessary for a capitalist to reinvest in the productivity of labor creating the dynamic, or motor, of capitalism. The idea that labor power is similar to a product because it is bought and sold on the market is also explained. Labor power differs from other products because it has the ability to create value beyond the value paid the laborer (as described in Fred Wright’s cartoon strip, Figure 6.1). It is because the worker is capable of producing more value than s/he is paid that the capitalist wants to buy the laborer’s labor power and control the

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circumstances in which the laborer produces. By controlling the labor, the capitalist is better able to control the value created by the laborer. However, the capitalist and worker struggle daily—firings/strikes, speed ups/slow downs, etc.—over control of the value created by the laborer. In class, we also discuss the similarities and differences between necessary and surplus labor (i.e., the labor that pays for the maintenance of the worker and the labor that yields unpaid surplus-value to the capitalist) and how the distinction between the two is obscured when combined into the single process of labor in the factory (as compared to feudal societies, where it was more clear when a serf or peasant was working for herself or himself and when she or he labored for her or his lord). We also discuss how capitalists attempt to extract more and more surplus-value from labor by increasing the amount of time worked per worker (i.e., absolute surplus value) and by decreasing wages, or increasing productivity and intensity of work (i.e., relative surplus value). These are key ideas for students to understand because absolute and relative surplus labor (and workers’ resistance to this exploitation) are at the core of the conflict between classes and are rarely, if ever, analyzed in the social studies curriculum. I conclude the capitalism theme with a classroom discussion of various cartoon strips from Bertell Ollman’s website (n.d.), which examines capitalism from different angles. These cartoons are excellent sources for provoking discussion and there are many “ah hah” moments when reading the cartoons because what students have studied is succinctly represented through the humor, irony, and paradox of the cartoons—all of which Ollman uses to foreground the contradictions of capitalism. Teaching about Racism The third theme of the unit is the problem of racism, which is explored through two activities. First, we read Jonathan Kozol’s, “Where Ghetto Schools Fail” (1967). In this article, Kozol discusses the events that led to him being fired from his teaching job. Teaching in a predominantly African American school, he ventures away from the prescribed curriculum and begins to use items that are more relevant to the lives of the students. This ultimately brings him into conflict with some members of the community and then school administration. He gets fired. The questions I pose to the class include: Why is Kozol fired? Why are so many of the books in his classroom outdated? Why he is told to stop teaching content his students are interested in and to stick to the required curriculum? This article provokes thinking about the relationships among school, curriculum, power, and the role of standardized testing.

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Secondly, we read and create skits to an article titled, “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die: Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race,” which was published as part of The New York Times series on “How Race is Lived in America” in 2000 (LeDuff, 2000). The main ideas of the article are as follows. The Smithfield Packing Co., in North Carolina, saw their profits nearly double while wages have remained flat. So, a lot of Americans here have quit, and a lot of Mexicans have been hired to take their places. But, more than management, the workers see one another as the problem, and they “see the competition in skin tones.” The intent of this article is to get kids to see the relationship between race, class, and power. Inevitably, the notion that the Mexican workers are the cause of this situation comes up and the idea that the immigrants are responsible for the lower wages is difficult to challenge, but I push students to rethink that idea. The point that I try to drive home in using this article is that the capitalist boss makes wage and employment decisions, not the workers. Hence the capitalist class plays a major role in causing/reinforcing class and racial antagonisms. Teaching about Globalization In the fourth theme in the unit, students watch and discuss two videos that deal with sweatshop labor (Zoned for Slavery: the child behind the label and Global Village or Pillage? [Bennett, Belle, Kean, Stern, & Kernighan 1995; Brecher, Costello & Smith 2000]). These videos give students an opportunity to see how labor is controlled and how workers, particularly in poorer countries, are seriously exploited by capitalist global relations. The students identify with the videos because they dramatically illustrate how children their age in other parts of the world are laboring for nickels and dimes. These videos reinforce concepts developed earlier in the unit, such as inequality and capitalism. It becomes clear to the students that these sweatshops are exploitative and used to enrich capitalist bosses. Our study of globalization provides a bridge for the final unit topic, the war in Iraq, or, in general, imperialist war. Teaching about Imperialist War Two pieces that have proved to be very useful in teaching the concept of imperialist war are “A Warmonger Explains War to a Peacenik” (n.d.) and “Questions and Answers about Foreign Policy (and the U.S. Invasion of Iraq)” (Bunker 2003). I use these two pieces because most students have heard only the Bush administration’s explanation for going to war, and

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these two pieces challenge widely accepted justifications for the war in a clear and accessible way. Both of the articles are dialogues between one person who supports the war and one who is skeptical or naïve. The skeptic/ naïve person questions all the arguments given by the war supporter. These readings create questions in the minds of students about the mainstream logic that supports the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and they create in students a desire to learn about alternative explanations for the war. In addition to the dialogues, I use a video of an ABC News Nightline episode, “In the National Interest: Dividends from the War on Terrorism” (Sievers 2002), that argues the war on terrorism is intersecting with the needs of the oil giants and other elite who depend upon cheap oil. Nightline host Ted Koppel contends that whoever controls access to oil will have significant power in the global economy. The final lesson on the theme of war involves an examination of a portion of George W. Bush’s March 6th, 2003 press conference. In this press conference, Mr. Bush answers many questions regarding the U.S. “war on terror” and the then impending invasion of Iraq. It appears to be a legitimate media interaction until somebody acts as if they have been called on by Bush. Bush responds with, “We’ll be there in a minute. King, John King. This is a scripted—(laughter).” Bush then smirks (President George Bush Discusses Iraq in National Press Conference 2003). Students become very skeptical of what they hear and see after viewing the press conference. This is a very powerful lesson for students to learn. Near the end of the unit, I present students with a series of “Master/ Slave” questions (Gibson n.d.):

What does the Master want? What does the Slave want? What must the Master do? What must the Slaves do? How do Masters Rule? How do Slaves resist? What does the Master want the Slaves to know? What do the Slaves want the Master to know? What does the master want the slaves to believe? What does the slave want the master to believe? Is truth the same for the Master as it is for the Slaves? Who has the greater interest in the more profound truths? (n.p.)

Students inevitably ask: “Should we just be applying these to the time when there were slaves and masters or can we apply it to the capitalist/worker relationship?” This question reveals significant and relevant learning. As a result, students now have a new sense or understanding of freedom and un-free-

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dom. In my experience after this point students begin to see the world from a “class perspective” and more readily recognize their own class position. Inequality, Capitalism, Racism, Globalization, and War in the Social Studies Curriculum Each of these themes is spiralled throughout subsequent units of the American Studies class. Some units emphasize one theme more than another and some are whole units in themselves. However, the dominant approach throughout the semester is placing historical moments in the context of the needs of capitalism. Titles of the subsequent units are: “From World War Two to the Cold War,” “Civil Rights,” “Vietnam,” “Under Control,” and “War in Iraq.” The main idea of the unit “From World War Two to the Cold War” is to show that although the United States declared it was fighting against militarism, totalitarianism, racism and imperialism, the U.S. government and U.S. corporations were acting in ways during and after the Second World War that reinforced militarism, totalitarianism, racism and imperialism within the United States and around the world. In the “Civil Rights” unit, we examine the idea that the elite divide the working class and weaken their unity using racism. As a result, the working class is easier to exploit (although resistance and opposition still occur), which helps secure elite control. Secondly, we look at how the local, state, and national governments have been used by the elite to enforce segregation both in the North and the South. Most importantly, students see how violent racial oppression was during the Civil Rights Era. In my diverse classroom, this is powerful for all students. The minority students feel a sense of pride in their history, and the White students form an appreciation and deeper understanding of the struggles endured by their classmates’ parents and grandparents. In the unit on Vietnam, the U.S. war on Vietnam is taught as an imperialist war. I use part of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) Vietnam: a television history video series (Ellison, Vecchione & Lyman 1996). This series has important footage that speaks from the point of view of those resisting U.S. aggression. In the unit titled, “Under Control,” we focus upon how the elite thought there was an “excess of democracy” in the United States during the 1960s and felt they needed to check the power of the people. The primary focus is how the ruling class manages to paint the fall of Nixon, the illegal actions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as anomalies of the system rather than the norm. In addition, we trace how the ruling class manages to dismantle social programs by scapegoating the beneficiaries while maintaining the military industrial complex. When I teach the unit titled, “War in Iraq,” the Vietnam unit

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is important because students can apply the knowledge and analytic skills gleaned from that historical event to the War in Iraq. The “Under Control” unit is important because it provides an opportunity for students to make connections between a decline in social programs and the need for increased militarization of the U.S. budget to engage in imperial wars. The theme of globalization is emphasized in the “World War Two to the Cold War” unit and the “Vietnam War” unit. I work to build a classroom ethos that has a deep respect for differences of opinion, knowing that the content students will be studying contains contrasting perspectives that elicit a variety of opinions. My personal pedagogical goal is to allow kids to challenge authoritative voices (including my own). Most students are uncomfortable or unfamiliar with challenging the ideas of their teacher, at least initially. When I see students whisper to each other after another student or I make a comment, I encourage them to share their perspective. Most times, it is something in opposition to what was just spoken, and by sharing it, the lesson deepens. Many, if not most, teachers practice a banking concept of teaching—as Paulo Freire (1970) called it—where kids are to absorb the content and reproduce it. The student who can most accurately reproduce the content gains highest marks. However, I do not think any opinion stated in class should just go unchallenged. Many times, the opinions and perspectives of students are based upon half-truths or incorrect information (as is typical of what Otero [2006] refers to as “experience-based concepts” [p. 249]). I do not believe unexamined beliefs, ideas, or perspectives should be allowed to stand in the classroom, no matter their source. There are risks to “being political” in the classroom. I would not advise teachers being too outspoken until they have developed the trust and support of the community. I have been teaching for over ten years within the district. Students appreciate my “voice” in the classroom. They communicate this to their parents, and I have had many parents call regarding concerns over the content of the classroom and I do not take these concerns lightly. From my experience, parents are often afraid their children are being indoctrinated because they are being taught a “one-sided” curriculum. (Interestingly, these parents do not complain about other teachers who teach only the textbook point of view.) I tell parents that I struggle very hard to create space in the classroom for discussion and a variety of perspectives, and they are usually satisfied. However, there have been times when parents take their complaints to higher authorities (Dueweke 2004; Wowk 2004). Recently, during the 2004 election, when I taught the dialogue titled, Daddy Why Did We Have to Invade Iraq? (Bunker 2003), a parent disagreed with the content of this dialogue and of the class. His initial claim was that the author of the piece had a website that if kids went to it, they might see or read things which were

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inappropriate for their age. I did not know the website existed because the piece was popular enough to have appeared on at least thirty different websites and was sent to me at as an attachment via a list serve. The parent was also upset with the master/slave questions I assigned the students. After a conference between the parent, my immediate supervisor, and myself, the parent appealed to the district Board of Education. Prior to the Board of Education meeting, someone informed the local media. The event appeared on a local news broadcast, and in both a metro-wide newspaper and a local tabloid. Despite having a discipline letter in my personnel file for one year for allegedly “not being balanced in my teaching,” the administration was “supportive.” The building principal advised staff members to support the Board of Education president and me, and said that although at times I may be outspoken, I was still a good teacher. How do students respond to the material? First, students develop a richer sense of history. Students see history less often as an object but more as something that was contested. Secondly, students begin to see the world through the prism of class struggle. They begin to recognize themselves as part of the working class. Even the skeptical students show signs that they do not include themselves with the elite. Thirdly, it becomes clear that students were asked to think and not just absorb information, unlike their other history classes. Below, are a few examples of student responses from their final exam, for which they were asked to write a 400 word reflection essay and instructed they could write whatever they wanted or they could respond to all or some of the following question: “How has this class helped you to understand your life better, to understand how history/society changes, to understand the role that the individual and/or groups play in the making of history, and/or to see the world differently?” I did not know how important it was for the working class to come together. The capitalist divide us by blaming it on others of different skin. They blame low wages on immigrants when in fact they are the ones paying the working class. If the working class would open their eyes, identify the lies and unite our world would or could rather become a much better place . . .  This class has definitely made me see the world differently. It has made me see that even though we think that we all have equal opportunities, this isn’t actually true. That is why I will try to make a stand like others have done before and start to make a difference in this world. My outlook on our world today has developed over the past semester. Throughout my life I was taught one side of the story. You taught us the other half. Putting both pieces of knowledge together I have discovered by own belief system. If I hadn’t taken this class I would never have understood the pitfalls of the capitalist economic structure. Our current government is not

228   E. W. ROSS and G. QUEEN perfect by any means. In the one-hour a day you are given, you teach us to highlight those downsides and make change towards what we should have and not to live with what we are given. I have learned more about the other side of capitalism in your class. How it’s bad, what should be done with it, and so on. But, the right way for capitalism is the good way of it. The way you never showed or taught it—the other side. . . . Now, this American Studies class has been one sided. Nothing in this class has approved or agreed with anything about capitalism or anything on that side of the agenda. Nothing has been said good or nice about how capitalism can really work. I personally really do not care about the Bush statements. This class in the beginning really bothered me to the sense that I should just walk out of the class. But, now, it’s just boring and being repeated over and over again. All this talk about capitalism is really only hurting our society. Thank you for the time you took to show me the other side. I probably won’t use this, but it’s good to learn about something you totally disagree with.

Conclusion In 1997, John Cassidy’s article, “The Return of Karl Marx” created a minor sensation, but not because it offered any new or important insights about Marx or Marxism. What was remarkable about the article was where it was published, the venerable New Yorker magazine. Cassidy reported a conversation with an investment banker in which the financier said: The longer I spend on Wall Street, the more convinced I am that Marx was right. I’m absolutely convinced that Marx’s approach was the best way to look at capitalism. There is a Nobel Prize waiting for the economist who resurrects Marx and puts it all together (p. 258).

This comment inspired Cassidy to read Marx, and then tell the readers of the New Yorker what he found: riveting passages about globalization, inequality, political corruption, monopolization, technical progress, the decline of high culture, the enervating nature of modern existence—issues that economists are now confronting anew, sometimes without realizing that they are walking in Marx’s footsteps. (p. 258)

We believe that “riveting passages about globalization, inequality, political corruption, monopolization, technical progress, the decline of high culture, the enervating nature of modern existence” have a place in the social studies curriculum, too. And, we agree with Cassidy that as long as capitalism is around Marx’s work and the thought and analysis it inspires will remain relevant, particularly in social studies classrooms.

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Notes 1. This section and the following section draws from: Ross, E. W. (2000). Redrawing the lines: The case against traditional social studies instruction. In D. W. Hursh & E. W. Ross (Eds.), Democratic social education: Social studies for social change (pp. 43–63). New York: RoutledgeFalmer. 2. Parts of this and the following sections draw from: Ross, E. W., & Queen, G. (2010). Globalization, class, and the social studies curriculum. In D. Kelsh, D. Hill & S. Macrine (Eds.), Class in education: Knowledge, pedagogy, subjectivity (pp. 153–174). New York: Routledge. 3. Fred Wright (1907–1984) was one of the most widely admired American labor cartoonists of the twentieth century, for much of his career was associated with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). View the cartoon at online at: http://www.iamawlodge1426.org/toonville3.htm

References A warmonger explains war to a peacenik. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.morepeace. org/warmonger_explains_war.htm Brooks, M. (1983, November). Historical materialism. Inqaba ya Basebenzi. Retrieved from http://www.newyouth.com/archives/theory/historical_materialism.html Bunker, A. (2003). Questions and answers about foreign policy (and the U.S. invasion of Iraq). Retrieved from http://www.geocities.com/anarchiebunker/foreignpolicy.htm Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. (2012). CEOs vs the 99%: No contest when it comes to pay. Retrieved from http://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/ news-releases/ceos-vs-99-no-contest-when-it-comes-pay Cassidy, J. (1997, 20–27 October). The return of Karl Marx,” New Yorker: 248–259. Countries by GNI per capita and PPP in international Dollars—2007. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/countries-classification.htm Cuban, L. (1991). History of teaching in social studies. In J. P. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 197–209). New York: Macmillan. Debord, G. (1994). The society of the spectacle, New York: Zone Books. Dueweke, C. (2004, 20 October). Parent questions materials used in government class. Warren Weekly (MI): 7A, 14A. Online. Retrieved from http://www.detroitnews.com/2004/macomb/0410/07c05-296230.htm Ellison, R., Vecchione, J., & Lyman, W. (1996). Vietnam: A television history, Boston, MA: WGBH Boston Video. Evans, R. W. (2004). The social studies wars: What should we teach the children? New York: Teachers College Press. Evans, R. W. (2007). This happened in America: Harold Rugg and the censure of social studies. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed, New York: Continuum.

230   E. W. ROSS and G. QUEEN Gibson, R. (n.d.). Master/Slave Questions. Retrieved from http://www.pipeline. com/~rgibson/masterslave.htm Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. A. (1994). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life, New York: Free Press. Income gap between rich and poor widest ever. (2010, September 28). Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/28/national/ main6907321.shtml Kellog, P. (1998). Ten chairs of inequality. Rethinking Schools 12(3). Retrieved from http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/12_03/wealth.shtml Kelsh, D. (2001). (D)evolutionary socialism and the containment of class: For a red theory of class,” Red Critique 1(1), 9–13. Retrieved from http://www.redcritique.org/spring2001/devolutionarysocialism.htm Kelsh, D., & Hill, D. (2006). The culturalization of class and the occluding of class consciousness: the knowledge industry in/of education. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 4(1). Retrieved from http://www.jceps.com/index. php?pageID=article&articleID=59 Kozol, J. (1967). Where ghetto schools fail. Atlantic Monthly 220(4), 107–10. Landes, D. (1999). The wealth and poverty of nations. New York: W. W. Norton. Leahey, C. (2010). Whitewashing war: Historical myth, corporate textbooks, and possibilities for democratic education. New York: Teachers College Press. LeDuff, C. (2000, 16 June). At a slaughterhouse, some things never die: who kills, who cuts, who bosses can depend on race. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/061600leduff-meat.html Leming, J. S. (1994). Past as prologue: A defense of traditional patterns of social studies instruction. In M. Nelson (Ed.), The future of social studies (pp. 17–23). Boulder, CO: Social Science Education Consortium. Leming, J. S., & Ellington, L. (Eds.). (2003). Where did the social studies go wrong? Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Luttwak, E. (1999). Turbo-capitalism: Winners and losers in the global economy. New York: HarperCollins. Marker, P. M. (2000). Not only by our words: Connecting the pedagogy of Paulo Freire with the social studies classroom. In D. W. Hursh & E. W. Ross (Eds.), Democratic social education: Social studies for social change (pp. 135–148). New York, NY: Falmer Press. Marx, K. (1894/1992). Capital: A critique of political economy (Vol. 1). New York: Penguin. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1847/1986). The communist manifesto, New York: Penguin. Mathison, S., & Ross, E. W. (Eds.). (2008). Nature and limits of standards-based reform and assessment. New York: Teachers College Press. McKinley, Jr., J. C. (2010, March 12). Conservatives win curriculum change. The New York Times (p. A10). Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/ education/13texas.html National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). (1994). Curriculum standards for social studies. Retrieved from http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/introduction/ Ollman, B. (2001). How to take an exam—and remake the world. Montreal: Black Rose Books. Otero, V. K. (2006). Moving beyond the ‘get it or don’t’ conception of formative assessment. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 247–55.

“Shut Up! He Might Hear You!”     231 Perlman, F. (1969). The reproduction of daily life, Detroit: Black & Red. President George Bush discusses Iraq in National Press Conference. (2003). Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030306-8.html Ravitch, D., & Finn, Jr., C. E. (1988). What do our 17-year olds know? A report on the first national assessment of history and literature. New York: HarperCollins. Ross, E. W., & Marker, P. M. (2009, Winter). Social studies teacher education: Dare we teach for democracy? Teacher Education Quarterly, 36(1), 5–8. Ross, E. W., & Marker, P. (2005a). (If social studies is wrong) I don’t want to be right. Theory and Research in Education, 33(1), 142–151. Ross, E. W., & Marker, P. M. (2005b). Social studies: Wrong, right or left? A critical analysis of the Fordham foundation’s “Where did social studies go wrong?” (Part I). The Social Studies, 96(4), 139–142. Ross, E. W., & Marker, P. M. (2005c). Social studies: Wrong, right or left? A critical analysis of the Fordham foundation’s “Where did social studies go wrong?” (Part II)”. The Social Studies, 96(5), 187–188. Ross, E. W. (Ed.). (2006a). Re-making the social studies. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (3rd ed., pp. 313– 327). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Ross, E. W. (Ed.). (2006b). The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (3rd Ed.). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Scriven, M. (1991). Evaluation thesaurus. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Selwyn, D. (2009). Following the threads: Bringing inquiry research into the classroom. New York: Peter Lang. Selwyn, D., & Maher, J. (2003). History in the present tense. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishing. Sievers, L. (Executive Producer) (2002, April 25–26) Nightline: In the national interest: Dividends from the war on terrorism (Parts 1 and 2) [Television broadcast], New York: ABC News. Retrieved from http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/ video_september11.htm Stanley, W. B., & Nelson, J. L. (1994). The foundations of social education in historical context. In R. Martusewicz & W. Reynolds (Eds.), Inside/out:Contemporary critical perspectives in education. New York: St. Martin’s. Teitelbaum, K. (2007). Curriculum. In S. Mathison & E. W. Ross (Eds.), Battleground schools (pp. 168–177). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Teller-Elsberg, J., Folbre, N., Heintz, J. and The Center for Popular Economics. (2006). A field guide to the U.S. economy (Revised and Updated), New York: New Press. United for a Fair Economy. (2011). State of the dream 2011: Austerity for whom? Retrieved from http://www.faireconomy.org/files/State_of_the_Dream_2011.pdf United Nations. (1999). Human Development Report 1999. Retrieved from http:// hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr1999/ Vinson, K. D., & Ross, E. W. (2001). In search of the social studies curriculum: Standardization, diversity, and a conflict of appearances. In W. B. Stanley (Ed.). Critical issues for social studies research in the 21st century: Research, problems, and prospects (pp. 39–71). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishers. Vinson, K. D., & Ross, E. W. (2003). Image and education: Teaching in the face of the new disciplinarity. New York: Peter Lang.

232   E. W. ROSS and G. QUEEN Williams, B., Sawyer, S. C., & Wahlstrom, C. M. (2005). Marriages, families & intimate relationships. Boston, MA: Pearson. Wolff, R. (2011, October 26). How the 1% got richer, while the 99% got poorer. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ cifamerica/2011/oct/26/how-1-got-richer-99-poorer Wowk, M. (2004, 7 October). Father irked by son’s anti-Bush lesson. The Detroit News. Retrieved from http://www.detroitnews.com/2004/ macomb/0410/07c05-296230.htm Wright, F. (1975). So long partner! New York: United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.

Chapter 7

Seeking Liberatory Possibilities in Science Education Andrew Gilbert

Introduction As I grew up, I was fascinated by the world around me. I was always drawn to understanding the Earth not as a means to extract resources from it, but rather a desire to know more about the beautiful balanced system that supports life in such a unique way (at least in our current understanding of the universe). This unwillingness to view my study of geology solely as a means to extract wealth from the Earth put me at odds with working in industry related to the geologic sciences. Instead, my love for the essence of science and helping others, seeing the beauty in our Earth inspired me to become an Earth Science teacher as opposed to a professional geologist. Over the years, my teaching evolved to take on a more activist role. I did not have the theoretical understanding or language to describe my actions as a teacher in the early days of my career, but my working class upbringing demanded an approach that seemed to fall outside of my teacher preparation. I questioned why students were learning disconnected facts that were

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disembodied from students’ everyday lives. I was painfully aware that my economically disadvantaged students were being conditioned to become rule followers and not thinkers. Innovative pedagogy was generally not considered as essentially important for this “low-achieving” group. It was this tendency of capitalistic schooling that drove me to study issues of economic and cultural reproduction in my masters and eventual PhD program, and fueled my desire to grow as an educator and human being. I am driven to expose and alleviate issues related to poverty and oppression mainly because we are allotted precious little time on this amazing planet and every human deserves a just and joyful existence. Justice and joy should not be reserved solely for those with means or those deemed worthy of special treatment for whatever reason. Naturally, the evolution and development of my critical theory lens has demanded that I better investigate the links between capital and the contexts in which I work, as a teacher and researcher, towards enacting a more socially, economically, and environmentally just world. In addition, I have been compelled to better understand the content of my teaching area and how it plays a distinct role in both creating and sustaining capital for nation states. To this end, the following piece represents how we can utilize critical notions of science and Marxist perspectives to challenge the status quo capitalist schooling agenda. I begin this journey with an introspection of the current efforts to commodify science education and how the state utilizes science primarily as a tool to gain capital. This is followed with a discussion regarding the possibilities that perspectives steeped in critical theory can challenge these capitalistic notions of science teaching. Lastly, I incorporate the experiences of an exceptional teacher and his students working within a critical science context and discuss the possibilities that exist across the sciences. The State of the Union between Science and the State Science holds a special place in the public. There exists a nearly universal reputation for science to create economic and militaristic advantages for nation states (Rudolph, 2002). The commonsense notion that a scientifically literate populous can increase the competitive advantage of the nation state is evident from President Obama’s State of the Union speech in January 2011. We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair; that success is not a function of fame or PR, but of hard work and discipline. Our schools

Seeking Liberatory Possibilities in Science Education    235 share this responsibility. When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance. But too many schools don’t meet this test. That’s why instead of just pouring money into a system that’s not working, we launched a competition called Race to the Top. To all fifty states, we said, “If you show us the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement, we’ll show you the money.” Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science.

President Obama has clearly tried to rally patriotic support for harnessing scientific understanding as means to accumulate capital and resources to compete with rival nations. In so doing, he commodifies our future generations of school children not as having the potential to solve our most pressing human and ecological crises that we face, but rather merely as a means to outcompete other nations. Robin Usher (2010) provides more insight here in regards to the value of this commodification: Knowledge (what is learned) has itself become a sign, a commodity, a product in its own right, that can be purchased and consumed for its economic and cultural value—capital which can confer competitive advantage and/or status or at least alleviate the fear of falling behind, either economically or culturally. (p. 43)

President Obama certainly echoes Usher’s point as he constructs science and future scientists (children in schools) merely as a conduit to create capital. Carter (2006) provides additional support for vitally of the linkage between schools and the goals of the state, “. . . the heart of the relationship between education and globalisation centers on the nation state, reformed by neoliberalism’s imperatives of reduced governance and the rule of markets” (p. 565). We continually hear of this need for reduced government and market fundamentalism as the world capitalist economies spiral further into chaos. Yet, there exists a propensity of governments to carry out “. . . the practice of privatizing gains and socializing losses is an ideal way of increasing profits and promoting capital accumulation” (Panayotakis, 2010, p. 12). This tendency further exacerbates issues of poverty throughout the world. I am deeply troubled about the move toward using science education as a mechanism to spur on economic systems that further degrade the natural environment and broaden the gap between the rich and poor. This manufactured crisis has serious implications for the future of school and science education in particular. What I find most fascinating about science is also that it may also serve as a tool for us to better understand alternate possibilities (Ahlquist & Kailin, 2003). Science, in concert with sound governmental policy, could certainly

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lead to ways that we can reduce our rampant consumption associated with unfettered capitalism (Sandlin & McLaren, 2010; Speth, 2008). Or that science education could play a vital role in educating people to support the burgeoning eco-socialist movement, which Tanuro (2010) described would help people envision the idea that, “a decline in material production is compatible with an improvement in well-being, and in the richness and quality of life of the immense majority of humanity” (p. 101). These issues are essential to survival of future generations and should challenge us to question the very core of capitalism. Furthermore, I wish to question the American mindset concerning the goals, desires, and possibilities that exist within science education. I have come to this position from an on-going struggle with public policy goals and their tendency to focus on competitiveness as opposed to possibilities for creating a more just world. Of equal importance, using school science as a tool to gain economic power, will certainly fail to inspire a new generation of scientists. Science in its current manifestation is also being manipulated by the state, by relegating or ignoring issues such as global climate change research while simultaneously adhering to the notion of science as an objective endeavor allowing the state to call on science to support their globalization goals. It is clear that the goals of nationalistic gains, in the sciences, are universally situated against a broader backdrop of global capitalism. Benzce (2010) argues, in his analysis of the economization of future generations of children: . . . science education seems to be under the influence of the mutualistic ideological perspectives of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism. Under neoliberalism, capitalists accumulate wealth with minimum opposition to, and responsibilities for negative side effects of, their activities. Meanwhile, under neo-conservatism, traditional elites maintain and perhaps augment their social status. In order to maintain and, perhaps, augment economic thinking and associated neoliberal and neoconservative ideological perspectives, economic elite may benefit if succeeding generations of children are enculturated along economic lines. (p. 294)

These economic forces are certainly at play in science education where science content has been utilized as a gate-keeping device that determines the economic trajectories of students in schools (Gilbert & Yerrick, 2001; Yerrick & Gilbert, 2011). For instance, the policies outlined in No Child Left Behind (NCLB), emphasizing assessment driven instruction have created serious difficulties for science education. The first being that standardized testing has misrepresented the nature of scientific knowledge itself as a pristine, abstract, objective knowledge and skills presumably unattainable by most students (Au, 2009; Duschl 1994; Lemke 1990) and best achieved

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by memorization and repetition (Poole 1994). Secondly, this treatment of scientific understanding has contributed to the deterioration of self-identity, confidence, efficacy, and agency for many students particularly students outside of the mainstream (Benzce, 2010; Brown 2006; Rodriguez, 2003). Wayne Au (2009) provides a powerful critique for how public school testing policies, supported and sustained by NCLB, actively objectify and commodify children by constructing their identities based solely on their test performance. . . . thereby allowing learners to be viewed and treated as products; commodification consequently allows learners to be categorized and sorted as ‘things,’ and creating conditions for systems of production to be monitored, surveiled, and ultimately disciplined; finally standardized tests, resting on the foundational concepts of scientific objectivity and students-as-individual-commodities, ultimately uphold the ideology of meritocracy, which posits that all individuals have the opportunity to work hard and compete freely to achieve educational and social success in the United States. (Au, 2009, p. 39)

Au utilizes the Marxist insight that education normalizes the commodification of human labor power through a discourse of meritocracy to expose the role of capital within public schooling as an active and intentional process. Science is also complicit in sustaining the veneer of meritocracy, not just in how it is taught in schools, but also how the public is often easily misled about the worth and veracity of test results through the appearance of objectivity. Feminist and Native scholars have thoroughly challenged the notion of science as objective activity and demanded that science should be clear about its subjectivities and multiple ways of knowing (Calabrese-Barton, 1998; Brickhouse, 2001; Cajete, 2000; Harding, 1991,1993; Kinchloe, 2004). It is this view of science that will allow scientists and educators to better understand science within its proper cultural context and more honestly portray the scientific process that is ultimately a human endeavor. The problematic union between science education and science as objective activity provides a distinct challenge as the science education community designs its formal standards for science instruction. The National Science Education standards (developed by the National Research Council) set formal science education policy in motion. The standards are meant to determine the goals of the state while simultaneously providing a unified vision for those working within science education contexts. This standardbased view of achievement in the science classroom runs counter to best classroom practices argued for by science education research and simultaneously less representative of the lives of the children it is meant to serve (Yerrick & Gilbert, 2011). Consequently, there is a growing gap between the view of expert science teaching between those inside the classroom and those outside the classroom. Carter (2006) demands that, “science educa-

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tion needs to problematize its reforms so the connections to globalisation and its ideologies can be fully investigated and elaborated (p. 572).” The following section will further investigate the links between science education and its connection to twenty-first century notions of globalization through the examination of national science education standards introduced by the National Research Council over the last 15 years. The Role of Standards in Science Education The relationship between science education and globalization becomes ever more clear when we consider the evolution of science education standards between 1996 and 2011. The National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996) and the latest Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (NRC, 2011) represent the collective efforts of the science education community to set the direction of pedagogy and policy related to the teaching of science. The scientific community has never been shy about the connection between science understanding and the economic potential for the nation state. For instance, the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996) state that one of the purposes of science education is to ‘‘increase economic productivity through the use of knowledge, understanding, and skills of the scientifically literate person in their careers’’ (p. 13). However, to be fair, the 1996 version of the standards made equity and ‘science for all’ a central core value for science education. Science is for all students. This principle is one of equity and excellence. Science in our schools must be for all students regardless of age, sex, cultural, or ethnic background, disabilities, aspirations, or interest and motivation in science, should have the opportunity to attain high levels of scientific literacy. (NRC, 1996, 2)

The ‘‘science education reform standards’’ argued that, by providing multiple and diverse entries into a more constructivist treatment of scientific knowledge, all students will learn to better think, speak, and act like scientists (American Association for the Advancement of Science 1989, 1993; National Research Council, 1996). These national visions aimed to prepare students for life in the twenty-first century by helping future adults make better, more well-informed decisions on scientific issues that will affect society’s future. In addition to redefining teaching and learning science, these standards challenged the notion of students as empty vessels that are to be filled with scientific truths. The standards discussed several changes in teaching methods including views on the nature of science, inquiry, obtaining knowledge, assessment, and the communication of ideas. Reform-

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ers also warned these objectives should be practiced by both “advantaged and disadvantaged” students, so as not to widen the gap between these two groups. “In particular, resources must be allocated to ensure that the standards do not exacerbate the differences in opportunities to learn that currently exist between advantaged and disadvantaged students” (NRC, 1996, p. 20). Science was not just for a small percentage of elite students. These efforts towards equity were not unproblematic, as evidenced by Rodriguez (1997), but they did represent an official attempt to address issues of diversity within science education. However, in the end, the central purpose of science education, contributing to the advancement of the capitalist economy and the maintenance of the capitalist-class, went unchallenged. We might say then that what the updated standards do is try to equalize exploitation rather than subvert it all together from Marx’s theory against class. The Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (NRC, 2011) represents the guiding force in the creation of the newest science education standards, which are currently being developed. A recent National Science Teacher Association newsletter described the two step process for constructing the next round of national science standards, where the framework, “does the first, defining all aspects of what students should learn in K-12 science, and Achieve [Inc.] will do the second, developing explicit standards and performance expectations for the various grade levels based on content specified in the framework” (NSTA, p. 1, 2011). Consequently, while the framework has been developed, the important work of operationalizing these ideas has been handed over to a non-profit corporation that describes itself in the following way: Achieve remains the only education reform organization led by a Board of Directors of governors and business leaders. This unique perspective has enabled Achieve to set a bold and visionary agenda over the past 15 years, leading Education Week in 2006 to rank Achieve as one of the most influential education policy organizations in the nation. (Achieve, 2011)

This is certainly unsettling that a group of governors and business leaders will take the lead in constructing such an influential document that sets the agenda for the whole of science teaching in the United States. Achieve, Inc. has remarked that the standards writing team will consist primarily of “K–12 teachers” (NSTA, p. 4, 2011); however, what I find problematic is that Achieve, Inc. will choose the writing team based on proposals put forth by differing states and Achieve will select the group to lead the process. This process will most certainly echo the interests of the economic and business leaders involved with Achieve, Inc. In addition to the unabashed coupling of corporate interests and science teaching, there were also several important changes, in both tone and substance, with the new science education framework (NSES, 2011). Inter-

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estingly, the new framework still claims a commitment to equity and making science open to all students equally, although it has certainly moved from being a focus of the work to something that is more of an afterthought or add-on. In an ironic twist, a science education colleague of mine (Dr. Matthew Weinstein—University of Washington-Tacoma) recently pointed out to me that the chapter devoted to social justice issues within the new framework, titled “Diversity and Equity,” just happens to be Chapter 11. I can only assume that this ironic reflection of the corporate nature of the new standards work and the push toward individual competition. Carter (2006) warns of this move away from progressive advances related to equality in favor of individualistic notions of meritocracy: Neo-liberal and neo-conservative forces work in tandem to marketize and reform and, as reform proceeds, to (re)distribute power back to traditional elites, effectively rejecting recent progressive liberal moves to increase equality and social redress . . . It has also helped redefine democracy as largely synonymous with capitalism, so that consumption becomes the new form of democratic participation, and equity becomes isomorphic with increased choice. (p. 565–566)

So, in the 15 years since the first set of National standards, we have seen issues related to social justice move from a centerpiece of the work that was incorporated into all aspects of the document to one that relegated these essential issues to confinement to one chapter near the end of the document which merely reifies the notion that diversity and justice should be separate from the everyday work of science instruction and learning. There also are real substantive changes in terms of globalization and the influence of neo-liberal and neo-conservative policies in the document. To this end, the framework has moved science education away from science as an intellectual pursuit of scientific literacy toward re-envisioning science as necessarily connected to Engineering and technology. Moreover, the line between applied science and engineering is fuzzy. It is impossible to do engineering today without applying science in the process, and, in many areas of science, designing and building new experiments require scientists to engage in some engineering practices. This interplay of science and engineering makes it appropriate to place engineering and technology as part of the science framework at the K–12 level. In this way, students can better see how science and engineering pertain to real-world problems and explore opportunities to apply their scientific knowledge to engineering design problems once this linkage is made. (NRC, 2011, Ch. 2, p. 7)

This seems to me to be a blatant effort to operationalize scientific understanding in the market place. This move could have unforeseen implica-

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tions for the future of science itself. This moves science away from the quest for understanding, curiosity and protection of Earth’s resources toward envisioning a science that has worth only in its application. It is not so much that notions regarding the beauty of understanding have been extracted from the standards, curiosity was mentioned six times and wonder twice, but there exists over 200 references to engineering. This specific link between science education standards and issues related to globalization have been challenged and I suspect those challenges will increase as the new frameworks are examined more closely within the coming years. Carter (2006) powerfully argues that: The current science education improvement discourses are more representative of national responses to global economic restructuring and the imperatives of the supranational institutions than they are of quality research into science teaching and learning. These relationships have remained unexplored because, I suggest, science education principally inhabits a realistic paradigm that tends to be interested in its traditional areas rather than contemporary social and cultural issues prominent in the broader social sciences of which it is a part. (p. 573)

In what follows, is my answer to Carter’s call to explore not only the connection between standards and globalization agendas, but to offer possibilities within science practice that work against these agendas in the best interests of students and the health of both our planet and its inhabitants. Critical Practices that Challenge Capitalistic Science In the previous sections, I have tried to explicate the connection between school science and capitalist agendas. I utilize the notion of capitalistic science to mean the unquestioned links between science and globalization agendas put forth by National science standard committees, the president of the United States, teachers, and average citizens that view science as essential to gaining and sustaining power and material capital. There have been a number of classroom-based studies that have depicted how science education and its special discourse expectations have traditionally been utilized to frame science as a gate-keeping activity that is reserved for those with access to cultural and social capital (Brown, Reveles, & Kelly, 2005; Gilbert & Yerrick, 2001, Lemke, 1990; Yerrick & Gilbert, 2011). These science education studies have paralleled earlier work in social reproduction that argued schools work to launch students into academic and economic trajectories throughout their lives (Calabrese-Barton & Yang, 2000; Eckert, 1989; Oakes, 1985; Page, 1991). McLaren (1998) views the current state of

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American schooling as one that is full of structural, historical, racial, and economic inequities that also depict the educational trajectories of students within the system. These inequities are part and parcel of a larger system of hegemony, which McLaren (1998) defines as: The maintenance of domination not by the sheer exercise of force but primarily through consensual social practices, social forms, and social structures produced in specific sites such as the church, the state, the school, the mass media, the political system, and the family. (p. 177)

Schools, in this sense, work within a hegemonic state to solidify the economic and power relations between dominant and subordinate groups within society while simultaneously making those differences appear to be natural and normal (Pruyn, 1999, 2003). So how might teachers, working with 100 or more students a year, make appreciable headway against such large-scale societal and economic power structures? Admittedly, as a veteran science teacher, what researchers have uncovered is not necessarily something that can be overcome solely through pedagogic means. However, teachers and students in schools “possess agency and consciousness which allows them to mediate and resist the dominant social relations reproduced through institutions” (Au, 2009, p. 8). The issues teachers and students face are big and changing the policy direction of a nation like the United States is certainly beyond the reach of the typical teacher that is concerned with the day-to-day work in the classroom. However, we cannot discount the power when we do not ignore our consciousness and agency in the classroom. McLaren (2008) reminds us of the power of the individual can have when engaging in collective struggle. It is through our own activities that we develop our capacities and capabilities. We change society by changing ourselves and we change ourselves in our struggle to change society. The act of knowing is always a knowing act. It troubles and disturbs the universe of objects and beings, it can’t exist outside of them; it is interactive, dialogical. We learn about reality not by reflecting on it but by changing it. (p. 479)

What is often less clear, particularly in the science education community, is how to work outside of these parameters and bring science as a tool for liberation to the fore. The following data were drawn from a Health Science classroom in the desert southwest of the United States. The teacher in this context provided evidence for the agentive power that teachers have when they enact courageous pedagogy in their classroom practice. Mr. Hill (a pseudonym) had completed a Masters in Teaching program steeped in Critical Multiculturalism and Critical Theory that was supported by a Marxist framework.

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More specifically, he utilized Fusco and Calabrese-Barton’s (2001) notion of Critical Science Education (CSE), which argued that students must critically question traditional science knowledge toward a new understanding of science as a subjective, collaborative, and reflective process involving multiple ways of knowing. The notion of CSE stands on the shoulders of a long history of critical work including those from the fields of feminist thought, multicultural science education, and critical theory. One of the major goals is to actively critique power and privilege embedded within societal institutions (i.e., schools) that work to stratify society and protect privilege of those in power (Greene, 2003; Kincheloe, 2004). Feminist and multicultural scholars further argue that in order to develop truly inclusive science pedagogy, educators must rethink several aspects of science education including: the nature of science and what counts as knowledge, connecting science to students lives, and reassessing the roles of students, teachers, parents, and the community (Fusco &Calabrese-Barton, 2001; Moore-Mensah, 2009; Rodriguez, 1998). Informed by this critical position on science knowledge CSE than draws on notions of social critique leveled by critical theory and proposes action connected to students’ material realities. Rivera-Maulucci and Calabrese-Barton (2005) describe the potential of CSE and its transformative possibilities: Creating a science education that is transformative implies not only how science is a political activity, but also the ways in which students might see and use science and science education in ways transformative of the institutional and interpersonal power structures that play a role in their lives. (p. 108)

This framework demands that students have opportunities to question and challenge taken for granted assumptions related to science and scientific understanding. Enacting Courageous Pedagogy The following section highlights some of my two and half years of working with Mr. Hill and his students as they struggled to enact elements of agency in the face of NCLB and other official school structures. In his practice, Mr. Hill worked to incorporate varying types of pedagogical approaches and investigation of issues that were directly connected to students’ lives and lived experience as called for by a critical science approach. This served as a forum for students to develop their critical views through the critique of media, situations in their own lives, engaging in dialog and other strategies that were designed to facilitate student questioning of their own socialized understanding of the world. This was in direct response to Giroux’s

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(1998) position that there is little discussion for why certain content items are chosen for study, whose interests they represent and why they may be important to the students’ lives. This disconnect often creates students who become passive, disinterested, or cynical in the classroom, because classes focus on the transmission of facts as opposed to meaningful connections to their lives and individual academic needs (Shor, 1992). To this end, Mr. Hill constantly worked to provide avenues for students to constructively dialog around content issues in the spirit of critical pedagogy (Horton & Freire, 1990). This was a distinct departure from a “facts only” traditional science curriculum and represented the essence of a critical science approach that must be in place as students work toward critical and transformative ideas. Much has been written about building community in a classroom and how students need to feel comfortable in order to participate. Interestingly, Mr. Hill took an alternative stance to this notion of comfort. He believed that in order to have students gain the ability to express their opinions, they had to learn to confront the very issues that made them uncomfortable. For this reason, he created many situations where students were required to respond to difficult questions, initially in writing, and then discuss their positions within the class as a whole. That is not to say, however, that Mr. Hill created an uncomfortable environment. On the contrary, students felt comfortable discussing these difficult issues. One student, Marissa, made clear the value of Mr. Hill’s openness, “He doesn’t judge us because he’s been there too. He’s made the exact same mistakes.” Another student, Rose, said, “He like, puts you on an equal level with him. . . he doesn’t make you feel stupid.” How did he do this? Along with sharing experiences of his own life, Mr. Hill cast himself in the role of a co-learner. This is important when we consider how this notion of equality can lessen students’ sense of marginalization, which can positively impact students’ identity formation and subsequent success in school science (Brickhouse & Potter, 2001). This leveling was essential in creating a “safe” place in which to discuss difficult issues. This approach was also supported through the work of Aguiar, Mortimer, & Scott (2010) concerning dialog in science classrooms, “. . . we have found that the communicative approach as well as content and patterns of interactions do not develop as an independent choice made by the teacher but rather emerge from the interactions between teacher and students” (p. 191). This respectful and dialogic approach had profound impacts on the classroom community. Beyond simply learning to develop their “voice,” listening to various points of view helped students to begin to question their taken for granted assumptions of the world. As students became more comfortable expressing their beliefs and having those beliefs questioned, it was clear that they also began to reflect on their own assumptions and to deconstruct socially constructed opinions according to their own “morals” and “values.”

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Once students had learned to express their opinions, they began to exercise ownership over those opinions. Secondly, they began to connect science content to their thoughts, beliefs, and opinions. This critical reflection on their own belief systems was a dramatic change for students who had never before been asked to confront what they valued and why. Once again, it is important to understand that this happened because of particular activities the teacher had the students engage in. It was the pedagogy and content of the science classroom, rather than more vague notions of “voice” and “community” which fostered the continuing process of transformation of these students. Mr. Hill used the content of the science curriculum to help students interrogate their own assumptions and to help to uncover what was previously hidden. In particular, his approach worked to incorporate notions of critical science by placing classroom content into larger social context. He did this continually in his teaching, but the following serves as a typical example, where students began a unit on tobacco and drug use and the health consequences associated with them. The following is an excerpt, taken directly from my field notes, that describes Mr. Hill’s typical classroom approach (Table 7.1, Figure 7.1): Mr. Hill writes causes of death on the front board and has students give their thoughts for the numbers of deaths these factors cause in the United States each year. After students add their estimates, Mr. Hill adds the third column . . .  Mr. Hill asks students to think about the following question: “Considering the numbers here . . . What are some of your thoughts? Several students add various comments . . .  Alexa–“I thought illegal drugs and car accidents would be the highest.” Several students agree . . .  Nick–“Man, if cigarettes kill that many people, why is it legal?” Mr. Hill–“Let’s think about that some more. Why is tobacco legal?” Table 7.1.  Causes of Death in the United States Causes of Death Smoking/tobacco use Alcohol Car accidents Illegal drugs Source: CDC

Estimates for Number of Deaths in U.S. per Year

Actual Deaths per Year

20,000–800,000 1,000–100,000 900–20,000 5,000–200,000

420,000 105,000 46,000 9,000

Figure 7.1  Student designed concept map concerning tobacco usage.

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Mr. Hill used this student question to frame the resultant discussion, and activities for the remainder of the class. Students began discussing these ideas within small discussion groups of four to five students. This smallgroup interaction lasted for 25 minutes during which time; Mr. Hill had students create concept maps that delved into their thoughts. At this point, the students were brought back together as a whole class and constructed a concept map that included all of the class ideas. The following concept map represents what the students collectively designed. The students identified four key areas that included: stimulants, being socially accepted, addiction, and money. Students were able to make remarkable connections between tobacco use and the larger social and economic contexts. Students were able to engage with the complexity surrounding this contentious issue on many levels. They envisioned how tobacco companies viewed them as mere profits, but interestingly students also identified how government, health officials, and the legal system also relied on the tobacco industry. This type of dialog is an essential component of a critical science framework, and worked to facilitate student understanding for the larger societal and corporate agendas that may not have their best interests in mind (Spring, 2010). These discussions and interactions played an essential role for classroom pedagogy that provided important avenues for student input which vested students in the class content as opposed to alienating them from it. These approaches, supported by a liberatory education framework, attempt to utilize classroom approaches that empower learners to critique and resist oppressive societal structures and actively work to create a more just society (Kinchloe, 2004; Shor & Freire, 1987; Spring, 2010). This provided profound opportunities to connect science to the lives of children particularly through the recognition of multiple discourse strategies and centering instruction on the questions and issues that are central to student life experience and interest (Horton & Freire, 1990; Gilbert & Wolfe, 2004; McLaren, 2008). Resulting Impact of Mr. Hill’s Pedagogical Approach Students described similar changes in their ability to express themselves, but they also articulated a notion of increased ownership about their ideas and the meanings behind them. The following passage is from an individual interview with Heather. I asked how she would describe what future students could expect to learn in Mr. Hill’s class. Heather responded, “I think you, what you would get mostly out of it, is a stronger opinion; on, life in general. Well, I guess on your morals, or your choices.” Heather described what she feels would be the essential outcome that

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students could expect from the course as one of developing strong opinions for their future choices and moral decisions that they may have to make in their lives. The words “stronger opinion” suggest that Heather has noticed this change within herself as a result of the course. Furthermore, these “stronger” opinions were developed around aspects of student’s “life in general,” “morals,” and “choices.” This class represented a chance for students to develop their own belief systems and a system of morals that are based on their own ideas. They are not being told what to think, but are allowed the freedom to process science content and information to help them base their decisions on what they believe to be important. This articulated the fundamental difference between a moralistic and democratic approach to health science education (Read, 1997), as well as traditional and critical approaches to science teaching (Fusco & Calabrese-Barton, 2001). Heather’s ideas are corroborated by the following words of Marissa (during an individual interview) who claimed the class helped her better understand her own ideas, “Like, I don’t know, it’s just, you know, um, more, um, more control over yourself. Your thoughts, what, what, what they might mean. What they don’t mean.” Students from Mr. Hill’s class may be more inclined to follow their beliefs as opposed to the wishes of others because they have spent time developing their own understanding for the decisions they wish to make. These students reiterated that making transformations was not a simple task, but were aware that they had truly changed their ability to express their viewpoints over the course of the year with Mr. Hill. This set the stage for students describing how these new viewpoints helped them make empowering decisions that would prepare them for their future lives. The best way to conclude the discussion on how these approaches affected students is to utilize the words of the students themselves. The following excerpts were taken from the set of anonymous written surveys answering the question: “Was the class worthwhile?” “I think it should be mandatory to take this class. I think it helps teens decide what to do.” “I think it was because you learned new things that pertain to your health and can be useful in your future choices and decisions.” “Yes, because I am more prepared for life.”

These passages demonstrated how students valued the content of the course, and felt better prepared to make empowered and empowering decisions that directly connect to their future lives. In an interview, Peter McLaren (Calabrese-Barton, 2001) reminds us of the difficult yet essential nature of critical pedagogy within a science context:

Seeking Liberatory Possibilities in Science Education    249 I believe that a critical pedagogy of urban science approached from a Marxist perspective evaluates educational policy and practice using the following criteria as a yardstick: Does it mobilize the working class to engage in activities that address those contemporary dynamics of advanced capitalism that place education in a subordinated partnership with imperialist capital? Does it promote unity of political purpose within a diversity of experiences (race, gender, class, and sexuality)? Does it promote gender equality and the destabilization of patriarchal structures of oppression? Does it promote racial/ethnic equality and dismantle the hegemony of White privilege? Does it improve the overall lives of the working class? Does it provide leadership in challenging the injustices that are constitutive of capitalist accumulation? Does it provide opportunities for an analysis of the contradictions between the forces and the relations of production (p. 853–854)?

McLaren presents a tall order for teachers; however, when teachers and students endeavor to engage their agency they can and do challenge many of these large-scale issues. Mr. Hill was able to make progress toward these goals and develop in students the ability and desire to ask questions and make sense of their own ideas in a larger global context. Enacting these critical pedagogies is often difficult and requires meaningful trusting relationships between teacher and student that are hard to document in a single article or book chapter. Therefore, if the reader desires more insights into Mr. Hill’s teaching, I suggest the following studies may be of interest: Gilbert and Wolfe (2004) which depicts how Mr. Hill challenged capitalist agendas while simultaneously enacting a process of transformation; Gilbert (2011) highlights how Mr. Hill connected science content to the lives of students and the resulting impact of critical science teaching on student identities. It has been my experience that when I describe Mr. Hill’s work in critical science approaches, that most science educators respond, “What you present works well in a Health Science context, but would not work in the more traditional sciences.” This is an important point that needs to be addressed. We must be able to put science into the lives of our students. I present the following reflections as a call for those working in more “traditional” science fields to consider how critical science approaches could impact both pedagogy and student learning. Bringing the Critical into All Areas of Science We are living in a rapidly changing world that is seeing a growth in technological advancements on a scale that was unimaginable just ten years ago. The first computer I ever used was a Commodore 64, which had 64K of memory—that was in 1981. Now, 30 years later I am writing this piece on a laptop computer that weighs a few pounds, has a 300 gigabytes of

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memory, has software that will allow me to edit movies, wirelessly send information, hold a library of music, burn DVDs, and many other tasks that 20 years ago would not have even seemed possible. In fact, the previous sentence may serve as an amusing reminder of how far we will have traveled, when someone reads it 20 years from now. I bring this up because students today are living in a world of possibilities that many adults have trouble imagining, but it is their reality. For these students, the idea of genetic cloning does not sound like science fiction, humans may well have to deal with profound changes in climate during their lifetime and other difficult and amazing findings await them in their futures. The possibilities for interesting these students in meaningful scientific conversations are nearly limitless if we put ourselves into their mindset, rather than making them step outside of that frame of reference. We must understand both the pressures they face and the futures that could exist for them, as Freire (1998) reminds us: Our relationship with the learners demands that we respect them and demands equally that we be aware of the concrete conditions of their world, the conditions that shape them. To try to know the reality that our students live is a task that the educational practice imposes upon us. (p. 58)

These words of Freire highlight that teachers must constantly strive to understand their notions of the world, and how they have been shaped by their experiences in the world. Thus, when educators incorporate science knowledge into frameworks of student experience they can have far-reaching and meaningful implications for students. Teachers are the catalysts in critical science classrooms. Without their ability to take risks and implement these varied elements these benefits would not be achieved, which is one reason I consider this work as necessarily courageous in today’s school climate. Teachers must break free from their previous classroom experiences to truly embrace the idea of making scientific knowledge accessible to a diverse population of students (Floden, Buchmannn, & Schwille, 1987; Gilbert, 2009). Implementation of these ideas is difficult on many levels. Teachers must understand their students’ needs, and not be afraid to share the decision-making power with their students. These ideas are not easy even for veteran teachers, but the benefits are remarkable considering the reactions of students to this orientation. Furthermore, teachers must understand the incredible impact that their thoughts and classroom actions can have on students. Students wish to be respected by their teachers. This respect for student knowledge is essential to the success of a critical science framework because student experiences must be the starting point for classroom curriculum. This sets the stage for students being vested in their own learn-

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ing and lowers student resistance during classroom activities and creates an overall atmosphere that is conducive to the learning of science. Possibilities for Biology The connections between a critical science framework and biology are seemingly limitless. The ethical questions that will assail this current generation of students are a good place to begin with connecting science content to the lives of students. First off, it should be noted the mapping of the human genome has created a myriad of possible ethical dilemmas that this generation will have to decide where to draw the line with genetic engineering. These include not just cloning but also other scenarios that students may not have thought about. Would they have their baby genetically altered before conception? What traits would you want your baby to have? What are the socialized understandings behind those desires? What are your thoughts on genetically engineered food? Should we alter the chromosomal structure of plants in order to create higher yields? How will this affect the humans who eat those foods? Should food corporations be able to patent seeds and plants? These questions can serve as the starting points for students to begin to study the curriculum of genetics, DNA, chromosomes, and other important aspects that are essential to the study of biology. These questions will provide students with a chance to develop their own position on these ideas and provide a need to know within students in order to understand the scientific principles behind their beliefs. Possibilities for Chemistry and Physics Physics and chemistry provide interesting connections to events, issues, and politics that may interest students and serve as a starting point to inquire about these content areas. For instance, think of the political ramifications associated with aspects of physics. Should the United States (and the United Nations Security Council) be allowed to dictate which countries are not permitted to develop nuclear weapons, when those countries on the council stockpile large reserves of nuclear weapons? What were the consequences of using nuclear weapons in Japan, the Bikini Atoll, or the desert of New Mexico? What did the original developers think of the use of this weapon? Should countries continue to develop nuclear energy? What implications could we draw from the Japanese tsunami in 2011, and Germany’s resulting decision to close its nuclear facilities? These questions represent a small sample that could drive curriculum and serve as an entry point for students concerning atomic theory, fission, particle theory, quan-

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tum mechanics and other aspects associated with standard physics curriculum. This only scrapes the surface for the possibilities within physics; there are hundreds of others that could accompany space exploration, power generation, and other meaningful issues that will play a role in student’s future lives. In the case of chemistry, there are also current issues that directly affect students and the environments in which they live. For instance, in the desert southwest there are a myriad of pollution issues that are currently threatening limited water supplies. These sources of pollution stem from mining operations and copper smelting and represent a serious problem that a previous generation has left for the next generation to clean up. These connections to pollution from industry, past and present, can be made in nearly every corner of the United States. On a more global scale, consider the rapidly changing chemical composition of the world’s oceans and atmosphere that are certainly essential for the survival of numerous species of animals, including Homo sapiens. Concluding Thoughts on Engaging in Critical Science The theoretical frameworks that informed this chapter demand that teachers include the work and voices of minority scientists and the contributions of non-western scientists to the body of work that comprises science knowledge. However, this alone is not enough to help students envision the possibilities that science can bring to better the lives of all people. Science inhabits a unique position in the world, one where mastery of scientific understanding could be utilized to further degrade the planet, but also contains remarkable possibilities for humanity. Bencze (2010) reminds us of this hopeful message: . . . one can imagine a science education that, for example, ensures that all students: are educated to the best of their abilities, develop more realistic conceptions of the nature of science and technology and their relationships with societies and environments, have the expertise and motivation to develop their own knowledge and are motivated and able to use their education for the benefit of the common good. Although the power and reach of global economization seems immense, and even unstoppable, it does not stop us from seeking to envisage a more socially just and environmentally sustainable science education—perhaps based on communitarian principles. (p. 302)

Critical science helps to envision a more equitable and humane vision for science than the one that has dominated western science knowing since the Renaissance (Malott & Gilbert, 2009). To do this, science teachers must help students not only see science as a socially constructed activity that has

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limitless potential for humanity, but also to recognize the political decisions behind science agendas that have traditionally used science as a tool to strengthen privilege and power. The problems before us are immense, but there exists a possibility to resist, challenge and change the world for the betterment of all people. References American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1989). Science for all Americans: Project 2061. Washington, DC. American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1993). Benchmarks for science literacy. New York: Oxford University Press. Achieve (2011). About achieve. Retrieved from http://www.achieve.org/AboutAchieve, August, 21, 2011. Aguiar, O. G., Mortimer, E. F., & Scott, P. (2010). Learning from and responding to students’ questions: The authoritative and dialogic tension. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47, 174–193. doi: 10.1002/tea.20315 Ahlquist, R., & Kailin, J. (2003). Teaching science from a critical multicultural perspective. In S. M. Hines (Ed.) Multicultural science education: Theory, practice, and promise. New York, NY: Routledge. Au, W. (2009). Unequal by design: High-stakes testing and the standardization of inequality. New York, NY: Routledge. Bencze, L. (2010). Exposing and deposing hyper-economized school science. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 5, 293–303. doi: 10.1007/s11422-010-9256-8 Brickhouse, N. W. (2001). Embodying science: A feminist perspective on learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38, 282–295. doi: 10.1002/1098-2736 Brickhouse, N., & Potter, J. (2001). Young women’s scientific identity formation in an urban context. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38, 965–980. Brown, B. A. (2006). It isn’t no slang that can be said about this stuff: Language, identity, and appropriating science discourse. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 43, 96–126. Brown, B., Reveles, J., & Kelly, G. (2005). Scientific literacy and discursive idntity: A theoretical framework for understanding science learning. Science Education, 89, 779–802. Calabrese-Barton, A. (1998). Teaching science with homeless children: Pedagogy, representation, and identity. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35, 379–394. Calabrese-Barton, A. (2001). Capitalism, critical pedagogy, and urban science education: An interview with Peter McLaren. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38: 847–859. doi: 10.1002/tea.1035 Calabrese- Barton, A., & Yang, K. (2000). The culture of power and science education: Learning from Miguel. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37, 871– 889. doi: 10.1002/1098-2736 Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.

254   A. GILBERT Carter, L. (2006). Globalisation and science education: Rethinking science education reforms. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 42, 561–580. Duschl, R. A. (1994). Research on the history and philosophy of science. In D. Gabel (Ed.), Handbook of research in science teaching and learning (pp. 443–465). New York: Macmillan. Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks and burnouts: Social categories and identity in the high school. New York: Teachers College Press. Floden, R., Buchmannn, M., & Schwille, J. (1987). Breaking with everyday experience. Teachers College Record, 88, 485–506. Fusco, D., & Calabrese-Barton, A. (2001). Representing student achievements in science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 38, 337–354. Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Gilbert, A. (2009). Utilizing science philosophy statements to facilitate K-3 teacher candidate’s development of inquiry-based science practice. Early Childhood Education Journal, 36, 431–438. Gilbert, A. (2011). Visions of hope and despair: Investigating the potential of critical science education. In C. Malott & B. Porfilio (Eds.), Critical pedagogy in the 21st century: A new generation of scholars. Charlotte: NC. Information Age Publishing. Gilbert, A., & Wolfe, P. (2004). Walking the middle ground: The process of transformation within a critical science classroom. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 1, 97–130. Gilbert, A., & Yerrick, R. (2001). Same school, separate worlds: A sociocultural study of identity, resistance, and negotiation in a rural, lower track classroom. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 38, 574–598. Giroux, H. (1998). Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. New York, NY: Bergin and Garvey. Greene, M. (2003). In search of a critical pedagogy. In A. Darder, M. Baltodano, & RD Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (pp. 97–114). New York, NY: Routledge. Harding, S. (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women’s lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Harding, S. (1993). Eurocentric scientific illiteracy: A challenge for the world community. In S. Harding (Ed.), The racial economy of science: Toward a democratic future (pp. 1–29). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Kincheloe, J. (2004). Critical pedagogy primer. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Lemke, J. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning, and values. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Malott, C., & Gilbert, A. (2009). Native American philosophy and Western science. In C. Malott, L. Waukau-Villagomez, & L. Waukau (Eds.), Teaching native America across the curriculum: A critical inquiry. New York: NY. Peter Lang. McLaren, P. (1998). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. New York, NY: Longman Publishers. McLaren, P. (2008). This fist called my heart: Public pedagogy in the belly of the beast. Antipode, 40, 472–481.

Seeking Liberatory Possibilities in Science Education    255 Moore-Mensah, F. (2009). Confronting assumptions, biases, and stereotypes in preservice teachers’ conceptualizations of science teaching through the use of book club. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, DOI: 10.1002/tea.20299 National Research Council, (1996). National science education standards. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. National Research Council (2011). Framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. National Science Teachers Association (2011). A framework for the next generation. NSTA Reports, 23(2), p. 1&4. Oakes, J. (1985). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Obama, B. (2011). State of the Union Speech. Retrieved from http://www.c-span. org/uploadedFiles/Content/The_Administration/State_of_the_Union/ SOTU-2011.pdf Page, R. (1991). Lower track classrooms: A curricular and cultural perspective. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Panayotakis, C. (2010): Capitalism, socialism, and economic democracy: Reflections on today’s crisis and tomorrow’s possibilities. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 21(4), 7–33. Poole, D. (1994). Routine testing practices and the linguistic construction of knowledge. Cognition and Instruction, 12, 125–50. Pruyn, M. (1999). Discourse wars in Gotham-west: A Latina/o immigrant urban tale of resistance & agency. Boulder: CO. Westview. Pruyn, M. (2003). Paulo Freire and critical multicultural social studies: One case from the teacher education Borderlands. Taboo: The journal of culture & education. Read, D. (1997). Health education: A cognitive-behavioral approach. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett. Rivera-Maulucci, M. S., & Calabrese-Barton, A. (2005). Where’s the joy? Justice and caring in science education. In N. M. Michelli & D. L. Keiser (Eds.), Teacher education for democracy and social justice (pp. 105–130). New York, NY: Routledge. Rodriguez, A. J. (1997). The dangerous discourse of invisibility: A critique of the National Research Council’s national science education standards. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34, 19–37. Rodriguez, A. J. (1998). Strategies for counterresistance: Toward Sociotransformative constructivism and learning to teach science for diversity and understanding. Journal of Research and Science Teaching, 35, 589–622. Rodriguez, A. (2003). “Science for all” and invisible ethnicities: How the discourse of power and good intentions undermine the National Science Education Standards. In S.M. Hines (Ed.), Multicultural science education: Theory, practice, and promise. New York, NY: Routledge. Rudolph, J. (2002). Scientists in the classroom: The cold war reconstruction of American science education. New York, NY: Palgrave. Sandlin, J., & McLaren, P. (Eds) (2010). Exploring consumption’s pedagogy and envisioning a critical pedagogy of consumption—Living and learning in the shadow of the ‘shopocalypse.’ New York, NY: Routledge. Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical teaching for social change. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

256   A. GILBERT Shor, I. & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Speth, J. (2008). Bridge at the edge of the world: Capitalism, the environment, and crossing from crisis to sustainability. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Spring, J. (2010). Schooling for consumption. In J. Sandlin & P. McLaren (Eds.), Critical pedagogies of consumption: Living and learning in the shadow of the ‘shopocalypse.’ New York, NY: Routledge. Tanuro, D. (2010). Marxism, energy, and ecology: The moment of truth. In R. Fidler (Trans.). Capitalism Nature Socialism, 21(4), 89–101. Usher, R. (2010). Consuming learning. In J. Sandlin & P. McLaren (Eds.), Critical pedagogies of consumption: Living and learning in the shadow of the ‘shopocalypse.’ New York, NY: Routledge. Yerrick, R., & Gilbert, A. (2011). Constraining the discourse community: How science instruction perpetuates marginalization of underrepresented students. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 6(1), 67–91.

Section III Social Class and Student Perspective

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Chapter 8

“Class” Discussion Social Class, Communication and the Classroom Environment Carrie Freie

Because both of the professors don’t have the same view, [as me, they are] very liberal, not very conservative. And the majority of kids are very liberal at this age so. . .  But, I do try to keep, I’m careful at what I say. —Amy, elementary education major and first-generation college student

Inspired by this quote from an undergraduate student in an elementary education program, this paper seeks to examine some of the constraints on classroom participation experienced by college students. Of particular interest, are the ways students, teachers, and the larger university and social/economic environments shape or influence the ways discussion is approached in the college classroom. Framed around the idea of social class positioning, class consciousness, and identity this discussion explores the constraints around, and opportunities for, using classroom spaces for democratic discussion.

Teaching Marx, pages 259–272 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Methods The discussion in this chapter is informed by interviews collected as part of an interview-based research project exploring the experiences of firstgeneration college students. The interviews were collected at a campus of approximately 4,000 students, which attracts many students from the local region. Located in a de-industrialized town, the campus attracts young adults who might have pursued agriculture, railroad, or factory employment when these options were more readily available in the area, but now find that college seems to be a more promising option. As part of a larger study pursing questions around the complexities of the college experience for first-generation students, interviews were conducted with fifteen first-generation, working-class college students. Participants were recruited from introductory-level education courses at the campus. A preliminary participation survey was given to students who responded to the call for volunteers. The co-investigators requested that volunteers complete a survey that asking them to identify their parents’ education levels and occupations and asked about their own racial and ethnic identification. From this response group, we chose 15 students whose demographic information identified them as working-class, first-generation students. All participants discussed in this paper are also White and female. Though our initial intention was not necessarily to limit our sample to White females because of where we recruited (mainly introductory-level education courses), our sample was limited in this way. Further discussion of the findings based on gender and major choice of students in this group can be found in Freie & Bratt (2011). After participants were selected, one-on-one interviews were conducted with them. Two student interviewers, who were hired and trained by a cooperating researcher and myself, conducted the interviews. The student interviewers were elementary education majors from the local area. Their basic demographic information is the same as the participants: White, female, workingclass, and the first-generation of their families to attend college. One goal behind hiring the student interviewers was to build on the rapport that we felt the students might develop if they were from similar economic, ethnic, racial, and regional backgrounds. We hoped that this rapport, if it surfaced, might lead to interesting discussions, getting at ideas and thoughts that that might more accurately reflect the concerns and issues of our participants rather than simply the answers to our questions. Although Bogdan and Biklan (1982) discuss the need to know research participants “naturalistically” by becoming a part of their world, we, the primary researchers, felt the possibility of such “becoming” would be unrealistic. Try as we might to consider ourselves professors in touch with our students, we did not want to assume that our students would agree. No

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matter how we might imagine ourselves, no matter how we might wish to deconstruct the power relationship between student and teacher, we did not assume, going into this study, that we could reconstruct ourselves sufficiently to become “insiders” in the world of our students, and most importantly to break down the power relationship that exists between student and teacher. We think the transcripts bear witness to this as the participants share comments and thoughts we feel they may not have shared with us face-to-face, despite the promise of anonymity. The assumption was that a shared demographic between interviewer and participant would provide greater comfort to the participant, and might yield more information or different types of information than if professors were interviewing students. Participants were offered payment for their interviews. The interviews range from 45 minutes to 2 hours in length. They were recorded and later transcribed and coded. Codes were generated based on a preliminary reading of the transcripts. In addition, the interview data is entwined and continually speaking to everyday experience. Some of the first inspirations for this study, for example, came out of my experiences with students who I saw struggling to balance work, school, and family. Many of these struggles seem to be either unacknowledged by institutions of higher learning on a structural or policy level, or treated as if they are individual struggles rather than social and institutional issues that should be addressed as significant factors impacting student achievement and equal access to higher education. In addition, many of the findings have also caused me to reflect on my own classroom practice and this reflection is also brought into the chapter. The University as a Site for Class Reproduction Schools, like other institutions in capitalist societies function as spaces for the reproduction of the class system and service to the interests of capital (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Anyon, 1981; hooks, 2003; Hill, 2001). At the post secondary level this is true as well, and both discussions of access and praxis reflect the ways in which the capitalist system works toward reproduction (Archer & Hutchins, 2000; Bloom, 2005; Goldrick-Rab, 2006; hooks, 2003). Informed by this well documented history of literature on the ways class is reproduced in education, this paper attempts to open a discussion of the ways that a university classroom environment restrains, constrains (Cornbleth, 2001, 2002), and offers opportunities for progressive, democratic pedagogy. Specifically, focusing on students’ perceptions of classroom environments and expectations of classroom discussion, this chapter will examine the perceptions brought into the classroom by a particular group of first-generation college students. The literature on the ex-

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periences of first-generation college students explores the themes of class reproduction and classism within all levels of higher education. In her work on social class and the college context, bell hooks has examined the potential for disconnects between college students from working-class backgrounds and the expectations embedded in a traditional college experience. Scholars argue that these situations are an often overlooked form of social stratification and classism that needs to be addressed by institutions of higher learning in order to make higher education a more equitable place for students from first-generation and working-class backgrounds (hooks, 2003; Langhout, Rosselli, & Feinstein, 2007; Oldfield, 2007). Goldrick-Rab’s (2006) work explores the ways in which educational institutions have class-based markers that define who “belongs” and who does not. Social class divides include meal plans, dorm rooms, access to computers, cell phones, etc. Social class shapes who feels he or she belongs at what kind of institution. Students who begin college with a disadvantage with respect to what they know about higher education (lack of cultural capital in this area) are less likely to persist to graduation. In addition, social economic status is strongly related to every measure of student satisfaction and sense of belonging (correlated with SES) and impacts persistence (Goldrick-Rab, 2006). Oldfield (2007), for example, notes that despite many more working-class students enrolling in higher education there has not been a shift in the culture of colleges and universities that would accommodate working-class students and promote their success. He argues that universities are not democratic institutions and that working-class students are often presented with insurmountable social challenges. The study by Langout et al., (2007), identifies classism, as it is found on college campuses, more specifically. Distinguishing between institutional and interpersonal classism, this study seeks to understand to what extent working-class and poor students experience classism within the university setting, and discusses the possible negative effects of classist behaviors, both materially and psychologically. Using the definitions of institutional classism (discrimination against working-class or poor students through policies or institutionally endorsed behaviors), interpersonal citational classism (discrimination based on social class that happens between individuals), and interpersonal classism via discounting (ignoring or discounting classbased experiences, points of view, etc), the authors find that working-class and working-poor students experience all three of these types of discrimination. However, because students often don’t categorize their experiences as “classism” the incidence of this type of discrimination is underreported. The authors argue that institutions of higher education need to acknowledge all three forms of classism and work to combat these on campus if they wish to retain students and provide an equitable college climate. The

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stressors of discrimination, they argue, can impact student achievement and retention. Working-class students, therefore, often feel unsupported in the college environment (Langout et al., 2007). In her work, hooks (2003) points to another issue. She argues that the pedagogy of the college classroom is shaped by middle class values and expectations, which are rarely articulated or made transparent. She describes her own experience as a working-class student entering a college classroom. She learned by example that there was a system of rewards. Loudness, anger, emotional outbursts, and unrestrained laughter were all unacceptable and associated with the lower class. Lower-class students were silenced by the class values of the educational setting. To avoid feeling estranged, students from working-class backgrounds often learn to cross borders by using mainstream speech patterns and repressing any patterns that might reveal their working-class origins. Many professors, hooks argues, think they foster free speech in their classrooms and strive for democratic environments while at the same time valuing traditional rules of middle- and upper-class etiquette. She calls on professors to interrogate their classroom environments for social class bias. It’s vitally important, hooks argues, to hear multiple people’s voices in the classroom (hooks, 2003). Power, Pedagogy, and Barriers to Class Consciousness As a site for the reproduction of capitalist values (Kelsh & Hill, 2006) and White supremacist capitalist patriarchy (hooks, 2003) classroom spaces themselves are rife with constraints and restraints that impose the values and actions which work toward the reproduction of the status quo. In this context, I have adopted Cornbleth’s (2001; 2002) use of the terms constraint and restraint to refer to “external influences, constraints, or controls.” Restraint is used to refer to self-imposed limitations or restrictions. In Cornbleth’s discussion she uses constraints and restraints to refer to teachers, and social studies teachers in particular, while I use the terms to apply to both teachers and students in broad ways. In some cases constraints and restraints can be difficult to distinguish since teachers and students are always working within social environments within established social and economic systems, and dealing with multiple factors which impact pedagogy. Therefore, while constraints come from outside factors and restraints are self-imposed, the two are often interconnected and overlap. For the purposes of this paper, I will discuss constrains and restraints together. Particularly, in the examples found here it is difficult to dissect where a constraint and restraint become distinct. The actions of the individuals discussed here do not exist outside of a social context and so the influences of social forces are always present. Constraints and restrains, be-

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cause of their social nature as functions of a social and economic system, function for both teachers and students. The focus of this discussion is on exploring the ways this group of students articulate their negotiation of constraints and restraints. Expectations of Power and Dialogue Students come into the classroom with expectations of the ways classrooms operate. Metz (1990) offers a discussion of what she terms “real school,” which is a common socially constructed script made up of ideas of what school is, how school works, and the roles students, teachers and administrators play. Frequently, these ideas, founded within a variety of personal experiences, are based on traditional models of school which include hierarchical authority structures, teacher centered classrooms, memory and fact based assessment, and so on. Metz presents the concept of “real school” as a sort of ritual performance including assumptions about the naturalness (as opposed to the socially constructed nature) of forms of privilege and opportunity. Both preconceived notions of school and the students’ own perceptions of the institutional and classroom environment are in evidence in the following excerpts from student interviews. In the first excerpt, Amy discusses classroom participation and the ways she negotiates the classroom setting. One particular constraint/restraint she experiences is the negotiation of speaking in the classroom environment. Here she perceives a clash of world-views, liberal and conservative, which is seen as potentially dangerous, as Amy explained. Interviewer: What do you think they [professors/ students] would see as your strength? Amy: Opinionated. Interviewer: Ok, ‘cause some people find that, it depends on what you are talking about but if it is something they believe strongly... Amy: ‘Cause both of the professors don’t have the same view [as me, they are] very liberal, not very conservative. And the majority of kids are very liberal at this age so... But, I do try to keep, I’m careful at what I say. Interviewer: Right. Just kinda have to be that way you don’t affect anybody. Amy: Yeah, I don’t want to offend the teacher because she gives me the grade. Interviewer: Right. Amy: Good thing to get good grades!

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A number of participants described themselves and/or their families as “conservative” usually in relation to a discussion of religion. Three students mentioned conservative ideas in relation to course material or classroom discussions. Amy said that college had challenged her beliefs somewhat. She also felt that her professors were liberal. Though she describes herself as “opinionated,” she also notes that she holds back in classes for fear of offending and jeopardizing her grade. Amy states unequivocally that her classroom agenda is simply to be successful, and she defines success in terms of the letter grade she earns. She says, “I don’t want to offend the teacher because she gives me the grade.” Presumably, to disagree with the professor’s point of view or material being presented would be to offend. This student also tells us, “I speak up when I have to, or when I’m rewarded for speaking.” Again, implicit in this claim is the idea that the classroom holds no real import or currency in the student’s life, and that she is really only concerned with the classroom as a vehicle toward her eventual goals. Though Amy cited being “opinionated” as her strength and more importantly what others would view as her strength, she also views the classroom as a potentially damaging space rather than a place of growth, and her role in that classroom is to survive these potential hazards long enough to escape unharmed. The harm, of course, would be a poor relationship with a professor, the person who will mark her participation with a grade. Again, the focus is on the grade, the end product rather than the experience, as she reiterates in this exchange. Interviewer: Do you find yourself being more opinionated in classes that deal with that [education, her major]? Amy: No. Just when you get class participation points for speaking out loud in class. So, those are the only classes that really, ya know. Like if you have a class that is just lecture you just go and sit and listen. It’s only the education theory classes, which I don’t care for much. But, all we have to do is read articles and write papers about them. So, yeah, those are the only classes that I voice my opinion in. If you don’t talk out in class you don’t get the credit. It’s all about the grade!

This final comment, “It’s all about the grade!” highlights an essential conflict in the student-faculty relationship that seems difficult to reconcile. While faculty members ostensibly value class discussion as a tool for encouraging growth, critical thinking, formulation of opinion, and professional development, Amy seems to regard class discussion, at best, as unnecessary, or, at worst, a proving ground, rife with dangers, that must be negotiated in order to survive to the next level.

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Expectations and Pedagogy Amy’s discussion of her classroom experiences reveals her own attitudes about learning and her ideas of what schooling is all about; what Metz (1990) calls “real school.” Many people can identify aspects of this “real school” ritual from their own experiences and assumptions. Some elements of “real school” are structural, such as identical classrooms lined up along long corridors, curriculum requirements set out by district or state, attendance requirements for students, textbook adoption procedures, assignment of grades that are used to differentiate students and influence future prospects, opportunities for participation in sports, musical performances, and clubs (Metz, 1990), and, increasingly, inclusion of the idea that standardized testing is taken for granted. These are assumed to be natural, and even essential, parts of schooling. Other elements of “real school” have to do with assumptions about how knowledge is formed, valued, and distributed. Freire (2000) defines the banking concept of education as commensurate with what many consider to be “real school;” a model in which the teacher stands in front of the class and imparts knowledge to students as empty vessels to be filled. For Amy, “real school” includes completing tasks or assignments because they are worth a grade. The focus, as in Anyon’s (1981) model of workingclass and middle-class schooling is not about participation per se, but in getting the right answer or following the directions (or, in this case, the expectations of participation in class rather than the learning objectives). In addition to her focus on grades, Amy’s concept of “real school” regards knowledge as something to be learned and stored away. For example, in the following exchange she tells the interviewer that she has already “learned everything” on the topic and, therefore, finds her classes redundant. Amy: No, I could really care less. No, that’s not right to say, really like most of the stuff we talked about I already know about. I know about kids. I know about the school system. I have dealt with the school system. I have worked. So, I’m not young coming into it and learning everything.

Numerous other ideas of “real school” surfaced during the interviews. The majority of these echoed Amy’s idea that knowledge is pre-determined and meted out by an authority. This banking model (Freire, 2000) goes largely un-critiqued and shows up again in an interview with Becky. Here, Becky talks about how she felt she was treated as an adult by one of her professors because she made clear what information was important and what would be on the test.

“Class” Discussion    267 Becky: She [the professor] taught us like we were adults. She came right out with the information, like the information we needed to know. She told us it wasn’t a guess of what is going to be on the test.

For Becky, the way the information was transmitted and coded as important or test-worthy was interpreted as a sign of respect coming from the professor. A possible acknowledgement that they were both “playing the game” of “real school.” Evident in her discussion of her education classes is the idea that through experience Amy already feels she knows what she needs to about the topics covered in class. From this standpoint the curriculum and the class work itself becomes constraints for the students. It is yet another hoop to jump through on the way to pursuing a grade or diploma. This leads to the conclusion Amy makes, that she doesn’t have much to gain from the classes. This seems not to leave much room for exploring the classroom as a place for engaging the “tools of critical analysis” necessary for democratic pedagogies (Fischman & McLaren, 2000). However, it might also be true that Amy does not find her experience-based knowledge valued in class, and, therefore, might be resistant to the idea that class could be of benefit to her. It is possible that Amy views herself as having different goals from the institution, leading her toward the point of view that getting the diploma is the means to the end. A college education, if it is functioning as worker training becomes a means to an end. While, as a professor, I might hope to realize the classroom as a space for what Fischman and McLaren define as democratic pedagogies, “those that motivate teachers and students, schools and communities to deliberate and shape the choices that they make with the overarching purpose of contributing to increased social justice, equality, and improvement in the quality of life for all constituencies within the larger society,” it bears noting that students might not view the classroom as even bearing potential for being this sort of space. For those faced with these constraints and restraints, the search for opportunities continues. Kincheloe and Steinberg assert that it is important to bring to a multicultural perspective, inclusive of social class, which works to address inequalities, empower and teach resistance (1997). The struggle to do this in ways that are relevant to students and respect their backgrounds and ideas while also challenging them to adopt new points of view, is ongoing. Another question for those called by Kincheloe and Steinberg’s challenge is: to what extent do working-class students see themselves in opposition to the status quo and to what extent do they embrace a class consciousness? In bell hooks’ personal experience related in, Confronting Class in the Classroom she describes a working-class consciousness that spoke back to power and challenged authority (2003). Does Amy’s distancing herself from the perceived “liberal” expectations of the university describe an opposition to the

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authority of the institution and a reaffirmation of working-class interests? Is fractioning of the working-class causing teachers and students to not see themselves as part of the same class and involved in the same struggles? As Kelsh and Hill argue (2006), moving away from a binary concept of class is to “fracture the working class by promoting anger, envy, guilt, and blame among its various fractions” (p.  5). The dialogue of fractioning appears around ideology, and ideas such as “liberal” professor and “conservative” students are part of this dialogue of separation, which Kelsh and Hill argue serves to separate workers by making it appear they do not share interests within a capitalist system. Expectations and Gender Along with the discussion of speaking out in class, the participants detailed the idea of being a “nice girl.” For Melanie being a nice girl in class means not speaking up much. Presumably, not causing any disagreements of opinion to come to light. Melanie: . . . I’m quiet. In class I don’t normally raise my hand. I do if the class is like [small], but if it is like a class that has like a ton of people in it. . . . I think people think I’m nice. Like, I’m a nice girl. I don’t talk about people, or give them dirty looks. I’m smiling a lot. People probably don’t know my name in class anyway. I’m there to learn, I’m not there to make friends. Interviewer: There [are] a lot people not there to learn. How would your teachers describe you? Melanie: Probably, I’m a good student. I do my work on time. I get things done. I don’t do very well on tests. I’m not much of a test taker.

Melanie says “People probably don’t know my name in class anyway. I’m there to learn. I’m not there to make friends.” Being a “nice girl” is correlated with being quiet and passive, playing by the rules and getting her work done without attracting attention or causing a problem. This is the sort of classroom behavior that Anyon (1981) noted was rewarded in the “workingclass” and “middle-class” schools she studied. Anyon’s work discusses the different hidden curriculum and expectations of students based on their social-class background arguing that students are presented with different concepts of knowledge and ways of interacting that function to prepare them for future jobs or careers that mirror those of their parents’ place in the class hierarchy. Melanie’s passive model of “nice girl” behavior is not necessarily the one rewarded in the “affluent-professional” and “executive elite” models of schooling Anyon (1981) describes, which tend to demand student par-

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ticipation, critical and/or creative thinking. Whether or not these traits are rewarded in college is of some debate, and is reflected in the participants’ discussion of college courses that require participation versus those that do not. Courses that require verbal participation pose a host of dilemmas for students, including a potential for a clash of worldviews, fear of offending students or professors, and being uncomfortable or unfamiliar with a framework of education that asks students to critically think, share, and defend “opinions.” For Amy, she meets this challenge by carefully deciding when to engage in classroom participation. For Melanie, it means being a “nice girl,” keeping to herself, and avoiding discomfort or potential offense. Melanie’s concept of schooling, that she is “there to learn” rather than engage with people is somewhat similar to Amy’s. These comments reflect the idea that schooling is about acquiring knowledge rather than involving oneself in experiences and doing. In the school’s 2011 “Profile of First Year Students,” 50% of students listed “prepare for a career” as their only or primary reason for attending college. In their discussion of schooling for democracy Fischman and McLaren (2000) write “ . . . we believe that schools should be detached from the requirements of the ‘real world,’ where reality has been collapsed into a function of the market. If we want schools to stress democracy, they need independence from the market” (p177). The illustration of the constraints and restraints Amy and Melanie experience in connection to their concerns about earning grades and diplomas (which are viewed as currency in the capitalist hierarchy), reveals multiple factors at play, which ultimately promote the status quo and limit democratic pedagogies. Expectations and Culture Many students, particularly first-generations students, live in multiple spaces and discourses. Because, for the most part, the students in this sample do not live on campus, many of them travel from campus to home, to work, crossing into different rhetorical territories each time. Most of them live at home rather than on campus, and many of them include their families in discussions about school; in particular, discussions revolving around performance, success, and grades earned. Some participants say that family discussions turn to ridicule of the student for engaging in certain coursework. One student talked about asking for required elementary education course books for Christmas (children’s literature) and being laughed at on Christmas morning. Another student, Dora, describes how her family teased her about projects for a methods course in art for elementary teachers, saying that the work was reminiscent of elementary school art work.

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Here she shares with the interviewer: Dora: Yeah, I took an art class. It was puppets and mask making, and my parents, I got endlessly picked on. Especially, like at Christmas. My brothers got me puppets. Interviewer: That’s crazy. Dora: They are so mean to me.

In this case the disconnect between Dora’s home and school selves was made even more visible, and painful, because of the way her family teased her about a subject that she felt ought to be treated seriously, her college work and career aspirations. Participants not only negotiated these identities at home, but also expressed their difficulty fitting into the academic and social worlds of the college setting. The students interviewed expressed a feeling of being disconnected from the general student population. The women presented various reasons for this (being conservative, being quiet, age differences, lack of things in common with other students, and so on). None of them explicitly used the language of social class, though many of them referred to gendered concerns (such as being a wife, married mother, or single mother) as reasons for a lack of connection with fellow students. The pressing nature of familial responsibilities was a recurring theme regardless of age, as some of the traditional college-age participants were single or married mothers. The story Dora tells about being made fun of for the content of her schoolwork attests to this marginality in the home spaces. In another example of marginalization, Amy notes that she visited the adult student center once, never to return, because she found it “odd” and unwelcoming. Layered within this social class divide is a gendered divide that is also being navigated. Tokarczyk and Fay (1993) find that working-class women in the academy inhabit distinct and often contradictory spaces marked by social class. As a consequence, these women often find themselves on the margins of different “worlds” and feeling like outsiders in all of them. For these students here the separation of those spaces functioned to distance them from others, whether it was family groups or fellow adult students. Conclusions Barriers to Class Consciousness Though these excerpts present brief glances into the lives of these students there are some central points of discussion emerging. The students in this sample are all engaged in negotiation of the campus and classroom

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spaces; balancing their goals with expectations or perceived expectations. While every college student likely faces challenges, those focused on here are uniquely class and gender based. As others have noted (hooks, 2003; Goldrick-Rab, 2006; Oldfield, 2007) the cultural capital that White workingclass students bring to higher education is not usually one familiar with academic culture (usually coded as upper or middle class) and can bring about struggles for working-class students as they learn to balance the values and ways of knowing and being between their home culture and the campus. Kelsh and Hill (2006) further illuminate this discussion by drawing attention to the ways these distinctions (which are not based on relationship to means of production in the strictly Marxist sense) function to fraction the interests of a group of people who share a class identity as workers. This creates identities that appear to be in opposition to one another. These sites of struggles, disconnects, or fractioning are often found in areas of communication and ideas about what communication styles are appropriate or valued in certain settings (a form of cultural capital). These areas of fractioning become constraints and restraints for teachers or students pursuing democratic pedagogies in the classroom. References Anyon, J. (1981). Social class and school knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 11(1), 3–42. Archer, L., & Hutchins, M. (2000, December). Bettering yourself? Discourses of risk, cost and benefit in ethnically diverse, young working-class non-participants’ Consturctions of higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21(4), 555–574. Bloom, J. (2005). Hollowing the promise of higher education: Inside the political economy of access to college. In L. Weis & M. Fine (Eds.), Beyond silenced voices: Class, race, and gender in United States schools (rev. ed.). Albany: State University of New York Press. Bogdan, R., & Biklen, S. K. (1982). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods. Boston: Allyn and Bacon Inc. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York: Basic Books. Cornbleth, C. (2001). Climates of constraint/restraint of teachers and teaching. In W. B. Stanley (Ed.), Critical issues in social studies research for the 21st century (pp. 73–95). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Cornbleth, C. (2002). What constrains meaningful social studies teaching? Social Education, 66(3), 186–190. Fischman, E., & McLaren, P. (2000). Schooling for democracy: Toward a critical utopianism. Contemporary Sociology, 29(1), 168–179. Freie, C., & Bratt, K. (2011). Nice girls become teachers: Experiences of female first-generation college students majoring in elementary education. In C. S.

272   C. FREIE Malott & B. Porfilio (Eds.), Critical pedagogy in the twenty-first century: A new generation of scholars. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed: 30th anniversary edition. New York: Continuum. Goldrick-Rab, S. (2006. January). Following their every move: An investigation of social-class differences in college pathways. Sociology of Education, 79(1), 61–79. Hill, D. (2001). State theory and the neo-liberal reconstruction of schooling and teacher education: A structuralist neo-Marxist critique of postmodernist, quasi-postmodernist, and culturalist neo-Marxist theory. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 22(1), 135–155. hooks, bell. (2003). Confronting class in the classroom. In Darder, A., Baltodano, M., & Torres, R. (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader. New York: Routledge. Kelsh, D., & Hill, D. (2006, March). The culturalization of class and the occluding of class consciousness: The knowledge industry in/of education. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 4(1). http://www.jceps.com/?pageID=article &articleID=59 Kincheloe, J., & Steinberg, S. (1997). Changing multiculturalism. Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Langhout, R., Rosselli, F., & Feinstein, J. (2007). Assessing classism in academic settings. Review of Higher Education. 30(2), 145–184. Metz, M. H. (1990). Real school: A universal drama amid disparate experiences. In D. E. Mitchell & M. E. Goertz (Eds.), Education politics for the new century: The twentieth anniversary yearbook of the politics of education association. London: The Falmer Press. Oldfield, K. (2007, January–February). Humble and hopeful: Welcoming first-generation poor and working-class students to college. About Campus, 11, 2–12. Penn State Altoona Office of Planning and Assessment. (2011). Profile of first year students, Fall 2011. Tokarczyk, M., & Fay, E. (1993). Working-class women in the academy: Laborers in the knowledge factory. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Chapter 9

Student-Teaching as an Emerging Marxist Eric Gerard Anderson

[The Marxist] approach demands a constant redefinition of theory in the light of immediate reality, and insistence on action as way of both testing and reworking theory. —Howard Zinn, 1969, p. 52 Modern Society . . . greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering incarnation of its innermost principle of life. —Karl Marx, 1990, p. 230 Cash rules everything around me, C.R.E.A.M., get the money, dolla dolla bill y’all. —Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan, 1993

Introduction Pre-service teachers commonly experience a “reality check” when beginning their careers: naïve idealism meets bitter, practical wisdom. The cliché stands that novice teachers want to change the world while experienced teachers simply wish to retire (to be sure, there exists numerous exceptions to this trend; many career teachers have not grown sour and continue to Teaching Marx, pages 273–323 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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passionately work for social change). I spent the 2010–2011 school year student-teaching at Queens College. As the program required, I taught one semester of 10th grade global history at a high school in Jamaica, Queens, and another semester in 7th grade United States history at a middle school in Rego Park, Queens. My personal confrontation with the harsh reality of teaching in public schools coincided with my awakening as a Marxist educator. I began to re-examine the writings of Karl Marx while at the same time I met the wildly inaccurate portrayal of socialism and capitalism in New York secondary education. What is more, I witnessed repeated teacher apathy on the matter, the reasons for which I intend to explore in this chapter. Most seemed wholeheartedly dedicated to the neo-liberalism cause (at one point I was reading Chomsky in the teachers’ lounge when a colleague saw the book and asked if I was a “f’ing communist”). As my goals to combat neoliberalism solidified, I was met head on with American education’s indoctrination into the capitalist story. The experience overwhelmingly convinced me of the need for an alternative in American education. In the following chapter, I discuss some examples of the challenges facing beginning Marxist educators in New York public schools, as well as some solutions and methods used during my experience along with strategies moving forward. Before continuing, it should be noted that I identify myself as a White male (my actual ethnicity is mostly Anglo and Eastern European, and some unknown backgrounds, likely also European). I say this because I feel it is important to acknowledge where I come from and the biases my upbringing may carry. In addition, while an undergraduate film major, I discovered post-modernism and feminism, which further affected my viewpoint (I began to deconstruct my personal schemas along with the world we live in). Above, and in the chapter title, I referred to myself as a “Marxist” teacher. While this label applies, it certainly deserves some explanation. For me, Marx’s studies are not gospels. Rather, I tend to lean toward Howard Zinn’s identification that being a Marxist acknowledges that the guy “had some very useful thoughts,” particularly useful, I would add, in the social studies classroom (Zinn, 1988, p. 156). All of these complexities (and much, much more) make up my viewpoint (a post-modernist, feminist, Marxist White dude from the suburbs to put it concisely), which will undoubtedly show through my teaching. With secondary education students, I have focused, and plan to continue focusing on point of view, as the students’ own viewpoints will come into play in the classroom. Students ought to realize authoritative voices like that of the teacher, textbook, and state exams all have points of view open to critique. I encourage students to point out that I am the only White person in the room, as it is an obvious observation that many White teachers in urban areas only jokingly acknowledge. The glaring inequities of our world, the students’ backgrounds, and the teacher’s own position can only act as assets

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with teaching social studies. What is more, like the students I work with, I encourage readers of this chapter to keep in mind my viewpoint as a writer and teacher. In practice this means actively engaging my facts, interpretations, critiques, and the teaching strategies that I offer, which are merely suggestions that I find interesting and relevant (you shall soon find my proposed global curriculum lacks female voices, something I am working on). Keeping with the spirit of Marxism, I can’t tell you what to find, but that you should look. A Marxist approach to teaching and learning, for me, “makes suggestions rather than demands” (Zinn, 1969, p. 54). Finally, as I will be critically examining the approaches to social studies I encountered, I by no means intend to demonize teachers, particularly the ones I worked with. My colleagues were amazing individuals who helped me a great deal and for the most part worked hard at their jobs, very hard. In fact, teachers work so hard they have little time, if any, to study new theories in history or critically reflect upon their school materials and their own methods (Loewen, 2007, p. xv). Interestingly enough, as I will discuss later, Adam Smith predicted that the division of labor in capitalism could turn people into machines, which Karl Marx later expanded upon to describe how the working class was conditioned into being docile, obedient machines with little free time to change their situation (1990, p. 474). As Marxist scholar David Harvey asks, “[To] what degree do our ordinary employments corrupt the courage of our minds?” (p. 187). To be certain, teachers are mandated to attend workshops about history, classroom management, and the like, which can be helpful, but more is needed than a one-day retreat. Between administrative demands, dealing with a largely uncooperative student body, and the pressures of the latest buzz-words such as “teacher accountability,” teachers are stretched unimaginably thin. Thus, it is hard to blame them for relying heavily on textbooks and test prep materials—their livelihood may very well depend on it. Challenges Faced On a national level, as noted above, it is fairly obvious teacher accountability has become the priority in education. In New York, the focus on standardized tests to assess teacher performance has only increased as of late. For instance, the New York State United Teachers Union recently sued the Board of Regents for proposing regulations that would double the weight of the state exams on teacher assessment (to 40%), and could even allow results for a single test to ruin a teacher’s yearly evaluation (Saunders, 2011). While many critical educators are aware of this focus which leads to an exaggerated emphasis on teaching to the test adversely affecting many students, some might not know of the extent to which it dictates content; perpetuat-

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ing neo-liberal myths, and in turn aiding the capitalists’ self-serving goals. Before I examine the particular challenges Marxist educators face, let us briefly look at some general concerns for teachers in this environment. Accountability has led many teachers to practice with the students regurgitating facts for the test, rather than promoting deeper understandings of the material. This method severely limits student interpretation. Teachers, therefore, tend to focus on having students form opinions that have already been finalized by the experts (writers of textbooks and state tests as well as the faculty and staff that religiously follow it). I have heard veteran teachers repeatedly offer the following advice, “Have the students feed your conclusions back to you.” The students can have opinions, but they have to be the correct opinions; turning them into consumers of conclusions, rather than creators of knowledge (Whelan, 2006, p. 41). In the schools that stress adherence to standardized testing, the questions to be answered and the conclusions to be drawn have already been decided upon and finalized. The teachers’ intentions may be fine and good, but any attempt to standardize history incorrectly assumes that students will forever generate and answer the same questions (Whelan, p. 44). In addition, Marxist education should not tell the students what to find, but instead encourage them to search, question, and decide for themselves what to do with the information (Zinn, 1969, p. 54). In a classroom where passing the exam is the aim, students might find many of the “facts” are open to debate, and some are outright false. What is more, memorizing facts and predetermined conclusions is at odds with what history itself actually is—a “dialogue” between the past and present with an “essential interpretative nature” (Whelan, pp. 40–41). In other words, the debates concerning historical events are not over. History is, therefore, not confined to the past. With this in mind, social studies teachers should aim to “undermine student certainty about past events, and to help them understand that, if anything, history is messy” (Singer, 2009, p. 30). Similarly, Jack Zevin and David Gerwin (2011) suggest teachers should approach “history as a mystery.” By examining primary sources, along with comparing different interpretations, “Teachers can promote world history as a mystery to be solved by struggling with raw evidence, competing view points, and theories about what drives people to take action.” (Zevin & Gerwin, 2011, p. 9) In essence, students should become historians themselves. Again, I must note, teachers themselves are not the primary problem, and therefore must not be blamed as a whole. Many at the high school were aware of the lack of historical inquiry, but were more concerned with keeping their jobs than making the students life-long learners. In this setting, meritocracy and standardized tests are unconsciously favored because of the indoctrination to capitalism; the content and methods reinforce each other and support the traditional story. Teaching to the test fits in with

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the neo-liberal agenda—teach kids enough information and discipline to be cogs in the global capitalist (imperialist) machine, but not enough to question authority. Pull the lever, don’t ask why, here’s a credit card, buy an iPhone. In addition to hampering the methods of teaching social studies, the dedication to state tests adversely affects the selection and presentation of social studies content. As mentioned above, when discussing the listing of facts there exists the overwhelming urge to fit in all the topics covered on the state tests. I regularly witnessed global teachers asking each other, “How far are you?” “I’m up to the Russian Revolution.” “Wow, that’s great!” The teacher further along with the material seemed to be the better one. There was little concern as to whether the students got anything out of the lessons (and when the assessment proved the kids did not comprehend much, teachers blamed the students, not the exam or methods). The attempt for so much coverage severely limits the time spent on each subject. Much like with critical thought, teachers minimize discussion of subjugated narratives, or leave them out entirely. Women’s role in global history was repeatedly cut out or reduced to a mention in passing (like saying at the end of a lesson, “For women the Enlightenment and French Revolution brought hope for equal rights, but they were not allowed to vote until much later”). The time period in Global 10th grade features plenty of powerful female voices; the fiery women’s rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote some of her best work during the years of the French Revolution. Her writing challenges both Burke and Rousseau’s notion of natural rights and asserts equal education as painfully logical, “for truth must be common to all” (Wollstonecraft, 1792). Wollstonecraft never came up in class and the textbook mentions her once along with a handful of other female writers in a “Women of the Enlightenment” section less than one page long, with a mini-biography on Wollstonecraft literally in the margin (Beck, Black, Krieger, Naylor, & Shabaka, 2009, p. 633). Meanwhile the men of the Enlightenment receive six pages, including a few short excerpts from male-written primary sources (Beck, et al., 2009, pp. 629–636). As we will soon see, Latin America, Africa, and Asia also become peripheral; side stories in the epic tale of White men rising. The listing of facts approach also leads to a strong focus on chronology. Lessons rarely connect topics to others or bring facts together under general themes or essential questions (Gerwin, pp. 134–136). In addition, global history seemed to hardly ever include the United States and how it relates to world issues (this is likely due to the division of the state exams to one solely on global history and one on the United States). Furthermore, the past is rarely shown as relating to our present world. The heavily relied upon classroom tools, like the textbooks, rarely use the present to shine light on the past, or conversely, use the past to shine light on the present

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(Loewen, 2007, p. 6). For instance, teachers and textbooks only bring up Karl Marx during the Industrial Revolution, and mention him briefly when studying the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions. Marx’s work, which covers large periods of history and can be related to the most current crises in capitalism stemming from over-accumulation, is confined to a short period and small area (mid1800s to early 1900s Europe). The result is a detachment from the past in the students’ minds—history becomes a series of dull, distant events that offer kids little reason to care. Later on, I will examine the advantages of thematic approaches, essential questions, and examining the past through our present day eyes, (really, the only way one can look at the past, but somehow lost in the traditional approach) and the opposite; how the past can teach us about the present. Along with listing facts in a nice, neat order, the state tests also focus overwhelming on Eurocentric content, sprinkling in a question about Latin America here, or one on China there. This, coupled with the scope of areas of study, further shortens possible time spent on subjugated narratives. When state exams do actually feature other cultures, it is almost always from a European colonial standpoint. Latin America, India, China, and Japan only appear in relation to England and American business exploitation (to be sure, they get a lot of coverage in 9th grade). Here is a recent question on a Regents exam (the state test in New York required to receive a high school diploma) that sums up this problem: Much of which area of the world came under European colonial control in the 19th century?

1. Japan 2. Southwest Asia 3. Africa 4. Latin America (2010, p. 6)

In turn, the curriculum becomes largely Eurocentric. For instance, one day is spent covering all Latin American revolutions, with Haiti shoehorned in at the end. The Haitian revolution receives a fraction of a lesson because L’ouverture may appear on the Regents (and his name highlighted a special color in the textbook). As I will discuss in depth later, Haiti is quite the missed opportunity. First, the nation’s story acts as arguably the first example of a free republic in the Western Hemisphere. Additionally, St. Domingo’s transformation into Haiti demonstrates the effects of old and new imperialism and teaches lessons on international or global capitalism. What is more, it connects very well to present day events, and relates to several of the students— many I worked with identified themselves as Haitian-American. The Haitian revolution’s European counterpart, France, meanwhile receives nearly two weeks of lessons (mostly on male figures and events concerning men).

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Not surprisingly, the school sources mirrored the lessons in the classroom. Our class’s text, World History: Patterns of Interaction, spends 21 pages on the French revolution and 3 on Latin America, with Haiti receiving a small subsection with the latter. The textbook can become an authority in a classroom setting where passing the state exams is a priority (thankfully, students rarely read, and subsequently many teachers avoid textbook assignments). The school texts contain a shallow survey approach to global history; spending little time on many subjects. Of course, important events like the French Revolution or the Industrial Revolution in England merit more space than other topics such as Latin America, Native Americans, or global slavery. This survey-style history features mostly definitions of key terms and listings of events (lots of events) and people (lots of people). When textbooks and exam preps dictate material selection (teachers as curriculum consumers not curriculum creators), the students receive a superficial, one-dimensional understanding of the past. For the test, this may be fine (although, if the aim is to retain information, the methods seem to ignore most psychological studies regarding cognition, but that is a discussion for another time). However, the lack of critical thought, multiple perspectives, and student-centered investigation does not make a more democratic individual. The traditional approach makes it nearly impossible for students to become active members of the global community; instead it renders the youth docile and subservient to the dominating neo-liberal paradigm—that is, the most current stage in the historical development of capitalism. Like Haiti, the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America receive minimal attention in school sources presenting themselves as missed instructive opportunities—most students’ backgrounds reflect the subjugated narratives involved. In the textbook, The Great Liberator, Simon Bolivar is briefly covered along with a handful of other Latin American revolutionaries, translating to about one or two days in the classroom. The lessons made no real connection between pillaging silver, gold and later sugar from Latin America to providing the investment capital for the Industrial Revolution, not to mention the birth and growth of mercantilism and later capitalism. As Eduardo Galeano points out, “Spain owned the cow, others drank the milk.” In other words, due to Spain’s rampant debt at the time, the gold it pillaged from the New World, and its countless inhabitants went all over Europe, particularly to England, which allowed surplus capital to be invested in manufacturing and money for importation of raw goods. (Galeano, 1997, pp. 22–24, 56) The destruction of indigenous civilization in Latin America paved the way for the conquering, insatiable white civilization of today (the “winners”) to grow and spread. Students examine the Columbian Exchange at length in the classroom (it is on the exam after all), but it is rarely, if ever, contextualized in the birth of mercantilism/capitalism. The focus on the exchange between precious materials (gold, silver, and later

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cotton and sugar) with death (massacre, rape, disease) gets glossed over, and its importance today undermined. Comparable to European pillaging, the role of slavery and other exploited labor is all but missing in the Caribbean and Latin America lessons, along with their importance in Europe’s (and later the United States’) industrialization and prosperity. Without rigorously exploring the terms “triangular trade,” “mercantilism,” or “encomienda,” they are reduced to empty vocabulary words to memorize but not understand. As Paulo Freire (1993) puts it, the words become “hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity.” Teachers become “depositors” of information, creating a “banking” model of education (Freire, 1993, pp. 71–72). As with important terms, the names Bolivar, Zapata, Hidalgo or Toussaint also become mere words to study for the exam (not to mention Marx and Smith). Taking the meaning out of these terms, while not understanding the people and events behind them, renders them useless in understanding how our current neo-liberal capitalist world came to be (no doubt a strategy to ease indoctrination). Furthermore, discussions of the birth of capitalism lack any sort of moral or critical evaluation. Introducing children to the neo-liberal narrative is really the triumphant story of White conquest. In U.S. classrooms, teachers avoid controversial topics like slavery, oppression, and genocide. Textbooks reflect this neatly packaged history, rarely including conflict (Loewen, 2007, p. 5). We dare not tarnish the heroics of the merchant, capitalist class. Additionally, the test prep materials (review books, websites, and interactive study tools) are devoid of moral questioning and critical thought, understandably so—after all, they are tools for memorization, hence simplification is necessary. The problem occurs when teachers rely too heavily on test review resources and neglect to bring in higher levels of thought and moral questioning. For example, take the definition of “Developing Nations” from an exam review website that features summaries of key concepts, vocabulary lists, and questions from previous state tests: Developing nations such as those found in Africa, Latin America, and some parts of Asia faced many economic problems after the end of European Imperialism. Some nations chose to follow the economic policies of the West, while others followed the path of communism. While each nation had different problems, they all faced similar tasks such as building industry, attracting investment capital, stabilizing their governments, and controlling a growing population. These countries continue to face economic difficulty due to these issues. (Regents Exam Prep Center)

These nations all had and continue to have “problems” after the Western powers devastated their countries (and in many cases, continue to destroy). But, what were the causes of those problems? How did imperialism lead to underdevelopment? Why after liberation did they continue to struggle?

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How is it connected to the birth and continued growth of capitalism? Without taking the investigation beyond the school sources, teachers only perpetuate neo-liberal myths; the developing nations are the objective “losers” in our “free market” world, while the United States is the fair “winner.” This simplification and distortion assumes the world is just and people and nations get what they deserve. Along with excluding any useful evaluation of corporate and military power and how they co-operate, the zealous dedication to the state exams leads to yet another issue: inaccuracies rising from the exam and textbook’s overly abridged interpretations that have to be taught, particularly with socialism and capitalism. If the textbooks and prep materials say Karl Marx invented communism and Adam Smith invented capitalism, then so must the teacher. Why give kids the wrong answers to the ever-important formal assessments? Why lose your job over alternative interpretations? In my student teaching class these economic theories were introduced using a chart with communism and Marx on one side and capitalism and Smith on the other. The information the students were given to complete the organizer were excerpts from The Communist Manifesto and The Wealth of Nations. Both excerpts seemed to obscure the writings in order to neatly fit into the answers presented on the state exams. Like the previously mentioned Latin American example the words “socialism/communism,” “capitalism,” and “laissez-faire” became vocabulary words. However, this time the words were less subtly charged with strategies for indoctrination. The adaptation of Smith reflects the definition featured on the aforementioned website to help students study for the state exam. The site, Regents Exam Prep Center at regentsprep.org (not officially affiliated with the New York Board of Education), has subsequently become an authority for teachers and students on information of the past (sometimes incorrectly). According to the website, laissez-faire, “was an economic philosophy begun by Adam Smith in his book, Wealth of Nations, that stated that business and the economy would run best with no interference from the government” (Regents Exam Prep Center). While Smith does emphasize free markets; at the core of his theory is an “equality of outcome” (Chomsky, 1999, p. 39). The “invisible hand” (a term that has become such a big part of teaching Smith yet he only uses it once in his book) leads every individual “for the sake of profit” to work for the good of all whether he intends “to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it” (Smith, 1965, p. 423). In other words, free markets, in theory, would not only allow a nation to prosper, but permit all people within the nation to thrive as well. Instead of helping business and the economy run better (according to the state exam review), laissez-faire was really designed to help the people. Without diving any deeper into this seminal work, the reasons why Smith came to the conclusions he came to are not asked or answered. As Chomsky often points out, Adam Smith is to be

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revered but not read. Years after Smith’s writing, capitalists adopted him as their “patron saint” to give neo-liberal practices some sort of basis in classical liberal thought, yet rarely follow his advice (Chomsky, 1999, p. 19). Public schools altogether seem to miss the complexity of Smith’s work. Teachers rely too heavily on the simplified, and often incorrect, views of Smith’s ideas found in the test prep materials and school sources. The public school textbook presents a similar shallow interpretation supporting the notion that Smith adamantly opposed state intervention claiming he “opposed government efforts to help poor workers” (Beck, et al., 2009, p. 735). Furthermore, the history textbook used in New York public high schools argues that Smith and his supporters believed “that creating minimum wage laws and better working conditions would upset the free market system” (Beck, et al., 2009, p. 735). However, according to Smith (1965), wages must at least maintain a worker’s life expenses, and his pay, “must even upon most occasions be somewhat more,” (pp. 67–28). How else are workers to reproduce more workers? In addition, Marx points out Smith accurately predicted the dehumanizing effects of the division of labor, quoting from The Wealth of Nations; the specialized worker will turn out to be “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become” (Marx, 1990, p. 483). To be certain, Smith does defend free markets, to an extent, and for the most part calls for governments to keep their hands off business, as the textbook explains. However, the class text neglects to mention that Smith (1965) goes on to say in The Wealth of Nations that, “some attention of government is necessary in order to prevent the almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people” (p. 734). Adam Smith (as well as Marx) can certainly be opened to interpretation. According to our textbook’s viewpoint, the “important ideas” of Adam Smith laid the “foundation for Laissez-Faire Capitalism,” which in turn “helped bring about the Industrial Revolution,” (notice how textbooks love to unnecessarily capitalize important words) (Beck, et al., 2009, p. 734). On the other hand, Chomsky argues that Adam Smith can be seen as “precapitalist, and anti-capitalist in spirit” (1999, p. 51). As a teacher, why then rely on the school sources’ interpretations of Smith? Why not present the whole story, or at least as much as time allows, then have the students interpret what Adam Smith was all about? The oversimplification of Smith’s work fits nicely into the neo-liberal agenda of governments protecting a handful of top capitalists while foregoing the needs of the population. The result of teaching free markets in this way only leads to an acceptance of a pseudo-historical/logical basis for why we should allow the few to prosper while the many suffer. To be sure, when talking about the Industrial Revolution, most teachers will at least point out that laissez-faire partly fails (made evident by the lousy conditions of workers and child labor, but it is all fixed now). The belief of zero government interference in business rests at

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the heart of neo-liberalism/capitalism (even though governments will often interfere regardless, usually in favor of big business), and is subsequently emphasized in the American classroom and textbooks. Similarly, the in-class handout severely adapting the Communist Manifesto overly generalizes Marx’s core theories, and in turn also promotes the capitalist narrative. Marx is shown as calling for: 1. Proletariats to rise up 2. The abolishment of private property 3. The means of production to be placed in the hands of the state Let us view each of these aspects one at a time in order to see how they function as neo-liberal strategies. In the classroom I observed, the teacher glossed over rather quickly Marx’s interpretation of history as one of class struggle (later I shall talk about how one could use this to frame global and U.S. curricula). After this brief introduction, teaching Marx begins by defining “proletariat,” which is undoubtedly necessary to study as vocabulary for the test. The adaptation of Marx read in class makes it seem as if Marx calls on the industrial proletariat to rise up against the capitalists. In fact, the factory worker is not ideal for capitalist exploitation; “workers, brought together in a large factory can become all too aware of their common interest and become a potentially powerful collective political force” (Harvey, p. 226). Marx was not only speaking about one type of worker (i.e., factory workers), but rather defined the working class as everyone who depended on a wage to survive. Capitalists, on the other hand, are those whose wealth is appropriated from workers. These two groups make up the two primary classes in capitalist society and are antagonistically related to one another. By this definition, a teacher can be considered a proletariat; we exchange our labor as a commodity for money (Allman, 2001, pp. 60–61,142–143). The distinction is necessary to understand capitalism today as it exists on a global scale. Without knowing who the working class is, how can we end exploitation? Similarly, Marx’s use of “bourgeoisie” is misunderstood and, in turn, reinforces the capitalist narrative. The textbook points out that for Marx and Engels, the bourgeoisie consists of the “‘haves’ or employers” and proletariats are made of up the “‘have-nots’ or the workers,” which, for the most part, is quite correct. However the text cunningly prefaces it with “in their own time,” implying that perhaps back then they had different definitions of middle and working class than we have today. (Beck, et al., p. 736). This is also true, but what are those differences? Students seemed to confuse Marx’s use of “middle class” with today’s perception that it simply means well-off financially; one with a “white collar” job who lives in the suburbs, opposed to a capitalist (or rather, one who does not

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have to exchange his or her labor as a commodity). Similarly, many see “working class” as only meaning “blue collar” workers, or simply put, “poor people.” Students mix up Marx’s discussion of class with the modern notion of upper, middle, and lower class. The United States is (mistakenly) considered a “middle class country,” so, by that meaning, Marxism undermines American values (Loewen, 2007, p. 206). With this confusion, students are unlikely to understand Marx’s call for a proletariat uprising within our current global neo-liberal system. As with Marx’s definitions of class, his call to abolish private property is largely inaccurate, if not at least extremely oversimplified. Rather than take away everyone’s things and give them to the state, Marx wanted to change the relationship of surplus-value to the workers. If a capitalist invests his private property in an industry to produce surplus-value, that surplus-value ought to go to those who created it—the laborers (even though, at first, the property may have rightfully belonged to the capitalist). Marx supports the Lockean principle that “property rights accrue to those who create value mixing their labor with the land” (Harvey, p. 249). In other words, after laboring, the property (as in, the fruits of the labor) should now belong to the workers. However, Marx’s insistence on abolishing private property/ land is based on the fact that capitalism was made possible by abolishing common land ownership in Europe and then in America and beyond forcing former peasants to have to sell their labor for a wage to survive having been divorced from the land (i.e., property) and thus denied access to the means of production (i.e., farms and shops). When the capitalist class owns all of the land (private property), the vast majority become wageworkers, and, thus, dependent on the owners for survival. This is an unequal, exploitative relationship Marx knew had to be abolished if a socially just society (i.e., socialism) was to be created. To be certain, recent state exams are not nearly as inaccurate as the lessons in the classroom, the textbook, or test prep materials concerning Marx’s view on private property. Surprisingly, a 2011 exam features a document-based-question quoting The Communist Manifesto, “The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property” (p. 18). A multiple-choice question from a test a few years earlier points out Marx and Engels “expressed the idea that profits from work should belong to the workers (2009, p. 4).” However, without proper background and context (like a proper definition of “bourgeois”), students may still see Marxism and communism as ridding the world of personal possessions. Interestingly enough, the textbook also makes the point that Marx saw a future where everyone’s needs would be met, but then goes on to undermine this point by interpreting, “Private property would in effect cease to exist” (p. 737).

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In either case, the treatment of Marx still relies heavily on the basic notion of abolishing private property. By instructing students that following Marx results in giving up their precious stuff, teachers are playing on the youth’s obsession with material objects. Indoctrinating students into the capitalist story requires them to fear and hate alternatives, what better way than to focus on the benefits of living in a “winner” state? “Become a communist and they’ll take away your iPhone or Xbox 360!” Why would anyone want to be a Marxist? According to the class textbook, “Marx’s theories of socialism and the inevitable revolt of the working class made him little money” (p. 736). Marx was a “loser.” To make Marxism even less appetizing, I experienced many teachers focusing on his Atheism or “godlessness.” Religion to Marx was not simply the “opium” of the masses, rather he viewed its prevalence as a sign of the problems within capitalism; “the sigh of the oppressed creature” (quoted in Zinn, 1988, p. 158). The image of a “godless” Marxist seems also open to debate. It should not be surprising that Marx’s call for the means of production to be placed in the hands of the state can be reinterpreted as well. The website Regents Exam Prep Center offers a simple definition that sounds more like a command economy, but nonetheless fulfills the neo-liberal agenda: Communism: A system of government in which a single, totalitarian, party holds power. It is characterized by state control of the economy, and restriction on personal freedoms. It was first proposed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto.

In, Capital, Marx’s (1990) major point with the means of production was that capitalism had alienated the labor and product of that labor from the laborer him/herself (Harvey 2010, pp. 250–251). The worker also produces estranged wealth “in the form of capital, and alien power that dominates and exploits him” (Marx, 1990, p. 716). Why then would Marx favor a totalitarian state or command economy? Would not Marx perhaps call for a democracy where the people share some stake in their own labor? In Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx explains, “Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it” (quoted in Zinn, 1969, p. 58). The test prep definition blends the different historical uses of the term Communism and overly generalizes the notion that Marx first proposed. Teaching that the type of communism that failed in Russia (command economy with a single party in power) was Marx’s idea goes along with the idea that his theories have failed; Marx’s work is obsolete. According to the textbooks and exams, the capitalists have won, so stop thinking about it. Adam Smith was right and Karl Marx was wrong.

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Marx’s work is repeatedly shown to be obsolete (but a fun read if you want to know how not to run an economy). This is not limited to school sources; the only hard copy version of Capital I could find in my local library features an abridged version of Marx’s “seminal work . . . trimming away much that is now unimportant,” according the back cover. The book uses the original name Das Kapital, which alienates the reader; it sounds foreign, and is written in scary German. The introduction by Serge L. Levistky (the editor as well) explains Marx’s obsoleteness because he predicted incorrectly that capitalism was doomed to fail. According to Levistky, Marx was partly correct—capitalism, as Marx saw it, evolved into a “new form” that “flourishes as never before” (p. xvvii). One would imagine this copy of Das Kapital was released before the 2008 global capitalism crises (or perhaps before the collapses in the 90s, 70s, or even 20s), but it was actually published in 2009 and makes no mention in the introduction about the potential of Marx’s theories to give insight into our current economic mess (or previous ones). Besides the straight failings of capitalism to sustain itself, neo-liberalism fails every time a mother is unable to feed her children due to low wages and high food prices, or when a sweatshop worker’s lifespan is severely reduced. By not failing, I am assuming Levistky refers to the few at the top, who despite the economic crash, are making out like bandits (proverbially and literally). The textbook we used in class supports the idea that Marx’s work is irrelevant today, “the gap between the rich and the poor within the industrialized countries failed to widen in the way that Marx and Engels predicted, mostly because of the various reforms enacted by governments” (Beck, et al., 2009, p. 738). What exactly is the basis for this claim? While working class conditions have plummeted here in the United States, “the proportion of the national income and wealth held by the top 1% of the population has doubled over the past 20 years, and for the top 0.1% it has tripled” (Harvey, p. 290). Around the world, the gap between the rich and poor is widening, with the United States having the widest of all industrialized nations (Shah, 2011). What is more, when governments actually reform business, it is usually to subdue labor movements and further exploit workers, as demonstrated by Thatcher and Reagan’s policies in the 1970s crushing unions and outsourcing labor, which in turn led to wage stagnation or regression. Evidence such as this proves Marx’s concept that “a world constructed along the pure liassez-fair lines would in itself produce an increasing accumulation of wealth at one pole and a burgeoning accumulation of misery at the other” (Harvey, pp. 284–285). In addition to not protecting the people, the top-tier financial giants regularly stray away from or outright violate so-called “free-market” principals to further expand their opulence and widen the gap between rich and poor. The U.S. government and its financial affiliates (the IMF and World

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Bank), repeatedly step in to protect the big bankers and investors. Financial institutions can make monster gambles, and when it goes wrong the public has to pay for it with taxes for bailouts—“socialize the cost and risks . . . while privatizing profit” (p. 106) as Chomsky (2010) puts it. Chomsky goes on to point out “these doctrines do not derive from economy theory; they merely reflect the decision-making power” (p. 106). The question becomes: Is capitalism today what Smith envisioned? Was Marx really wrong about the fate of workers? It certainly matters whose point of view you examine. The notion of viewpoint and questions of whether capitalism is working, or if Marx or Smith were correct or relevant (or even interpreted or used correctly), becomes the core of my curriculum to which we return later. Regardless of the above-mentioned shortcomings of the school sources, the readings about Smith and Marx at least gave the students I taught a very basic (albeit largely inaccurate) knowledge of capitalism and socialism that aided an extremely fruitful class discussion of the two economic theories. To my surprise, the students were able to have a critical debate despite their shallow understanding of the material. A few students discussed the question of worker motivation under communism. One student took the typical argument, that without a promise of more pay, professions like doctors would not be as motivated to do an adequate job. Another student pointed out that perhaps doctors would eventually work for the better of humanity, citing his own father who volunteered for free as a doctor in Bangladesh. A third student reconciled the two views by saying we could still have merit-based pay, but society has to abandon basing someone’s value solely on material wealth (although how this is possible I do not know). The class debate was all evidence to me that the students were at least open to the idea of an alternative to capitalism. It seems Paula Allman (2001) was quite accurate in stating that today’s neo-liberal policies have revealed the brutal reality of capitalism (p. 152). I would add that this is particularly apparent in today’s youth. In most circles of adults, these student conversations I witnessed would be ruled as treasonous. This rewarding discussion inspired me to begin units by looking at modern social inequity brought about by the development of capitalism and eventually neo-liberalism. Young people tend to have a fine-tuned sense of fairness (not yet corrupted by constructed needs or fully indoctrinated). Teaching a Global Curriculum through Marx and Smith Keeping some of the challenges discussed above in mind, what follows is an outline of how I would teach a semester in global history using Karl Marx and Adam Smith to frame the content. Some of the following was attempted during my tenure as a student teacher, but most are strategies I

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intend to employ moving forward (inspired by what I studied in graduate school and experienced in the classroom). My goal is for the students to better understand those empty vocabulary words, and trouble the “banking” approach to education. These young adults are commanded to study hard and memorize these lists of facts (most of which seem outright irrelevant to their lives), and are never given an opportunity to question, “Why?” In keeping with the above notion that Marxist education insists on inquiry, much of the following includes student-centered critiques of the school sources (including textbooks and exams) as well as evaluating traditional education methods. I intend to create disequilibrium for students by asking: How can your textbooks be wrong? How can the state exams be incorrect? Why are teachers often lying to you? From my experience, this dissonance is one the students love, as it turns out; young adults are not too surprised at the possibility that their teachers are “whack.” In stark contrast to most high school approaches to social studies, I would organize the concepts into themes, or essential questions posed to the students. The entire semester would have a theme as well, along with an overarching essential question to guide student research and thought. As you will soon discover, this approach leads to a break with the strict adherence to chronology often featured in secondary education. However, it does feature enough linearity and covers a good amount of exam material to be used at even the most traditional schools. In addition, the lessons fall within the strict timeline of the first half of 10th grade global required by most New York schools, roughly starting with the French Revolution up through the World War I and the Russian Revolutions. How can we critique the textbooks or exam reviews without reading them? Furthermore, the depth required for a critique will ideally lead to a deeper grasp of the material as well as some student ownership of their education and history. Judging from the responses by teachers for his book, Lies My Teacher Told Me; Everything Your American Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen (2007) calls student textbook critique a “win-win action” (p. xvi). Opening a Global Semester, the World According to Marx and Smith For the semester long theme, the students can examine freedom and human rights as they relate to social and economic development. At first, the essential question asks: Is the world today the way it has to be? As the semester progresses, the theme and question are subject to change depending on how the students interpret the material (shortly we will see some possible ways to expand on them). As alluded to earlier, schools provide students with loads of information without making any of it relevant to their lives (out-

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side of superficially connecting it with phrases like, “Adam Smith invented capitalism and we live in that today”). John Dewey (who I have heard more than one teacher call a “godless” lunatic who ruined education) suggested educators make the material relevant to the students, but did not altogether reject discipline-based subject matter. Rather, Dewey’s approach aims to relate to what kids already know while compelling “them to seek answers in discipline-based knowledge” (Mirel, 2011, p. 8). Thus, my curriculum poses questions in which the students can answer using the designated social studies content. With this in mind, I would, thus, begin the semester by looking at our planet as it exists today (instead of starting at the earliest event in the curriculum guide, the French Revolution). The students can look at some modern global statistics, particularly the social inequalities that exist on a global scale. For example, extreme poverty is heavily concentrated to South Asia and sub-Sahara Africa, and to an extent Latin America (Sen, 1999, pp. 99–104). What is more, the top 225 wealthiest people own more than the world’s poorest half (Malott & Pruyn, 2006, p. 158). It would then be asked: How did it come to this? In addition, the question will be posed of whether or not this bothers any of the students, or if it matters to them (connecting with why the social studies are even studied in the first place). Investigation into some of these areas will prove particularly potent. For instance, examining the revolutions of Latin America and Haiti as well as European imperialism in Africa and Asia will definitely shine some light on this question. After getting an idea of the kind of place we live in, and before getting into the essential questions, I would spend some time introducing the students to Karl Marx and Adam Smith along with their respective predictions and assessments of the workings of society (also beginning our semester long critique of public school’s treatment of the two figures). Smith and Marx attempted to explain their worlds, so the students can use them as guides to explain our own. Instead of reading the textbooks or state exam reviews, we would initially look at excerpts from The Wealth of Nations and Capital. Why not have students read for themselves these seminal works and interpret them accordingly? There seems to be the notion in secondary education that students are unable to handle difficult primary sources (and Karl Marx is difficult). And, at first, these college level readings and theories may be very hard to understand, but as we will see, the students return to them repeatedly throughout the year, allowing multiple chances of understanding and even rethinking (Gerwin, 136). Additionally, the writings would be partially adapted, but for clarity and understanding and not so severely that they lose the original meaning. With this in mind, let us look at Smith’s utopian idea of “hidden hand” in The Wealth of Nations mentioned earlier, which provides some insight into how the world markets should

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function and relate to human development and freedom. Here is one way Smith (1965) can be adapted for students without losing much meaning: “. . . It is only for the sake of profit that any man invests in industry (manufactory, business, trade); and he will always try to use that investment in the support of that industry that makes the products of the greatest value . . . But the yearly profits of every society is always equal to the value . . . of its industry . . . by directing that industry in such a manner as its products may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he . . . led by an invisible hand . . . promotes the interests of the society . . . .” (p. 423)

The students can interpret this however. For me, Smith is saying business leaders and investors will inadvertently work towards a better world. Conversely, Marx (1990) offers another explanation of global capitalist development, presented here with how it could be adapted for 10th graders: “Accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production: this was the way in which classical economics expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie (middle class, business leaders, capitalists) in the period of its domination.” (p. 742)

To aid the students with interpreting this tough passage (it is the beginning of the year after all), I would offer how the Marxist scholar David Harvey (2010) reads it: “What this means is that capitalism is always about growth. There can be no such thing as a capitalist social order that is not about growth and accumulation on a progressively increasing scale . . . [it also leads to the belief that] growth is inevitable and growth is good.” (p. 259)

My cooperating teacher from my second semester in a middle school introduced me to a Dr. Seuss environmental cartoon (and book) that can be used as a tool in the classroom and further brings home Marx’s point about growth. In The Lorax, a character representing business leaders, the “Once-ler,” sells a constructed need, a “thneed.” His business booms and expands at the expense of the local trees, water and wildlife. While justifying the destruction, the Once-ler reassures himself that if he did not do so, someone else would, for “progress is progress and progress must grow” (Seuss, 1972). My experience in the middle school demonstrated this film is exceptionally potent and students are likely to remember it throughout the year, I highly recommend to social studies teachers at any grade level. Using these readings, the Dr. Sues film, and what we learned about global inequity, as a class we could expand the opening question: Is today the “utopia” Adam Smith predicted? Have business leaders promoted the

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interests of society? Was Adam Smith wrong? Or, are the markets not free? Is capitalism always about growth? What is the cost of growth/progress? Can democracy and capitalism coexist? These questions shall be addressed using the following units. And, as mentioned, the class shall regularly return to these quotes by Smith and Marx, reinterpreting their works in light of new information. All too often, teachers present readings and material and never return to it, likely due to the dedication to coverage—why read something twice? However, educational scholarship has demonstrated the usefulness of scaffolding in the student’s ability to change and grow over time as a learner. A part of guiding student learning requires returning to previous material and expanding on initial understanding, as well as using the previous material to understand the new (Gerwin, 2009, p. 136). Again, the urge to finish the material on the state exams supersedes the students actually learning anything. Haiti, the Roots of the Problem After the semester themes and questions are posed, the students move on to the French Revolution. As mentioned earlier, my class spent a lot of time on France, but a literal fraction of a lesson on Haiti. I would reverse the traditional approach, and spend little time on France and more on looking at the French Revolution through the Haitian Revolution. With Haiti, I would implement the formula of initially looking at our current world, reading what Marx and Smith say about it, and then formulating an essential question for us to answer as a class using mostly primary sources, some secondary scholarly work, and ending with a textbook critique. The 2010 earthquake provides an excellent jumping point and a grabber into the lesson. The “Do Now” (the activity New York city teachers have their students work on during attendance and what not) invites students to share what they already know about Haiti and the damage done by the earthquake (as mentioned earlier, a good portion of my students were Haitian-American). Some questions might be: Is there a reason why the earthquake was particularly harmful to Haiti? Could poverty be involved? The students interpret some statistics about the 2010 quake, followed about the CIA’s report on the economy of Haiti from the U.S. government’s website (a terrific tool for the classroom). The CIA report lists Haiti as the most impoverished country in this hemisphere (“World Factbook”). As Eduardo Galeano (1997) notes, Haiti “has more footwashers than shoeshiners” (p. 275). The essential question could become: How did Haiti become the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere? Before addressing this question, it helps to have some background on the island of Hispaniola, today the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The

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island is famous in textbooks for being one of the first islands the legendary Columbus stumbled upon. However, school sources seem to leave out the moderate amount of evidence suggesting African explorers reached it years before Columbus and traded spear points with the native Arawaks. Furthermore, textbooks will likely not focus much on Columbus’ attempt to enslave the local population, their refusal and subsequent genocide. Likewise, the true purpose of Columbus’s adventure often goes unmentioned. Gold was at the heart of Columbus’ adventure, it was not, as textbooks sometimes suggest, proving the world was round (Loewen, 2007, p. 46). Writing back to the Spanish monarchs, Columbus boasts, “Hispaniola is a miracle. . . . There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals” (quoted in Zinn, 2003, p. 3). The Arawaks resisted rape and pillage, and consequently, relentless war waged by the Europeans followed. In the end Columbus returned to Spain with hundreds of captured natives and sold them as novelty slaves. After Columbus returned to the Caribbean and set up an encomienda system, Spain continued to exploit the natives, until 1555 when there were simply not any left. Anticipating the dwindling local free-labor population, Columbus’ son, taking his father’s place in the West Indies, began importing enslaved Africans. When the gold Columbus desperately searched for was eventually found in Hispaniola, the other powers in Europe scrambled to get a piece of the new lands (Loewen, 2007, pp. 54–61). Adam Smith (1965) seems to lament the “plundering of the defenseless natives,” while accurately connecting gold to later exhibitions: “All the other enterprises of the Spaniards in the new world, subsequent to those of Columbus, seem to have been prompted by the same motive. It was the thirst for gold that carried Oieda, Nicuessa, and Vasco Nugnes de Balboa, to the isthmus of Darien, that carried Cortez to Mexico, and Almagro and Pizzarro to Chili and Peru” (p. 528–529). With Columbus, the students begin to examine the relationship between gold, subjugating natives and Africans, and an emerging European capitalist class’ accumulation of wealth. As we shall soon see, the French continue Columbus’ legacy of exploitation and oppression in St. Domingo. After studying the background on the tumultuous story of Hispaniola, the class again looks to Smith and Marx for some insight to the essential question of how it became so impoverished. We saw what Smith (1965) said about Columbus and Spain, but he goes on to write about the island of Hispaniola, now partly the French Colony of St. Domingo, as “the most important of the sugar colonies of the West Indies, and its produce is said to be greater than that of all the English sugar colonies put together” (p. 538). In another primary source written before the slave revolution, Moreau de Saint–Méry (1797–1798) asserts that Haiti was invaluable to France not only for its exports, but also “as a market for French foodstuffs and a stimulant to French trade” (p. 12). He goes on to examine the actual population

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of Haiti, which by then were overwhelming enslaved Africans (Saint–Méry, 1797–1798, pp. 13–15). The essential question can now be expanded to ask: How did Haiti go from being the richest colony in the world to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere? Marx offers additional insight into the essential question concerning the Caribbean: “You believe perhaps . . . that the production of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the West Indies. Two centuries ago, nature, which does not trouble herself about commerce (trade), had planted neither sugarcane nor coffee trees there” (quoted in Galeano, 1997, p. 65). Here, Marx is a bit cryptic, to understand what he meant, and to continue to answer the essential question, the students need to explore further. By the French Revolution, the colony of St. Domingo was a slave economy and the world’s leading producer in sugar and cotton with most of its forests leveled and exported to Europe (Chomsky, 2010, p. 7). Engravings of slave cotton and sugar production, as well as a view of modern Haiti from space to see the effects of the deforestation, provide visual evidence of the facts (for the aerial view I suggest an online map resource such as “Google Earth,” and for images of Haiti and its revolution, check out “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution” online at http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/chap8a.html). Consequently, Haiti was not destined by Providence to poverty and destruction, as Galeano (1997) points out; the devastation brought about by the global division of labor was in fact organized by men and for the development of mercantilism and later capitalism (p. 65). Once the effects of colonization and the division of labor are established (something that will we return to later in this proposed semester), the students can go on to examine Haiti’s liberation and the consequences of its freedom. The Haitian call for emancipation contains language resembling French Revolution rhetoric (also echoing the American Revolution and Enlightenment principles). Jean-Louis Viefville des Essars (1790) appealed to the French National Assembly, calling freedom “the first right that man receives from nature” and is “sacred and inalienable.” However, the enslaved African’s plea was completely ignored by their European brethren, who I assume were too busy liberating themselves. To be sure, some of the French were aware of the glaring hypocrisy of the “heroes” of the French Revolution’s handling of slavery in the colonies. The French feminist playwrite Olympe de Gouges (1790), who spoke on behalf of all oppressed peoples, points out the difficulty of abolition while defending her play The Slavery of Negroes; “The conquest of the golden fleece caused Jason far fewer worries and required less skill than I will need against the torments and traps involved in avoiding these poisonous branches that harm this famous tree as well as the spirit of mankind.”

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A brief period of freedom in Haiti was interrupted by an attack from Napoleon forces aimed at reinstating slavery in all French colonies. After capturing the hero of the revolution, Toussaint L’Ouverture, French General Leclerc advised Napoleon, “all the Blacks in the mountains, men and women, must be suppressed, keeping only the children under twelve; half the Blacks in the plains must be exterminated and not a single Mulatto with epaulets must be left in the colony” (quoted in Galeano, 1997, p. 66). Fortunately, Leclerc died before he could carry out his horrific plan. Nonetheless, after the failed recapture of its favorite colony, France demanded Haiti pay a massive cash indemnity for recognition of its independence (Galeano, 1997, p. 65–66). The French were not alone in fearing the newly freed Blacks; politicians in the United States became terrified the slave liberation would spread northward. The Pennsylvania Gazette (1793) reported the Governor of South Carolina called for all freed Blacks from Haiti to leave within ten days, as they have been “deemed dangerous to the welfare and peace of that state” (quoted in Galeano, 1997, p. 66). Due to pressure from France, the United States eventually joined them in banning trade with Haiti (Galeano, 1997). It can be very useful for students to critically examine the “bitter price” Haiti paid “for the crime of liberation” (Chomsky, 2010, p. 7). The amount of information regarding the cost of Haiti’s liberation is plentiful and powerful, something that can surely be returned to or pursued with independent student research. The class can examine the payments Haiti had to make to France as well as some of the other constraints placed on Haiti by the United States up to the 2004 U.S.-sponsored military coup (Galeano, 1997, p. 66; Chomsky, 2010, p. 7). In fact, neo-liberal exploitation and destruction continues today—in June 2011, Haitian peasants marched protesting the poisoned seeds “donated” by agribusiness giant Monsanto. The farmers called for more government support of locally produced seeds, which are far less likely to destroy Haitian biodiversity and agriculture. (Bell, 2011). As a summary activity, the students can respond to former Haitian president Aristide’s request for reparations from France; forming an argument for or against based on evidence from class and their own research. Aristide’s request could be expanded to include the United States, considering all the harm Haiti’s northern neighbor has wrought. President Wilson (who is known for his wonderful “Fourteen Points” rather than his ardent racism) devastated Hispaniola with an illegal invasion. Comparatively, Wilson’s administration treated the lighter-skinned Dominican Republicans with far less brutality than their black neighbors, who the State Department remarked were “almost in a state of savagery and complete ignorance” (quoted in Chomsky, 2010, pp. 47–48). With Haiti, students begin thinking about the impact of Western powers on developing country’s economies and the

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development of capitalism, as well as the function of racism, which is crucial later when discussing European imperialism in Africa, India and China. In addition to asking whether or not France owes Haiti anything, a school source critique further brings the lesson into the realm of action. As discussed, the textbook gives less than a page to the Haitian Revolution, and mentions it once earlier with the Napoleonic Code’s reinstating of slavery in the French Colonies (Beck, et al., 2009, pp. 664, 682). I think it is important to ask students: Why is it this way? Why focus so much on France, but so little on Haiti, whose revolutionary effects are far more obvious? (To this day I still fail to see how the French Revolution plays any significant part in everyday life in New York City, compared to the Haitian Revolution and subsequent oppression that many fled, up until today.) My guess is that the more you learn about Haiti (and Latin America, which we will see shortly), the harder it is to swallow the capitalist story. Meanwhile, France fits in nicely with the triumphant white man’s quest to civilize the world’s barbarians—the French saved us from feudalism and brought democracy to Europe. Neo-liberal indoctrination relies heavily on the nice, neat “winner” and “loser” story told in traditional global history courses. If you start to look closely at the South, then the story becomes darker and more complex, and calls into question much that the U.S. education centers around. Latin America, “Open Veins” Like the Caribbean, Latin America presents a similar story of conquest and exploitation that acts as an alternative to the traditional narrative. Focusing on Latin America also appeals to the cultural backgrounds of many students. I will not spend as much time on teaching Latin America from a Marxists perspective as I did on Haiti because it is covered in other chapters of this volume. However, I shall briefly outline how I would at least frame a class inquiry into Latin America, keeping with the formula previously laid out and bearing in mind the restrictions and dangers of the traditional approach to teaching the story of the South. Before starting the unit with a look at modern Latin America, it would be interesting to open with a class discussion of the term “Latin American.” When a New Yorker visits other countries and explains to someone abroad where he or she hails from, she or he will likely say, “I’m an American.” Doubtful that she or he would remark, “I am a United Statesian.” And even more doubtful the person abroad would require clarification to which American—North, Central, South, Caribbean, or Latin? All of which contain people that can claim to be “American,” but only those from the United States seem to have this right. Why is that? Why is “Latin American” not deserving of being reduced to “American”?

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Once the students have had their fun with why people below the Rio Grande require an extra title, we are ready to examine some facts about Latin America today. I would again use the CIA “World Factbook” website, but this time around the students can choose which regions to explore based on either their own backgrounds or outright curiosity. It can also be beneficial to compare Latin America’s tale to the North American story. Some similarities arise—both began as colonies and both fought and won independence (for the most part), yet those south of Rio Grande are significantly poorer. Thus, the essential question borrows from Galeano (1997), “Why is the north rich and south poor?” (p. 131). For a moment, let us consider the role of slavery, returning to Adam Smith (1965), who discusses how his rule of free markets can be applied to enslaved peoples (adapted for comprehension): In all European colonies the culture of the sugar-cane is carried by negro slaves . . . as the profit and success of products of the work carried out by the cattle, depends on the good management of the cattle; so the profit and success of the products of the work carried out by slaves, must depend equally upon the good management of those slaves. (p. 553)

At least Smith calls on slave-owners to be nice to their slaves, which can equally be interpreted as even more immoral because it prolongs the exploitative and dehumanizing material conditions of slavery. Regardless, it brings up the role of enslaved workers in the Americas, as well as highlighting how many Europeans, including the “enlightened” Adam Smith, likened Africans to animals. To be sure, Smith (1965) goes on to call slavery “unfortunate” (p. 553). Either way, slavery adds levels of complexity to Smith’s notion of “free” markets. In order for our modern, liberated economic system to come about, millions of people had to die or become subjugated. As Engels points out, silver and gold from Latin America turned Indians and later Africans into “external proletariats,” allowing European merchants to prosper, accumulate wealth, and reinvest (quoted in Galeano, 1997, p. 38). Returning to the notion of laissez-faire, Smith’s (1965) idea that governments ought not to interfere, but, as we saw, should protect the people. How does this apply to slaves? And what does it mean for the indigenous populations? Smith (1965) attempts to justify his predictions by explaining where native peoples fall in his theory. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith evaluates, possibly prematurely, the effects of colonization on the survivors and descendents of Incas and Aztecs: In spite of the cruel destruction of the natives which followed the conquest, these two great empires are, probably, more populous now than they ever were before; and the people are surely very different; for we must acknowl-

Student-Teaching as an Emerging Marxist    297 edge, I apprehend, the Spanish creoles are in many respects superior to the ancient Indians. (p. 535)

Again, Smith’s thoughts on free markets come back into play here. Within the free market theory, how does Smith’s prediction that business leaders will make decisions that benefit all apply? Was he perhaps referring to only people of European descent? And should not the government step in to protect all people? Which people? The ones oppressing or the ones being exploited? Additionally, are the creoles “superior” to Indians? Is becoming more Western a good thing? To give Smith (1965) the benefit of the doubt (he does say “probably”), he wrote The Wealth of Nations when the merchants of Northern colonies were about to put forth the Articles of Confederation, and the far-reaching effects of pillage in Latin America were yet unclear. Let us turn the clock forward several decades, and see if we can shine more light on the essential question with Karl Marx. Regarding Latin America, Marx (1990) puts it eloquently in Capital (adapted for understanding): The discovery of gold and silver in America, the [removal], enslavement and entombment in the mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a [den] for the commercial hunting of Black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. (quoted in Galeano, 1997, p. 28)

With this excerpt, the students can return to Marx and Harvey’s point from the beginning of the semester that capitalism is all about growth, presented as good and inevitable. According to Marx, what is the cost of this growth? We revisit the questions: Can capitalism and democracy coexist? Can “free market” business grow while human rights are protected? What lessons can Latin America teach us about the advent of capitalism (and later Africa and India)? Returning to our essential question; how did the northerners escape the tragic fate of the South? Again, Smith (1965) offers some insight (adapted): In the plenty of good land the English colonies of North America . . . though very abundantly provided, are . . . inferior to those of the Spaniards and Portuguese . . . the labor of the English colonists is not only likely to allow more and better products, but because of the restricted taxes, a greater proportion of these products belongs to themselves, which they may store up and employ in putting into motion a still greater quantity of labor . . . (pp. 538–540)

The United States had free workers immigrating (at least some were free); Latin America had subjugated labor (enslaved Indians, then later Africans forced to immigrate). Tied more to the foreign market, Latin America’s populations, both native and immigrant, were left in the margins. Mean-

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while, the northern immigrants had some freedom and were allowed to keep a significantly greater portion of the fruits of their labor. As Smith suggested, North America had no gold or silver to exploit, no giant Indian civilizations organized and ready for work. Galeano (1997) puts it nicely, “The thirteen colonies had the fortune of bad fortune” (pp. 132–133). Instead of being slaves (proverbially and literally) to the global powers, the northerners were free to grow, buy their own slaves, and their “yearly multiplying millions” could now “overspread the continent allotted by Providence” (Sullivan, 1845, quoted in Zinn, 2003, p. 151). The thirteen colonies could become an imperial power themselves, and fulfill their “destiny” to conquer and subjugate the local natives, neighboring nations, and free people abroad. It is more than being fortunate (or unfortunate); the northerners possessed a “city on the hill” mentality. They were somehow ordained for greatness, what is called “American exceptionalism” (Chomsky, 2010, p. 39). Meanwhile, it seems, the southern colonists and natives were destined to a different fate. So, what were some of the results of the misfortune of having fortune? What was Latin America’s “Manifest Destiny”? Any number of routes can be explored to more specifically answer these questions. Again, it would be great to give the students some say in deciding which of the many stories in Latin America to explore, like with the modern-day statistics from before. If the students struggle with their decision, some teacher suggestions include the amazingly interesting tales of the Mexican priest Hildalgo, Zapata, Pancho Villa, or Tupac Amaru (whose name the students surely recognize from the famous, and infamous, rapper). I find Eduardo Galeano’s (1997) work, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, extremely useful when teaching students about Latin America. First off, he offers a wonderfully written alternative to the traditional story offered in school sources. Second, his work is well researched and cited, often quoting Mark and Engels. Third, the book is quite informative, covering most Latin American countries, and, thus, could be adapted according to whichever narrative the students choose. Finally, besides being eloquently penned, the original edition is in Spanish, something some students may benefit from reading. Understanding the reserves many have with teaching immigrant students (or children of immigrants) in their native languages, I hold that it would be empowering to read about Latin American history in the language of most of its peoples, and written by a Latin American. And like before with Haiti, the students could use Galeano’s work and their own research to critique the small sections about Latin America in their textbooks and other school sources. Whichever course the students decide upon, certain general themes of Latin America ought to be present. Since the connection is regularly ignored, it is important to emphasize gold, silver, and much later oil, along

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with slavery’s role in the birth of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Marx (1990) connects colonization to the inner-workings of capitalism, noting that “the colonial system and the extension of the world market, both of which form part of the general conditions for the existence of the manufacturing period, furnish us with rich materials for displaying the divisions of labour in society” (p. 474). Marxist scholar, Ernest Mandel, further supports this notion, also asserting that the pillaging led to a “favorable climate for investment in Europe” (quoted Galeano, 1997, p. 28). Even Adam Smith (1997) agrees, writing much earlier in history, “the colonization of America . . . contributed to augment the industry” of first Spain and Portugal, and eventually other countries in Europe, namely England. Writing before the industrialization of the United States, Smith (1965) goes on to accurately predict that exclusive trade with the mother country “cramps” colony industrialization (pp. 557–558). The North became rich and industrious because they freed themselves from their masters while the South gained independence in name only (and some places not at all); still existing as slaves to the West. Furthermore, the slave trade’s role in funding the United State’s industrial revolution deserves recognition in the classroom (Galeano, 1997, p. 82). Imperialism in Africa, India, and China; Lessons Learned After Latin America, we continue with imperialism in the nineteenth century, again asking, Can capitalist growth coexist with democracy and the protection of human rights? We begin, like time and time before, with some statistics, mainly concerning modern day Africa and India. It can be powerful to look at data comparing infant mortality and adult literacy, as those are often signs of development and prosperity. When one looks closely at such numbers, it becomes clear that nowhere in the world is the death rate for newborns as high as the district of Ganjam in Orissa, Africa. And, India’s Rajasthan has a district with by far the lowest adult female literacy rate on the planet (Sen, 1999, pp. 100–101). We can ask a similar question as when we discussed Haiti and Latin America, that is, How did these regions in Africa and India become so underdeveloped? Since now we have seen that it usually relates to foreign powers, the great trading nations of the world—a better question might be: What lessons did business leaders learn in Africa and Asia in the nineteenth century? Africa deserves some review before exploring the effects of colonization on the continent. Students likely will have had a teacher the year earlier downplay the role of slavery and the emerging racism in global interactions; some background might be necessary. What was Africa like before

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European involvement, and how did slavery change it? Before we examine what Africans have to say about this (as we shall see later in the lesson), let us turn to our friend Adam Smith (1965), bearing in mind he is writing in the middle of the slave trade (adapted): All the inland parts of Africa . . . seem in all ages of the world to have been in the same barbarous and uncivilized state in which we find them at present . . . There are in Africa none of those great inlets, such as the . . . Mediterranean in . . . Europe, to carry maritime trade into the interior parts of that great continent. (p. 20)

Smith’s perspective here clearly reproduces the hierarchy of civilizations paradigm common during his time (as well as today). Students here might be engaged in the mainstream apologists that argue that he was just a product of his time making his racism acceptable. For Smith, due to the lack of navigable waterways, Africans have been as savage as they appeared in his time, slavery is incidental to their plight. They have been, and will likely continue to elude civilizing. To be certain, in his day, Smith likely could not see the full impact of slavery, or the soon to come devastation from colonization. In fact, we are now approaching a time period beyond Smith’s years, and soon will be out of grasp of Marx’s lifespan and work. However, Marx and Smith’s writings can be brought back to further frame our investigation into imperialism in Africa, and we may see our initial interpretations change in light of the new information. For example, we might better understand what Marx means by his connection between “rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production” and turning Africa into a hole for the “commercial hunting of Black-skins” (quoted in Galeano, 1997, p. 28). In addition, with imperialism in Africa (and later Asia), we can attempt to further evaluate Smith and Marx’s predictions on free-market/capitalist growth—do international business decisions in the “free” market end up benefiting all, or is the main concern to grow, grow, and grow despite the harmful effects on labor? And after reading Smith’s view of Africa above, the first question comes to mind, Were the Africans uncivilized? What does “civilized” mean anyway? Furthermore, we saw how slavery impacted Europe and the Americas, but what were the long-lasting effects on Africans? Let us search for evidence while looking at European imperialism in the “Dark” continent. The “Scramble for Africa” receives a good amount of attention in public school textbooks; pointing out that no Africans were present at the Berlin Conference’s division of the continent. However, most traditional sources, including our textbook, focus largely on the Eurocentric point of view that subsequently downplays the negative effects of European colonization (I would even say they fabricate a lot of the positives). What did the Africans have to say? Why is their narrative missing? My best guess is the same with Haiti and Latin America—there are dangerous lessons to be learned when

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the world’s people are brought together under the global market, dangerous to the “triumphant” story of capitalism. For students: If people are suffering, how does that fit into Smith’s idea that everything will work out for everyone? I had some experience using the African viewpoint on the effects of colonization to combat the traditional approach in one of the few critical lessons I was able to implement while student-teaching, below are some of the highs and lows of the lesson. The students critiqued their textbook using some alternative sources from Rethinking Schools, which remains a powerful source for critical materials that work great in the classroom. The book, Rethinking Globalization (Bigelow, 2002) features a secondary source critically analyzing the effects of colonization in Africa by Bob Peterson (2002), as well as a primary source from the point of view of an African chief. The Rethinking sources seriously expand on and challenge the class text’s treatment of Africa. The mainstream public school textbook explains that the easy colonization was largely due to Europeans’ “technological superiority,” and the fact that Africa’s “huge variety of languages and cultures discouraged unity” (Beck et al., p. 775). Meanwhile, Peterson (2002) emphasizes slavery’s role in destroying Africa; “little attention or resources were put toward improving farming or people’s lives.” Furthermore, Peterson’s (2002) article complicates the notion of disunity within Africa, by noting, “Some Africans helped the European slave traders increasing conflict between Africans themselves” (p. 41). Thus, slavery’s role cannot be understated, otherwise it would seem Africans lost to European colonizers simply because they were inferior. Concerning portrayals of Africans and Europeans, the public school textbook makes an attempt at objectivity, even when discussing the Berlin Conference; however, it provides no real moral questioning of taking up the “White man’s burden.” Peterson, on the other hand, overemphasizes the greed and lust for power of the Europeans, calling them “barbaric” (p. 42). The African voice, Chief Kabongo, is puzzled by Europeans and their structures of power: “We had no king; we elected our Councils and they made our law. A Strange king could not be our king and our land was our own” (quoted in Peterson, 2002, p. 46). Kabongo’s people are shown as democratic and patient (they calmly wait for a reply to an appeal, and are rejected). Furthermore, Kabongo’s account calls into question the validity of Adam Smith’s claim that Africa was and remains uncivilized, which certainly depends on whose point of view and on one’s definition of civilization. The African Chief goes on to vividly describe the sadness and despair he and his fellow tribal leaders feel for simply wanting “land to grow food” (quoted in Peterson, 2002, p. 49). Again, his story demonstrates the restriction of democracy and self-determination within a neo-liberal system. As Peterson (2002) puts it: “Prohibited by European powers from continu-

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ing their own cultures based largely on farming, and also prohibited from developing manufacturing, the colonies came to depend heavily on a few crops or minerals . . .” (p. 42). In other words, economic development led to an underdeveloped Africa. The mainstream textbook points out the few negative aspects of colonization (mentioning that millions died), but goes on to demonstrate the positive impact of reduced local warfare, including better health and sanitation, the establishment of schools, and “economic expansion . . . railroads, damns, and telephone and telegraph lines [which] were built in African colonies” (Beck et al., 2009, p. 784). To be sure, the textbook adds at the end, “for the most part, this benefited only European business interests, not Africans’ lives” (Beck et al., 2009, p. 784). The notion of economic expansion is surely up for debate (as Peterson, 2002, demonstrates), as are the other so-called “positives,” which again certainly depend on point of view. Meanwhile, Chief Kabongo sees nothing positive in colonization, criticizing the new European schools; “The children make marks which they call writing, but they forget their own language and customs, they know not the law of their people . . . they have no land and no food and they have lost laughter” (quoted in Peterson, 2002, p. 49). The late Gil Scott-Heron (1982) (credited for influencing early hip-hop), criticizes the notion of an uncivilized Africa and further drives Kabongo’s point home in this excerpt from his poem, later a song, “Black History:” First, White folks discovered Africa and they claimed it fair and square. Cecil Rhodes couldn’t have been robbing nobody ‘cause he said there was nobody there. White folks brought all the civilization, since there wasn’t none around. They said ‘how could these folks be civilized when you never see nobody writing nothing down?’

For the most part, the students were receptive and had some fun with the lesson. I was unable to perform any valuable formative assessment outside a discussion, but several students now refer to all White people in history as “pink cheeks,” (a term introduced by Kenyan Chief Kabongo). One student questioned the European schools in Africa, citing the African chief lamenting the children forgetting their own histories. Many were quick to point out that their textbooks omitted any real African viewpoints, not once even quoting a single native. The students were definitely invested in the material more than usual, and I think this is due to the lesson calling on them to evaluate the effectiveness of their textbooks. It seemed to be an enjoyable alternative form of assessment; instead of being tested on history— they tested history, themselves. Some students explained the inadequacies in the textbook were because it was written by White people to “make them feel good.” On the other hand, some students (the higher achieving ones) complained that the answers were hard to find, or that they did not under-

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stand why it mattered if the text left anything out. After all, the textbook can’t be wrong, they reminded us. As students too often grow up within behaviorist model classrooms, they become conditioned with questions that have predetermined answers. They tend to be concerned with their grades and, therefore, grow frustrated when they cannot immediately discern the “correct” thing to say. I find this a lot when I ask students their opinion of something; they are terrified of getting it wrong (likely tied to the public school’s emphasis on exams and our own culture’s emphasis on trivia and game show contests). Going back to the point made earlier, history is indeed “messy,” and the answers are not always so easy to find (Singer, 2009, p. 30). Later, I was told I downplayed the positive impacts of imperialism, namely that the Europeans brought education, medicine, and industrialization. Not only do I think these contributions are debatable, I see focusing on these positive impacts as undermining the African perspective on the matter. Promoting the good of colonization is an ethnocentric act justifying the “White Man’s Burden.” For many Africans, colonization was not a positive process; Chief Kabongo’s view is just one example. India and China’s interactions with Western business leaders offer further evidence of the results of neo-liberalizing the planet. As with Africa, before investigating the European invasion into Asia, let us turn to Adam Smith to get an idea of how these regions existed before interaction with Europe. Smith (1965) seems puzzled that parts of Africa and Asia became wealthy while not adhering to his theories: “It is remarkable that neither the ancient Egyptians, nor the Indians, nor the Chinese, encouraged foreign commerce, but seem all to have derived their great opulence from this inland navigation” (p. 20). What happened to this “great opulence”? Where did it go? Why is it gone? How did India, like Haiti with the French Empire before, go from being a “jewel” in the crown of the British Empire, to one of the poorest places on the planet (Chomsky, 2010, p. 15)? Returning again to Marx, he connects “the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies to the peachy birth of capitalism” (quoted in Galeano, 1997, p. 28). As alluded to earlier, teachers usually paint Marx as fighting for the poor factory worker; few utilize Marx’s analysis of global capitalism to frame an inquiry to colonialism (there are more proletariats out there in the world). Let us look at India; what Chomsky (1999) calls the first major “experiment” in international neo-liberal doctrine (p. 24). Lessons on South Asia are so charged with resounding resistance to Western colonization, textbooks and teachers tell a good amount of the story (culminating with Gandhi’s revolution in the second semester of 10th Grade Global). For nineteenth century imperialism, the class textbook highlights the “Sepoy Mutiny,” where British-trained Indian soldiers working for European Mer-

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chants rebelled, likely due to cultural insensitivity on the Europeans’ part (Beck et al., 2009, p. 793–794). Although the book’s choice of words raises an immediate concern; why not use the terms “resistance” or “rebellion”? Calling the Sepoy uprising a “mutiny” perpetuates the notion of White entitlement to the planet; the British were superior, and, thus, the rightful rulers and the people of India mutinied. Lord Kitchener sums up this mindset perfectly, interestingly enough from a primary source featured in the student’s textbook: “It is this consciousness of the inherent superiority of the European which has won for us India” (Beck et al., 2009, p. 794). Furthermore, the text again avoids controversy (not surprisingly); offering no moral evaluation of British racism, only mentioning once after the Kitchener quote the rebellion “fueled the racist attitudes of the British” (Beck et al., 2009, p. 794). The test prep website offers another cold, boring, and oversimplified interpretation of imperialism in Africa and Asia: “Europeans had little regard for most of the indigenous peoples of these areas, and as a result, there was great loss of life and culture” (Regents Exam Prep Center). Teachers could expand on this and ask, what is this “loss of life and culture” about? How does it relate to business growth and our current world? As with Africa, the negative effects of colonization in India deserve more attention, especially if we are to understand the business lessons learned. I am happy to say that my cooperating teacher in the high school had done plenty of research on the topic (his grandparents were British living in India), and put together a great lesson. In class, we analyzed excerpts from two contrasting view primary sources my colleague found in his studies (a great example of teachers as historians, not textbook guides). A British scholar from the time period explains that his countrymen brought “certain standards of humanity” (Schwartz & O’Connor, 1976, pp. 26–27), like eliminating female infanticide and child marriages. In addition, Schwartz and O’Connor (1976) note that colonization did wonders for the Indian exporting economy. Meanwhile, an Indian Nationalist claims England restricted economic growth, destroyed their textile industry, and made India “a farming colony of industrial England” (Farah, Flickema, & Hantula, 1980, p. 74). Taking these perspectives into account, the teacher offered the following questions for the students to consider: How can we reconcile these two viewpoints? How can British imperialism be good and bad for economic development? After some lazy class discussion (it was the day before Thanksgiving), one student eventually pointed out, it was “good for the British but bad for the Indians.” The student echoed what Chomsky (1999) points out; that neo-liberalism’s “first great experiment was a ‘bad idea’ for the subjects, but not for the designers” (p. 26). The lesson the European businessmen learned is simple; “profit over people” (Chomsky, 1999, p. 27). Furthermore, India acts as an example of what to do with your surplus-value

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from your outstanding profits—transform the devastated Indian population into a new market (Harvey, 2010, p. 223). What a genius plan; first, you subjugate and destroy a nation’s industry and autonomy, use the profit from exploiting its labor to make more products than you could have possibly sold within your own European country, and then take these extra products and force the colonized population to buy them. That’s global capitalism in a nutshell. Similar lessons of “profit over people” can be learned in China during early capitalism’s scramble for raw materials, cheap labor and new markets. For students: How did contact with Western trade affect China? Additionally, what brought about that contact? Reflecting back to what Smith (1965) pointed out, while violating his principles, China obtained “great opulence” without foreign commerce. Smith (1965) also notes that China “has been long one of the richest . . . most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world” (pp. 20, 71). Despite their fantastic wealth derived from within, Smith (1965) later advises China to join the world market, claiming it would “increase very much the manufactures of China, and . . . improve very much the productive powers of its manufacturing industry” (p. 645). Others agreed with Smith, as many European merchants were eager to tap into the Chinese market and get some of China’s silver (Harvey, 2010, p. 94). China was able to turn down the foreign powers, as the textbook explains, “because it was largely self-sufficient” (Beck et al., 2009, p. 805). Chinese leaders scoffed at the West and its “beggarly commerce” (Smith, 1965, p. 644). The question arises for students: If China was so autonomous, why would it take Smith’s advice? Should it listen to the West and begin foreign trade? What’s the worst that could happen? Let’s find out, shall we? The West finally tapped into the Chinese market by addicting the population to opium, smuggled in illegally by British merchants (who had their subjugated labor in India grow the drug). The reaction from Chinese leaders was anything but pleasant. Addressing the “British imperialist logic” that led to war and destruction in China, David Harvey (2010) connects it fluidly to English trade with India, and in a way which students can understand: There was a lot of silver in China, so the idea was to sell Indian opium to the Chinese, get all that silver out of that lucrative sale, and thereby pay for all the goods that were being produced in Manchester (England) and sent to India. When the Chinese resisted opening their doors to the opium trade, the British response was to knock them down with military force. (p. 94)

Another genius plan by the British imperialists. After you turn India into your source for raw materials, a cheap labor force, and market for English goods, you need some way to finance the continued manufacturing of those goods (to grow and grow), so sell drugs grown in India to China—if the

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Chinese resist, shoot them. Again for the students: What is the cost of progress for the Indians? For the Chinese? The class textbook devotes a significant about of time surveying the Opium Wars and the countless violent rebellions against Western influence (at one point offering a great primary source from a Chinese leader pointing out hypocrisy in illegalizing opium in Britain). However, the chapter on “opening up” China appears to attempt objectivity when portraying the Chinese response. Addressing the popular opinion in China, the textbook reads cold and dull: “Many Chinese greatly resented the foreigners and the bustling trade in opium they conducted,” (Beck et al., 2009, pp. 805–806), an understatement of mega proportions. Teachers ought to go beyond the objectivity (if that is even achievable) of the textbook, and add levels of moral evaluation. Additionally, it helps to contextualize China within the emergence of neo-liberalism, as Harvey (2010) was able to (and discussed earlier with the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and India). How does Smith’s maxim of “free markets” apply here? China did fine for years by restricting trade with foreigners. Eventually, however, China opened up, but not by the “free market,” instead by the forcing of drugs upon the population (Chomsky, 1999, p. 26). How does this relate to governments keeping their hands off business? Is it possible capitalism is more concerned with growth than human rights? The idea of using addictive substances to create a market resonated strongly with the students in my classroom; many compared it the selling of crack cocaine in urban areas (“you’re always going to have a demand if you’re flipping crack!”). It goes beyond narcotics; tobacco and alcohol are two of the most traded products on the planet, and both are incredibly addicting, not to mention more lethal than opium (Chomsky, 2010, p. 60). How can there be freedom in the market with commodities that produce a physical dependency? Another lesson the students can take from imperialism in Asia is that in order for a nation to actually prosper (as in the people and national trade, not a few that are either foreign or slaves to foreign powers), it requires very little interference, or advice from the West. Japan, along with the United States, learned this as they developed free of an imperial presence squeezing its economy (Chomsky, 1999, p. 26–31). So, our earlier question posed by Galeano (1997) can be expanded globally: Why do some countries develop and others do not? After examining all the evidence from China and the other victims of nineteenth century imperialism, along with Haiti and Latin America, the class returns once again to Marx and Smith’s work from the beginning of the year. Using what they learned, the students formulate an argument to which interpretation applies best, offering their own view as well. Upon examining the evidence, as mentioned, Chomsky (1999) comes to the con-

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clusion that neo-liberal (i.e., capitalist) growth is about profit over people. The lesson with colonization seems to be this: For the Western capitalists to make a profit, or in other words, for capitalism to grow, the populations must be neglected. What is more, an industrial country’s population is largely forgone, as governments, like the United States, neglect the rights of slaves and wage workers. And, what of the role of government in business, should it be left free? In reality, it seems business leaders rarely follow classical economic theory, as Chomsky (1999) notes, England (and the United States) practiced partial protectionist policies after their so called “liberalization” in the mid-nineteenth century. England violently interfered with business, protecting its markets in India, and creating “by far the most extensive narco-tafficking industry in world history” (Chomsky, 2010, pp.78–79). Of course, these are just different ways to look at it; I invite whatever opinion, as long as it can be defended. The aim is for the students to at least begin questioning the normal spoon-fed story (whether they accept or reject it is out of the teacher’s hands). Marx and Smith Today, Cash Money While the students evaluate whether global capitalism and democracy live side by side, and as they critique their textbook’s treatment of socialism and capitalism (discussed earlier with challenges faced by Marxist educators), I would love to end a semester devoting a good amount of time to studying Smith and Marx’s relevance today. Students can utilize the critiques, analyses, and evidence gathered from throughout the semester to formulate a course of action (if they even want to take one). In addition, the readings and critical thought required in the following are far more difficult than before, and as the students have been building up and building upon previous material (change over time), they, hopefully, should be ready for some tough stuff (Gerwin, 2009, 135–136). The student action can take many forms. It can simply expand on the critique of Smith and Marx’s treatment in public education: Is Smith the “patron saint” of capitalism? Would Smith have supported modern, global capitalism? If not, then why teach it that way in high school? Bringing Smith’s work into modern times, has the division of labor system turned us into robots? (Do people like their jobs?) Do governments intervene at the right times? To be sure, we have a minimum wage (arguably low at that), and certain working condition protections. Proving that it takes a disaster to stir people and governments to action, the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire drastically improved fire regulations in factories and buildings in general (Kalish, 2011). However, overwhelmingly, the evidence suggests governments only really protect the investors and owners, as was the case

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with the recent bank-bailouts; not the lowly workers, who pay for those bailouts while wages stagnate (Chomsky, 2010, 109–110). Turning to Marx’s role today: Is it true his theories are obsolete? Is it fair to attach Marxism so strongly to the Russian Revolution (a topic the textbook gives a significant amount of pages)? Would Marx have approved of Lenin and later Stalin? Howard Zinn (1988) liked to think Marx “would have been a dissident in Moscow” (p. 160). For students: Is there a better example of a Marxist society than the ones offered by our textbooks? Is there a true “dictatorship of the proletariat?” Marx and Engels had an example—the shortly lived Paris Commune in 1871, which paid representatives the same as all other workers, allowed immediate recall of representatives, and gave everyone (I mean, everyone) the right to vote (Zinn, 1968, p. 58; 1988, p. 160). For the most part, the government was subject to the people. A more contemporary example exists in 1960s Sweden, when the Meidner Plan, named after the Swedish labor economists Rudolf Meidner, attempted to effectively bring out the capitalist class (over time and peacefully), and replace them with “total worker control over investment decisions” (Harvey, 2010, p. 249–250). Both examples end up failing, though not on their own, but mostly due to outside forces; the French army destroyed the commune in 1871, and in Sweden, neo-liberal economists like Milton Friedman helped the capitalists prevent the labor uprising (“Timeline of the Civil War in France”; Harvey, 2010, p. 250). Since these did not last, in our classroom, can we think of a hypothetical society in keeping with Marx’s ideas? Can we think of a society that actually follows Smith’s advice? (Unless, of course, you believe our current world is in accordance with Smith’s principles of the free market.) Or, do capitalism and democracy work together fine? Friedman certainly thinks so; he argues that obtaining funding for political activism would be nearly impossible in a socialist state (Butler, 1985, p. 208). Of course, the socialist state he refers to is one with a strong centralized government controlling economic policy, which again raises the question—is that what Marx was talking about? In addition to action inspired by the content, the very methods and school materials the students critique can lead to more generalized action concerning education. All semester long, the students are asked why they believe the textbook neglects certain parts of history while often lying about others (of course, unless the students disagree). How can we change the social studies? This can be anything from writing a letter to the publishers or school board calling for better or new textbooks (or no textbooks). Or, students can create their own secondary sources, in the forms of books, graphic novels, videos, computer games, or whatever. Again, I cannot tell you or your students what to do; the action is up to the individual.

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We can have some fun with this as well, returning to whether Marx can be relevant today: Can his work be used to understand urban lifestyles? I attempted to make Marx relevant in my classroom student-teaching by examining sweatshops today in South Asia and relating it to the outlandishly high price of Nike shoes. Looking back, the lesson felt gimmicky and a bit preachy, “Feel bad about owning Air Jordan’s, some poor girl made them!” A good lesson, but the analysis is shallow, and perhaps more suited for the elementary school age. And, many students already knew about it, explaining that despite the injustice, they still intend to pay hundreds for shoes (they really, really like Jordan’s). In the future, I would extend this exploitation beyond sweatshops to the low wages and job insecurity in the United States and our own communities (not to mention actual sweatshops here in New York City). Students in high school are likely just about to, or already entering the work force, a realm of tedious button-pushing and product sorting for measly wages. Well, what of these terrible pay checks? Despite the low pay, advertisements everywhere command urban youth to buy things, lots of things. In my classroom, virtually every student owned a smart phone, a gaming computer, or a video game system (or all three). A few had deckedout cars, modified for racing and shows. How do we pay for all these things? With credit cards and toxic debt, of course! There exists something even more desired by urban youth than all the above novel items—money itself. The recent economic crises (still unresolved at the time of this chapter) demonstrated the fickle nature of the U.S. dollar, and pointed at the larger problem of value, particularly in the money commodity and lending (Harvey, 2010, pp. 79–80). However, if you listened to popular music, the radio, or spoke to an urban youth, it would be hard to guess anything is wrong with the economy—the money form of commodity is still hot. It is not news that people in urban areas, particularly ones in poverty, have an obsession with getting paper, as money is often called. Urban children and young adults are particularly targeted to spend, consume, accumulate, and chase after the capitalist dream. One can observe this in popular urban music—Canadian rapper Drake proudly proclaims in a chorus on a recent track with Rick Ross and Lil Wayne, “All I care about is money” (DJ Khaled, 2011). Early in his career, murdered rapper Notorious B.I.G. (1994) demanded cash, shouting “Gimme the loot, gimme the loot!” Although, in Biggie’s (1997) defense, later in his short life, he noted “mo[re] money, mo[re] problems.” Of course, there are exceptions, for instance, rapper BoB (2011) observes “it’s not about the money” on a Jessie J. song entitled “Price Tag,” later commenting that it seems “everybody has a price.” And neo-soul singer Bilal (2010) asks the listener whether he or she is a “programmed robot,” observing how people seem to “bow down to the almighty dollar.”

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Regardless, songs critiquing our insatiable lust for money are few and far between. The popular sentiment can be reflected with singers like Chris Brown (2011) calling on his audience to “Look at me now, look at me now, oh, I’m getting paper.” But, where does “paper” come from? What gives money its value? What is money anyway? A lesson in the value of money can begin with formatively assessing the students’ understanding on the subject; teachers can ask: What is money and why do people want it? The almost religious emphasis placed on the money commodity in urban areas and with urban music (whose popularity extends beyond urban areas) could give potency to an inquiry into money and create disequilibrium among students and teachers alike. Most people’s schemas of money undoubtedly leave little room for questioning; money is good, you want it, you have to get it. On a recent Travie McCoy (2010) track, Bruno Mars sings, “I want to be a billionaire so fucking bad” (to be sure, McCoy at one point raps about feeding starving children throughout the world, but not before mentioning throwing up a million dollars just “for the heck of it”). Thanks to rapper Lil Wayne (2008), a new slang term emerged; “a milli,” referring to making a million dollars or being a young millionaire. Moving beyond consumer fetishism (as discussed earlier with private property), why obsess about accumulating cash money? While it can certainly feel empowering for a Black youth to possess massive amounts of currency—Why is that? It may help in understanding urban culture and modern capitalist society if we dig deeper into this mysterious thing called money. For the origin of modern currency, let us turn to our dear old friend, Mr. Adam Smith, who, by now students I imagine either hate, or find mildly to moderately annoying. According to Smith (1965), when society first became commercial, and people just started dividing labor, trade was “clogged and embarrassed in its operations.” People struggled to find others who were willing to trade for what they had; Smith uses the example of a brewer wanting meat from a butcher but having nothing to offer if the butcher already has plenty of beer. In time, traders eventually turned to precious metals, and the already present coinage system, as intermediaries for exchange: “It is in this manner, that money has become in all civilized nations the universal instrument of commerce” (Smith, pp. 22–24, 28). Marx asserts Smith’s analysis when introducing the money form (he later expands on this definition, discussed shortly). In class students can make some sense out of Marx’s (1990) expression to understand money’s exchange-value: C-MC (commodity to money to commodity) (pp. 199–200). For Marx (1990), in capitalism money serves the role of obscuring the exploitation of that peculiar commodity, labor power. In this case, money again acts as mediator between commodities (as opposed to barter as Smith points out). Thanks to our current paper dollar, backed by no precious metal since the 1970s, this important exchange-value of money can be easily assessed. For students to

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consider: Is money itself valuable? Or is money’s value more how it fits into the system of exchange? Contemporary neo-liberal economist Milton Friedman attempts to answer the “mystery of money,” calling the acceptance of money at a certain value as “from one point of view, no more than fiction.” He affirms really anything can act as a medium of universal exchange, citing post WWII Germany where cigarettes and even cognac (a favorite of rappers) became currency (Friedman, pp. 10–12). So why do people strive to acquire more money than they need for their exchanges? Why accumulate these particular pieces of paper? Why pile up cash in “stacks on stacks on stacks,” or as rapper YC (2011) calls it, “racks on racks on racks?” Marx (1990) offers some insight, spending a good amount of time in Capital on why a person might become, as he calls it, a “hoarder of money” (pp. 227–228). In fact, the students on their own can reach Marx’s conclusion, in class they can brainstorm reasons why people save up money. Typically, we hoard cash when buying an expensive item, like a car, iPhone, big screen high-definition television, a place to live, what have you. People save up money, of course, if there does not exist some sort of credit system (more on that shortly). Regardless, by holding money—the ultimate exchangeable commodity—you allow yourself to potentially buy bigger or more things. At the risk of sounding extremely cliché, in a consumer society, money is indeed power. This power to purchase anything awakens a thirst for more power, a “lust for gold” similar to the conquistadors in Latin America. Marx even mockingly quotes Columbus, “Gold is a wonderful thing! Its owner is the master of all he desires!” (quoted in Harvey, 2010, p. 71). Credit cards and lenders fit in here as well. When money is the end goal in an exchange, Marx’s formula turns from C-M-C to M-C-M (money to commodity to money). Why then exchange money only to get back the same amount of money? It certainly makes more sense if you could get back more money than you invested, hence interest rates on loans, credit cards and such. As David Harvey (2010) points out, in this type of exchange (M-C-M), money takes on a different role than solely the mediator (as with C-M-C), it becomes capital—money that can be put into circulation to get more money (Harvey, 2010, pp. 74–76). Credit, thus, has a two-fold function, both of which benefit the capitalist class. First, it allows people with low wages to partake in the consumerism necessary for capitalism to function, and second, it provides a means to make even more money for the lenders, who make money on money, “stacks on stacks” or “racks on racks.” Thinking of history as a continuum, connecting the past, present and future: Can we imagine a time where money will disappear (not wealth, but money as the standard of exchange)? For this to happen, the system of exchange will have to change or vanish. The aim is to think of alternatives, and if the students cannot come up with any, then I have one ex-

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ample that always comes to mind for me—Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. Thanks to the lack of original ideas and risk-taking in the entertainment business, the series has returned repeatedly and recently been released as a major motion picture (a popular date movie a few summers ago). In the common Star Trek cannon, money does not exist in the future because people have stopped working towards profit and wealth. After realizing there is more in the universe than our petty differences, humankind unites under the common goal to advance civilization for everyone everywhere. As Captain Picard says in the film Star Trek: First Contact, “We work to better ourselves” (1996). There is no money because there is no longer the competitive capitalist system of exchange; everyone’s needs are met accordingly. In other words, the “United Federation of Planets” in Star Trek is a post-capitalist society. Money is certainly tempting, I cannot lie and say I too, from time to time, wish I just had a little more money to pay a bill, buy an iced coffee, or purchase a new book in critical theory, history or even the occasional graphic novel (and I must admit I do enjoy a lot of urban music). As W.E.B. Du Bois (1994) wrote, “Golden apples are beautiful—I remember the lawless days of boyhood, when orchards in the crimson and gold tempted me over fence and field” (p. 49). The above critique ties together the themes from earlier in the semester; asking again whether capitalists, in this case lenders, work for the benefit of all, or do people accumulate simply to accumulate (growth for the sake of growth). This approach could stir much controversy by questioning the value of money, why people hoard it, and by proposing a time when we might no longer have money (not to mention bringing science-fiction into the classroom). In addition, the question may arise: Why is urban music in particular filled with so many “hoarders of money”? Is it more so than other parts of society? Or, are all Americans told to stack up cash money? Why? If the students are unwilling to come to terms with the nature of money, they will at least have had a brief opportunity to think about its real value and can begin to question why people lust for it. Some may even begin to think of money no longer as an end itself, but rather as only a means to other ends (hopefully ends that benefit all). Du Bois again sums up my point in his usual beautiful prose (speaking to the future of education in Atlanta after Reconstruction): Work and wealth are the mighty levers to lift this old new land; thrift and toil and saving are the highways to new hopes and new possibilities; and yet the warning is needed lest the wily Hippomenes tempt Atlanta to thinking that golden apples are the goal of racing, not mere incidents by the way. (p. 49)

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Money can be useful; it can buy better books for schools (hopefully not textbooks) and safer facilities, and could be invested in research to better understand how students learn. Money can help purchase the means to organize by funding networking or allowing revolutionary writing to be published and distributed. Money is a tool, nothing more, just as iPhones and cars are tools (for me at least). And of course, I have to be careful with pushing this idea too forcefully on students. In keeping with Zinn’s interpretation of a Marxist approach, I can only tell the students to look, not what to find. In other words, I can’t take it personally if a student tells me to “screw off.” Teaching American History from a Marxist perspective So far, I have been focusing on teaching global history from a Marxist standpoint, particularly in the 17th to 19th centuries. Using Marx is at least plausible within this semester of lessons, since his existence falls within the designated meridians and epochs. As previously argued, Marx can and should be expanded beyond his small place in the traditional approach to global studies. But, what of American history? Marx is rarely included in United States curricula, outside of a possible mention when discussing socialist political parties or perhaps during the Cold War (again usually the misconception of Adam Smith’s capitalism versus Karl Marx’s communism). Can we say American history is one of class struggles? Howard Zinn certainly thinks so. Since before the thirteen colonies, enslaved Africans have been forced to migrate to North American shores, not to mention indentured servants or female sex slaves (Zinn, 2003, pp. 23–24, 104). Lest we forget, the founding fathers and the framers of the constitution were all rich White guys. Many of which owned slaves; Washington himself owned many, and fearing a slave uprising, he refused to let Blacks fight in the Revolutionary War (Zinn, 2003, p. 82). The creation of federalism was charged with class oppression, with one of its architects, Madison, claiming it was the government’s role “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” (quoted in Chomsky, 1999, p. 47). Not to mention the oppression of the Native Americans as sort of an “untouchable” class. The birth of U.S. industry had factory workers toil in working and living conditions that were comparable to those in England. If anything, American workers had it worse. London writer and working class sympathizer Charles Dickens (1791) visited the New York’s infamous Five Points and observed: “All that is loathsome, drooping and decay are here.” In addition, the relation of public education and industrialization deserves some focus in the classroom—why not tell kids how American public

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school started in the first place? At first glance, educating the masses may seem like an altruistic act proving the life in the United States improves every century (affirming Smith’s maxim). In reality, the introduction of public education in the mid-nineteenth century was more or less intended to prepare America’s farming population for factory work (Chomsky, 2002, p. 88). It comes as little surprise that today a big part of public school education is insuring students are properly instructed in the ways of the work place (hence the focus on math and technology—how else can we expect students to work in offices data-inputting or in stores inventorying?). I often hear teachers threaten off-task students with the notion that if school was a job, the kids would be “fired.” Along with providing America’s youth with the tools to work, it is also necessary to instill loyalty to capitalism using the traditional, triumphant neo-liberal narrative (as we saw earlier). Besides using Marx to understand class struggle and industrialization, his concepts of capitalist growth can be applied to U.S. expansionism, both territorial and in business. The typical Eurocentric approach to westward expansion in classrooms emphasizes the White perspective on moving westward, in effect perpetuating the myth of “Manifest Destiny.” The view is evident in the language used in the school textbooks: Jefferson “roughly doubled the size of the United States” with the Louisiana Purchase; or the Mexican-American War “increased the size of the United States by almost 25%” (Deverell & White 2009, pp. 274, 301). From this perspective, westward expansion is seen as progress and growth; the shape of the United States today is the way it has to be, and the steps made in the ninetieth century are a part of a tale of inevitable progress. Growth is good and inevitable. The traditional approach to U.S. history presents American expansion (which could be seen as imperialism or the physical expansion of capitalism geographically) as “fundamental to civilization” (Zinn, 2008, p. 279). To combat the Eurocentric approach, I highly recommend teachers review the Zinn Education Project online (zinnedproject.org), presented by Rethinking Schools in collaboration with Teaching for Change (which both are also great resources for the classroom). The website features regularly updated suggestions for activities and materials for teachers inspired by Howard Zinn’s work, namely the seminal book A People’s History of the United States (including an Indian Removal role play edited by Bill Bigelow, pdf file available at zinnedproject.org/posts/114). Based on a chapter from A People’s History, and borrowing the title “We take nothing by conquest, thank god” (which Zinn borrowed from a Whig article after the Mexican-American War), the website features a set of activities and sources that demonstrate American expansionism as intrinsically tied to business growth (download the pdf file at zinnedproject.org/posts/1499). Students examine different points of view from the war, including a wealthy Mexican woman in California, Apache leader Cochise, and U.S. President James K. Polk. In

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his book, Zinn demonstrates Polk effectively completed manifest destiny by tearing a path through Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, allowing the “peculiar institution” of slavery (one of which he was a part of) to spread and grow. Fredrick Douglass wrote in his Rochester newspaper the North Star in 1848, “Mexico seems a doomed victim to Anglo Saxon [greed] and love of dominion” (quoted in Zinn, 2003, p. 157). When the war began, abolitionist writer Henry David Thoreau was arrested and jailed for not paying his taxes, which he saw as supporting the immoral expansion of slavery. He later wrote his views in the essay “Civil Disobedience,” a great read for students, teachers, and anyone interested in changing the government (Zinn, 2003, p. 157). In addition to expanding slavery, westward “progress” was implicitly tied to worker exploitation and class struggles. The railroads westward were owned by a handful of business moguls while built with the blood of immigrants and poor laborers. The rich few, like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan were in a class above the rest of the American people, even avoiding conscription into service for the Civil War. One of Rockefeller’s wealthy peers, James Melon, was instructed by his father not to risk his health fighting; after all, “There are plenty of lives less valuable” (quoted in Zinn, 2003, p. 255). The same questions brought up by reading Smith and Marx’s work can be asked in U.S. history. Have U.S. business leaders made choices that benefited all people? Again, which people? Enslaved Africans and massacred or displaced Native Americans certainly add some complexity to the issue. Has the government really protected the people? The history of unions in America is one of conflict, usually with the government crushing labor movements, with a few exceptions. These few exceptions are usually the ones covered in classes, as if to prove the American government empathizes with workers. U.S. history textbooks cover a few major victories for labor in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but leave out any failed strikes of the late twentieth century like the 1991 Caterpillar Strike in Decatur Illinois (Loewen, 2007, p. 205). Socialism, itself, is all over American history—people often forget (or more likely never learn) elementary school favorite Helen Keller was an ardent socialist (Loewen, 2007, p. 12–13). Abraham Lincoln, at one point, sounds a tad Marxist, stating, “Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration” (quoted in Loewen, 2007, p. 204). I was fortunate to be at a middle school that allowed teachers to create the curriculum (instead of consume it); less restricted by state exams, we spent a good amount of time covering the above mentioned topics. Additionally, my cooperating teacher identified himself (if he had to chose a label) as leaning more toward libertarian socialist. Thus, he focused heavily on issues of class, gender, and race as well as the link between business and govern-

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ment in U.S. political history. One essential question for the year displayed on the wall read: “Is capitalism the cause of or solution to our problems?” His aim as a teacher was to create democratic citizens in the Deweyian sense, instead of indoctrinating them with the capitalist story. However, the setting still presented itself with numerous challenges. At one point in the semester, a parent complained of the teacher turning the children into anarchists. Again, we dare not tarnish the heroics of American civilization. Regarding teaching methods, much of what I learned from education professors was reinforced during my time at the middle school, proving to me the importance of higher education in teaching secondary and elementary students, as I shall discuss more in the conclusion. The most powerful learning experience was observing the effectiveness of scaffolding in teaching social studies. The first unit in the school year introduced students to history by asking, “What is social studies?” Students examine how the past illuminates the present, and how the present illuminates the past, with a selection of interesting and controversial topics and themes in U.S. history, like 9/11 to name one. Other lessons introduce class struggle, unemployment, capitalism, business growth, and its effect on the environment. Later in the semester, students reexamine much of the material from the first unit, but now in more depth with harder questions and readings. With lessons I ran on western expansionism and later industrialization, the students already had an idea of America’s notion of progress from Dr. Seuss’ film, The Lorax (“progress is progress, and progress must grow”). In addition to returning to previously viewed sources and themes, the students were given a chance to reflect on their own work and progress throughout the school year. The class answered essential questions after each unit in a composition notebook. The students could assess their own growth as writers and historians, examining how their interpretations change over time. Providing students with this portfolio aids in promoting their self-efficacy as learners. As renowned psychologist Albert Bandura (1993) concluded, “Learning environments . . . that deemphasize competitive social comparison, and highlight self-comparison of progress and personal accomplishments are well suited for building a sense of efficacy that promotes academic achievement” (p. 125). In other words, portfolio-style assessments move away from the meritocracy method of discerning student value, and aim towards building intrinsically motivated life-long learners. Moving beyond self-efficacy in academics, teachers can promote political-efficacy within their students, instilling in them the belief that they (as “the people”) can work for change in their local and global communities. Young people, particularly young women and girls, made up a large portion of the laborers and activists during the Industrial Revolution. Teachers should provide the young women and girls today with these historical women as models (not the runway kind). The social studies offer countless

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examples. Students ought to learn about such heroines as Mother Jones, who marched along with thousands of mill children to Washington to demand Child Labor reform. Non-fiction writer for children (and adults), Penny Colman authored an incredible narrative on Mother Jones’ life, Mother Jones and the March of Mill Children. I highly recommend her books to teachers of all grade levels. Her work also covers labor movements and “adventurous” women throughout history (pennycolman.com). Other models for young girls include the Lowell Mill girls in Massachusetts who went on strike and protested about wage cuts, or the women of Triangle Factory fire who inspired massive protests for better working conditions in New York City (Zinn, 2003, pp. 116–117; Kalish, 2011). Furthermore, students can research the role of young people “facebooking” in the recent Egyptian revolution and the students and teachers protesting in Madison, Wisconsin (Lyman, 2011). I asked at the beginning: Is the world the way it has to be? Now for the students: What can we do to change it? Closing Comments, Using History as a “Weapon” As pointed out in the introduction, one reason for the existing circumstances in public schools is the tendency to overwork teachers. Busy workers have no time for feelings of political-efficacy. Although, when pressed, people find time, as demonstrated by the aforementioned Madison protests, or the demonstrations and solidarity witnessed right here in New York City, as shown when the remarkably under-qualified and morally questionable Cathie Black stepped down as Schools Chancellor due to popular unrest (Wedes, 2011). Along with working for change, teachers ought to stay in close contact with the higher levels of education. For instance, recent education psychology has demonstrated enhancing student self-efficacy and self-regulation as a far better way to improve academic performance than stressing student’s self-esteem (Bandura, et al., 1996). High self-esteem does not seem at all connected to academic performance; in fact, praising students for their intelligence (rather than effort) can undermine motivation (Baumeister, et al., 2003; Mueller, 1998). Furthermore, other studies have shown that while self-esteem makes a less-depressed individual, it can lead to a focus on selfenhancement, which can have detrimental consequences. In most cases, an individual’s wants are at odds with what society values, such as “collective welfare, peace, kindness, and honesty” (Krueger, 2008. p. 64). In other words, a person would want to prolong his or her feeling of pleasantness, rather than work for the common good. Promoting self-esteem could, thus, be related to promoting meritocracy, capitalist competition, and, in turn, loyalty to neo-liberalism. Despite all of the evidence suggesting otherwise,

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teachers still promote self-esteem over self-efficacy with their students, as witnessed during my time student-teaching, growing up in American public education, and recognized by loads of psychology research (Crocker & Park, 2004, p. 392). It should be obvious that we need a better connection between the classroom and academia, and not simply one where service teachers take more high level classes, rather one where experience in schools also shapes and guides education scholarship. To put it simply; there needs to be a dialogue between practice and theory. In any case, the straits are dire. Teachers often ignore higher education, and social studies teachers, in particular, seem to forget what history means. Leading students to predetermined conclusions can be problematic. I also acknowledge that in many ways the above-suggested curriculum criticizes global capitalism more than supporting it. At first, these two notions could seem contradictory. However, it is precisely because I disagree with having students come to the same conclusions as their teachers that my curriculum leads more towards anarchy than the status quo. As I heard Chomsky once say, “History is a battleground.” Thus, social studies teachers ought to utilize “history as a weapon,” to borrow the title of a website that freely offers resistance themed historical sources (including Zinn’s Peoples History of the United States in its entirety, historyisaweapon.com). The notion of recapturing history (or teaching for change) is a controversial subject to say the least. Among teachers, young and old, pre-service and experienced, there exists the goal of objectivity in the classroom. This assumes many things; first, that objectivity is possible, and that somehow we can transcend our upbringings, cultures, educations and life experiences to make unfiltered observations and judgments. Second, the idea assumes U.S. public schools, class materials, and pedagogy are also free of purpose (as I have shown seems to be initiating students in neo-liberalism). As Howard Zinn (1995) puts it in his memoirs, You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train. Similarly, Paulo Freire asserts that knowledge can never be neutral; everything a teacher presents has a point of view (Singer, p. 111). In turn, teachers must always be vigilant of their own assumptions—any knowledge used in learning likely has been “ideologically contaminated” (Allman, 2001, p. 174). In addition to critiquing ourselves, we ought to examine the setting we exist in, on a local and global scale. For me, the situation is plain to see—neo-liberal policies “undermine education and heath, increase inequality, and reduce labor’s share in income” (Chomsky, 1999, p. 32). To promote social justice, educators must provide an alternative to the traditional story, and ask what can be done about our situation today. Students will likely continue to support neo-liberalism when they leave the classroom. After all, they are surrounded by a constant barrage of pro-capitalist propaganda. There is even an entire sector of business today that exists solely for this purpose, namely the Public

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Relations industry. As Chomsky (1999) points out, democracy and freedom are dangerous notions to the leaders of government and business, thus in a democratic nation the public mind must be “regimented” (pp. 52–53). PR propaganda not only convinces the majority of the population to go along with capitalism, but encourages them to never question it. In this world, most cannot see alternatives. It is for these reasons that a thematic curriculum that questions the structure of our world, and calls students to join the inquiry, I think, is necessary. From my experience, this is the best advice I can offer to pre-service and service teachers alike: Always make an effort to be aware of your own biases and limitations (you don’t have to be a god of all knowledge, although knowing a lot certainly helps), don’t be so rigid (allow for change and growth, also a dialectical relationship with the students), use what makes you and your students different as assets in the classroom, never think you are done learning (there is always more to know), and finally, teach subject matter that interests you (although be ready that it may not always be of interest to your students), after all, if you don’t love the stuff and work passionately for your goals, don’t bother showing up. References Allman, P. (2001). Critical education against global capitalism: Karl Marx and revolutionary critical education. London: Bergin & Garvey. Bandura, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning. Educational Psychologists, 117–118. Bandura, A., Barbaranelli, C., Caprara, G. V., & Pastorelli, C. (1996). Multifaceted impact of self-efficacy beliefs on academic functioning. Child Development, 67, 1206–1222. Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2003, May). Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles? Psychology Science in the Public Interest, 4(1), 1–44. Beck, R. B., Black, L., Krieger, L. S., Naylor, P. C., & Shabaka, D. I. (2009). World history: Patterns of interaction. Evanston, IL: McDougal Little Press. Bell, B. (2011, June). Haitians challenge Monsanto’s influence. Truth-out.org. Retrieved from http://truth-out.org/news/item/1941:haitians-challenge-monsantosinfluence Bigelow, B., & Peterson, B. (2002). Rethinking globalization: Teaching for justice in an unjust world. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Bilal. (2010). “Robots.” Airtight’s Revenge. Plug Research. Digital download, CD Album. Brown, C., Busta Rhymes. (2011). “Look at Me Now.” F.A.M.E. Jive. Digital download, CD Album. Butler, E. (1985). Milton Friedman: A guide to his economic thought. The University of Michigan: Universe Books.

320   E. G. ANDERSON Chomsky, N. (1999). Profit over people: Neo-liberalism and global order. New York: Seven Stories Press. Chomsky, N. (2002). Understanding power: The indispensable Chomsky. New York: The New Press. Chomsky, N. (2010). Hopes and prospects. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Crocker, J., & Park, L. E. (2004). The costly pursuit of self-esteem. Psychological Bulletin, 130(3), 392–414. Deverell, W., & White, D. G. (2009). United States history and New York history: Beginnings to 1877. Austin Texas: Holt Mcdougal. Dickens, C. (1791). Charles Dickens visits five points. HERB by ASHP, Item #1791, Retrieved from http://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1791 Du Bois, W. E. B. (1994). The souls of Black folk. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications. Farah, M. A., Flickema, T. O., & Hantula, J. N. (1980). Global insights: People and cultures. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Publishing. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Friedman, M. (1992). Money mischief: Episodes in monetary history. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers. Gerwin, D. (2009). Scaffolding conceptual reasoning about history. Social studies and diversity education: What we do and why we do it (pp. 134–136). New York: Routledge. Galeano, E. (1997). Open veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continen (C. Belfrage, Trans.). New York: Monthly Review Press. Gouges, O. de. (1790). Réponse au champion américain ou colon très-aisé à connaître. Paris. pp.3–8.  (accessed July 27, 2011). Haitian Earth Quake: the Death Toll in Numbers (2010). The Huffingtonpost. January 10. (accessed, November 10, 2010). Harvey, D. (2010). A companion to Marx’s Capital. London: Verso. Jessie J., BoB. (2011). “Price Tag” Who You Are. Lava, Island. Digital download, CD Album. Kabongo, Chief. (1991). The coming of the pink cheeks. As told to Richard St. Barbe Baker. In B. Bigelow, & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking globalization: Teaching for justice in an unjust world (pp. 45–49). Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Rethinking Schools. Kalish, J. (2011, March). A somber centennial for the triangle factory fire. National Public Radio. (Accessed, July 28, 2011). Khaled, D. J., Drake, Rick Ross, & Lil Wayne. (2011). “I’m On One.” We the Best Forever. We the Best, Terror Squad, Cash Money, Universal Motown. Digital download, CD Album. Krueger, J. I., Vohs, K. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2008, January). Is the allure of selfesteem a mirage after all?” American Psychology, 64. Levistky, S. L. (2009). Introduction. Das Kapital: A critique of political economy Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc. Lil Wayne. (2008). “A Milli.” Tha Carter III. Cash Money, Universal Motown. Digital download, CD Album.

Student-Teaching as an Emerging Marxist    321 Loewen, J. (2007). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster. Lyman, K. (2011). Teaching and learning in the midst of the Wisconsin uprising. Rethinking Schools. (accessed July 26, 2011). Malott, C., & Pruyn, M. (2006). Marxism and critical multicultural social studies. The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (3rd ed., pp. 157–170), Albany, New York: State University Press. Marx, K. (1990). Capital: A critique of political economy (Vol. 1). (B. Fowkes, Trans.). London: Penguin Classics. Marx, K. (2009). Das kapital: A critique of political economy. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc. McCoy, T., & Mars, B. (2010). “Billionaire.” Lazarus. Atlantic Records (via Distribution), Nappy Boy Entertainment. Digital download, CD Album. Médéric-Louis-Elie Moreau de Saint-Méry, (1797–1798/1985). A civilization that perished: The last years of White colonial rule in Haiti, Philadelphia, (I. D. Spencer, Trans.) (Ed.), Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Mirel, J. (2011, Summer). Bridging the widest street in the world: Reflections on the history of teacher education, American Educator, 6–12. Moreau de Saint-Méry, Médéric-Louis-Elie, (1797–1798/1985). A civilization that perished: The last years of White colonial rule in Haiti, Philadelphia, (I. D. Spencer, Trans., pp. 13–15.) (Ed.), Lanham, MD: University Press of America. http:// chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/568/ Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33–52. Notorious B.I.G, The. (1994). “Gimme the Loot.” Ready to Die. Bad Boy Records. Digital download, CD Album, Cassette, Vinyl. Notorious B.I.G, The. (1997). “Mo Money Mo Problems.” Life After Death.. Bad Boy Records. Digital download, CD Album, Cassette, Vinyl. Pennsylvania Gazette , The. (1793/1998). Philadelphia. December 4; available on cd-rom (Accessible Archives: Wilmington, Del., distributed by Scholarly Resources). Peterson, B. (2002). Burning books and destroying peoples: How the world became divided between rich and poor countries. In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking globalization: Teaching for justice in an unjust world (pp.38–43). Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Rethinking Schools. Regents Exam in Global History and Geography (2009, January). New York State Education Department. (accessed on July 17, 2011). Regents Exam in Global History and Geography (2010, June). New York State Education Department. (accessed on July 17, 2011). Regents Exam in Global History and Geography (2011, January). New York State Education Department. (accessed on July 17, 2011).

322   E. G. ANDERSON Regents Exam Prep Center. Oswego City School District.  (accessed June 2, 2011) Saunders, S. (2011, July/August). “NYSUT Sues Regents, State Ed. To Block Teacher Evaluation Regs” NYSUT United. Schwartz, S., & O’Connor, J. R. (1976). Imperialism and the emerging nations (pp. 26– 27). New York: Globe Book Company Inc. Scott-Heron, G. (1982). “Black History.” History is a Weapon. (accessed July 26, 2011). Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. New York: Knopf. Seuss, Dr. (1972). The Lorax. DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, CBS. Television, VHS, DVD. Shah, A. (2011, January). Poverty around the world. Global Issues. (accessed July 27, 2011). Singer, A. J. (2009). Social studies for secondary schools: Teaching to learn, learning to teach (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge. Smith, A. (1965). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. New York: Random House. Star Trek: First Contact. (1996). Director: Jonathan Frakes. Paramount Pictures. Film, VHS, DVD. “Timeline of The Civil War in France.” History of the Paris Commune. (accessed July 27, 2011). Viefville des Essars, Jean-Louis, (1790). Discours et projet de loi pour l’affranchissement des negrès ou l’adoucissement de leur régime, et réponse aux objections des colons (Paris, n.d.). Wedes, J. (2011, April). “Cathie Black is out at DOE!” Our Schools NYC. (accessed, July 26, 2011) Whelan, M. (2006). Teaching history: A constructivist approach. The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (3rd ed.) (pp.37–50), Albany, New York: State University Press. Why is Haiti So Poor? Black History Walks. http://www.black historywalks.co.uk/ haitipoverty.html (accessed November 2, 2010). Wollstonecraft, M. (1792). A vindication of the rights of woman. The Rights of Woman (1891, pp xxvi–xxix,17–18, 155–56, 159 ) London: Scott. (accessed July 30, 2011) World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Wu T. C. (1993). “C.R.E.A.M.” Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers). RCA Records. Digital download, CD Album, Cassette, Vinyl. YC. (2011). “Racks.” Universal Republic. Digital download, CD Single. Zevin, J., & Gerwin, D. (2011). Teaching world history as mystery. New York: Routledge. Zinn, H. (1969/2011). The new radicalism. On history (2nd ed., pp. 51–68.). New York: Seven Stories Press. Zinn, H. (1988/2011). Je ne suis pas Marxiste. On history (2nd ed., pp. 155–160). New York: Seven Stories Press. Zinn, H. (1995). You can’t be neutral on a moving train. Boston: Beacon Press.

Student-Teaching as an Emerging Marxist    323 Zinn, H. (2003). A peoples history of the United States. New York: HarperCollins. Zinn, H. (2008/2011). Empire or humanity? What the classroom didn’t teach me about the American empire. On history (2nd ed., pp. 273–279). New York: Seven Stories Press.

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Section IV Twenty-First Century Socialism in Practice

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Chapter 10

The Role of Higher Education within the Socialist Revolution of Latin America John M. Elmore

On October 9, 1967, in the Bolivian town of La Higuera, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was executed by a “half-drunken” sergeant in the Bolivian Army under the direction of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Moments before his death, Che was asked if he was thinking about his own immortality. “No” he answered, “I am thinking only about the immortality of the revolution” (McLaren, 2000). On January 22, 2006, Evo Morales assumed the office of President of Bolivia after a democratic election in which almost 85% of the Bolivian electorate cast a vote. President Morales is the leader of Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), which aims at giving more power to the country’s indigenous and poor communities by means of land reforms and the redistribution of wealth. On January 25, 2009, Bolivia’s new constitution that grants unprecedented rights to the country’s indigenous majority was approved by

Teaching Marx, pages 327–341 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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over 61% of the vote (Morgan, 2009). This, according to President Morales, represents the beginning of “communitarian socialism,” the first step in liberating Bolivia from its colonial state (Fuentes, 2009). Morales has nationalized the oil and gas industries and laid the groundwork for agrarian reform. In Bolivia where he gave his life, Che’s revolution lives.

What is happening in Latin America, however, is certainly not isolated to Bolivia. A movement of convergence is underway in the region that has mobilized governments from a broad political range behind a common imperative; the necessity of rising to challenge the systematic plundering by the U.S. government and U.S. corporations, which, most recently, has been cloaked in the veil of “globalization”: the neo-liberal privatization of the world. Globalization and the Exploitation of Latin America The term “globalization” has been used in many different ways including the rather benign characterization in which the word merely describes the blurring of cultural lines in a world made smaller by technology and a global mass media. When such a definition is applied, efforts to articulate the true phenomena are reduced to terms like toleration, cultural sensitivity, and adaptation. While this version of globalization is certainly worthy of exploration and examination, the more important inspection requires a much deeper and dialectical assessment of the matter. Such an examination identifies that the true nature of globalization is found in the effects of the global spread of neo-liberal capitalism in its harsh and oligarchic economic realities, as well as its powerful assault on native cultures and their inherent values throughout the world. In short, globalization merely represents the most recent stage in the expansion of capital and, as Marx (1848/1967) predicted, it is a necessary stage: “. . . the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere” (p. 5). And, as Le Blanc (2006) accurately stated: As we survey the operations of the multinational corporations that dominate the global economy—from ALCOA to AT&T, from Disney to DuPont, from General Electric to General Motors, from McDonalds to Microsoft, from Texas Instruments to Toyota—we know that the truth of this description is greater now than when Marx and Engels published it over 150 years ago. (p.55)

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This process of globalization, however, is not an easy one; this is especially true for those who are being globalized, but is also true (although in a very different way) of the capitalists who are doing the globalizing. As the Bourgeoisie solidifies its complete control over the planet, multiple efforts must be made on their behalf to manipulate the free market in a way that will limit the potential of a proletariat revolution in reaction to the new oligarchy. In effect, the capitalist class must begin to negate their own principles in order to maintain control (i.e., welfare, Medicare, social security). The primary direction of this hegemony aims to pacify the proletariat by creating a sense of stable and/or upward economic movement, even when real wages are stagnant or even being reduced (which has especially been the case over the past 30 years within the United States). This is why globalization is so necessary within advanced capitalism. For example, it is the reason not a single pair of Levi’s jeans (probably one of the most identifiable American brands) is still made in the United States. In order to provide dungarees at a price the working class can afford and simultaneously continue to increase profits for the capitalist class, they must now be produced using cheap sweatshop labor in Southeast Asia, where workers remain in a state of political invisibility. The only other option would be to reduce profits, or raise the price to the point that they would be out of reach of the average working class family, which would, in turn, give the worker a sense of economic instability and lead to working-class consumers spending less (the equivalent of an economic assault on the Bourgeoisie) and/or seeking political alternatives to defend their wages and security (a political/democratic assault on the Bourgeoisie). This is a key reason that most working class people get “cost of living increases” annually at their jobs—so, that even though the profits are increasing dramatically for the capitalist class, the working class will not feel as though they are losing ground (although in real terms they are). The result, as such, is that the globalization of capitalism assists the Bourgeoisie in maintaining a proletariat that can be manipulated both economically and via fear; they are provided just enough economic oxygen and the illusion of choice that they can be manipulated via the fear of losing such privileges (not to mention the meritocratic pipe dream of becoming Bill Gates). However, a significant side effect is generated from this scheme; this pacification comes at the direct expense of the destitute masses, the world’s poor—what Freire called “those living in a culture of silence.” Many classic Marxist interpretations generally dismiss this group as being politically unviable and incapable of revolutionary organization. However, this is precisely what Che Guevara (2004) believed was the “problem” with a classic Marxist interpretation; it overlooked the revolutionary potential of the peasantry and the indigenous populations of the world. But, as the global agenda of capitalism unfolds, the poor and

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destitute are further and further marginalized, exploited, and oppressed. It is this reality that is the real powder keg, which sits quietly beneath the throne of the capitalist juggernaut. As the corporate empire is stretched to its limits (and most certainly is), trying to extinguish each and every spark of dissent around the globe, its destruction becomes more and more inevitable. To this point, Marx (1848/1967), “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable” (p. 32). This is also the purpose behind Che Guevara’s enthusiastic call for “. . . many Vietnams [to] flourish throughout the world” (1969, p.112). The impact of advanced, or what can be most aptly termed, imperialist capitalism can be seen in most parts of the world without deep inspection. One example is the widening division between the ultra wealthy and the destitute masses, which is a common, if not required, consequence for every nation that has chosen, or been chosen for, admission into the game of world capital; a game whose rules are maintained by the American dominated World Trade Organization (WTO). It is the WTO that facilitates and fosters the capitalization of all aspects of social life, clearing the path for the advancement of global capitalization by freeing corporations to exploit cheap labor, and search the globe for profit-making opportunities. While capitalist exploitation has steadily spread throughout the world, Latin America has experienced its boot upon its neck for hundreds of years and, most recently, has been used as the proving ground for neo-liberalism. As the logic and values of capital begin to overcome and supersede longestablished values within a given native culture, every social institution is adjusted to serve the new purpose of capital accumulation and cultural domination. Key among these are the public institutions, that is to say, institutions that have been traditionally seen as serving a common good; a collective social good. The neo-liberal agenda of globalization defines all things public as bloated, ineffective, and wasteful; privatization is offered as the only path to efficiency and effectiveness. In short, all things public must be privatized and profit-making must become the motivating factor driving all societal institutions. This is the “capitalization of social life”—the changing of all social activities into commodity—status with some market value. Rikowski (2002) describes it well: . . .it is value (not values) that becomes crucial. Old traditional modes of working, professional values, notions of public service, and putting community needs before the drive for profit—all become liabilities for capital accumulation as educational institutions shift from becoming public goods to private commodities. Community needs are placed within the context of the market and profit making potential. They are reconfigured. (p.133)

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In the United States, we have seen the neo-liberal agenda advanced dramatically over the past thirty years, starting with the so-called deregulation of “Reaganomics” and the de-funding of public education in the early to mid1980s. While the tide was stemmed slightly during the Clinton administration, it was not reversed. Attacks continued on public funding for education, business-education partnerships continued to be fostered, and attacks on intellectual freedom and tenure in higher education went virtually unchallenged. Finally, under George W. Bush the neo-liberal agenda started by Reagan has been vigorously reignited, but has gone somewhat undetected, most likely because it has been overshadowed by the more immediate threats of Bush’s neo-conservative imperialist aggression abroad, most recently in the Middle East. Regardless, it is safe to say that the march of neo-liberalism has moved ever forward over the last 30 years in the United States, and while we see the consequences in healthcare, social security, and a rising oligarchy, no place is it more clear than in the realm of education. In America, much of the change that has taken place on college and university campuses can be directly linked to the application of capitalistic values to the management and overall purposes of higher education; what has appropriately been termed the neo-liberal model of higher education. Most recently, this challenge comes in response to the neo-liberal model that Latin American governments have been coaxed, prodded, and bribed into employing over the past forty years; a model that has, according to Robinson (2011), “changed the face of the continent’s political economy and devastated the poor and working classes” (p. 1). This general movement to the left in Latin America, which has been labelled “The Pink Tide,” presents a program that rejects these neo-liberal policies, demands independence over colonialism, and populist, redistributional policies over the neo-liberal fixation on privatization. This pink tide, however, has taken on very different forms within each Latin American nation. Greatly inspired by Cuba, Venezuela, under the direction of President Hugo Chávez, has instituted multiple steps towards uprooting layers of systemic oppression, resulting from decades of colonization and the capitalization of social life, and is moving his country towards what he refers to as “twenty-first century socialism” (Fuentes, 2009). Chávez first coined the term at an international meeting of academics in Caracas in December of 2004, and it has since come to represent a real alternative to globalized capitalism within Latin America and around the world. The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, which will be covered in greater detail in the following chapter, has provided a blueprint, rooted squarely in the Marxist tradition, for an alternative to the neo-liberal model. Under Chávez’s leadership, Venezuela has managed to re-nationalize its oil, establish exchange controls, initiate major state-run infrastructure projects in railways, ports and telecommunications, introduce workers’ co-management in some of

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the nationalized industries, and promoted thousands of cooperatives and worker-controlled enterprises. In addition, Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua, has declared capitalism to be in its “death throes” and has begun a series of egalitarian reforms since being (re)elected. This, of course, is Ortega’s second attempt at bringing such reforms. His first attempt was interrupted as the country recovered from civil war in which over 30,000 Nicaraguans died between 1980 and 1989 (Grandin, 2007). A war that was incited, armed, and maintained illegally by the U.S. government via the Iran/Contra affair. The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa , has recently offered to allow the continuation of the Manta U.S. military base in his country only if the United States will allow an Ecuadorian military base in Florida. An agreement the United States, shockingly, has refused. This is, of course, only one of a multitude of examples in which the hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy is readily visible. As stated by Noam Chomsky (2005), “For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit” (p. 5). Such hypocrisy has become the United States’ most abundant and recognizable export. Especially in these hyper-partisan times, when the chants of “freedom” and “democracy” can be heard coming from both the so-called left and the right within the U.S. politic. In fact, former president, George W. Bush, stated multiple times during his presidency that he believed it his sole mission (anointed by god) to spread and support these long under-defined, and poorly practiced, political ideals. However, what an even casual review of world history reveals is that what the U.S. government has actually supported has very little to do with either freedom or democracy. What is balefully clear is that ally status is granted to any government that is willing to except their submissive role beneath the world dictator and, of most importance, extend a friendly (and typically unequal) hand to American corporations. The labels and realities of the applicants political apparatus are simply of no consequence what-so-ever; if you submit, you are a government, if you do not submit, you are a “regime”—which can, and will, be “changed”. The execution of this foreign policy has been even more visible within the Western Hemisphere. In short, the United States has demonstrated, repeatedly, that a “friendly” dictator (even the most vicious of tyrants) is far more acceptable than a duly elected official who openly challenges U.S. foreign policy. This has been demonstrated so many times that it doesn’t deserve explanation, but the slightest open-eye viewing of our official stance toward the likes of Chávez, Correa, Ortega, and Morales (all of whom were democratically elected) in direct comparison of our support of Pinochet, Batista, Amin, Cerezo, Marcos, Suharto, and let us not forget. . . . Saddam Hussein (who the United States fully supported when he was killing Iranians with chemical weapons), should make it painfully clear to even the most jingoisticly conditioned that we do not support democratically elected governments when they do not support our capitalist hegemony.

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This reality is masked from most Americans by a constant barrage from the for-profit propaganda machine. And, as Noam Chomsky (1992) so aptly suggested, “propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to the totalitarian regime” (p. 1). U.S. Imperialism in Latin America: Past and Present The movement towards a post-capitalist Latin America is not unprovoked. For more than 200 years, the U.S. strategy for Latin America has been exploitation via complete domination. It is very accurate to say that the peoples of Latin America have experienced firsthand the true cost of U.S. imperialism and the glories of free-market capitalism. What began with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, declaring hegemonic ownership over the Western Hemisphere, has been re-enforced consistently via U.S. foreign policy right up to the recent “agreement” with Columbia to allow the opening of seven bases for use by the U.S. military. The list of U.S. imperialistic policies, military aggressions, and economic exploitations in Latin America is a long one. But just to point out a few from the last 50 years: • In 1954 CIA-trained U.S. troops invaded Guatemala to carry out a coup against the Arbenz government, and reverse the country’s agrarian reform which went against the economic interests of United Fruit (Schoultz,1998). • In 1961 a CIA-backed coup overthrows elected President Ibarra of Ecuador (Schoultz, 1998). • In 1963 a CIA-backed coup overthrows elected social democrat Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic (Lafeber,1993). • In 1965 some 50,000 U.S. troops invade the Dominican Republic (Lafeber,1993). • In 1973 the CIA-organized coup in Chile overthrows the elected government which results in the murder, imprisonment and, exiling of tens of thousands of Chileans (Schoultz,1998). • In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, U.S. advisers on the ground direct the counter-insurgency war in El Salvador which results in 80,000 killed and 1.5 million Salvadorans exiled (Grandin, 2007). • In the 1980s, the CIA directs the previously mentioned “contra war” against Nicaragua which claims the lives of 30,000 people (Grandin, 2007). This effort includes the murder of six Jesuit priests, according to Dick Cheney, to “eradicate liberation theology” (Chomsky, 2009). • In 1983 30,000 U.S. troops invade Grenada (Schoultz,1998). • In 1985 the invasion of Panama (Schoultz,1998).

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• In the 1990s the implementation of “Plan Columbia” increases U.S. weapons to Columbia, arguably the most violent country in the region and the worst violator of human rights (Ballvé, 2009). • In 2002 the United States supports and funds an unsuccessful coup of the democratically elected government in Venezuela (Gott, 2005). • In 2004 U.S. forces abducted the democratically elected President of Haiti. President Aristide and his wife now reside in South Africa, while Aristide’s party is now prohibited from participating in the Haiti electoral process; a party that is the largest party in Haiti (Robinson, 2009). The one case not yet mentioned that offers the most blatant examples of U.S. imperialistic aggression in Latin America is the case of Cuba. In the Case of Cuba For fifty years, at varying degrees but constant none-the-less, the U.S. government has waged war on a small island nation, 90 miles off the coast of Florida. According to now declassified CIA records, the United States is directly responsible for blowing up cargo ships, inciting riots, sabotaging sugar and tobacco fields, poisoning food supplies, murdering innocent civilians, imposing an illegal embargo, engaging in economic warfare, illegally occupying Cuban soil (Gitmo), providing safe-haven for known anti-Cuban terrorists, and even attempting to poison Cuban government officials (Escalante, 2004). It is important to note that this list of American terrorist acts against Cuba (of which I have only mentioned a small sample) was not initiated as a response to communism or soviet missiles or ‘evil’ dictatorships... the decision to “strangle Cuba,” as Bobby Kennedy so eloquently put it, was made in 1960; before Cuba was even a twinkle in Khrushchev’s eye and long before Castro had ever uttered the word “socialismo”. Cuba was “strangled” for one reason only . . . willful disobedience to their Yankee slave master. Cuba had been an American plantation for 50 years (really more than that); Cubans had been waitresses, busboys, maids, and the vacation-time entertainment for the American wealthy (including Cuban women in live beastiality shows throughout Havana) (Escalante, 2004). 97% of Cuban property was owned by foreign interest (mostly U.S.), and Cubans worked as virtual slaves in their own land, without healthcare, education (80% illiteracy rate), or adequate food and housing. Politically, Cuba was, in fact, a dictatorship—but of the acceptable variety—an American sanctioned and controlled dictatorship (Escalante, 2004). Clearly, the most offensive crime that Cuba was, and is, guilty of is a desire for independence

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and self-determination; something that is clearly not tolerated in the Western Hemisphere. The point is, the United States has done (and continue to do) everything in its power to destroy Cuba, and make the Cuban people suffer as much as possible; a fact that is understood throughout the world by everyone . . . except the vast majority of American people themselves. The United Nations, for example, has voted on numerous occasions to end America’s economic war on the Cuban people—the last resolution, which declared the embargo illegal and demanded that it be ended, passed 173 to 3 with four abstentions. This same vote has taken place annually for 18 straight years with the same results . . . and the U.S. government has ignored the international community on each and every occasion. In spite of the belligerence and illegality of U.S. foreign policy, Cuba remains an inspiration throughout the world for its defence of socialism and resistance to the juggernaut of global capitalism and the Cuban leadership has continued to insist that socialism, in spite of the constant attacks, will not be abandoned; it will be perfected. It is clear that the primary reason for the persistence of what has come to be known to many as the “Cuban Obsession” is simple; U.S. harassment of Cuba has served as a clear warning sign to the rest of Latin America that there are only two options in the Western Hemisphere: 1. Fully embrace the logic of U.S. style capitalism (meaning capitalism that is “fixed” in favor of U.S. corporations), establish a domestic social agenda that fully embraces neo-liberalism, and welcome the “assistance” of U.S. wisdom in all national endeavors both foreign and domestic; Or, 2. Struggle to achieve true independence, withstand the backroom economic manipulation and the repeated vilifications of your government (which will now be known as a “regime”), and live in constant fear of invasion or an orchestrated coup. A key point not to be missed by even a casual student of Latin American history is that, in spite of very lofty rhetoric, democracy is clearly only encouraged, but certainly not required, for fulfilment of “option one.” Furthermore, the history of U.S. interactions within Latin America prove that democracy should only be considered if the economic obligations previously listed can go unchallenged. To this end, the types of citizens and methods of governance required for the successful implementation of option one are very different from the type of citizen required for option two. The most powerful methods of shaping the qualities of a collective citizenry lie in the mass dissemination of information; the key tool of which exists in the designing and controlling of the education of the people. While neo-

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liberalism, by its nature, holds the very concept of a “public” education in contempt; it has proved a critical component of achieving its goals. The Logic of Neo-liberalism and its Educational Agenda Neo-liberalism is a socio-political perspective that is defined solely within the logic of capital and offers as key evidence to the accuracy of its claims, the leaps in human progress, that have been fuelled by individual desire for profit and power; what Adam Smith termed the “vile maxim.” According to Chomsky (2005), “In sum, neo-liberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future” (p. 87). Arguing that an unfettered free-market is the best, if not only, path to progress, equality and social justice, public institutions are viewed by neo-liberalism as social distractions and, operating outside the free market model, are actually counterproductive to human progress. The neo-liberal agenda, therefore, defines all things public as bloated, ineffective, and wasteful; privatization is offered as the only path to efficiency and effectiveness. In short, all things public must be privatized and profit-making must become the motivating factor driving, not only citizens, but all societal institutions. This is the “capitalization of social life”—the changing of all social activities into commodity-status with some market value (Rikowski, 2002). Of particular interest, as witnessed in the United States, is the question of compatibility between the ideology of neo-liberalism and the required ingredients of participatory democracies. As citizens are trained to embrace a neo-liberal view of society, the need for a collective democratic voice is diminished as citizens come to define themselves along neoliberal lines; solely as customers and consumers. The end result of such training can even bring citizens to the point of viewing both themselves and their fellow citizens as “products” to be sold on a market, judging the quality of themselves and those around them solely in terms of their prospective market “value” (i.e., my neighbor makes more money than me and, therefore, is a more valuable human being). As stated by Chomsky (2005), neo-liberalism fosters a society where “instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless” (p. 73). Citizens do retain a voice within neo-liberalism, but only as that of a consumer; the only “vote” cast is by purchasing a particular product versus its competitor. Predictably, any sense of a collective voice or drive to advance a common good is seen as misguided; it is suggested that the “natural selection” of the free mar-

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ket will separate the billionaire from the “defective” individual living under a bridge. To “tinker” with that process via social welfare programs is to upset the “natural” balance of the free market. The end result is a system of pure social Darwinism in which any collective social responsibility to care for the less capable or less fortunate among us is deemed a waste of time and resources. For a participatory democracy, such a retreat from all things public means, in effect, a retreat from democracy itself. As traditional schooling has been systematically reconstituted over the past quarter century to centralize these goals of capital accumulation, consumerism and work-force preparation—what Neil Postman (1995) referred to as the “gods of economic utility and consumerism”—we have seen a steady increase in the rate of de-politicization among citizens, especially among young people. The nature of education required for the fulfilment of option two is quite opposite that prescribed by neo-liberalism. Education for Social Democracy and the “New Socialist Man” Breaking free of the colonial mind and moving towards true self-governance and independence requires the development of a higher level of consciousness in the citizenry, a critical consciousness: In capitalist society individuals are controlled by a pitiless law usually beyond their comprehension. The alienated human specimen is tied to society as a whole by an invisible umbilical cord: the law of value. This law acts upon all aspects of one’s life, shaping its course and destiny. The laws of capitalism, which are blind and are invisible to ordinary people, act upon the individual without he or she being aware of it. One sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon ahead. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller—whether or not it is true—about the possibilities of individual success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly. (Guevara, 1969)

Within the logic of capital, education is reduced to mere commoditystatus; something to be purchased solely for the promised advancement of the individual from the rank of exploited to the rank of exploiter (Guevara & Castro, 1989). This, as McLaren (2006) suggests, “colonizes the spirit and wrings the national soul clean of a collective social conscience” (p. 123). The path to success within neo-liberal education, therefore, is absorption of the dominant culture so to become as much like those in power as pos-

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sible. This is what Paulo Freire (1973) termed “cultural invasion” and it is the cornerstone of authoritarian education. If Latin America is to truly shed, not only the physical and economic chains of U.S. imperialism, but also the mental chains of colonialism, the education of the people will need to provide a true path to critical consciousness for citizens. A process Freire (1970) termed “conscientização” (p. 23). In real terms, this means that education must be free to all citizens, and any educational endeavor that the government undertakes must be the result of true collective and democratic deliberations. As stated previously, Freire (1973) argued, students can be educated and liberated or they can be mis-educated and oppressed; true education, he believed however, must always lead to liberation. For this to be realized, education must be centered on the development of the unique individual, but also focused on assisting students in recognizing the inherent interconnection between citizens; a collective consciousness and social responsibility. Paula Allman (2001) argued that, when carried out with reference to the ideals of Freire and Gramsci, such radical pedagogy could give students the opportunity to shape their own perspectives on their world—to become subjects of their own histories rather than objects of someone else’s. In short, education is key, not only in initiating conscientização, but in providing multiple lenses through which students can undertake a critical analysis of existing social relations. The Role of Higher Education in the Latin American Socialist Revolution The results of the advance of imperialist capitalism can be seen in most parts of Latin America without deep inspection. The widening division between the ultra wealthy and the destitute masses, the capitalization of all aspects of social life, the continual exploitation of cheap labor, and the pilfering of natural resources by international corporations stand as unabashed examples. Certainly, the glories of globalization have been stamped on Latin America; inked in the blood and sweat of the native people of the region. The logic and values of capital displace the native culture, devalue it, and destroy it. Every social institution is adjusted to serve the call of the Bourgiouse: “Acumulate, Acumulate! This is Moses to the prophets” (Marx, 1848/1967). Across Latin America, although at uneven paces, U.S. hegemony is being brought into question. Indigenous populations especially, are finally having their voices heard after centuries of having their labor and their countries natural resources plundered in the name of “progress,” “free trade,” and “globalization.” The governments being elected by the peo-

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ples of Latin America are being given a mandate to respond to the realities the neo-liberal hegemony being peddled by the empire to the north. A key factor in the success or failure of this push towards independence will be the role of higher education in Latin American countries, and efforts to assist teachers, students, and citizens to develop the critical consciousness necessary to integrate and become subjects who take an active roll in defining this new epoch. As Marx wrote (Capital, Vol.I, Chap.XIII), “the partially developed individual, who is merely the bearer of one specialised social function, must be replaced by the totally developed individual” (p. 236). What Marx was referring to was the capacity for education to be perverted into training, and when education is employed for such a purpose it ceases to expand freedom and begins to withdraw it. In the words of Max Stirner (1842/2002), “In the pedagogical as in certain other spheres freedom is not allowed to erupt, the power of the opposition is not allowed to put a word in edgewise: they want submissiveness” and “The result of school is then philistinism” (p. 23). This is the definition of education under the shadow of imperialism. Education, when serving as a truly democratic institution, has historically played a key role in any given societies march to social justice, equality, and reciprocity. For this reason, education, and specifically, higher education must play a central role if the socialist revolution of Latin America is to be successful in pushing back against the very powerful and oppressive nature of globalized capitalism and the anti-democratic nature of neoliberal ideology. The universities of Latin America must become laboratories of social democracy, beacons of critical thought, and incubators of revolutionary epistemologies—sites where democracy is constantly reconsidered and remade and shared dialogue is celebrated—where students can be encouraged to question everything including ideologies, views of the common good, the limits of capitalism, social justice, and multiple conceptions of what Amy Guttman (1999) termed “the good life” (p. 56). If the promise of a socialist revolution, that is, the possibility of developing a more humane and democratic world free of systematic exploitation, is to be realized, higher education within Latin America must lead the way in addressing what citizens need to know, or the critical pedagogical issue: how they may come to know it. In short, institutions of higher education must exist as a true public good and be protected as a readily available option to all citizens who seek opportunities to comprehend, engage, and transform their society. Control over the production of ideas, the production of the collective intellectuality is central to the potential of the destruction of capital and the realization of socialism. The words of Marx (1845/1939) seem more relevant than ever:

340    J. M. ELMORE The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas (i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force). The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control, at the same time, over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas. (p. 86)

References Allman, P. (2001). Revolutionary social transformation: Democratic hopes, political possibilities and critical education. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Ballvé, T. (2009, 27 May). The dark side of plan Colombia. The Nation. Chomsky, N. (1992). Interview given to WBAI. Found at www.chomsky.info/interviews. Chomsky, N. (2005). Imperial ambitions: Conversations on the post-9/11 world (American empire project). New York: Metropolitan Books. Escalante, F. (2004). The Cuba project: CIA covert operations 1959–62. Havana: Ocean Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum. Fuentes, F. (2009). Bolivia: National revolution and “communitarian socialism”. Global Research Articles. Green Left March 27, 2009 greenleft.org.au Gott, R. (2005). Hugo Chávez: The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. Brooklyn: Verso Books. Grandin, G. (2007). Empire’s workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the rise of the new imperialism. New York: Holt Paperbacks. Guevara, E. (1969). Che: Selected works of Ernesto Guevara. In R. Bonache and N. Valdes (Eds). Boston: The MIT Press. Guevara, E. (2004). Latin America: Awakening of a continent. Havana: Ocean Press. Guevara, E., & Castro F. (1989). Socialism and man in Cuba. New York: Pathfinder Press. Guttman, A. (1999). Democratic education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Le Blanc, P. (2006). Marx, Lenin and the revolutionary experience: Studies of communism and radicalism in the age of globalization. New York: Routledge. McLaren, P. (2000). Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the pedagogy of revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. McLaren, P. (2006). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education (5th ed.), New York: Allyn & Bacon Publishers. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1846/1939). The German ideology. Moscow: The Marx-Engels institute. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1848/1967). The communist manifesto. New York: Pocket Books. Morgan, T. (2009, 8 December). Socialism’s march across Latin America and Bolivia’s revolution. Louisville Democrat Examiner. Postman, N. (1995). The end of education: Redefining the value of school. New York: Knopf Publishers.

The Role of Higher Education within the Socialist Revolution of Latin America     341 Rikowski, G. (2002). Education, capital and the transhumant, In: D. Hill, P. McLaren, M. Cole & G. Rikowski (Eds.), Marxism against postmodernism in educational theory, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Robinson, W. I. (2011) The global capital leviathan. Radical Philosophy, 165. Schoultz, L. (1998). Beneath the United States: A history of U.S. policy toward Latin America. Harvard University Press. Stirner, Max. (1842/2002). The false principle of our education. Colorado Springs, CO: Ralph Myles Publishing.

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Chapter 11

Education and TwentyFirst Century Socialism The Venezuelan Alternative to Neo-Liberal Capitalism Mike Cole

Introduction We can make a distinction between schooling, on the one hand, and education on the other, with the former referring to the processes by which young people are attuned to the requirements of capitalism both in the form and the content of schooling, and the latter, a more liberatory process from birth to death, a process of human emancipation and socialism. In many ways, the whole Bolivarian project of twenty-first century socialism is in its very essence education in that sense of the word. As we shall see, the revolutionary president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has described the country as “a giant school.”1 In this chapter, I begin by looking briefly at the advent of the government of Hugo Chávez, and the ensuing ascendancy of social democracy, and the move toward socialism. I then consider the effects of the overall Teaching Marx, pages 343–362 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Bolivarian educational processes at the level of educational institutions as a whole. As a case study, I outline the work of revolutionary socialist educators in an alternative school started by residents and activists in Barrio2 Pueblo Nuevo in Mérida, Western Venezuela. Hugo Chávez, Social Democracy, and Twenty-First Century Socialism Education, as what I have called “a liberatory process from birth to death, a process of human emancipation and socialism,” (e.g., Cole, 2011, p. 141) is articulated by Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. In 2010, Chávez described the nature of the Bolivarian Revolution and the role of knowledge and education as the first of three forms of power in the revolutionary process, the others being political power and economic power: When we talk about power, what are we talking about? . . . The first power that we all have is knowledge. So, we’ve made efforts first in education, against illiteracy, for the development of thinking, studying, analysis. In a way, that has never happened before. Today, Venezuela is a giant school, it’s all a school. From children of one year old until old age, all of us are studying and learning. And, then political power, the capacity to make decisions, the community councils, communes, the people’s power, the popular assemblies. And, then there is the economic power. Transferring economic power to the people, the wealth of the people distributed throughout the nation. I believe that is the principal force that precisely guarantees that the Bolivarian revolution continues to be peaceful. (cited in Sheehan, 2010)

In Gramscian terms, what Chávez is describing is the fostering of the development of organic intellectuals of the working class3. Earlier in 2010, Chávez asserted that, as well as being a Christian, he was also a Marxist (Chávez, 2010), describing Marxism as “the most advanced proposal toward the world that Christ came to announce more than 2,000 years ago” (Suggett, 2010). The inclusion of “the spiritual” is one element that differentiates twenty-first century socialism from its twentieth century incarnation (see Cole, 2012). In 1998, Hugo Chávez won the presidential election in Venezuela by a landslide, and inaugurated a participatory democracy. In representative democracies such as the United Kingdom and the United States, political participation is, by and large, limited to parliamentary politics—which represent the imperatives of capitalism, rather than the real needs and interests of the people4. Participatory democracy, on the other hand, involves

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direct decision-making by the people. Maria Paez Victor (2009) concisely summarizes Chávez’s impact: Immediately, the elites and middle classes5 opposed him as an upstart, an Indian who does not know his place, a Black who is a disgrace to the position. Hugo Chávez established a new Constitution that re-set the rules of a government that had been putty in the hands of the elites. Ratified in overwhelming numbers, the Constitution gave indigenous peoples, for the first time, the constitutional right to their language, religion, culture, and lands. It established Human Rights, civil and social, like the right to food, a clean environment, education, jobs, and health care, binding the government to provide them. It declared the country a participatory democracy with direct input of people into political decision making through their communal councils and it asserted government control of oil revenues: Oil belongs to the people.

Vast oil revenues and reserves, Victor (2009) goes on, have been used to meet the real needs of the Venezuelan people. Little over ten years have seen the virtual eradication of illiteracy, a dramatic lowering of infant mortality, the lowest rate of malnutrition in South America, and the lowest unemployment in decades. At the same time, “the great majority of the people have direct access to free health care, free schools, a network of day care, a subsidized food distribution network, and subsidized medicines” (Victor, 2009; see also Willgress, 2010, pp. 4–5 for the statistics). The “missions,” a series of social justice, social welfare, anti-poverty, and educational programs, have massively reduced poverty, and greatly increased educational opportunities, all essential in the creation of organic intellectuals of the working class (for a discussion of the missions, see, for example, Cole, 2009, pp. 125–127). These measures, of course, entail a massive educational project for the Venezuelan people, and other peoples in the region, and indeed the world. They represent a major challenge to U.S. imperial hegemony, and its attendant ideological and repressive apparatuses (Althusser, 1971). However, while the innovations allow the export of socialist ideas and ideals, they are, in themselves, classic social democracy rather than socialism, somewhat akin to the policies and practice of the post-World War II Labour governments in the United Kingdom. What makes Venezuela unique, however, is that, whereas these British Labour governments were posing social democracy as an alternative to socialism, and, indeed, attempting to fight off attempts by revolutionary workers to move toward socialism, Chávez is presenting reforms as a prelude to socialism. These reforms are seen both by sections of the Chávez government and by large sections of the Venezuelan working class6 as a step on the road to true socialist revolution. At the same time, Chávez is promoting genuine participatory democracy that is laying the foundations for the socialist proj-

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ect. Thus, for Chávez, “[t]he hurricane of revolution has begun, and it will never again be calmed” (cited in Contreras-Baspineiro, 2003). On another occasion, Chávez asserted: “I am convinced, and I think that this conviction will be for the rest of my life, that the path to a new, better and possible world, is not capitalism, the path is socialism, that is the path: socialism, socialism” (Lee, 2005). As Victor (2009) argues, one of the biggest achievements of the Bolivarian Revolution is existential: a new sense of identity, a new sense of belonging. . . . The great majority of Venezuelans feel they are now in control of their own government and destiny—despite the continuous attacks from the oligarchy and its satellites. Now, the Chávistas frame all the political discourse and its name is Socialism of the Twenty-first Century.

Socialism cannot be decreed from above (see the comment on this by Gerardo in the case study toward the end of this chapter). The people discuss Chávez and they support him, but they are aware that they are the motor of the revolution. It is worth quoting Victor (2009) at length: For the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a country in the world repudiates the barbaric version of capitalism that has prevailed since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and embraces a new socialism, one that has its roots in the indigenous people’s socialism, in Liberation Theology7 which was born in Latin America, in Humanism, in the inspiration of Cuba, as well as the works of Marx, but not exclusively in European socialism. It is not Stalinism8, it is not a copy of what has passed for socialism to date, but Venezuela’s own brand infused with the idea that the people are the protagonists of democracy, that the economy should serve people, not the other way around, and that only their active and direct participation in political decision making will free the country from corruption and inequality.

Writing toward the end of 2009, Luke Stobart (2009) argues that there were positive developments in that year when organized workers at the biggest factories in the country won several major battles for nationalization, including partial or total workers’ control. Chávez supported the struggles, arguing that nationalized “state capitalist” firms need workers’ democracy to become “socialist.” In October 2010, Chávez announced the nationalization of the Spanish agro company, Agroisleña, which is renamed Agropatria; the privately owned oil and derivatives company, Venoco; and the agro industrial company Fertinitro. In addition, complete control will be taken of hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, including some 130,000 head of cattle, owned by La Compañía Inglesa (The English Company), which is con-

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trolled by the Vestey Group (Rosales, 2010). In the same year, five new “revolutionary laws” were announced: the Organic Law of Popular Power; the Organic Law of Popular and Public Planning; the Organic Law of Communes; the Organic Law of Communes; the Organic Law of Social Auditing; and the Organic Law for the Development and Promotion of the Communal Economy. Five new PSUV (the United Socialist Party of Venezuela) Strategies were announced for 2011–2012, encapsulated in the following directives: “from political capitalist culture to socialist militancy”; “convert the machinery [of the PSUV] into a party-movement at the service of the struggles of the people”; “convert the party into a powerful means of propaganda, agitation and communication”; “the PSUV as a platform of development and strengthening of popular power”; and “the development of the Patriotic Pole” (a coalition of left-wing political parties and social movements) for the 2012 presidential election. Chávez also announced a new housing program, and repeated calls to “banish bureaucracy and inefficiency” in the state apparatus (Rosales, 2010). Over three and a half million households, totalling 10.8 million people, have registered with the Government’s new housing program, which aims to construct over two million homes by 2017, and also carry out renovations, repairs and enlargements. Over 80,000 homes were built in October 2011 alone. The program will particularly benefit the poorest, and many women (over 40% registering) have single mothers as the household head. Overall, nearly three quarters said they needed their own or new housing, citing reasons such as renting privately, sharing with multiple families, or living in high risk situations such as steep hills prone to landslides (Viva Venezuela, 2011–2012). Chávez recently highlighted how household poverty in Venezuela had declined from nearly 44% in 1998 to over 25% in the second half of 2011 (Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, 2011–2012). In addition, under the “Children of Venezuela” scheme, mothers with income under the level of the minimum wage will receive child support of £100 per month per child until they are 17 (up to a maximum of 3 children) and more for every child with any kind of disability. Another new “mission” further builds on the extensions to the state pension system that have been made in recent years, further contributing towards the eradication of extreme poverty in the country, while the “Knowledge and Work” mission is focused on reducing unemployment in addition to increasing training and skills in the Venezuelan population. Despite having made serious advances in access to healthcare and education, Chávez said crime continues to be the biggest worry facing the Venezuelan population, announcing his intention to create an extensive new security “mission” throughout the country. The new mission will complement the other security initiatives undertaken by the government during

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the past two years, including the creation of the Bolivarian National Police—Venezuela’s first national police force since its municipal fragmentation under the neo-liberal IV Republic—and the recently created Criminal Investigation Service in the Capital District and Miranda state (Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, 2011–2012). With respect to health, Chávez stated that access to free health services in Venezuela increased by 155% to over 13,000 in 2011 from some 505,360 health centres at the beginning of the revolution (1998.) In terms of community organisation, the president confirmed that 5 billion bolivars ($U.S. 1.6 billion) had been given to grassroots organisations in 2011, including to cooperatives and community councils, which run budgets, social programs and other affairs at a local event (Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, 2011–2012). The presidential election is scheduled for October 7, and, at the time of this writing (October, 2011), after over 12 years in government, two opinion polls show that Chávez commands nearly 60% support among the electorate (Venanalysis newsletter, 11 October, 2011). Education in Venezuela Venezuela as “a giant school” and “education for socialism” is exemplified by the Revolutionary Reading Plan launched by Chávez in 2009 (Pearson, 2009). “A change in spirit hasn’t been achieved yet,” Chávez suggested, and argued that the plan will be the “base for the injection of consciousness through reading, with which our revolution will be strengthened even more” (cited in ibid.). The plan involves the distribution by the government of 2.5 million books to develop the communal libraries. Chávez said that part of the plan was a “rescuing of our true history for our youth,” explaining that many standard textbooks do not acknowledge the European imperialist genocide of the indigenous peoples and their resistance (Pearson, 2009). Chávez went on to recommend that people do collective reading and exchange knowledge, mainly through the communal councils and the popular libraries. He called on communal councils as well as “factory workers, farmers, and neighbors, to form revolutionary reading squadrons,” one of whose task is to have discussions in order to “unmask the psychological war . . . of the oligarchy” (cited in ibid.). “Read, read, and read, that is the task of every day. Reading to form conscious and minds,” Chávez noted, “[e]veryday we must inject the counter revolution a dose of liberation through reading” (cited in MercoPress, 2009). Moreover, the revolutionary reading plan is intended to reaffirm values leading to “the consolidation of the new man and the new woman, as

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the foundations for the construction of a Socialist motherland, unravelling the capitalist imaginary” (ibid.). As far as more “formal” education is concerned, since the election of Chávez, there has been a massive increase in funding for primary, secondary and higher education. As far as the curriculum is concerned, the Venezuelan Ministry of Culture stated on its website that the plan will help schoolchildren get rid of “capitalist thinking” and better understand the ideals and values “necessary to build a Socialist country and society” (ibid.). Education is increasingly put forward by the state as a social good, and a central factor in shaping the system of production (Griffiths & Williams, 2009, p. 37). In line with the Bolivarian Constitution, in addition to the urban and rural poor, access has been extended to traditionally disadvantaged or excluded groups, such as those of African descent and indigenous communities. As argued in Cole (2011, chapter 5), while these are welcome developments, there is still much to do. Tom Griffiths and Jo Williams (2009) outline the essential factors in the Bolivarian Revolution’s approach to education that make it truly counterhegemonic. The Venezuelan approach, they argue, draws on concepts of critical and popular education within the framework of a participatory model of endogenous socialist development (Griffiths & Williams, 2009, p. 41). At the forefront, they note, is “the struggle to translate policy into practice in ways that are authentically democratic, that promote critical reflection and participation over formalistic and uncritical learning” (ibid.). As in the United Kingdom and the United States, formal school education in Venezuela is based on an explicit, politicized conception of education and its role in society (ibid., pp. 41–42). However, whereas in the United Kingdom (e.g., Beckman, Cooper, & Hill., 2009) and the United States (e.g., Au, 2009), the capitalist state increasingly uses formal education merely as a vehicle to promote capitalism, in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, “the political” in education is articulated against capitalism and imperialism and for socialism. In 2008, a draft national curriculum framework for the Bolivarian Republic was released. It stated that the system is “oriented toward the consolidation of a humanistic, democratic, protagonistic, participatory, multi-ethnic, pluri-cultural, pluri-lingual, and intercultural society” (Ministerio del Poder Popular Para la Educación, 2007, p. 11, cited in Griffiths & Williams, 2009, p. 42). It went on to critique the former system for reinforcing “the fundamental values of the capitalist system: individualism, egotism, intolerance, consumerism, and ferocious competition . . . [which also] promoted the privatisation of education” (Ministerio del Poder Popular Para la Educación, 2007, p. 12, cited in ibid., p. 42). One central message of the Bolivarian Revolution tells us that a fundamental counter-hegemonic shift in the political economy towards socialism, including universal free access to education, with a high degree of eq-

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uity in terms of opportunity and outcomes, can be achieved quite quickly (Griffiths & Williams, 2009, p. 34). As Griffiths and Williams conclude, the Bolivarian system consistently refers these back to the underlying project to promote the formation of new republicans, with creative and transformational autonomy, and with revolutionary ideas; and with a positive attitude toward learning in order to put into practice new and original solutions for the endogenous transformation of the country (Ministerio del Poder Popular Para la Educación, 2007, p. 16, cited in ibid., 2009, pp. 42–43). It should be stressed at this stage that, in terms of actual practice in the schools and universities, education based on the above revolutionary principles is by no means universal. Indeed, as Griffiths and Williams (2009, p. 44) point out, discussions with education academics and activists during fieldwork in Caracas in 2007, 2008, and 2009, repeatedly raised the challenge of the political and pedagogical conservatism of existing teachers, often in opposition to the government’s Bolivarian socialist project (e.g., Griffiths, 2008). Revolutionary Education in an Alternative School in Barrio Pueblo Nuevo, Mérida Creating Space9 The school is a small project, started by committed socialist revolutionary residents and activists of Barrio Pueblo Nuevo, perhaps the poorest community in the city of Mérida in western Venezuela. It caters to students aged between 8 and 15, and since, at the time of the research, it had been operating for only six months, it was very much in its initiatory phase. The teachers want to create an alternative for young people who have been left behind in the public school system and re-engage them in participatory pedagogy consistent with socialist and democratic values. The school is currently linked to the Ministry of Education under the title of “alternative school” and receives some state funding. Reflecting on the overall context of his fieldwork at the school, Edward Ellis (2010) points out that the fact that the school is the exception rather than the rule as far as education in the country as a whole is concerned “need not be understood as distressing. It can be seen . . . as a great opportunity to empower and encourage new forms of change.” He underlines the spaces that the Chávez government have opened up—in this case for “independent and autonomous . . . new projects to grow and develop.” As Gerardo, a part-time collaborator at the school, a long-time community activist from the barrio, and an organic intellectual of the working class par excellence states: “ten years ago this wouldn’t have been possible. This would have been called ‘terrorist’ and would

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have to be underground.” As he puts it, revolutionary teachers, unlike before, can advance faster, no longer having “to worry about being hunted down.” Gerardo points out that the school has opened many doors for people and that there are “a lot of expectations” from the Ministry of Education, which is hoping that the school might work as “a model for other schools.” Twenty-first Century Socialist Praxis Gerardo is committed to socialist praxis, noting that “socialism is done, not decreed.” Given that the words “revolution” and “socialism” are omnipresent in Venezuelan society, and can be used “without much thought,” Gerardo is working on the construction of socialism in the school, being “a bit more responsible in this sense.” As he explains, “here we practice socialism with concrete elements from everyday life . . . sharing, working in a collective way, friendship, getting along, the fundamental bases of socialism with praxis.” Having seen societies torn apart in a capitalist system based on consumption, and underlining Chávez’s stress on participatory democracy, Gerardo notes that the teachers are trying to teach the children to be “critical and proactive”—“not just criticism but how things can be changed,” “we are trying to show that the children have a participatory role in society, and that this role can be transformative.” Communication tools are crucial in this process—“the radio, the television, the written word . . . these things can lead to the transformation of society.” Lisbeida, a university student studying criminology, and a dance instructor, working at the school and in the community as a volunteer, says of twenty-first century socialism, it “is being redefined, something that is flexible. I believe there are new understandings of what socialism is and how it can be implemented”: But basically, the core concepts are the same: equality, social justice, elimination of class differences, more horizontal processes, all of this inside our school is an intrinsic part of what we are doing. It’s our base. . . . So, we are trying to transmit these values of equality, solidarity, cooperation, collective work.

James Suggett, a writer for venezuelanalysis.com10 who is also a community activist and a volunteer at the school, reflects Freireian11 analysis when he says he is critical of those teachers who view socialism as being authoritarian, those who believe they should be getting students into line. For Suggett, “socialism means creating a democratic space in the classroom,” encouraging people “to recognize oppression and overcome it.”

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Communal, Cooperative, and Democratic Living and Learning At the Alternative School in Barrio Pueblo Nuevo, each day starts with a communal breakfast, after which students are brought together to discuss what will take place that day. Sometimes, communal cleaning of the community center where the classes are held ensues; sometimes, the day starts with group activities, focused on reading, writing, or mathematics, depending on what students wish to work on, or need to improve. Addressing the socialist roots of Venezuela’s indigenous communities, Gerardo illustrates Freire’s process of conscientization (the pedagogical process by which counter-hegemonic awareness is achieved) as he points out that indigenous peoples have a tradition of companionship, solidarity, respect, and sharing, and that private property did not exist, and how the teachers are trying to break the paradigms of Western society that value “capital more than people,” and that prioritize individualism and competition. The school aims to provide the children with a point of departure so that they can all advance together toward socialism. Gerardo points to the use of a pedagogy that “involves the children in collective work and thinking” and includes cooperative games. When the teachers meet with the children, as Jeaneth (the main teacher of the school, a member of the community whose children are studying at the school) explains, the teachers try to emphasize “that we are a collective and if something happens to the group it affects us all.” Learning at the school is in line with Freire’s advocacy of “dialogic education,” which entails a democratic learning environment and the absence of authoritarianism, of “bankingeducation” (where teachers deposit “facts” into empty minds) and of grades. As Jeaneth puts it: we plan activities and then ask the children which they would like to work on. They choose the area. We have some basic parameters that they need to work in but they choose. Also, when we leave the school for a trip, we propose the idea to them and they take part in the discussion about how to plan the trip.

Tamara Pearson, like Suggett, a writer for venezuelanalysis.com, and also a volunteer teacher of reading at the school, points out that: No one is forced to do anything and there are no punishments. If they don’t want to participate in an activity, they can simply go somewhere else, or sit and watch. Hence, the weight is on the teacher to properly motivate the students, and draw them in through the activity rather than discipline and threats of lower grades, or whatever.

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“There is no grading or competition.” Pearson explains, “There’s simply no sense of them competing with others.” “The idea of the school,” she believes, “is to teach using more creative and dynamic methods, without the usual competition and grades and failure and passing and who is first etc., with teachers who are very supportive and friendly, while also involving the community in school life, and vice versa.” Socialism and the Community As Edward Ellis states, “there is a real emphasis on trying to increase students’ participation in all activities.” He gives the example of how “the students watched a movie and then discussed how to organize a screening of that same film in their community. A group conversation was held to identify what the steps necessary would be to put on this screening.” As Ellis explains, “there is a lot of collaboration on the part of the community and different activities are led by different folks. . . . It is quite common for the students to leave the classroom to attend an event in the community.” In addition, as Lisbeida points out, the school’s “activities [are] open to the entire community so that the community is a protagonist in what happens in the school. In that way, the dance group which is part of the school is also part of the community.” Emphasizing how Participatory Action Research (PAR)12 works in the community and school, Lisbeida explains: The idea is that the children have an impact in their community, carrying with them this experience to their homes and to their families so that their families also become integrated in the educational process that the school is trying to carry out. So, there’s a kind of feedback that we are trying to accomplish between the community and the school. And school-community means family, workers, etc. There is an important interaction which is very relevant to the educational process in the school.

This is not to glamorize the students’ community. As Gerardo explains, some of the students come from homes where there are problems of violence, alcohol, or drugs, or unemployment and its attendant problems. However, as Lisbeida believes, this can also be a source of strength for the students: As these students come from backgrounds that are very difficult, I think that this gives them the ability to see certain social realities with more clarity: justice, the marked differences between violence and love. I see this as a potential to create criticisms and questions with more meaning. Because they have experienced very difficult things, they are not going to be afraid and they are going to have a very strong base to be critical of things.

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Gerardo points out that there is help from some government missions, such as Mission Barrio Adentro (literally, “mission inside the barrio”), which provides comprehensive publicly funded health care, and sports training to poor and marginalized communities. Barrio Adentro delivers de facto universal health care from cradle to grave. In addition, the teachers are trying to improve human relations, not only with cooperative games, from which the teachers are also learning, but there are physical spaces “with a community vision,” such as a community library and a community radio station. As Lisbeida puts it: we’ve noticed that the children are arriving at their house with new attitudes, and although we don’t have a way to scientifically measure it, we can feel difference in the attitude of the parents as well . . . how they treat their children. Something very interesting is happening. Things are changing . . . [the children] learn things based on what they already know and live. In this way, they can also learn that they have the potential to change the reality that surrounds them.

The students at the Alternative School in Barrio Pueblo Nuevo are clearly being empowered, and already there are signs of progress. As Lisbeida enthuses, “one of the things that we have seen with this process in the school is that the ones who were thought to be completely without potential or capacity to learn are making people turn their heads. They are doing some incredible things.” As Gerardo concludes: we’ve only had a short time operating but I have noticed a change in the way the children see things. Before, their world was just the barrio, but now they are looking a little bit beyond this. And I have seen that the children are speaking now, they are conversing. . . . Before everything was resolved through violence. Now there is more talking. There are still some very sharp words, but we are working on it. This has opened many doors for people. There are a lot of expectations. . . . And there are many things that we have learned about ourselves due to the students.

Conclusion The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, led by Hugo Chávez, represents, I believe, the best currently existing model in the world for a future socialist society. However, as noted above and stressed by Gerardo, the part-time collaborator in the Alternative School in Barrio Pueblo Nuevo, and by Chávez, himself, the revolution will not be decreed from above. From a Marxist perspective, it is important to stress the Chávez gov-

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ernment’s dialectic and symbiotic relationship with the Venezuelan working class. As Martinez et al., (2010, p. 2) argue, President Chávez continues to be “the defining political factor” as revealed “by the typical political labels that . . . divide many Venezuelans between Chavistas and anti-Chavistas.” It is “precisely in the relationship and tension between the Venezuelan government and the social movements that the process of building a participatory democracy comes alive most vividly.” Greg Wilpert (2010, pp. viii-ix) underlines this fact To learn about . . . the movements that stand behind the Chávez phenomenon is . . . as important as learning about the Chávez government itself. One cannot truly make sense of one without the other. And making sense of, and defending what is happening in Venezuela is perhaps, one of the most important tasks for progressives around the world today, since Venezuela is at the forefront in the effort to find a real progressive alternative to capitalism, to representative democracy, and to U.S. imperialism.

Central to the Bolivarian Revolution, as we have seen, is the idea of participatory democracy, as opposed to representative democracy, which has been a pillar of Chávez’s philosophy since his first election victory in 1998. While much remains to be done, particularly with respect to the full implementation of indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan rights (consistently acknowledged by Chávez, though not the whole of the Chávez government), there seems to be an abundance of hope for the future at the local and societal levels despite the forces opposing the revolution (see Cole, 2011, pp. 146–149). With respect to education, we have witnessed that, viewed as a lifelong liberatory process, education is a key pillar of the revolution. I have noted how this is manifested in Chávez’s concept of Venezuela as “a giant school.” At the “formal” institutional level of education, the principles of the revolution have not been fully put into practice. Moreover, given the aforementioned conservatism of many teachers discovered by Griffiths and Williams, the challenge for Venezuelan revolutionary teachers to continue their counter-hegemonic struggle against capitalism, racism, and imperialism remains paramount. As noted earlier in this chapter, the overall societal reforms with respect to the “missions” and the other ameliorative measures are precisely that— reforms. However, just as these societal reforms need to be seen in the context of the country having a revolutionary socialist president and millions of pro-Chávez workers, who are, or have the potential to become, revolutionary socialists, so do the reforms at the level of education in general, and at the level of the Alternative School in Barrio Pueblo Nuevo. In the same way that the societal reforms are reminiscent of those of the post-World War II Labour governments in the United Kingdom, the educational reforms

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being carried out in Barrio Pueblo Nuevo recall those that took place, for example, in the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) and other progressive authorities. Indeed, in some ways these U.K.-based educational reforms were more progressive, particularly with respect to equality policies, as are equality policies embedded in U.K. equalities legislation today (see chapter 4 of Cole, 2011 for a discussion). In Mérida, there are, however, revolutionary teachers fostering, in Freire’s terms, a deepening awareness of the socio-cultural reality that shapes their students’ lives, including the racism still institutionalized in Venezuelan society. To reiterate, unlike the United Kingdom and the United States, either historically or contemporaneously, the promotion in future workers of the consciousness that they have the capacity and the power to transform that reality is supported in Venezuela by a revolutionary movement and a revolutionary president. Good socialist education in the United Kingdom tends to get undermined or banned, as was ILEA, against the wishes of the parents/carers, by the undemocratic government of Margaret Thatcher. In the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, socialist education is promoted by and is pivotal to the revolutionary process. Whereas, the liberation of the working class in the United Kingdom and the United States is, for the foreseeable future, forestalled,13 in Venezuela, for Chávez, the epicenter of the revolution, socialism is unstoppable. Whatever the final outcome of twenty-first century socialism, in Venezuela’s “giant school,” conscientization is providing the working class, current and future, with the certainty that a different world is possible. In the words of one resident in the Caracas barrio of Baruta, who joined the hundreds of thousands of people, maybe a million, descending from the barrios around Caracas, successfully demanding the reinstatement of Chávez after the military coup in 2002 (Blough, 2010): We love our president, but this is not his revolution. This is our revolution, and it will always be the revolution of the people. If President Chávez goes, we will miss him dearly, but we will still be here. We are revolutionaries and we will always be here. We will never go back! Cited in Blough, 2010.

In various ways, we all have much to learn from each other. The revolutionary teachers in the school in Mérida have expressed a desire for open collaboration with revolutionary pedagogical scholars and theorists outside of Venezuela (personal correspondence). The United Kingdom has a history of working class militancy, currently hindered by the ideological and repressive apparatuses of the British state, particularly since the advent of the Thatcher government, and accelerated under Tony Blair, and under the ConDem government (see Cole, 2011). Blair’s mantra, “educa-

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tion, education, education,” in essence creating a flexible workforce for capitalism, represents the antithesis of the forms of popular education advocated by Chávez. With respect to the United States, San Juan Jr. (2010, p. xiv) has suggested that among other factors, the lack of a viable labor-union tradition has distorted historical materialist principles14 in that country.15 Hence, among many leftist academics, “there is no mention of the working class as a significant force for overthrowing capitalism, much less initiating a socialist revolution” (San Juan Jr., 2010, p. xiv). Nevertheless, despite all this, revolutionary thought continues to exist among some key educationists in the United States (see Cole, 2011, chapter 4). As noted in chapter 1 of this volume, capitalism is a failed system. Workers throughout the world need to be awakened to the possibility that another world is possible. San Juan Jr. (2010, p. xiv) shows awareness of how events in Venezuela may serve as a positive example to people in the United States, when he suggests that it is instructive to contrast the trend among those leftists in the United States who have abandoned the socialist cause with the revolutionary promotion of popular literacy in Venezuela, “a pedagogical experiment of historic significance for all anti-capitalist militants” (San Juan Jr., 2010, p. xiv). As part of the more general process of conscientization for all workers, intercontinental collaboration between revolutionary teachers and revolutionary academics surely captures a key element in the spirit of internationalism, a fundamental tenet of Marxist praxis. Writing about the significance of the 2012 Venezuelan presidential elections, Correo Del Orinico International (2011) notes: The results of next year’s presidential elections will greatly affect the future of Venezuela’s democratic, socialist and participatory revolution, as well as regional integration efforts across Latin America and the Caribbean and global initiatives to consolidate a multi-polar world.

Notes 1. This chapter draws on parts of and develops chapter 5 of Cole (2011). 2. “Barrio” is a Spanish word meaning district or neighborhood. In the Venezuelan context, the term commonly refers to the outer rims of big cities inhabited by poor working class communities. 3. As the Marxist writer and political activist Antonio Gramsci argued, traditional intellectuals regard themselves as an autonomous and independent group, and are seen as such by the public, whereas, in fact, they tend to be conservative and allied and supportive of the ruling group. Organic intellectuals, on the other hand, grow organically with both dominant and sub-

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4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

ordinate groups classes in society, and are their thinking and organizing elements. For Gramsci, organic intellectuals are produced by the educational system to perform a function for the dominant social group in society. It is through organic intellectuals that the ruling class maintains its hegemony over the rest of society. Gramsci argued that it was important for the working class to produce its own organic intellectuals, and also that a significant number of “traditional intellectuals” come over to the revolutionary cause (see Burke, 2005 for an analysis). Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov (commonly known as Lenin), one of the founders of the Russian Revolution, characterized capitalist democracy as the process by which oppressed workers are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class will represent them and repress them in parliament (1917 /2002, p. 95) “Middle class” is used here in the sociological sense of relatively rich people in relatively high-status jobs The Venezuelan working class should not be viewed as constituting a traditional industrial proletariat, akin to the working class that constituted the driving force of much of twentieth century socialism (see Cole, 2011, chapter 1 for a discussion). Some 60% of Venezuelan workers are involved in the informal economy (street vendors and so on), primarily in the barrios from where Chávez draws his support (Dominguez, 2010). Liberation theology began as a movement within the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s, achieving 2011, in the 1970s and 1980s. It emphasizes the role of Christians is aligning themselves with the poor and being involved in the struggle against economic, political, and social inequalities. In Chávez’s view, “[t]he people are the voice of God” (cited in Sheehan, 2010). Chávez is referring to the Venezuelan revolutionary masses. Stalinism refers to political systems that have the characteristics of the Soviet Union from 1928 when Joseph Stalin became leader (his leadership lasted until 1953). The term refers to a repressive and oppressive form of government by dictatorship, which includes the purging by exile or death of opponents, mass use of propaganda, and the creation of a personality cult around the leader. The fieldwork at this school was carried out on my behalf by Edward Ellis. I am most grateful to him for this. The subheadings in this section of the chapter reflect the main issues and concerns that arose in Ellis’s interviews. The issue of racism was also raised (see Cole, 2011, chapter 5). Cole, 2011 as a whole specifically addresses racism, and chapter 5 of that volume also considers racism and antiracism in Venezuela. Venezuelanalysis.com, in its own words: . . . is an independent website produced by individuals who are dedicated to disseminating news and analysis about the current political situation in Venezuela. The site’s aim is to provide on-going news about developments in Venezuela, as well as to contextualize this news with in-depth analysis and background information. The site is targeted towards academics, journalists, intellectuals, policy makers from different countries, and the general public.

Education and Twenty-First Century Socialism    359 11. For Paulo Freire, learning environments, as democratic spaces, entail an absence of authoritarianism (Freire, in Freire and Shor, 1987, p. 102). Such an absence is not to be confused with a lack of authoritativeness. As Peter Ninnes (1998) points out, Freire (1998) explains the importance of teachers being authoritative, rather than being weak and insecure or being authoritarian. In addition to democracy, dialogic education centralizes the need to develop an open dialogue with students, and requires a balance between “talking to learners and talking with them” (Freire, 1998, p. 63, cited in Ninnes, 1998). Freire maintains that only through talking with and to learners can teachers contribute to the “[development of] responsible and critical citizens” (ibid., p. 65, cited in Ninnes, 1998). Freire makes a distinction between the progressive and democratic teacher, on the one hand, which he favors, and the permissive or authoritarian teacher, on the other, which he rejects. 12. Participation Action Research (PAR) involves respecting and combining one’s skills with the knowledge of the researched or grassroots communities; taking them as full partners and co-researchers; not trusting elitist versions of history and science that respond to dominant interests; being receptive to counternarratives and trying to recapture them; not depending solely on one’s own culture to interpret facts; and sharing what one has learned together with the people, in a manner that is wholly understandable (Gott, 2008). 13. This is not in any way to undermine the significance of the ongoing (at the time of writing—October, 2011) “Occupy Wall Street” phenomenon, nor the movements worldwide which are following in its wake. “Occupy Wall Street” self-describes as: a people powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations on the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people who are writing the rules of the global economy and are imposing an agenda of neoliberalism and economic inequality (occupywallst.org/). 14. Marx argued that societies progress through various stages. Moreover, all past history, with the exception of its most early stage (primitive communism—the original hunter-gatherer society of humanity) is, according to Marx and Engels, the history of class struggles. These warring classes are always the products of the respective modes of production, of the economic conditions of their time. Thus slaves were in class struggle with their masters in the historical epoch of ancient slavery; feudal serfs with their lords in times of feudalism; and in the era of capitalism, workers are engaged in a class struggle with capitalists. Like ancient slavery and feudalism, capitalism is viewed merely as a stage in human development. Marxists see such stages as containing a number of contradictions, which resolve themselves dialectically. Thus, when these contradictions become too great, a given stage gives way to another. For example, just as the privileges that feudal lords held and the hereditary basis of subordinating serf to lord in the feudal societies contradicted the need for “free”

360    M. COLE labor power in emerging capitalism (“free” in the sense that workers were not needed to be indentured to the capitalists; they were, of course, forced to sell their labor power in order to survive), present-day capitalism contains contradictions that Marxists believe, given the right circumstances, can eventually lead to its demise, and be replaced by socialism. 15. It is, in part, for this reason that a non-Marxist interpretation of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is so preeminent among U.S. antiracist academics (for a Marxist critique of CRT, and a discussion of some of its strengths, see Cole, 2009).

References Althusser, L . (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses, In Lenin and philosophy and other essays, London: New Left Books. http://www.marx2mao.com/ Other/LPOE70NB.html (accessed December 19, 2009). Au, W. (2009, Summer). Obama, where art thou? Hoping for change in U.S. education policy, Harvard Educational Review, 79(2), 309–320. Beckman, A., Cooper, C., & Hill, D. (2009, November). Neo-liberalization and Managerialization of ‘education’ in England and Wales—A case for reconstructing education, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 7(2), http://www.jceps. com/PDFs/07-2-12.pdf (accessed April 16, 2010). Blough, L. (2010) “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela: It Is Not Chavez. It Is the People.” Axis of Logic, April 1 4. http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/ Article59344.shtml Burke, B. (2005). Antonio Gramsci, schooling and education. http://www.infed. org/thinkers/et-gram.htm (accessed August 19, 2010). Chávez, H. (2010). Coup and countercoup: Revolution! Retrieved from http:// venezuela-us.org/2010/04/11/coup-and-countercoup-revolution/April11. Cole, M. (2009). Critical race theory and education: A Marxist response, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cole, M. (2011). Racism and education in the U.K. and the U.S.: Towards a socialist alternative, New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cole, M. (2012). Marx, Marxism and (twenty-first century) socialism. In M. Cole & C. S. Malott (Eds.), Teaching Marx across the curriculum: The socialist challenge, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Inc. Contreras-Baspineiro, A. (2003). Globalizing the Bolivarian revolution: Hugo Chávez’s proposal for our América. http://www.narconews.com/Issue29/article746.html (accessed April 7, 2010). Correo Del Orinoco International (2011). Chávez campaign prepares nationwide grassroots coalition for 2012 Elections. venezuelanalysis.com/news/6544 (accessed October 17, 2011). Dominguez, F. (2010, 24 July). Education for the creation of a New Venezuela. Paper delivered at Latin America and Education, Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues XIII, Institute of Education, University of London. Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach (Trans. D. Macedo, D. Koike, & A. Oliveira). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Education and Twenty-First Century Socialism    361 Freire, P., & Shor, I (1987). A pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education, London: Macmillan Education. Gott, R. (2008, 26 August). Orlando Fals Borda: Sociologist and activist who defined peasant politics in Colombia, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ world/2008/aug/26/colombia.sociology (accessed October 17, 2011). Griffiths, T. G. (2008). Preparing citizens for a 21st century socialism: Venezuela’s Bolivarian educational reforms. Paper presented at the Social Educators Association of Australia National Biennial Conference, Newcastle, Australia. Griffiths, T. G., & Williams, J. (2009). Mass schooling for socialist transformation in Cuba and Venezuela, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 7(2), 30–50. http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=160 (accessed April 12, 2010). Lee, F. J. T. (2005). Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez Frias: The path is socialism. http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/chavez_path_socialism_4.htm (accessed May 4, 2007). Lenin, V. I. (1917/2002). On utopian and scientific socialism, Amsterdam: Fredonia Books. Martinez, C., Fox, M., & Farrell, J. (2010). Venezuela Speaks: Voices from the grassroots, Oakland, CA: PM Press. MercoPress (2009, 17 May). To school for reading classes with Karl Marx and Che Guevara. http://en.mercopress.com/2009/05/17/toschool-for-readingclasses-with-karl-marx-and-che-guevara. (accessed February 10, 2011). Ministerio del Poder Popular Para la Educación ( 2007). Currículo Nacional Bolivariano: Diseño Curricular del Sistema Educativa Bolivariano.” http://www. me.gov.ve/media.eventos/2007/dl_908_69.pdf Ninnes, P. (1998). Freire, Paulo: Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach, (D. Macedo, D. Koike, & A. Oliveira, Trans.) Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Education Review, August 4. http://www.edrev.info/reviews/rev28. htm (accessed September 12, 2010). Pearson, T. (2009). Venezuela opens national art gallery and launches national reading plan, Venezuelanalysis.com http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/4402 (accessed April 7, 2010). Rosales, A. (2010). Chávez revving up revolution with land takeovers. Venezuelanalysis.com. http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5716 (accessed February 27, 2012). San Juan Jr., E. (2010). Foreword. In D. Kelsh, D. Hill, & S. Macrine (Eds.), Class ineducation: Knowledge, pedagogy, subjectivity, London and New York: Routledge. Sheehan, C. (2010). Transcript of Cindy Sheehan’s interview with Hugo Chávez. March 30. http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5233 (accessed August 1, 2010). Stobart, L. (2009, October). Letter from Venezuela, Socialist Review. http://www. socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11001. Stop the War Coalition (2009) http://stopwar.o rg.u k/content/blogcategory/24/41/ (accessed October 25, 2009). Suggett, J . (2010). Chávez’s annual address includes minimum wage hike, maintenance of social spending in Venezuela. http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5077 (accessed August 5, 2010). Victor, M. P (2009, 31 October). From conquistadores, dictators and multinationals to the Bolivarian Revolution. Keynote speech at the conference on land and freedom, of the Caribbean studies program. University of Toronto, Venezu-

362    M. COLE elanalyis, December 4, 2009, http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4979 (accessed April 9, 2010). Venezuela Solidarity Campaign (2012). President Chávez’s annual address shows clear choice as Venezuela approaches October election” Retrieved from http://left-click.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=962& Itemid=30 Viva Venezuela (2011–2012). Millions registered in new housing programme (p. 3) http://left-click.net/images/stories//viva%20venezuela%20issue%203.pdf (accessed 26 February, 2012). Willgress, M . (2010). Venezuela under threat from U.S. intervention, Latin America Forward! Adelante! Wilpert, G. (2010). Prologue. In C. Martinez, M. Fox, & J. Farrell, (Eds.),Venezuela speaks: Voices from the grassroots, Oakland, CA: PM Press.

Afterword

Teaching Marx in the Neo-Liberal Age John M. Elmore

The past few years in the United States, and around the globe, have provided ample evidence that change is coming; it is, in fact, being demanded. Capitalism, once a taboo topic for mainstream news shows, is now being delicately and, at times, subversively brought into question. Even on the so-called “left” networks the word itself is still rarely used. However, little by little the possibility is being proposed that, in contrast to what we have been taught our entire lives, perhaps it is the system itself that is defective and not merely the vast and “lazy” majority that choose not to embrace the immense and glorious opportunities that the free market provides. As Eagleton (2011) argues, the most recent . . . . . . crisis has at least meant that the word ‘‘capitalism,’’ usually disguised under some such coy pseudonym as ‘‘the modern age,’’ ‘‘industrialism’’ or ‘‘the West,’’ has become current once more. You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism. It indicates that the system has ceased to be as natural as the air we breathe, and can be seen instead as the historically rather recent phenomenon that it is. (p. 24)

Teaching Marx, pages 363–367 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Citizens, even those who have always viewed themselves as moderate or even conservative, are finding ways to critique the effects of capital on their daily lives; the insatiable greed of Wall Street, the legalized knee-capping of the credit card industry, the dehumanizing practices of (anti)health insurance companies, the neo-fascist coup d’état of the “super PAC,” the exporting of jobs and the systematic destruction of collective bargaining rights. Beneath these irritations, however, deeper questions burn: Is it possible that I am poor BECAUSE you are rich? Is it possible that I struggle and toil BECAUSE you live free of such necessities? These, especially for those raised within the United States, are not questions we are supposed to ask; in fact they are not questions that our minds should even be capable of producing. We are bred to be certain of nothing more than the fact that we live in a pure meritocracy; here you get exactly what your god-given abilities and hard work afford you, no more, no less. The good American is to celebrate our Rockefellers, Carnegies, Waltons, and Gates, because they are vivid reminders that the system works for those who are willing to work for the system. To hold these “job creators” in contempt for their hard-earned success is surely nothing less than a Bolshevist plot. As businessman-turned-GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain so eloquently put it, “Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!” (Shahid, 2011). These jingoistic tactics have certainly been effective; the bourgeoisie have spent the past two hundred years melding the terms “capitalism” and “democracy” within the public mind, churning out a never ending barrage of propaganda designed to convince the people that the problem is not capitalism, nor the rich who have successfully harnessed its power, the problem is the people themselves. It is the people, those who Walter Lippman termed the “meddlesome outsiders” and Alexander Hamilton branded the “bewildered herd,” that are offered up as the real “disease of democracy” (Chomsky, 2000). We have been inculcated with the idea that the real culprits keeping the capitalist rocket ship tethered to the launching pad are the lazy welfare moms, the freeloading college students, the spoiled and unionized workers, or the filthy and illegal immigrants crawling over our boarders to steal our jobs. Union membership within the United States is now at an all-time low and, most recently, when the U.S. auto industry was on the verge of extinction, the vast majority of the non-unionized public found fault not in the bloated CEO salaries, or their fleets of private jets, or the tens of millions of dollars spent to name sports stadiums; they were quickly and easily convinced that this crises was all caused by those “greedy” union workers and their two-dollar an hour raise they thoughtlessly collected the previous year. In Arizona and other states, draconian, and unconstitutional, immigration laws are being passed in order to “stem the tide” of so-called “illegal workers” who are conveniently demonized as invaders

Teaching Marx in the Neo-Liberal Age    365

and thieves rather than the fellow victims of capitalist exploitation that they are. These are certainly arguments and policies that would have made Hermann Goering proud: . . . it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. (Gilbert, 1947)

Put directly, the public has been stupefied, bamboozled, and hoodwinked by a bourgeoisie propaganda machine that has effectively convinced the masses that the limit of their decent is boycotting their local Chick-Fil-A, or that the limit of their activism is buying recycled paper towels from WalMart, or that and the maximum act of rebellion is to vote for the democrats instead of the republicans; choosing death by a humane, but lethal, injection in lieu of a rusty and jagged blade to the throat. In short, we are meant to believe that capitalism is natural and inevitable. The education system within the United States does not, in purpose or in practice, challenge these anti-democratic perspectives. To the contrary, as Bowles and Gintis (1974) effectively argued: To reproduce the social relations of production, the educational system must try to teach people to be property subordinate and render them sufficiently fragmented in consciousness to preclude their getting together to shape their own material existence. The forms of consciousness and behavior fostered by the educational system must themselves be alienated, in the sense that they conform neither to the dictates of technology in the struggle with nature, nor to the inherent developmental capacities of individuals, but rather to the needs of the capitalist class. It is the prerogatives of capital and the imperatives of profit, not human capacities and technical realities, which render U.S. schooling what it is. (p. 130)

Although this is the case for the vast majority of U.S. students, education for critical consciousness does exist in certain quarters. For example, for those who attend universities, specifically elite universities, a certain level of criticality is tolerated, if not encouraged. This is most certainly because, by that time in education, generally only those who look, act, believe, and think like those in power (and often even related to those in power) are still around. The few ‘romantic critics’ that do emerge are simultaneously marginalized as “fringe voices” while being held up as examples of just how tolerant and democratic the system truly is. Those who lack access to the elite institutions, and who are, therefore, in the greatest need of this

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knowledge so to recognize their plight and demand liberation for themselves, have long since been pigeonholed by standardized tests and tracked out of education and into the workforce or prison industrial complex. In doing so, the Bourgeoisie remove the most dangerous ideas from the most dangerous hands. In spite of these dismal circumstances, the current crisis has prompted the possibility that the wool may have begun to slip from the peoples’ eyes and many are beginning to see as Che Guevara (1965/1989) did that, The laws of capitalism, which are blind and are invisible to ordinary people, act upon the individual without he or she being aware of it. One sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon ahead. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefellerwhether or not it is trueabout the possibilities of individual success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly. (p. 114)

Developing the necessary criticality so that the hidden can be made visible is key if the oppressive power of the capitalist class is to be challenged and defeated. The questions are: what role will education play in this revolutionary moment? Will we continue to allow our schools and universities to be co-opted by the powerful? Will we continue to allow critical and democratic education to be perverted into robotic vocational training that acts as an impediment to revolution? As Malott stated in the Introduction (this volume), should our goal be merely “increasing the productivity of labor, which has been an increasing necessity of the capitalist class due to the falling rate of profit” (p. 7)? If, as Freire (1970) contended, ‘true’ education must be an act of liberation, then education today must provide students with the necessary tools to understand and critique the true nature of the capitalist system. Without this fundamental capacity even the well-intentioned person can fall for the false promise of “fixing” capitalism offered by the many bourgeois apologist and capitalist reformers who reside both inside and outside the academy. Ultimately what must be achieved if capitalism is to be destroyed is a fundamental change of consciousness by way of a re-situating of educational purpose. However, as Guevara (1965/1989) suggested this is not a task to be taken lightly: The new society in formation has to compete fiercely with the past. This past makes itself felt not only in one’s consciousness in which the residue of an education systematically oriented toward isolating the individual still weighs

Teaching Marx in the Neo-Liberal Age    367 heavilybut also through the very character of this transition period in which commodity relations still persist. (p. 115)

The work of Marx has always served as a critical tool in identifying and scraping away the residue of such commodity relations. As the authors of this volume have argued, teaching Marx is key if education is to truly serve as a tool of liberation and revolution instead of a tool of capitulation to power and accommodation to the status quo. For those of us who teach and for those of us who believe that a post-capitalist world can, and must, be achieved, education must be realigned to serve such revolutionary purpose. By providing our students with the critical lens Marx offers and challenging our students to employ a dialectic lens when critiquing the world in which they live, we encourage the development of critical and revolutionary consciousness; which is the clear and fundamental ingredient to creating a more egalitarian and socially just world. References Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (1977). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York: Basic Books. Chomsky, N. (2000). Chomsky on mis-education. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Eagleton, T. (2011). Why Marx was right. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum Publishers. Gilbert, G. M. (1947). The Nuremberg diary. New York: Farrar, Straus and Company. Guevara, E., & Castro F. (1965/1989) Socialism and man in Cuba. New York: Pathfinder Press. Shahid, A. (2011). Herman Cain to occupy wall ptreet protesters: If you’re not rich ‘blame yourself’. New York Daily News. October 5, 2011.