neo marxist theory education

Theoretical perspectives of education: Neo-Marxist

Theoretical Perspectives of Education: Neo-Marxist

The Fundamental Premise

Neo-Marxism is a theoretical approach that builds upon traditional Marxist theory, yet critically deviates from it in significant ways. They share the belief that society is class-based and conflict-centric, recognising the role that education plays in maintaining social inequalities.

Reproduction theory is central to Neo-Marxist thought, arguing that education reproduces existing social class inequalities and makes them appear legitimate. They argue that the working class are taught to accept their lower status as inevitable and just.

Ideology and Education

In relation to education, Neo-Marxists assert that it is a principal terrain for the reproduction of ideological dominance . By subtly transmitting ruling-class ideology, schools condition learners into acceptance of the status quo and discourage critique and challenge.

Neo-Marxists, however, consider working class students as not entirely passive and give them agency . They can resist this indoctrination and develop a counter-hegemonic or oppositional culture , challenging the position of the dominant class.

The Hidden Curriculum

An important concept introduced by Neo-Marxists is the hidden curriculum – an informal, unarticulated programme of knowledge and norms taught in schools, distinct from the formal curriculum.

They suggest that through the hidden curriculum, schools impart values and attitudes that sustain capitalist hierarchies. This includes competition, acceptance of authority and the internalisation of the society’s reward and punishment system.

Cultural and Symbolic Capital

Neo-Marxists also draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural capital and symbolic capital . Cultural capital refers to the range of cultural knowledge, skills, disposition and tastes inherited from the family environment and valued by schools.

Symbolic capital, on the other hand, refers to the prestige or recognition that an individual receives from others. It is understood that those from higher social classes not only possess more cultural capital, but can convert this into symbolic capital, often resulting in educational success.

The Correspondence Principle

Neo-Marxists Bowles and Gintis extend the base-superstructure model in their correspondence principle, arguing that the structure of schooling corresponds to the structure of workplace.

The school system preps individuals for their adult roles within a capitalist society, teaching them to accept hierarchy and competition as normal aspects of life.

In summary, Neo-Marxist perspectives emphasise the role of education in perpetuating social inequality, yet acknowledge the potential for resistance and opposition within the system. They illustrate the subtle ways in which education can serve ideological functions in maintaining capitalism.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

Marxism and Educational Theory

2007, Marxism and Educational Theory

Related Papers

Renewing Dialogues in Marxism and Education: Openings

Glenn Rikowski

Since the mid-1990s, Marxist educational theory, research, and policy analysis has experienced an upturn. By exploring Marxist theory in the age of neoliberalism, this edited collection examines the dialectic between race and power in education. The essays embody an underlying set of principles and practices that seek to maximize inclusiveness and dialogue between critical theoretical traditions such as postmodernism, Critical Realism, Feminism, and "anti-racism" in order to critique current educational institutions, policies, and practices. Finally, the book explores phenomena such as globalization, commodification, and capitalization in relation to key aspects of the contemporary educational landscape. The essays extend from the local to the global and encompass historical and contemporary developments in the political economy of education.

Why Marxism? Why Marxist educational theory? Through addressing these questions, this paper proclaims the importance of Marxism as a theory that intellectually disrupts and ruptures capitalist society and its educational forms. With reference to the work of John Holloway, it is argued that the significance of Marxism resides in its capacity to pinpoint fragilities and weaknesses in the constitution of capital. Grasping these fragilities in the rule of capital in contemporary social life sharpens the critical edge of any politics aimed at social transformation. Marxist educational theory plays an important role in this enterprise. These points are illustrated through consideration of the following ideas and phenomena: fragility, crisis, critique, negativity and social form(s). It is argued that fragility must be the starting point as Marxism is primarily a theory of capitalist weaknesses, and not the opposite: a theory of capitalist domination. Following Holloway, Marxism is a theory against society, rather than just another mainstream theory of society. Against Holloway, it is argued that the forms that fragilities for labour take also need to be understood. Paradoxically, our strength vis-à-vis capital is also the place for apprehending the fragilities and dependencies of labour. This vicious duality also exists in terms of crises in capitalism, and this flows into the phenomena of critique and negativity too. Finally, on the basis of this theorisation, the doors of capitalist hell are opened through a consideration of social forms in general and commodity forms in particular and their relations to educational processes and institutions. It is at this point that Marxist educational theory enters the stage, although in a transfigured form. In 1997, I wrote an article for the British Journal of Sociology of Education called ‘Scorched Earth: Prelude to Rebuilding Marxist Educational Theory’. Twenty-one years later, this paper can be viewed as my definitive first element in a programme of rebuilding Marxist educational theory.

Cadernos do GPOSSHE On-line

The article rests substantially on the work of John Holloway, especially his early articles in Common Sense: Journal of the Edinburgh Conference of Socialist Economists. On this foundation, it is argued, firstly, that the importance of Marxism resides in its capacity to pinpoint fragilities and weaknesses in the constitution, development and rule of capital in contemporary society. Understanding these fragilities sharpens the critical edge of any movements aimed at social transformation out of the madhouse of capital.

Educational Theory

Frank Margonis

Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory, in: D. Hill, P. McLaren, M. Cole & G. Rikowski (eds.), Lanham MD: Lexington Books

derek r. ford

With the contradictions of capitalism heightening and intensifying, and with new social movements spreading across the globe, revolutionary transformation is once again on the agenda. For radicals, the most pressing question is: How can we transform ourselves and our world into something else, something just? In Marx, Capital, and Education, Curry Stephenson Malott and Derek R. Ford develop a "critical pedagogy of becoming" that is concerned with precisely this question. The authors boldly investigate the movement toward communism and the essential role that critical pedagogy can play in this transition. Performing a novel and educational reading of Karl Marx and radical theorists and activists, Malott and Ford present a critical understanding of the past and present, of the underlying logics and (often opaque) forces that determine the world-historical moment. Yet Malott and Ford are equally concerned with examining the specific ways in which we can teach, learn, study, and struggle ourselves beyond capitalism; how we can ultimately overthrow the existing order and institute a new mode of production and set of social relations. This incisive and timely book, penned by two militant teachers, organizers, and academics, reconfigures pedagogy and politics. Educators and organizers alike will find that it provides new ammunition in the struggle for the world that we deserve. Advanced praise: "In Marx, Capital, and Education, Malott and Ford advance one of the boldest and [most] unmitigated analyses of education in the history of the field. Their unflinching and scholarly critique of the relationship between capitalism and compulsory education helps to reground the field of critical pedagogy, framing a renewed ‘revolutionary Marxist pedagogy.’ Their careful undertaking of Marx and contemporary scholars of Marx situate this text as a must-read across multiple disciplines including philosophy, political science, government, and education - a true classic in the making." (Sandy Grande, Associate Professor and Chair, Education Department, Connecticut College) "This is an essential text for all of those interested in the continuing potential of Marxism as an analytic tool and as a political movement, with implications for critical pedagogy and a truly liberatory education. It traces the history of the use of Marxist theory in education in ways that are insightful, and it provides a key set of categories for reading and using Marx in a ‘postmodern’ age. A rare achievement in educational scholarship." (Dennis Carlson, Full Professor, Department of Educational Leadership, Miami University)

A paper prepared for the Fourth Historical Materialism Annual Conference 2007, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London

Sona Kazemi

Spyros Themelis

RELATED PAPERS

Ghulam Farid , Dr Syeda Hina Batool

Michael Crilly

Revista Nava

Marcos Lacerda

Türkan Erdoğan

Nicoleta Gugu

Katherine Apriliani

Shubham sachdeva

Contemporânea - Revista do PPGART/UFSM

Carla Borba

Zeitschrift für Naturforschung B

Journal of Nanofluids

Annals of Surgery

Franco Salomon

Mara Pavel-Dinu

Filo Sofija

Alfred Skorupka

Experimental Cell Research

rosario tubio

Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing

Prasanna kumar Sahoo

International Wound Journal

Janet Lynne Kuhnke

Erik Exe Christoffersen

Cogent Business & Management

vali borimnejad

Corporate Governance and Sustainability Review

Musah Osumanu Doumbia

Learning Through Languages:A Strategy for Whole School Improvement

Judith Woodfield

Bhagyashree Salekar , Dr. Shruti Dhokpatil , Dr. Karuna Kamble

Physics of Life Reviews

Andrew Fingelkurts

Innovations in Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment

Nnenna Okoli

zuhal hamurcu

Evaluate the Marxist View of the Role of Education in Society

An essay evaluating the Marxist view of education covering ideological state apparatus, correspondence principle, the reproduction and legitimation of class inequality.

Last Updated on November 18, 2022 by Karl Thompson

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

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

Education has four main roles in society according to Marxists:

acting as the state apparatus
producing an obedient workforce
the reproduction of class inequality
the legitimation of class inequality.

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

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

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

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

For example passive subservience of pupils to teachers corresponds to the passive subservience of workers to managers; acceptance of hierarchy (authority of teachers) corresponds to the authority of managers; and finally there is ‘motivation by external rewards: students are motivated by grades not learning which corresponds to being motivated by wages, not the joy of the job.

Marxists also argue that schools reproduce class inequality . In school, the middle classes use their material and cultural capital to ensure that their children get into the best schools and the top sets. This means that the wealthier pupils tend to get the best education and then go onto to get middle class jobs. Meanwhile working class children are more likely to get a poorer standard of education and end up in working class jobs. In this way class inequality is reproduced

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

Finally , Paul Willi’s classic study Learning to Labour (1977) criticises aspects of Traditional Marxist theory.

Willis’ visited one school and observed 12 working class rebellious boys about their attitude to school and attitudes to future work. Willis described the friendship between these 12 boys (or the lads) as a counter-school culture. They attached no value to academic work, more to ‘having a laff’ and that the objective of school was to miss as many lessons as possible.

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

However, the fact that the lads saw manual work as ‘proper work’ and placed no value of academic work, they all ended up failing their exams, and as a result had no choice but to go into low-paid manual work, and the end result of their active rebellion against the school was still the reproduction of class inequality. Thus this aspect of Marxism is supported by Willis’ work.

Evaluating the Marxist Perspective on Education

Traditional Marxist views of education are extremely dated, even the the new ‘Neo-Marxist’ theory of Willis is 40 years old, but how relevant are they today?

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

However, the recent academisation programme, which involves part-privatisation of state schools suggests support for the idea that Businesses control some aspects of education.

It is also quite easy to criticise the idea of the correspondence principle – Schools clearly do not inject a sense of passive obedience into today’s students – many jobs do not require a passive and obedient workforce, but require an active and creative workforce.

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

The Marxist Theory of the reproduction of class inequality and its legitimation through the myth of meritocracy does actually seem to be true today. There is a persistent correlation between social class background and educational achievement – with the middle classes able to take advantage of their material and cultural capital to give their children a head start and then better grades and jobs. It is also the case that children are not taught about this unfairness in schools, although a small handful do learn about it in Sociology classes.

In conclusion , while Marxist theory might be dated, all of the four major ideas still seem to have some relevance, especially their ideas about the reproduction and legitimation of class inequality, so I would say Marxism is one of the more accurate perspectives which helps us understand the role of the education system today, both nationally and globally.

Signposting and Related Posts

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

For more essay plans please see this main post of links….. ‘ sociology revision and exam advice ‘… all tailored towards AQA A level sociology.

You can find more essay advice on my essays and exam page !

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

The Marxist Perspective on the Role of Education in Society

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

4 thoughts on “Evaluate the Marxist View of the Role of Education in Society”

Pingback: What Is the Role of Education in the Society? A Marxist Perspective! - Learningneverstops
Pingback: Perspectives on the Role of Education – Knowledge Check- List – ReviseSociology
Pingback: The Marxist Perspective on Education | ReviseSociology
Pingback: Evaluating the Marxist Perspective on Education | ReviseSociology

Discover more from ReviseSociology

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

The Palgrave Handbook on Critical Theories of Education pp 243–259 Cite as

Critical Education, Social Democratic Education, Revolutionary Marxist Education

Dave Hill 4
First Online: 14 September 2022

1054 Accesses

Writing from a Revolutionary Marxist political and Classical Marxist theoretical perspective, I identify and critique two types of Critical Education: (i) democratic socialist/Left social democratic/ and (ii) Revolutionary Marxist. I focus on Revolutionary Marxist education, distinguishing it, in particular, from both ‘Centrist’ and Left versions of social democratic education (e.g., Michael Apple and Henry Giroux). I set out what I consider to be five key aspects Marxists critique about education policy and make proposals and seek to enact, relating to: (i) Curriculum and Assessment, (ii) Pedagogy, (iii) The Organizational Culture within the School/Institution, (iv) Organization of The Education System and of Students, for example, comprehensive schooling or selective schooling and (v) Ownership and Control of Schools, Colleges and Universities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Available as EPUB and PDF
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info
Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Althusser, L. (1962). Contradiction and overdetermination . https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1962/appendix.htm

Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In L. Althusser (Ed.), Lenin and philosophy and other essays . New Left Books. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm

Anyon, J. (2011). Marx and education . Routledge.

Book Google Scholar

Apple, M. (2006). Review essay: Rhetoric and reality in critical educational studies in the United States. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27 (5), 679–687.

Article Google Scholar

Ball, S. J. (2003). Class strategies and the educational market: The middle classes and social advantage . RoutledgeFalmer.

Banfield, G. (2015). Marx and education: Working with the revolutionary educator. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 13 (3). http://www.jceps.com/archives/2792

Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture . Sage.

Google Scholar

Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America . Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Bukharin, N., & Preobrazhensky, Y. (1922/1969). The ABC of communism . Penguin Books. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc

Busby, M. (2020, September 27). Schools in England told not to use material from anti-capitalist groups. The Guardian . https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/27/uk-schools-told-not-to-use-anti-capitalist-material-in-teaching

Castanheira, P., & Costa, J. A. (2011). From a collegially elected council to a director: The evolution of Portuguese school management. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 15 , 2007–2011. www.sciencedirect

Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). (1998). The national literacy strategy: Framework for teaching . HMSO.

Doe, B. (1984, March 23). Improving London’s schools. Times Educational Supplement .

Edwards, G., Hill, D., & Boxley, S. (2018). Critical teacher education for economic, environmental and social justice. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 16 (3). http://www.jceps.com/archives/49021

Farahmandpur, R. (2004). Essay review: A Marxist critique of Michael Apple’s neo-Marxist approach to educational reform. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 2 (1). http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/02-1-4.pdf

Faulkner, N., Hearse, P., Hannah, S., Fortune, R., & Fortune, N. (2021). System crash: An activist guide to the coming democratic revolution: Chapter 6 the new fascism . https://www.anticapitalistresistance.org/post/the-new-Fascism

Floud, J., Halsey, A. H., & Martin, F. M. (1957). Social class and educational opportunity . Heinemann.

Foley, J. A., Morris, D., Gounari, P., & Agostinone-Wilson, F. (2015). Critical education, critical pedagogies, Marxist education in the United States. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 13 (3). http://www.jceps.com/archives/2758

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

Giroux, H. (1983). Theories of reproduction and resistance in the new sociology of education: A critical analysis. Harvard Education Review, 55 (3), 257–293. https://www.academia.edu/3638580/Theories_of_Resistance_and_Reproduction_in_the_New_Sociology_of_Education

Giroux, H. (2001). Theory and resistance in education: Towards a pedagogy for the opposition. Bergin and Garvey.

Gonzalez, A. O., & Rikowski, G. (2019). Interview with Glenn Rikowski on Marxism, critical pedagogy and inclusive education: Discussions for a revolutionary discourse. Revista Izquierdas, 45 (1), 260–276. https://www.aacademica.org/aldo.ocampo.gonzalez/9.pdf

Gramsci, A. (1971/2000). Selections from the prison notebooks . International Publishers Co. https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/prison_notebooks/selections.htm

Halsey, A. H. (1972). Educational priority volume 1: EPA problems and policies . HMSO.

Hill, D. (1994). Teacher education and training: A left critique. Forum (For Promoting 3-19 Comprehensive Education), 6 (3), 74–76. http://www.wwwords.co.uk/forum/content/pdfs/36/Forum_36_3.pdf

Hill, D. (1997). Equality in primary schooling: The policy context, intentions and effects of the conservative ‘reforms’. In M. Cole, D. Hill, & Shan, S. (Eds.), Promoting equality in primary schools . Cassell. http://www.ieps.org.uk/publications/online-papers-dave-hill/

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. The British Journal of Sociology of Education, 22 (1), 137–157. http://www.ieps.org.uk/media/1162/brit-jnl-sociol-of-educ-22-1-2001-dave-hill-state-theory-article.pdf

Hill, D. (2003). Brief autobiography of a Bolshie Dismissed . http://www.ieps.org.uk.cwc.net/bolsharticle.pdf

Hill, D. (2009). Culturalist and materialist explanations of class and ‘race’: Critical race theory, equivalence/parallelist theory, and Marxist theory. Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory & Practice, 12 , 1–52. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/191552/188664

Hill, D. (2010). A socialist manifesto for education . Institute for Education Policy Studies. http://www.ieps.org.uk/media/1003/socialistmanifestofored.pdf

Hill, D. (2013). Marxist essays on neoliberalism, class, ‘race’, capitalism, socialism and education . The Institute for Education Policy Studies.

Hill, D. (2015). A socialist education policy. Forum for Promoting 3-19 Comprehensive Education . http://www.wwwords.co.uk/rss/abstract.asp?j=forum&aid=6224

Hill, D. (2019a). Marxist education and teacher education against capitalism in neoliberal/neoconservative/neofascist/times. Cadernos do GPOSSHE On-line , 2018 Estadual do Ceará Fortaleza, Brazil (Grupo de Pesquisa Ontologia do Ser Social, História, Educação e Emancipação Humana). https://revistas.uece.br/index.php/CadernosdoGPOSSHE/article/view/1524/1275?fbclid=IwAR349OKt6lL5HRD1SiJK-6Iv7EwlQLoJpbNlVQqrjvH-LW89JHT5fAeXdFA

Hill, D. (2019b). Marxism and teacher education. In M. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of teacher education (pp. 1–6). Springer Singapore.

Hill, D. (2019c). Marxist public policy principles: Schooling and teacher education training. In P. Vittoria & D. Hill with I. Accioly (Eds.), O Bella Ciao; Critical education as resistance against populism, sexism and racism . Educazione Aperta. http://educazioneaperta.it/

Hill, D. (2021). Excluding/including the (‘raced’ and gendered working class: Neoliberal, neoconservative/neofascist schooling and education in Covid times: A classical Marxist critical analysis and activist programme [Excluyendo/ Incluyendo la Clases de Trabajo (‘Raced’ y de Genero): Escuela y Educacion Neoliberal/ Neoconservador/ NeoFascista en Tiempos Covidos: Un Programa de Activis y Analisis Critico Clasico Marxista]. Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos de Educación Inclusiva (CELEI), Chile

Hill, D., Cole, M., & Williams. C. (1997). Equality and primary teacher education. In M. Cole, D. Hill, & S. Shan (Eds.), Promoting equality in primary schools . Cassell. http://www.ieps.org.uk/publications/online-papers-dave-hill/

Hill, D., Lewis, C., Maisuria, A., Yarker, P., & Hill, J. (2016) Conservative education policy reloaded: Policy, ideology and impacts in England. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 14 (3). http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/14-3-1-1.pdf

Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). (1984). Improving secondary schools—A summary of the Hargreaves report . ILEA.

Jones, K. (1989). Right turn: The conservative revolution in education . Hutchinson Radius.

Jones, K. (2003). Education in Britain, 1944 to the present . Polity.

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). http://www.jceps.com/?pageID=article&articleID=59

Lenin, V. I. (1902/1999). What is to be done? Burning questions of our movement . https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/

Luxemburg, R. (1899/1999). Reform or revolution: Party, vanguard, programme and organisation. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/

Marx, K. (1847/1999). The poverty of philosophy . https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/

Marx, K. (1852/1999). The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte . https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1848/2010). The Communist Manifesto. Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf

McGrew, K. (2011). On being holier-than-thou: A critique of Curry Malott’s “Pseudo-Marxism and the reformist retreat from revolution” . Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 9 (1). http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=222

McLaren, P. (2000). Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the pedagogy of revolution . Rowman & Littlefield.

McLaren, P. (2010). Revolutionary critical pedagogy . Interactions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 6 (2). http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7qj2b570

McLaren, P. (2013). Critical pedagogy against capitalist education—A socialist alternative. Global Education Magazine . http://www.globaleducationmagazine.com/critical-pedagogy-againstcapitalist-schooling-socialist-alternative-interview-peter-mclaren/

McLaren, P. (2016). Revolutionary critical pedagogy: Staking a claim against the macrostructural unconscious. Critical Education, 7 (8), 1–43. https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/186144

Reay, D. (2018). Miseducation: Inequality, education and the working classes . The Policy Press.

Rikowski, G. (2006). In Retro Glide. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 4 (2). http://www.jceps.com/?pageID=article&articleID=81

Rikowski, G. (2019, July). Education crises as crises for capital. Theory in Action, 12 (3), 128–172. https://rikowski.wordpress.com/2019/08/25/education-crises-as-crises-for-capital-2/

Simon, B. (1978). The politics of education reform, 1920–1940 . Lawrence and Wishart.

Stańczyk, P. (2021). The critique of the critical critique of critical pedagogy: Freire, Suchodolski and the materialist pedagogy of emancipation. Critical Education, 12 (4), 1–24. http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/186502

Vygotsky, L. S. (1934). Thinking and speech . https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/words/Thinking-and-Speech.pdf

Woods, A. (2020, July 2). Why is the Brazilian right afraid of Paulo Freire? Open Democracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/why-is-the-brazilian-right-afraid-of-paulo-freire/

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford and Cambridge, UK

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Ali A. Abdi

Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

Greg William Misiaszek

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter.

Hill, D. (2022). Critical Education, Social Democratic Education, Revolutionary Marxist Education. In: Abdi, A.A., Misiaszek, G.W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook on Critical Theories of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86343-2_14

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86343-2_14

Published : 14 September 2022

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-86342-5

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-86343-2

eBook Packages : Education Education (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
Palgrave Macmillan

Two decades of Neo-Marxist class analysis and health inequalities: A critical reconstruction

Carles muntaner.

a Bloomberg School of Nursing, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, 155 College Street, Suite 386, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5T 1P8

c Department of Public Health Sciences, Korea University, Suite 365, Hana Science Building, 145 Anam-Ro, Seongbuk-Gu, Seoul, 136-713 Republic of Korea. E-mail: rk.ca.aerok@yciloph

b Centre for Research on Inner City Health, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, 209 Victoria Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5B 1C6. E-mail: ac.hms@degn

Haejoo Chung

Seth j prins.

d Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, 722 West 168th Street, Suite #720C, New York, NY 10032, USA. E-mail: ude.aibmuloc@4512pjs

Most population health researchers conceptualize social class as a set of attributes and material conditions of life of individuals. The empiricist tradition of ‘class as an individual attribute' equates class to an ‘observation', precluding the investigation of unobservable social mechanisms. Another consequence of this view of social class is that it cannot be conceptualized, measured, or intervened upon at the meso- or macro levels, being reduced to a personal attribute. Thus, population health disciplines marginalize rich traditions in Marxist theory whereby ‘class' is understood as a ‘hidden' social mechanism such as exploitation. Yet Neo-Marxist social class has been used over the last two decades in population health research as a way of understanding how health inequalities are produced. The Neo-Marxist approach views social class in terms of class relations that give persons control over productive assets and the labour power of others (property and managerial relations). We critically appraise the contribution of the Neo-Marxist approach during the last two decades and suggest realist amendments to understand class effects on the social determinants of health and health outcomes. We argue that when social class is viewed as a social causal mechanism it can inform social change to reduce health inequalities.

Introduction

The term ‘Neo-Marxism' has been applied during the last century to a number of social science currents that expanded the work of Karl Marx with input from other intellectual developments. In particular in the 1980s emerged a distinctive school of Neo-Marxists, Analytical Marxism ( Roemer, 1986 ) that not only integrated other social science theoretical traditions (for example, Weberian sociology, Neo-classical economics, game theory, development economics and political philosophy) but also embraced empirical class analysis ( Wright and Perrone, 1977 ; Wright, 1985 ). Analytical Marxism has proved more influential than originally anticipated ( Jacoby, 1989 ). For example, a social scientist influenced by Analytical Marxism has become influential in worldwide academic and policy circles dealing with income inequality ( Piketty, 2014 ). An economist associated with this current has become Greece's Finance Minister and is now in charge of the negotiations with the European Union on his country's debt. The health field, in particular the sociology of health and illness ( Muntaner et al , 2013 ) and social epidemiology ( Galobardes et al , 2006 ) have also been a fertile ground for this kind of Neo-Marxist influence. Specifically, the theoretical and empirical research by Wright (1985 , 2000 ) on Neo-Marxist class analysis has translated in new explanations and findings on the relation between class and health ( Muntaner et al , 2013 ), a central question for the sociology of health ( Hollingshead and Redlich, 1953 ).

The term ‘social class' is widely used in health inequalities research. Nonetheless, it remains a contested concept. Broadly speaking, three major uses of ‘social class' coexist in the health field: pragmatic, Neo-Weberian and Neo-Marxist ( Muntaner et al , 2000 ). The pragmatic approach has typically focused on simple stratification indicators such as income, educational attainment, and occupational hierarchies that may, de facto, draw on a functionalist tradition in sociology, and even a Weberian concept of status ( Muntaner et al , 2000 ). The Neo-Weberian approach typically focuses on processes of opportunity hoarding or social closure in market relations, through measures of educational credentials and occupational prestige. The Neo-Marxist approach, elaborated below, can be summarized by a focus on relations of economic production, through processes of ownership and labour, domination and exploitation. Other theories of class have also gained interest in population health research; for example, Bourdieu's framework, in which groupings of individuals in a multidimensional social space, with various forms of capital – social, economic, cultural, and symbolic – share circumstances and interests and can manifest classes ( Bourdieu, 1987 ; Veenstra, 2007 ).

Although these three approaches have been subject to several empirical comparisons in sociology ( Marshall et al , 2005 ) and population health ( Wolfarth, 1997 ; Muntaner et al , 2003 ), the theoretical and empirical status of the Neo-Marxist approach has yet to be examined. As a consequence this article will focus on the merits of Neo-Marxist approaches to social class in the sociology of illness during the last two decades, approximately when Neo-Marxist constructs and measures began to be used in socio-epidemiologic journals ( Muntaner et al , 2013 ). We critically review its contributions and point to new directions to better explain the resilient association between social class and health. We begin by critiquing current methods in health sociology and social epidemiology, and attendant implications for reducing health inequalities. Next, we lay out the origins of the Neo-Marxist class concept used in empirical studies of population health, its main findings, limitations and what could be a heuristic approach. A key suggestion is that a focus on social mechanisms might overcome the lack of relative explanatory power of employment relations indicators. We conclude by discussing the implications of a Neo-Marxist class approach for applied population health interventions, and identifying future directions for research and practice.

The Individualization of Social Class

Most population health researchers conceptualize social class as a set of attributes and material conditions of life of individuals ( Krieger et al , 1997 ). The empiricist tradition of ‘class as an individual attribute' equates class to an ‘observation', precluding the investigation of unobservable social mechanisms ( Muntaner et al , 2013 ). Another consequence of this view of social class is that it cannot be conceptualized, measured, or intervened upon at the meso- or macro levels. Thus, population health disciplines marginalize rich traditions in Marxist theory, whereby ‘class' is understood as a ‘hidden' social mechanism such as exploitation.

The marginalization of rich traditions of class theory in favour of the mainstream, individual-attribute approach, is consistent with the biological, psychological, and quantitative reductionism that characterizes the methodological individualism of contemporary social science, and the reduction of social science to a technique, which has both reflected and affected cultural, political, and economic processes in contemporary class relations. When, consistent with this trend, social processes such as class relations are conceptualized as individual attributes, it absolves researchers from engaging with social mechanisms (of which class relations are a prototype). In population health research and theory, examples include prioritizing individual-level risk factors over population determinants of risk (that is, the risk of risk) ( Rose, 1985 ); disqualifying as valid causal constructs any variables that are not easily manipulable in the current policy space (for example, ‘no causation without manipulation') ( Hernán, 2005 ); prioritizing research on commodifiable, purportedly biological mechanisms for socially conditioned physical and mental health problems ( Burke et al , 2010 ); and re-reifying ‘race,' for example, the re-emergence of genetic essentialism, rather than focus on the social processes of racialization and racism ( Duster, 2005 ).

This approach to social class has real consequences. For example, think tanks in the 1980s and 1990s provided empirical justification for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, legislation that ended the possibility to receive insufficient but secure aid for the poor in the United States (‘welfare reform'). The success of such research was possible by reducing social inequalities to individual stratification indicators such as education and ‘race' that individualized social outcomes (for example, income) and by omitting sociological processes from their analysis (for example, social class, racial segregation, access to education, housing and social services) ( O'Connor, 2009 ). More recently, the report of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health ( WHO, 2008 ) explicitly avoided the social class construct. The result of this omission is that the report tells us little about the origins of economic and power inequalities, and that we all seem to be equally responsible for health inequities ( Navarro, 2009 ).

Although, the mainstream approach to social class has dominated health sociology and social epidemiology, an alternative approach, drawing on Neo-Marxist theory, has developed in tandem. This approach holds promise – empirically, theoretically, and practically – for advancing the study of health inequalities and providing an intellectual foundation for the social change required to reduce them.

Street Fighting Sociologists

The emergence of empirical Neo-Marxist class analysis in population health developed in the 1990s stemming from the work of sociologists such as Melvin Kohn, in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on the theoretical writings of European scholars such as Poulantzas (1978) and Dahrendorf (1959 ) who tackled the problem of power and control over production in class analysis, these sociologists developed survey instruments that capture Neo-Marxist notions of class ( Kohn and Schooler, 1969 ; Wright and Perrone, 1977 ; Robinson and Kelley, 1979 ; Wright, 1979 ; McNamee and Vanneman, 1987 ). Among these sociologists, Erik Olin Wright had the major impact in the health sciences during the eighties and beyond ( Krieger et al , 1997 ; Muntaner et al , 2013 ). A leading theoretical production during Analytical Marxism's decade and afterwards ( Wright, 1985 ), a long-term commitment to Marxist sociology ( Wright, 1994 ), a number of highly visible empirical articles ( Wright, 1997 ), and a continuous engagement with Weberian sociology ( Wright, 1989 ) could explain such influence.

Neo-Marxist Class Analysis in Population Health

Although some early articles used Neo-Marxist class indicators to tap into psychological outcomes such as self-esteem ( Kohn and Schooler, 1969 ), it was not until the 1990s that health researchers began using Wright's Neo-Marxist class indicators in population surveys. In brief, Wright's survey questions for the measurement of social class tap into three theoretical constructs of control over productive assets: ownership, organization, and skills/credentials. The construct of skill/credentials is close to that of ‘education', used commonly in the social inequalities in health field. Its status as a Neo-Marxist relational construct has been debated since the publication of classes ( Wright, 1985 ) and is generally considered a Neo-Weberian influence on Wright's model ( Wright, 1989 ). Nonetheless, higher skills/credentials can result in higher wages (that is, less exploitation) and more autonomy (that is, less domination) than lower skills/credentials, indicating its theoretical salience for relation to the means of production. In the first version of his model, Wright emphasized the construct of control (that is, domination) over production relations (economic ownership, control over the means of production, and control over labor ( Wright, 1979 ). It was not until later when, influenced by John Roemer's rational choice Marxism, he shifted his theoretical focus to the exploitation mechanism ( Wright, 1985 ).

Ownership of productive assets refers to the relations to the means of production (large employer, small employer, petit-bourgeois and worker) and control of organizational assets refers to relations of control (that is, domination) over labor power at the work place (manager, supervisor, non-managerial worker). Indicators of these class relations ( Wright, 1997 ) typically include a question on how many workers the respondent employs (ownership); a question on whether the respondent can hire and fire other workers (organizational control); and a question on whether the respondent has the power to influence company policy (budgets, inventories, and investments). Workers who influence company policy and can fire and fire workers are assigned the class position of manager; those who can only hire or fire are assigned the class position of supervisor; and those who cannot perform any of these functions are assigned the class position of non-managerial workers. With three class locations per dimension, Wright's theoretical Neo-Marxist class framework consists of 12 class positions or locations ( Wright, 1997 ). Another component of Wright's framework is the construct of contradictory class locations (CCL) in production relations. For example, a supervisor is a manager to workers and a worker to managers, a contradictory position that might have consequences for her lived experience at work and class consciousness. This framework and its indicators have been applied to population health problems since the mid-1990s, producing a set of new findings appraised in the next section.

A Critical Appraisal of the Extant Literature

The amount of existing empirical Neo-Marxist research pales in comparison with their theoretical counterparts. Within the empirical domain, for example, there are far fewer studies using Neo-Marxist conceptual definitions of class than Neo-Weberian ( Blane et al , 1993 ) or Bourdieusian measures ( Sayer, 2005 ; Veenstra, 2006 ). In order to gain a better sense of the nature and scope of the Neo-Marxist literature, in February 2015, we searched for empirical, peer-reviewed studies in PubMed with the following key word terms in the Title or Abstract: ‘Neo-Marxist', ‘Wright', ‘social class' and ‘contradictory class location'. A total of 19 studies met our conceptual definition of social class and methodological criteria of quantitative designs. As revealed in Table 1 , our own research network has contributed eleven of the 19 studies to the Neo-Marxist literature ( Borrell et al , 2004 , 2008 ; Espelt et al , 2008 ; Muntaner et al , 1994 , 1998 , 2003 , 2009 , 2015 ; Muntaner and Parsons, 1996 ; Rocha et al , 2013 , 2014 ; Prins et al , in press), thus allowing us to critically appraise the strengths, limitations, and future needs of this scholarship. This list of studies overlaps and updates our previous systematic review on the relational effects of social class on health ( Muntaner et al , 2010 ). Together, these studies reflect several common characteristics. First, the vast majority of Neo-Marxist studies have used cross-sectional designs (89.5 per cent, 17 of 19 studies), analysed survey data from the general population (78.9 per cent, 15 of 19 studies), and tested self-rated health and mental health as dependent variables (84.2 per cent, 16 of 19 studies). Second, only 2 of the 19 studies used longitudinal designs (10.5 per cent) ( Macleod et al , 2005 ; Muntaner et al , 2009 ), revealing a clear and urgent need for research to repeatedly collect data on the same employers and employees to establish causality. Third, the over-reliance on general population surveys has meant that certain social class positions are more likely to be systematically excluded from observation. This includes social class positions such as larger employers and the most exploited workers, which in turn, narrows and underestimates the true range of effect estimates. And fourth, research has paid scant attention to the instrumental role that Neo-Marxist class plays in shaping and influencing other social determinants of health, including for example, gender, race/ethnicity, disability, national or religious relations, access to services, employment conditions, income and wealth or at different levels of aggregation (for example, firm, neighborhood, and city). One notable exception is Borrell et al (2004) 's study that tested multiple pathways such as psychosocial stress, housework, material deprivation through which Neo-Marxist class positions might generate health inequalities among men and women.

Yet Neo-Marxist class indicators are consistently associated with predictable health outcomes, with large and medium size employers and managers showing the healthiest profiles ( Schwalbe and Staples, 1986 ; Muntaner and Parsons, 1996 ; Wohlfarth, 1997 ; Wohlfarth and van den Brink, 1998 ; Muntaner et al , 1998 , 2003 , 2009 , 2015 ; Borrell et al , 2004 , 2008 ; Rocha et al , 2013 , 2014 ; Hadewijch et al , 2014 ). In particular, studies that conceptualize and test CCL hypotheses demonstrate the added value of Neo-Marxist thinking and analysis. The key advantage is that CCL hypotheses suggest social mechanisms that do not follow the gradient ( Muntaner et al , 1998 ; Prins et al , in press). That is, gradient hypotheses postulate that supervisors would present worse mental health than managers but better than frontline workers. Here, the idea is that increases in income correspond with improvements in health. In contrast, CCL hypotheses are based on the domination from managers and the opposition of workers to their domination by supervisors. Instead of graded health outcomes, one would anticipate worse mental health among supervisors than among frontline, non-managerial workers ( Muntaner et al , 1998 ). Separate findings from the United States, Spain, and Chile suggest that this might be the case among frontline, low-level supervisors as identified by Wright's indicator of social class locations ( Muntaner et al , 1998 ; Muntaner et al , 2003 ; Rocha et al , 2013 ; Hadewijch et al , 2014 , Prins et al , in press). Compared with an occupational gradient hypothesis, Neo-Marxist class analysis reveals relational class mechanisms that make a logical link between psychosocial and proximal processes (for example, lack of control, high demands) and different, non-linear predictions (for example, increases in income do not automatically translate into enhanced health) ( Muntaner et al , 2003 ). Moreover, the theorized organizational control mechanisms among manager, supervisor, and non-managerial worker relations ground Neo-Marxist class analysis in realist epistemology ( Scambler, 2001 ; Scambler et al , 2002 ).

Overall, these Neo-Marxist studies reveal a genuine lack of correspondence between theoretical definitions and social class measures. For example, Wright's definition of social class postulates that the key mechanism generating inequalities in economic welfare between social class positions is exploitation . Exploitation is defined by Wright in Neo-Marxist terms, coupling it with power and domination during production. Three principles are invoked to define this key class mechanism ( Wright, 1997 ):

The inverse interdependent welfare principle : the material welfare of exploiters causally depends upon the material deprivations of the exploited. This means that the interests of actors within such relations are not merely different, they are antagonistic: the realization of the interests of exploiters imposes harms on the exploited.
The exclusion principle : this inverse interdependence of the welfare of exploiters and exploited depends upon the exclusion of the exploited from access to certain productive resources.
The appropriation principle : Exclusion generates material advantage to exploiters because it enables them to appropriate the labor effort of the exploited.

Yet survey questions used in the existing literature often fail to capture exploitation and its three principles ( D'Souza et al , 2003 ). Instead, most studies are measuring employment relations (for example, employer, self-employed owner, worker), which makes them practically analogous to Neo-Weberian indicators of social class (Marshall et al , 1988). A heuristic solution to this impasse might be to measure the process of exploitation , and its associated domination, with its own set of indicators. For example, in a recent study among nursing assistants and their mental health within the context of US nursing homes, exploitation was measured at the organizational level with for-profit status and domination was measured with rating scales answered by key informants in each workplace ( Muntaner et al , 2015 ). Results showed strong multilevel effects of indicators of exploitation and domination on worker mental health. A specific focus on the social mechanisms of exploitation and domination ( Wright, 1997 ) that underlie inequalities in welfare between persons in different class positions could hold promise for future Neo-Marxist class analyses. This would actually represent a significant move towards a more ‘classical' Marxist understanding of class ( Wolff and Resnick, 1986 ) without abandoning the distinctive empirical bent of Wright's ‘Analytical Marxism'.

Conclusions

Identifying class mechanisms to guide social change and reduce health inequalities.

An ostensible goal of all research on the social production of health inequalities is not merely to describe or explain such inequalities, but to effectively reduce them ( Muntaner and Lynch, 2002 ; O'Campo and Dunn, 2011 ; Muntaner et al , 2012b ). A Neo-Marxist class approach has implications for the way that researchers think about and engage with efforts to reduce health inequalities, implications that invert the mainstream relationship between research and action. A cursory glance at the conclusion sections of many population health studies reveals an almost rote focus on ‘policy implications' relevant to policymakers. We argue here that, although this mainstream orientation to social class and health inequalities may appear innocuous or politically neutral, it in fact functions in the service of incremental, apolitical, technical changes that are ultimately system-justifying and status-quo -reproducing ( Chomsky, 1971 ).

As we described at the outset, the individual attribute approach to social class tracked broader trends in social science theory and research towards reductionism and methodological individualism. This absolves researchers from engaging with social processes and relations, which demand analyses of exploitation, domination, and even employment relations. These intellectual trends, in turn, reflect structural changes in the political economy of academic institutions that produce such knowledge ( Muntaner et al , 2012a ). While a complete discussion of the impact of neo-liberalism on health inequalities research is beyond the scope of this analysis, we contend that such trends conform to political options that often perpetuate inequalities, because they produce knowledge that explicitly avoids the mechanisms that generate social and health inequalities.

What can a Neo-Marxist approach to social and health inequalities add? Aside from doing the opposite of the mainstream approach (that is, re-engaging with analyses of employment relations, exploitation, domination and other class processes), an important contribution of Neo-Marxist class analysis is to break the chain between health inequality research and the ‘policy mystique'. It can do this by flipping its orientation from the top-down to the bottom-up, and rediscovering and engaging with the rich diversity of poor people's and working class social movements whose struggles – class struggles – against inequality, including health inequalities, can become a target audience for research and action. Adopting a relational class approach means recognizing – not just politically, but from a pragmatic research design and implementation perspective – that the vast majority of ‘the 99 per cent' are completely alienated from the policy space, both professionally and electorally. Examples of such bottom up class approaches would be the ‘Housing First' program in Canadian cities ( van Draanen et al , 2013 ) or public health action research with labour unions in the United States ( Malinowski et al , 2015 ). A resurgence of poor, working class, and climate-justice activism, from the international outgrowths of Latin America's left turn and the Arab Spring ( Muntaner et al , 2011 ) to the anti-austerity movements in the European Union ( Tugas, 2014 ), provides compelling opportunities for researchers to address new, grassroots stakeholders.

Recognizing that the vast majority of the population is on the opposite side of the class struggle than ‘policymakers' does not imply that we should abandon progressive health policy reforms, but it means that we should adopt a more critical, bottom-up perspective towards how policy changes affecting the public's health are ultimately achieved. This is not to say that all researchers of social inequalities in health must become public social scientists ( Burawoy, 2005 ) but it is to say that we cannot consign ourselves, under a thin veil of neutrality, to de facto approaching policy from a privileged position of access to elites, that is, from the orientation of serving policymakers. At the very least, we should have a more class-conscious perspective ( Burawoy, 2014 ). Returning to and advancing relational approaches to class may be the only way this will be possible.

Future Directions

Previous research on the relational effects of social class on health inequalities confirms the explanatory and analytical value of conceptualizing mechanisms of exploitation and domination as health determinants. Our critical reconstruction of two decades of Neo-Marxist scholarship provides an overview of the state-of-evidence and offers several promising directions for future research. First, there is a clear need to advance the conceptualization and measurement of social class in health inequalities scholarship. As revealed in Table 1 , existing studies have primarily relied on Wright's typology of class in capitalist societies to understand health inequalities between capitalists, managers, petty bourgeois, and workers. Wright's contributions to our current understanding of social class are indisputable. However, new contributions are needed. Public health scholars run the real risk falling into an intellectual trap if we fail to consider, integrate, and synthesize other concepts into our explanatory frameworks and research methods. For example, most studies make predictions about the health of individuals based on the assumption that capitalists and workers occupy a single class position at one time. Yet, prior work finds that individuals are often simultaneously engaged in multiple class positions that have the effect of generating different amounts of economic resources and creating different kinds of exploitation relations (for example, an individual can be self-employed and a recipient of welfare assistance while occupying a working poor or underclass position) ( Muntaner and Stormes, 1996 ). Other important needs in terms of advancing the conceptualization and measurement of social class include: identifying new social classes that might have emerged because of changes in capital accumulation and employment relations (for example, financial investors, hedge fund managers, technical middle class workers or precarious workers [ Standing, 2011 ]); investigating untested relational and dimensional aspects of social class (for example, health inequalities between different owners such as capitalists (hires 100 or more employees) versus small employees (hires 2–99) employees versus petit bourgeoisie (hires no more than 1 employee) ( Muntaner et al , 1999 ); integrating other major social class (non-stratification) approaches in public health (for example, synthesizing Weberian and Bourdieusian ideas about social class with Neo-Marxism ( Bartley et al , 1999 ; Veenstra, 2007 ); and striking a balance between the theory-method nexus (for example, conceptualizing exploitation at organizational levels with the use of multi-level modelling, Muntaner et al , 2015 ).

Second, future work will benefit from incorporating mechanism-based explanations on how and why social class relations generate avoidable and unfair health inequalities, and under what circumstances. On one hand, existing social class studies have successfully identified plausible mechanisms that may contribute to health inequalities. Exploitation, for example, generates and reproduces health inequalities by (i) ensuring that the material welfare of capitalists comes at the expense of the working class; (ii) excluding the working class from owning productive resources, and (iii) appropriating the labour of the working class in the form of profits for the capitalist class. On the other hand, more theory-driven work is needed that considers how social class mechanisms interact with specific contexts to generate intended and unintended outcomes (for example, income and wealth as well as health outcomes). One such approach is scientific realism, which provides a compelling rationale to unpack context-mechanism-outcome (CMO) patterns ( Molnar et al , 2015 ; O'Campo et al , 2015 ). In particular, this approach provides useful analytical tools to compare ‘how social class relations are theorized to generate health inequalities' (for example, exploitation) to ‘rigorous evidence on how social class relations actually generate health inequalities in different situations'. By identifying and testing CMO patterns, researchers will be well-positioned to describe and understand the various contingencies that shape and influence the likelihood that social class relations may generate social, economic, and health outcomes. In turn, such findings can potentially inform how social class relations may be restructured in egalitarian policies (for example, increasing workplace democracy) that most likely trigger causal mechanisms (for example, increasing social solidarity) that narrow health inequalities (for example, among capitalist, managers, and workers) ( Ng and Muntaner, 2014 ).

Third, health sociologists and social epidemiologists can significantly advance the ultimate goal of reducing health inequalities by investigating the egalitarian effects of social change. Instead of reinforcing the status quo and asking descriptive questions such as ‘What is the extent of social class inequalities in health?', researchers can make major strides toward changing unequal power relations and narrowing health inequalities by raising moral and political questions ( Sayer, 2005 ). Rather than trying to understand health inequalities in terms of individual attributes and material conditions, future work needs to shed a critical light on how health inequalities are generated and re-produced over time and place by asking ‘Should social class relations remain in their present form?' This kind of public sociology ( Burawoy, 2005 ) enables us to generate a host of new and important queries to be considered, including for example, ‘Should we repeal legal rules that give people and firms effective control over productive means and resources?' ‘How can we democratically un-structure mechanisms of domination and exploitation that allow a small number of owners power over the lives and activities of a large number of workers?' ‘How can we initiate and support social struggles that effectively modify existing power relations, which subsequently reduce the distance between exploiting and exploited class positions?' ‘How will taking action on Neo-Marxist social class locations shape and influence social determinants of health?' and ‘How would such egalitarian changes affect the well-being and health of the population?' The past two decades of research on social class and health inequalities have explored and confirmed the existence and extent of the problem. Over the next two decades, it is essential that we overcome barriers to knowledge production and translation in order to make real progress toward changing and transforming the nature of social class inequalities in health ( Muntaner et al , 2012a ).

About the Authors

Carles Muntaner, MD, PhD, is a Professor in the Faculty of Nursing, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and in the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Toronto. He is also with the Center of Research in Inner City Health (CRICH) at St Mike's Hospital in Toronto. He has conducted research on social inequalities in health in the United States, European Union, Latin America, and Western Africa, integrating the public health fields of occupational health and social epidemiology.

Edwin Ng earned his BSW and MSW degrees from the Universities of Windsor and Toronto, respectively. He completed his PhD in Social Science and Health in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. His research interests include the political determinants of population health and the Neo-Marxian concept of social class.

Haejoo Chung is an associate professor in health policy at the Korea University College of Health Sciences. She received a master's degree from the Department of Pharmacy, Seoul National University, and a PhD in health and social policy from the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health (2006). Her research deals with the political economy of health, especially the impact of welfare states on health care systems and population health.

Seth J. Prins is a PhD candidate in Epidemiology and a Psychiatric Epidemiology Training Program Fellow at Columbia University. He received an MPH in Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. His research interests include the political-economic determinants of mental illness, the criminalization of mental illness, and the medicalization of crime.

The online version of this article is available Open Access

Bartley M., Sacker A., Firth D., Fitzpatrick R. Social position, social roles and women's health in England: Changing relationships 1984–1993. Social Science & Medicine. 1999; 48 (1:99–115. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Blane D., Smith G.D., Bartley M. Social selection: What does it contribute to social class differences in health. Sociology of Health & Illness. 1993; 15 (1:1–15. [ Google Scholar ]
Borrell C., Muntaner C., Benach J., Artazcoz L. Social class and self-reported health status among men and women: What is the role of work organisation, household material standards and household labour. Social Science & Medicine. 2004; 58 (10:1869–1887. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Borrell C., et al. Immigration and self-reported health status by social class and gender: The importance of material deprivation, work organisation and household labour. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 2008; 62 (5:e7–e7. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Bourdieu P. What makes a social class? On the theoretical and practical existence of groups. Berkeley Journal of Sociology. 1987; 32 (1:1–17. [ Google Scholar ]
Burawoy M. For public sociology. American sociological review. 2005; 70 (1:4–28. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Burawoy M. Sociology as a vocation: Moral commitment and scientific imagination. Current Sociology. 2014; 62 (2:279–284. [ Google Scholar ]
Burke W., et al. Extending the reach of public health genomics: What should be the agenda for public health in an era of genome-based and ‘personalized' medicine. Genetics in Medicine. 2010; 12 (12:785–791. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chomsky N. Conditions on Transformations. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club; 1971. [ Google Scholar ]
D'Souza R.M., Strazdins L., Lim L.L., Broom D.H., Rodgers B. Work and health in a contemporary society: Demands, control, and insecurity. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 2003; 57 (11:849–854. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Dahrendorf R. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Stanford University Press; 1959. [ Google Scholar ]
De Moortel D., Palència L., Artazcoz L., Borrell C., Vanroelen C. Neo-Marxist social class inequalities in the mental well-being of employed men and women: The role of European welfare regimes. Social Science & Medicine. 2015; 128 :188–200. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Duster T. Race and reification in science. Science. 2005; 307 (5712:1050–1051. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Espelt A., et al. Inequalities in health by social class dimensions in European countries of different political traditions. International Journal of Epidemiology. 2008; 37 (5:1095–1105. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Galobardes B., Shaw M., Lawlor D.A., Smith G.D., Lynch J.2006 Indicators of socioeconomic position In: J.M. Oakes and J.S. Kaufman (eds.) Methods in Social Epidemiology San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons; 47–85. [ Google Scholar ]
Hadewijch V., Muntaner C., Vanroelen C. Structural and intermediary determinants of social inequalities in the mental well-being of European workers: A relational approach. BMC Public Health. 2014; 14 (1:938. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hernán M.A. Invited commentary: Hypothetical interventions to define causal effects – Afterthought or prerequisite. American Journal of Epidemiology. 2005; 162 (7:618–620. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hirokawa K., Tsutsumi A., Kayaba K., Jichi Medical School Cohort group Occupation and plasma fibrinogen in Japanese male and female workers: The jichi medical school cohort study. Social Science & Medicine. 2009; 68 (6:1091–1097. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hollingshead A.B., Redlich F.C. Social stratification and psychiatric disorders. American Sociological Review. 1953; 18 (2:163–169. [ Google Scholar ]
Jacoby R. The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe. New York: Basic Books; 1989. [ Google Scholar ]
Kohn M.L., Schooler C. Class, occupation, and orientation. American Sociological Review. 1969; 34 (5:659–678. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Krieger N., Williams D., Moss N. Measuring social class in US public health research: Concepts, methodologies, and guidelines. Annual Review of Public Health. 1997; 18 (1:341–378. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Macleod J., Smith G.D., Metcalfe C., Hart C. Is subjective social status a more important determinant of health than objective social status? Evidence from a prospective observational study of Scottish men. Social Science & Medicine. 2005; 61 (9:1916–1929. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Malinowski B., Minkler M., Stock L. Labor unions: A public health institution. American Journal of Public Health. 2015; 105 (2:261–271. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Marshall G., Newby H., Rose D., Vogler C. Social Class in Modern Britain. London: Routledge; 2005. [ Google Scholar ]
McNamee S., Vanneman R. The class structure of job rewards: A canonical analysis. Work and Occupations. 1987; 14 (2:190–215. [ Google Scholar ]
Molnar A., et al. Protocol: Realist synthesis of the impact of unemployment insurance policies on poverty and health. Evaluation and Program Planning. 2015; 48 :1–9. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Wolyniec P., McGrath J., Pulver A.E. Psychotic inpatients' social class and their first admission to state or private psychiatric Baltimore hospitals. American Journal of Public Health. 1994; 84 (2:287–289. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Parsons P.E. Income, social stratification, class, and private health insurance: A study of the Baltimore metropolitan area. International Journal of Health Services. 1996; 26 (4:655–671. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Stormes J. Social class and behavior: Simultaneous class positions yield different amounts of income. Psychological Reports. 1996; 79 (2:379–382. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., et al. Social class, assets, organizational control and the prevalence of common groups of psychiatric disorders. Social Science & Medicine. 1998; 47 (12:2043–2053. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Lynch J., Oates G.L. The social class determinants of income inequality and social cohesion. International Journal of Health Services. 1999; 29 (4:699–732. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Eaton W.W., Diala C.C. Social inequalities in mental health: A review of concepts and underlying assumptions. Health. 2000; 4 (1:89–113. [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Lynch J. Social capital, class gender and race conflict, and population health: An essay review of bowling alone's implications for social epidemiology. International Journal of Epidemiology. 2002; 31 (1:261–167. [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., et al. The associations of social class and social stratification with patterns of general and mental health in a Spanish population. International Journal of Epidemiology. 2003; 32 (6:950–958. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., et al. Capitalists, managers, professionals and mortality: Findings from the Barcelona social class and all cause mortality longitudinal study. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health. 2009; 37 (8:826–838. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., et al. Employment relations, social class and health: A review and analysis of conceptual and measurement alternatives. Social Science & Medicine. 2010; 71 (12:2130–2140. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Benach J., Tarafa G., Chung H. The welfare state and global health: Latin America, the Arab world and the politics of social class. Gaceta Sanitaria. 2011; 25 (6:445–447. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Chung C., Murphy K., Ng E. Barriers to knowledge production, knowledge translation, and urban health policy change: Ideological, economic, and political considerations. Journal of Urban Health. 2012a; 89 (6:915–924. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Rai N., Ng E., Chung H.2012b Social class, politics, and the Spirit level: Why income inequality remains unexplained and unsolved International Journal of Health Services 42 (3L369–381. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Ng E., Vanroelen C., Christ S., Eaton W.W.2013 Social stratification, social closure, and social class as determinants of mental health disparities In: C.S. Aneshensel, J.C. Phelan and A. Bierman (eds.) Handbook of the Sociology of Mental Health 2nd edn.Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer; 205–227. [ Google Scholar ]
Muntaner C., Ng E., Prins S.J., Bones-Rocha K., Espelt A., Chung H. Social class and mental health: Testing exploitation as a relational determinant of depression. International Journal of Health Services. 2015; 45 (2:265–284. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Navarro V. What we mean by social determinants of health. International Journal of Health Services. 2009; 39 (3:423–441. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Ng E., Muntaner C. A critical approach to macrosocial determinants of population health: Engaging scientific realism and incorporating social conflict. Current Epidemiology Reports. 2014; 1 (1:27–37. [ Google Scholar ]
O'Campo P., Dunn J.R. Rethinking Social Epidemiology: Towards a Science of Change. Berlin, DE, Germany: Springer Science & Business Media; 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
O'Campo P., et al. Social welfare matters: A realist review of when, how, and why unemployment insurance impacts poverty and health. Social Science & Medicine. 2015; 132 :88–94. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
O'Connor A. Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
Piketty T. Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University; 2014. [ Google Scholar ]
Poulantzas N.A. Classes in Contemporary Capitalism. London: Verso; 1978. [ Google Scholar ]
Prins S.J., Bates L. M., Keyes K. M., Muntaner C. Anxious? Depressed? You might be suffering from capitalism: Contradictory class locations and the prevalence of depression and anxiety in the United States. Sociology of Health and Illness. in press. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
Robinson R.V., Kelley J. Class as conceived by marx and dahrendorf: Effects on income inequality and politics in the United States and Great Britain. American Sociological Review. 1979; 44 (1:38–58. [ Google Scholar ]
Rocha K.B., et al. Clase social, desigualdades en salud y conductas relacionadas con la salud de la población trabajadora en Chile. Rev Panam Salud Pública. 2013; 33 (5:340–348. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Rocha K.B., et al. Social class, psychosocial occupational risk factors, and the association with self-rated health and mental health in Chile. Cad Saude Publica. 2014; 30 (10:2219–2234. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Roemer J.(ed.) (1986 Analytical Marxism Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press [ Google Scholar ]
Rose G. Sick individuals and sick populations. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 1985; 79 (1:990–996. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Sayer A. The Moral Significance of Class. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 2005. [ Google Scholar ]
Scambler G. Critical realism, sociology and health inequalities: Social class as a generative mechanism and its media of enactment. Journal of Critical Realism. 2001; 4 (1:35–42. [ Google Scholar ]
Scambler G., Higgs P., Jones I.R.2002 A critical realist perspective on class relations and health inequalities In: J.J. Kronenfeld (ed.) Social Inequalities, Health and Health Care Delivery (Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Volume 20) Bingley, West Yorkshire, England: Emerald Group Publishing Limited; 57–75. [ Google Scholar ]
Schwalbe M.L., Staples C.L. Class position, work experience, and health. International Journal of Health Services. 1986; 16 (4:583–602. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Standing G. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: A & C Black; 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
Tugas R. Escac al Poder. L'auge de l'esquerra alternativa. Barcelona, Spain: Deu i Onze Edicions; 2014. [ Google Scholar ]
van Draanen J., et al. Meaningful inclusion of consumers in research and service delivery. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal. 2013; 36 (3:180–186. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Veenstra G. Neo-Marxist class position and socioeconomic status: Distinct or complementary determinants of health. Critical Public Health. 2006; 16 (2:111–129. [ Google Scholar ]
Veenstra G. Social space, social class and Bourdieu: Health inequalities in British Columbia, Canada. Health & Place. 2007; 13 (1:14–31. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health . Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity Through Action on the Social Determinants of Health: Commission on Social Determinants of Health Final Report. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2008. [ Google Scholar ]
Wohlfarth T. Socioeconomic inequality and psychopathology: Are socioeconomic status and social class interchangeable. Social Science & Medicine. 1997; 45 (3:399–410. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Wohlfarth T., van den Brink W. Social class and substance use disorders: The value of social class as distinct from socioeconomic status. Social Science & Medicine. 1998; 47 (1:51–58. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Wolff R., Resnick S. Power, property, and class. Socialist Review. 1986; 16 (2:97–124. [ Google Scholar ]
Wright E.O. Class Structure and Income Determination. New York: Academic; 1979. [ Google Scholar ]
Wright E.O. Classes. London: Verso; 1985. [ Google Scholar ]
Wright E.O. Interrogating Inequality. Essays on Class Analysis, Socialism and Marxism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company; 1994. [ Google Scholar ]
Wright E.O. Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1997. [ Google Scholar ]
Wright E.O. The comparative project on class structure and class consciousness: An overview. Acta Sociologica. 1989; 32 (1:3–22. [ Google Scholar ]
Wright E.O. Class Counts, Student Edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 2000. [ Google Scholar ]
Wright E.O., Perrone L. Marxist class categories and income inequality. American Sociological Review. 1977; 42 (1:32–55. [ Google Scholar ]

Final dates! Join the tutor2u subject teams in London for a day of exam technique and revision at the cinema. Learn more →

Reference Library

Collections

See what's new
All Resources
Student Resources
Assessment Resources
Teaching Resources
CPD Courses
Livestreams

Study notes, videos, interactive activities and more!

Sociology news, insights and enrichment

Currated collections of free resources

Browse resources by topic

All Sociology Resources

Resource Selections

Currated lists of resources

Study Notes

Conflict Theories of Education: Willis on Anti-School Cultures

Last updated 26 Nov 2019

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share by Email

Paul Willis takes a different Marxist view on how school prepares children for the workplace from that of Bowles and Gintis.

For Willis, the experience of being a working-class “lad” at school prepares young people for the boredom of manual labour by allowing them to develop a distinct set of values which serve as a coping mechanism.

He writes about an anti-school subculture, but it is the culture of “having a laff” and entertaining themselves which prepares them for the tedium of work, rather than developing the qualities of subservience and passivity. While doing the right thing and working hard is what is rewarded by the school, it is not what is rewarded by the anti-school subculture, and it is the appreciation of peers that provides a more important external reward than grades and qualifications for pupils who do not expect to do well. For “the lads” the worst thing you could be is an “ear’ole” (a teacher’s pet or swot)

The outcome, however, is the same: an easily exploitable workforce which serves the interests of capitalism. For Willis, “the Lads” – at work – have their little rebellions through schoolyard humour and mockery, which contributes to there never being the sort of big rebellion that could really threaten the capitalist system.

This is a neo-Marxist idea. It does not argue explicitly that the schools deliberately and consciously set out to prepare the workers for their coming exploitation. Willis, like other neo-Marxists, would recognise that a lot of teachers, even some educational managers and educational policy-makers, are not deliberately working on behalf of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system and indeed some might consciously seek not to.

However, the class nature of capitalist society makes it very difficult to work against the exploitative nature of the system or even to recognise your own function in facilitating that exploitation. This can also be seen in neo-Marxist theories that see the education system’s principle function as being reproducing inequality. It is not necessarily that teachers set out to ensure working-class pupils fail and middle-class pupils succeed, but it happens.

Essential Revision Resources for Education (AQA A-Level Sociology)

Education Revision Guide for AQA A-Level Sociology

Printed Resource

Education Revision Flashcards for AQA A-Level Sociology

Education Exam Skills Workbook for AQA A-Level Sociology

Pro-school subculture
Anti-school subculture

Just the facts.

16th May 2017

Example Answer for Question 1 Paper 1: AS Sociology, June 2017 (AQA)

Exam Support

Example Answer for Question 2 Paper 1: AS Sociology, June 2017 (AQA)

Example answer for question 3 paper 1: as sociology, june 2017 (aqa), example answer for question 4 paper 1: as sociology, june 2017 (aqa), example answer for question 5 paper 1: as sociology, june 2017 (aqa), example answer for question 6 paper 1: as sociology, june 2017 (aqa), education: a level webinar video 2017.

Topic Videos

Our subjects

› Criminology
› Economics
› Geography
› Health & Social Care
› Psychology
› Sociology
› Teaching & learning resources
› Student revision workshops
› Online student courses
› CPD for teachers
› Livestreams
› Teaching jobs

Boston House, 214 High Street, Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, LS23 6AD Tel: 01937 848885

› Contact us
› Terms of use
› Privacy & cookies

It appears you don't have a PDF plugin for this browser. click here to download the PDF file.

What’s so Marxist about Marxist Educational Theory?

Derek R. Ford

DePauw University

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 world-historic and ongoing transformations inaugurated particularly since the beginning of the 20th century by erasing, discounting or, denouncing them. I argue the primary factors inhibiting educational researchers: Anticommunism. The global revolutionary era led largely by revolutionary communists contains the most fruitful explanations of those conditions and connections (and the historical legacies accounting for mass movements in the U.S. today, like the historic 2020 uprising against the War on Black America). This rich and dynamic legacy is what can get educational scholarship beyond the cages of academia. After outlining the interconnection between anticommunism and anti-Black racism as the contours of master narratives, I demonstrate how anticommunism continues to hold education’s potential contributions to the struggle back while accounting for the material conditions responsible for the absence of revolutionary theory and practice and the overwhelming surplus of theories critical of revolution in the university today. I demonstrate how anti-Black racism in the U.S. is tethered to anticommunism and how Leninism provides the theoretical and practical link uniting the global struggle of the oppressed and creating the Black and indigenous-led communist movement, contending struggles against white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism depend on a rejection of anticommunism by turning to Black communist Claudia Jones.

https://scholarship.depauw.edu/context/educ_facpubs/article/1068/viewcontent

http://scholarship.depauw.edu/educ_facpubs/67

5126ea5a-ec1c-4fff-b15e-bd138ab1329e

This is the Author Accepted Manuscript version, for the version of record follow the DOI link.

Ford, D. (2024). What’s so marxist about marxist educational theory? Policy Futures in Education (online first), 1-18.

https://doi.org/10.1177/14782103241232839

Derek Ford's ORCID record

https://scholarship.depauw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&context=educ_facpubs

IMAGES

The Marxist Perspective on Education
The philosophy of education. (Chapter 5)
The Neo-Marxist Perspective on The Media
PPT
Lesson 9- Neo-Marxist theory- A Level sociology AQA, Crime and Deviance
PPT

VIDEO

Tibet's New Governor Calls Tibet "Harmonious"
Neo-Marxist Contradiction On Disparities #voddiebaucham #marxist #communism #socialism #capitalism
Neo Marxism and Leftist Totalitarianism Today
Marxism: Unveiling the Foundation of Revolutionary Ideology
The Rock is a Neo-Marxist ☭
Marxism vs Queer Theory

COMMENTS

Neo-Marxism
e. Neo-Marxism is a collection of Marxist schools of thought originating from 20th-century approaches [1] [2] [3] to amend or extend [4] Marxism and Marxist theory, typically by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism. Neo-Marxism comes under the broader framework of ...
Neo-Marxist Sociology of Education
Education, Culture, and Class Power: Basil Bernstein and the Neo-Marxist Sociology of Education Beyond the Automaticity Thesis In The German /deo/ogy, Marx articulated one of his most famous claims. Paraphrased, it essentially says that "The ruling class will give its ideas the form of universality and represent them as the only ratio-
The Marxist Perspective on Education
According to the Marxist perspective on education, the system performs three functions for these elites: It reproduces class inequality - middle class children are more likely to succeed in school and go onto middle class jobs than working class children. It legitimates class inequality - through the 'myth of meritocracy'.
Education, Social Class and Marxist Theory
The chapter then presents some of the main concepts of Marxist social class analysis and relates these concepts to Marxist theory of education. It concludes by differentiating between two types of Marxist analysis—Structuralist neo-Marxism and Culturalist neo-Marxism, and by arguing for a revolutionary Marxist programme to replace, overcome ...
Neo-Marxist Theory
Neo-Marxist Theory. De-skilling in neo-Marxist theory is a form of social control of workers through a minute division of labor, with organizing work into simple, repetitive tasks involving few mental reflections. ... Thus, if modernist theories sought to improve education as part of a global modernization project, ...
Evaluating Neo-Marxist Views on Education
In this study note we briefly explore some potential evaluation points on neo-Marxist views on education. One potential problem for all Marxist theories of education is that people who work in education are famously left-wing biased (!) and often got into education specifically to do the opposite of what they are accused of in these theories.
Theoretical perspectives of education: Neo-Marxist
Neo-Marxism is a theoretical approach that builds upon traditional Marxist theory, yet critically deviates from it in significant ways. They share the belief that society is class-based and conflict-centric, recognising the role that education plays in maintaining social inequalities. Reproduction theory is central to Neo-Marxist thought ...
A Critical Reassessment of Marxian Base-superstructure ...
validity of the Marxist claim on the inseparable link between proper education and a radical political praxis. For these purposes this study employs a typology of neo-Marxian theories in order to clarify some of the basic assumptions regarding the base-superstructure concept implicit in these theories. Four broad categories are identified.
The Changing Nature of Neo-Marxist Theory: A Metatheoretical Analysis
Three conclusions are derived from this analysis. First, the classic schools of neo-Marxist theory are declining in significance. Second, Marx's own ideas are also of decreasing importance. Third, the post-Marxists are drawing increasingly less on Marx's ideas and neo-Marxist theories and more on other intellectual traditions.
The Changing Nature of Neo-Marxist Theory: A Metatheoretical Analysis
from this analysis. First, the classic schools of neo-Marxist theory are declining in significance. Second, Marx's own ideas are also of decreasing. importance. Third, the post-Marxists are drawing increasingly less on Marx's ideas and neo-Marxist theories and more on other intellectual traditions.
Education, Culture, and Class Power: Basil Bernstein and the Neo
z zyx 127 EDUCATION, CULTURE, AND CLASS POWER: BASIL BERNSTEIN AND THE NEO-MARXIST SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION Michael W. Apple Department of Curriculum and Instruction The University of Wisconsin-Madison zyxwvuts BEYONDTHE AUTOMATICITY THESIS In The German Ideology, Marx articulates one of his most famous claims.
(PDF) Marxism and Educational Theory
Since the mid-1990s, Marxist educational theory, research, and policy analysis has experienced an upturn. By exploring Marxist theory in the age of neoliberalism, this edited collection examines the dialectic between race and power in education. The essays embody an underlying set of principles and practices that seek to maximize inclusiveness ...
Evaluate the Marxist View of the Role of Education in Society
Evaluating the Marxist Perspective on Education. Traditional Marxist views of education are extremely dated, even the the new 'Neo-Marxist' theory of Willis is 40 years old, but how relevant are they today? To criticise the idea of the Ideological State Apparatus, Henry Giroux, says the theory is too deterministic.
Critical Education, Social Democratic Education, Revolutionary Marxist
Using Marxist theory in general, and Marxist educational theory in particular, the chapter points the way, identifying some of the key parameters, areas of policy, in which Marxist educators can and do engage in public pedagogy and activism within education institutions. ... quasi-postmodernist, and culturalist neo-Marxist theory. The British ...
Critical theory as Post-Marxism: The Frankfurt School and beyond
Notable critical theorists and theories of Marxism, Neo-Marxism, and Post-Marxism: The legacy of humanism in the critical European tradition ... and education scholars. A recent theme in political economy among critical theory has been the critique of Neo-Liberalism that was begun in the late lectures of Foucault. Among the scholars in critical ...
Searching for Missing Links: neo‐Marxist theories of education
Since the appearance of Bowles & Gintis' (1976) 'correspondence thesis', neo‐Marxist theorizing about educational change has gone in several directions. Different approaches have emphasized capitalist reproduction requirements, contradictions between these requirements and the democratic state, hegemony theory and processes of class ...
The implications of the thinking paradigms of British neo-Marxism
Educational Philosophy and Theory Volume 54, 2022 - Issue 11. Submit an article Journal homepage. 306 Views 0 ... British neo-Marxism is a novel theory that emerged and developed in the UK during the period from 1950s to 1980s. It encompasses issues of history, culture, politics, society, technology, and outer space as it continues to broaden ...
Marxism and Educational Theory
Marxism and Educational Theory compellingly and informatively propels the debate forward in the pursuit of that socialist future. In that quest, suggestions are made to connect theoretical issues with the more practical concerns of the school and the classroom. With a specially written Foreword by Peter McLaren, this timely book will be of ...
Two decades of Neo-Marxist class analysis and health inequalities: A
The term 'social class' is widely used in health inequalities research. Nonetheless, it remains a contested concept. Broadly speaking, three major uses of 'social class' coexist in the health field: pragmatic, Neo-Weberian and Neo-Marxist ( Muntaner et al, 2000 ). The pragmatic approach has typically focused on simple stratification ...
From Ought to Is: A Neo-Marxist Perspective on the Use and ...
A Neo-Marxist Perspective on the Use and Misuse of the Culture Construct Diana Baumrind University of California at Berkeley, Calif., USA Key Words Culture W Ethics W Kohlberg W Morality W Neo-Marxist Standpoint Theory W Oppression Abstract Neo-Marxist Standpoint Theory is concerned with the application of moral judg-ment to praxis.
Marxist Perspective on Education
Marxist Views on Education. Although Marx and Engels wrote little on education, Marxism has educational implications that have been dissected by many. In essence, Marxists believe that education can both reproduce capitalism and have the potential to undermine it. However, in the current system, education works mainly to maintain capitalism and ...
Searching for Missing Links: neo‐Marxist theories of education
Since the appearance of Bowles & Gintis' (1976) 'correspondence thesis', neo‐Marxist theorizing about educational change has gone in several directions. Different approaches have emphasized capitalist reproduction requirements, contradictions between these requirements and the democratic state, hegemony theory and processes of class formation. While studies with affinity to a Marxist ...
Conflict Theories of Education: Willis on Anti-School Cultures
This is a neo-Marxist idea. It does not argue explicitly that the schools deliberately and consciously set out to prepare the workers for their coming exploitation. ... This can also be seen in neo-Marxist theories that see the education system's principle function as being reproducing inequality. It is not necessarily that teachers set out ...
What's so Marxist about Marxist Educational Theory?
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 deb..