From “Authentic” to Actual Marxist Educational Theory: Advancing Revolutionary Pedagogies

ABSTRACT

Education is central to both the reproduction of capitalism and the revolutionary project of creating a new social order. As revolutionary and leftist activists, organizers, researchers, and academics—along with capitalist and imperialist powers—increasingly turn to educational theory, the pedagogical contents and forms of such theories are of decisive political importance. This article conducts a historical-materialist inquiry into the origins, critiques, and developments of two dominant radical educational theories in imperialist countries—and in much of the world—to advance a revolutionary educational theory adequate to our moment. After establishing the political and strategic significance of the “scholastic apparatus” and its centrality in reproducing and challenging capitalism, this article examines critical pedagogy (the educational spin-off of the Frankfurt School), finding it originated not from Paulo Freire’s praxis but as a break from it. This article investigates Marxist responses to critical pedagogy, arguing they’re held back by their lack of orthodoxy, as Marxist orthodoxy adheres to limitless flexibility and creativity based on material conditions. Reclaiming Freire’s orthodox Marxism, this article homes in on a pillar of his praxis that critical pedagogy and Marxist educational theory avoid: education is only revolutionary within revolutionary organization.

KEYWORDS:

• Marxism
• education
• pedagogy
• popular education
• revolution

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editor and peer reviewers of International Critical Thought as well as my colleagues and comrades, especially Curry Malott, Eli Pine, and Daniele Puccio, who helped me realize and refine my argument and findings.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Incidentally, we can quickly and easily clear the muddied waters of debates over productive versus unproductive labor here, where Marx ([1956] 1969, 157) says Adam Smith “hit the nail on the head” in generating “one of his greatest scientific merits” by showing productive labor is defined “from the standpoint of capitalist production.”

2 Thanks to Eli J. Pine for helping with such nuances.

3 In his foreword to the 20th-anniversary edition of The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Bell (1978, 4) still said “I am a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture.”

4 See David I. Backer’s (2022) extensive research into this matter that conclusively demonstrates that the very resistance-reproduction dichotomy is without any grounds whatsoever.

5 Instead of highlighting this, Cole and other Marxist educational theorists slander “Stalinism” because of prisons—or “gulags”—based purely on US Cold War propaganda that has been debunked since the opening of the Soviet archives. Official documentation proves “there was no systematic extermination of inmates” and that “the great majority of gulag inmates survived and eventually returned to society when granted amnesty or when their terms were finished. In any given year, 20 to 40 percent of the inmates were released” (Parenti 1997, 79). Most inmates at the time were not there for political reasons but for violations of the law like “murder, assault, theft, banditry, smuggling,” and so on (Parenti 1997, 80). Given the circumstances, it’s not unreasonable such purges would be violent and private rather than more literary and public as under prior leadership.

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Derek R. Ford

Derek R. Ford is a teacher, educational theorist, and organizer serving as Associate Professor of Education Studies at the DePauw University (USA), Visiting Lecturer at the Korea University (Japan), and Instructor at the People’s Forum (USA). Ford’s written eight monographs, the latest of which include Teaching the Actuality of Revolution: Aesthetics, Unlearning, and the Sensations of Struggle (Iskra, 2023), Communist Study: Education for the Commons, 2nd ed. (Lanham, 2022), Inhuman Educations: Jean-François Lyotard, Pedagogy, Thought (Brill, 2021), and Marxism, Pedagogy, and the General Intellect: Beyond the Knowledge Economy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). They’ve published in scholarly journals like Cultural Politics, Rethinking Marxism, and Critical Education and in a range of popular outlets like Black Agenda Report, Peace, Land, and Bread, Orinoco Tribune, and International Magazine. In addition to creating and hosting the podcast series, “Reading Capital with Comrades,” Ford serves as associate editor of Postdigital Science and Education and the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies and co-editor of the book series Radical Politics and Education (Bloomsbury). Ford edits LiberationSchool.org and organizes with the Indianapolis Liberation Center, ANSWER Coalition, International Manifesto Group, and other revolutionary and anti-imperialist organizations.