The educational historian Brian Simon is well known for his portrayal of the social and political conflicts surrounding adult working-class education in 19th and early 20th-century England. However, the third and fourth volumes of his classic history of education in Britain, covering the period from 1920 to 1940 and 1940 to 1990 respectively,…

Since the death of cultural critic Mark Fisher and the posthumous release of his final lectures Postcapitalist Desire, conversation surrounding his teaching and pedagogy has started to arise. This article thus seeks to (partly) formalise Fisher's pedagogy into concepts that might contribute to broader pedagogical discourse. Building on and…

Materialist approaches to aesthetics historicize our sensuous capacities, orientations, and objects by attending to their ongoing production. This article begins by articulating capital not as an "economic" system but as a broader perceptual ecology that produces particular correspondences between subjects and the world. In response to…

In California and other states, neo-Marxist ideologues are using "ethnic studies" as a Trojan horse to indoctrinate students in a divisive ideology. The author asserts that state and district policymakers must not permit this enterprise to take root and that merely saying no is not enough; the best defense is a good offense. New…

This paper advances Marxist Critical Policy Analysis (MCPA) -- a particular form of Critical Policy Analysis. I contrast it with 'Traditional Policy Analysis' (TPA) and with 'Critical Policy Analysis' (CPA), generally, and, with respect to Education, work by Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball, and wider reformist, postmodern and…

Law is an important part of Althusser's thought. He profoundly criticized the mechanism of capitalist law from the perspective of 'reproduction.' First, the law cannot be separated from the relations of production. In order to maintain capitalist relations of production, the law covers up the exploitation in the process of capitalist production.…

In this article, I discuss how the principle of exemplarity developed in the 1970s by the Marxist educators and theorists Oskar Negt and Knud Illeris can be a model for a deliberative curriculum. Today's crisis-ridden discourses of 'taking back', 'reclaiming', etc., the practices and purposes of the university are evidence of a widespread…

In this article, we posit a Marxist critique of the way that neoliberal capitalism has thwarted the possibility of comprehensive education. We begin with an explanation of the unique productive capacity of human labour, and the centrality of labour power for capitalism. We go on to show the importance of the education system for continually…

"Dialectic Materialism as a Method of Doing Education" - was written over 30 years ago by one of us -- Huebner. Following an interesting dialogue we had over the last years, Dwayne suggested co-re-writing a revised piece to be published under both names. It explores at greater length the ideas that structured the initial piece and offers…

Drawing on the seminal works of Jurgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, Andre Gorz, and Shoshana Zuboff, this article searches in the Marxian tradition for clues to assert claims that the struggle for an emancipatory consciousness and practices must include the workplace. This article examines the kind of arguments that might open the way to reclaim the…

The antagonism between "class" and "race" have plagued educational theory for decades. As a communist organizer seeking to move Marxist educational theory out of the stagnant waters of theoretical debates, I turn to recent CRT scholarship, which I find much more in line with the communist project. Yet, this literature omits…

The aim of this study was to explore dramatic play processes from a Marxist-Feminist perspective as a context in which preschool children express their understanding of gender and related issues. This qualitative study utilized critical discourse analysis to focus on the meaning created among children through their interaction while playing. The…

This essay analyzes Derrida's questioning of the relationship between "Theory and Practice" in his recently published seminar of 1976-1977 of this same title. It traces Derrida's reading of this relationship in Marx and Marxism, beginning with various interpretations (such as Althusser's) of the famous line from Marx's "Theses on…

In this essay, I explore the recent cultural and epistemological turns in sociological music education research. Changes in the economy--and most specifically in the modes of production aided by changes in technology--provide a frame for understanding the cultural and epistemological turns within music education research in sociology. The economy…

The article analyses the circularity of symbolic and structural forms of domination, feeding the field of expertise, and the school field in a country such as Italy, historically characterised by a deep divide between north and south; this led to the emergence of the so-called "Southern Question". We aim to bring into the international…