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The Educational Limits of the Capital

ABSTRACT

Drawing on a Materialist perspective, in this paper we aim to build a critique of what we call three basic dimensions of the educational limits engendered by the sociometabolic order of the Capital, articulating the discussion of these limits to the transformative and revolutionary potential of Education. We set out from the principle that the founding contradiction of education in capitalism is to present itself as a system of reproduction of capitalism’s framework of values and practices while it constitutes itself as a way of contesting this same ideological structure. In conclusion, we indicate that the limits of education must be conceived as part of the Capital’s complex ideological framework of reference, and not just as isolated elements.

Keywords
Education; Capitalism; Marxism

RESUMO

A partir da perspectiva do Materialismo Histórico, nosso objetivo neste artigo é construir uma crítica do que denominamos três dimensões básicas dos limites educacionais engendrados pela ordem sociometabólica do Capital, articulando a discussão desses limites ao potencial transformador e revolucionário da Educação. Partimos da concepção de que a contradição fundante da educação no Capital é apresentar-se como sistema de reprodução do quadro de valores e práticas do sistema ao mesmo tempo em que se constitui como via de contestação dessa mesma estrutura ideológica. Indicamos, em conclusão, que os limites da educação devem ser concebidos como parte do complexo quadro ideológico de referência do capital, e não apenas como elementos isolados.

Palavra-chave
Educação; Capitalismo; Marxismo

Introduction

The dramatic moment of ongoing attacks on our teachers and professors, on our research, on our students, on our friends and colleagues, whose goal is to dismantle our public and free educational institutions demands collective action. The organised destruction of education, the precariousness of teacher education and the excessive attachment to a practice that reproduces common sense claim for deep and critical theoretical reflections that go beyond what is given. Marx and Engels’s principle remains essential: “Workers of the world, unite”.

Drawing on historical materialism’s epistemological framework, we aim in this article to present an analysis of what we call the three basic dimensions of the educational limits of the Capital, articulating the discussion of these limits to the revolutionary and transformative potential of Education. We also seek to discuss the relations between these three dimensions and the papers presented in the thematic section Capitalism, State, and Education – the limits of the Capital, which has been organized by us for the journal Education & Reality.

Education and the Limits of the Capital

The founding contraction of both formal and informal education in capitalism is to present itself as a powerful system of reproduction of capitalist values, practices, symbols, signs, and meanings at the same time it constitutes itself as an arena of dispute and contestation of this very same ideological structure (Williams, 1980WILLIAMS, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso Books, 1980.; 1989). The educational limits may be organised around three basic dimensions, which are: 1) the ideological reproduction of individuals whose objectives daily reproduce the system of practices and values of this structure, guaranteeing the illusory feeling of belonging to it; 2) the role of intellectuals in the construction, maintenance, and adjustments in the economic, political, and ideological levels of this sociometabolic structure; and 3) the training of workers who are able to satisfy the system’s demands for workforce (Mészáros, 1970MÉSZÁROS, István. Marx’s Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin Press, 1970.).

The first dimension of that we conceive as educational limits of the Capital refers to the reproduction of individuals whose personal objectives are in accordance with the rules, practices, values, and meanings of the hegemonic and dominant culture (Mészáros, 1970MÉSZÁROS, István. Marx’s Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin Press, 1970.). Agencies of ideological transmission and reproduction circulate the system’s structure of values and practices that is reproduced, absorbed, and lived daily, among other forms, by the “common sense” (Williams, 1980WILLIAMS, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso Books, 1980.). Mészáros (2005, p. 400)MÉSZÁROS, István. The Power of Ideology. London; New York: ZED BOOKS LTD, 2005. argues that “[…] ‘sophisticated’ ideological systems express in their own way the same conditions of practical reification which ‘common sense’, also finds at hand and actively confirms for itself on a daily basis”.

The dominant ideology is “[…] sustained by the practical evidence of the established material structures within which people have to reproduce the material and cultural conditions of their existence and ‘feel at home as a fish in water’” (Mészáros, 2005MÉSZÁROS, István. The Power of Ideology. London; New York: ZED BOOKS LTD, 2005., p. 401). It is interesting to observe such a tautological sense of the expression “to feel a fish inside the water”. It represents a deep social and cultural naturalization of a system of practices and values that despite being the reproducer of the most varied kinds of contractions remains an incontestable dominant power of control.

The feeling of an incontestable system is only possible because these dominant practices, values and meanings in sociocultural circulation are lived as individual feelings diluted in daily life. Williams (1980, p. 39)WILLIAMS, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso Books, 1980. argues that “[if] what we learned there were merely an imposed ideology, or if it were only the isolable meanings and practices of the ruling class, […] which gets imposed on others, […] it would be […] a very much easier thing to overthrow”. That is, the system of practices, values and meanings of the dominant class is not just reproduced socially, it is appropriated, adopted by other classes as its own system of practices, values, and meanings.

The concept of a ‘sociocultural circulation of ideas’, or the reproduction of the ideological structure of the capital, represents the Marxist principle that “[the] ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual [geistige] force.” (Marx; Engels, 1968MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. A Critique of The German Ideology. Retrieved from Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org), 1968., p.26). The concept of [geistige], in Portuguese translated as [spiritual] could also be translated as “intellectual”, such as the version in English, indicating that the power of domination of the ruling class is material at the same time that it is intellectual. This means that, the maintenance and reproduction of material domination depends dialectally on its intellectual reproduction:

The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch

(Marx; Engels, 1968MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. A Critique of The German Ideology. Retrieved from Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org), 1968., p. 26).

The traditionally adopted translation of the concept [geistige/spiritual] in Portuguese offers the possibility of an analysis of the depth of the ideological roots that sustain the structure of the Capital. Ideology, in the perspective of Historical Materialism, transcends the limits of a ‘false conscience’, it is a “[…] concrete/real situation in a certain kind of society (Mészáros, 2008MÉSZÁROS, István. Filosofia, Ideologia e Ciência Social. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2008., p. 8, free translation). Williams (1980, p. 38)WILLIAMS, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso Books, 1980. emphasises that the ideological power of the practices, symbols, signs and meanings hegemonically established are not merely a set of ideas or manipulation of our conscience, it is much more complex than that, it “[…] constitutes a sense of reality for most people in the society, a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move, in most areas of their lives”.

It is in this ‘sense of a reality that is lived’ that the concept of “a spiritual [geistige] domination” could be understood, that is, the body of meanings constructed by an individual (or group of individuals) to their reality is embedded in the intellectual order of Capital, that is deeply rooted in their conscience. Conscience that is constructed upon real and concrete experiences in social life (Marx; Engels, 1968MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. A Critique of The German Ideology. Retrieved from Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org), 1968.). Specifically, “[…] men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” (Marx; Engels, 1968MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. A Critique of The German Ideology. Retrieved from Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org), 1968., p. 11). In this sense, ideology is […] a practical inescapable conscience” (Mészáros, 2008MÉSZÁROS, István. Filosofia, Ideologia e Ciência Social. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2008., p. 9, free translation).

Maria Ciavatta (2021, p. 16), in Theory and Education in the limits of Capital, argues that:

Theories, practices, experiences, and relationships with others help us understand the world in which we live. And this, hegemonically in the planet in the 21st century is the capitalist mode of production, the capital system. The norms, values, behaviours, and knowledge are part of educational processes and are part of the world in which we produce our lives.

Formal and informal educational institutions, as agencies of transmission of the dominant culture, play a role of social formation and reification of the ideological framework of the Capital. It is by means of the complex educational system that individuals “[…] adopt the overall perspectives of commodity-society as the unquestionable limits of their own aspirations” (Mészáros, 1970MÉSZÁROS, István. Marx’s Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin Press, 1970., p. 289). When individuals and groups of individuals adopt the dominant system of values and practices, they work as agents of preservation and ontological reproduction of the Capital. Therefore, “[…] the complex education system of society is also responsible for producing and reproducing the framework of values, within which the particular individuals define their own specific aims and ends”. Without negating “[…] the potentialities of the prevailing system of production” (Mészáros, 1970MÉSZÁROS, István. Marx’s Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin Press, 1970., p. 289).

Michael Wayne and Vinícius Neves de Cabral (2021), in Capitalism, Class and Meritocracy: a cross-national study between the UK and Brazil, present an analysis of meritocracy as one of the pillars capitalism’s framework of values and practices. The authors argue that:

Meritocracy is an ideology that entrenches economic, social, and historical inequalities while offering the promise of a way out of those inequalities. It individualises what are structural problems, making individuals responsible for outcomes and structures invisible to popular critique and policy reforms

(Wayne; Cabral, 2021WAYNE, Michael; CABRAL, Vinícius Neves de. Capitalismo, Classe e Meritocracia: um estudo transnacional entre o Reino Unido e o Brasil. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/QfPgJhMxBvKPg7YgnMvJwGs/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
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, p. 2).

The meritocracy ideology reiterates the social inequalities imposed on those who are not, in fact, the ruling class, while justifying it as natural and individual, concealing inequality itself and preserving the system that engenders it.

Amalgamated to this system, education reproduces these conditions by providing an educational process constrained to the limits of an individual’s class. Despite the limitations, this education still allows for some disruption and deviations from the main routes that are incorporated into the system of practices and values so that there are, once again, justifications and reiteration of the dominant social order.

The tension triggered by this process can, on one hand, foster a movement of opposition amongst those who suffer with the inequalities of the structure and, on the other hand and with greater strength, reify the suitability of the system, aiming to its conservation.

Once more, the system of practices and values is built upon meanings that distort the understanding of reality. For instance, the concealment of the structure of classes as a constitutive part of the conditions of life of the individuals.

In Class, Race and Gender Relations in the Constitution of Intellectual Disability, José Geraldo Silveira Bueno and Natália Gomes dos Santos (2021)BUENO, José Geraldo Silveira; SANTOS, Natália Gomes dos. As Relações de Classe, Raça e Gênero na Constituição da Deficiência Intelectual. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/9ncJsnMBx8VYvRxrwcGd4hs/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 12 dez. 2021.
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discuss how the concealment of the category of social class distorts the understanding of what sustains and intensifies the limits and precariousness of life imposed on certain groups of individuals. Analysing public statistics on class, race, gender, and disability, they demonstrate how the structure of the capital values certain individual ‘characteristics’, even if they are socially marked as a condition of deviation, to hide the inequalities that lie therein. The authors highlight […] “the need to overcome the abstract way of considering disability as the preponderant factor in determining the subject’s living conditions, regardless of class, race and gender” analysing “the real living conditions through data that expose the political and social macrostructure involved” (Bueno; Santos, 2021BUENO, José Geraldo Silveira; SANTOS, Natália Gomes dos. As Relações de Classe, Raça e Gênero na Constituição da Deficiência Intelectual. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/9ncJsnMBx8VYvRxrwcGd4hs/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 12 dez. 2021.
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, p. 18).

The second dimension of these limits involves the education of those who are able to successfully guide the sociometabolic reproduction of the system ideologically, politically, and economically. This group of “the elected” (Williams, 1968) of the Capital are socially recognised as “intellectuals”. They integrate a category of individuals whose responsibility, in their use of intellectual and ideological power, is to guarantee the preservation of the sociometabolic order of capital and fix possible micro fissures in the structure of the system. The concept should not be limited to an understanding of intellectuals only as writers, professors, scholars, and scientists, but it should embrace all the category of thinkers that in a way or another exert some influence on the systems of ideological circulation.

It is by means of the systems of ideological circulation – which include, but are not limited to the means of communication, sociocultural and academic-scientific manifestations, the formal and informal educational systems, and, in a way, institutionalized politics – that the intellectuals of the capital exert power of ideological reproduction. This “[…] successful reproduction of the conditions of domination cannot take place without the active intervention of powerful ideological elements” (Mészáros, 2008MÉSZÁROS, István. Filosofia, Ideologia e Ciência Social. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2008., p. 7, free translation). The successful reproduction of the conditions of domination relies on the power of co-optation of individuals who absorb this material and ideological structure as a unique and only possible form of social organisation, as we discussed above.

In contrast with those whose work demands some kind of ‘mental effort’, the intellectuals of the Capital are […] direct producers in the sphere of ideology and culture […]” (Williams, 1983WILLIAMS, Raymond. Keywords: a vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983., p. 170). The intellectuals play, therefore, a fundamental part of influence in the production and sociocultural circulation of the founding ideas of the structure of the Capital, in the processes of co-optation and/or ideological suppression of revolutionary movements and in the processes of correction of political, economic, and ideological microfissures that may threaten the ontological reproduction of the Capital.

The social and formal construction of what we call ‘intellectual’ is happens in two basic ways: I) the formation of the intellectuals of the dominant class in order to conscientiously create means of ideological reproduction (Marx; Engels, 1968MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. A Critique of The German Ideology. Retrieved from Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org), 1968.) and II) by the co-optation of working-class members who are raised to the status of an academic-intellectual elite. In this context, the concept of ‘elite’ adopts a sense of “[…] etymological association between elite and elected” (Williams, 1983WILLIAMS, Raymond. Keywords: a vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983., p. 115). It just evokes an image of “the elected among the working-class”, co-opted to serve the ideals of the Capital and the true dominant economic elite.

In the global level, the intellectual action in the reproduction of the economic structure of the Capital may be perceived in the action of agencies and organisms that impose subtle and violent political, ideological, and economic control of educational practices. On this regard, in Education and Inclusion: equity and learning as capital strategies, Rosalba Maria Cardoso Garcia and Maria Helena Michels (2021, p. 2)GARCIA, Rosalba Maria Cardoso; MICHELS, Maria Helena. Educação e Inclusão: equidade e aprendizagem como estratégias do capital. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/bkyxVHz9FYPCwRQj8KnJCsb/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 10 dez. 2021.
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point out that:

Therefore, education becomes central to the discourse of international organizations such as the World Bank and UNESCO, which already played the role of guiding sector policies in peripheral countries. […] From the 1990s onwards, these guidelines associate development with education oriented by and toward the market.

Building an illusory humanized discourse, international organisms, as educational agencies of orientation, supervision, and ideological-intellectual control, aim to elaborate and propose educational policies that preserve capitalism’s ideological power and its social order, superficially fighting structural pathologies engendered by the Capital. However, “[…] it is not a fight against the roots of the contradictory social processes that generate poverty and inequality, since they are ways instituted by the bourgeois State to manage the social risks of poverty and to channel social investments to target audiences” (Garcia; Michels, 2021GARCIA, Rosalba Maria Cardoso; MICHELS, Maria Helena. Educação e Inclusão: equidade e aprendizagem como estratégias do capital. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/bkyxVHz9FYPCwRQj8KnJCsb/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 10 dez. 2021.
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, p. 2).

At the same time, educational practices represent a possible space of resistance and critical analysis of the structure of the Capital and a place to educate intellectuals who distance themselves from the dominant ideological reproduction (Mészáros, 1970MÉSZÁROS, István. Marx’s Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin Press, 1970.; 2008; Williams, 1980WILLIAMS, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso Books, 1980.). Chomsky (2017)CHOMSKY, Noam. Quem manda no mundo? 3. ed. Tradução: Renato Marques. São Paulo: Planeta, 2017. categorizes the ‘class of the intellectuals’ in two groups: conformists and dissidents. In addition to those who openly choose a side, either as intellectual representatives of the bourgeoise or as a force of opposition to this system, there are two other categories that unfold from these. On the pole of conformists, there are those who naively adhere to the false concept of ‘(political) neutrality’ and, on the other pole, those who seek to promote ‘alternatives’ to the structure of the dominant culture (Williams, 1980WILLIAMS, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso Books, 1980.).

The myth of ideological neutrality hides a position in favor of the reproduction of the framework of values of the Capital, just like “[…] no software could be considered ‘neutral’ (or indifferent) to the purposes for which it has been devised (Mészáros, 1995MÉSZÁROS, István. Beyond Capital: towards a Theory of Transition. London: The Merlin Press, 1995., p. 742). This postulate constitutes an exercise of power that, by denying criticism and remaining in a position of ideological pseudo neutrality, reproduces the complex system of domination and control of the Capital. It is the acceptance of domination for the possibility of enjoying the crumbs of privilege.

In contraposition to this idea, it is essential to consider “[…] the sources of that which is not corporate; of those practices, experiences, meanings, values which are not part of the effective dominant culture” (Williams, 1985, p. 40). Thus, two distinct categories of “dissident intellectuals” are evoked to analysis: the alternative intellectual and the oppositional intellectual. Williams (1985, p. 40)WILLIAMS, Raymond. Keywords: a vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. indicates that “[t]here is clearly something that we can call alternative to the effective dominant culture, and there is something else that we can call oppositional, in a true sense”.

Based on this distinction, we could consider the alternative intellectual as the most far-reaching form of critical approach to the ideological limits of the system of the Capital within the system itself. It is the rash critique of the microfissures of the structure without a real critical approach to the practices and values that sustain the structure. It is the homeopathic dose to the symptoms without offering an effective treatment to the pathologies engendered by the contradictions of the sociometabolic order of the system. This is the second educational limit of the Capital.

The contradiction lies in the potential of educational practices to educate intellectuals that may act as opponents to the sociometabolic order of capital and its system of practices, values, signs, symbols, and meanings.

Dave Hill (2021, p.14)HILL, Dave. Neo-Fascismo, Capitalismo e Educadores Marxistas. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/4YcLY95WRvSy4g4bpmq4zvn/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
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argues in Neo-Fascism, Capitalism and Marxist Educators that:

The role of organic Marxist public intellectuals is crucial. Marxist public intellectuals – such as the political shop steward, or union organizer, the member of a socialist/ Marxist party or group, the teacher, the teacher educator, the youth worker – intellectualise social, political, cultural, economic matters […].

By indicating the ‘role of intellectuals in the process of intellectualising the social, political, cultural, and economic matters’, the author sheds light on the social, historical, political, and educational responsibility of intellectuals that in fact place themselves as opposing forces to the structure of the Capital. Additionally, “[…] a duty as a Revolutionary Marxist teacher is as an activist, and a recognition that political organization, programme development, intervention are necessary. What is needed is a revolution to replace, to get rid of, the capitalist economic system” (Hill, 2021HILL, Dave. Neo-Fascismo, Capitalismo e Educadores Marxistas. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/4YcLY95WRvSy4g4bpmq4zvn/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
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, p. 14).

Still on the social, historical, political, and educational responsibility of intellectuals, Chomsky (2016, p. 21)CHOMSKY, Noam. Who rules the words? UK: Hamilton House, 2016. concludes that “[…] intellectuals are typically privileged; the privilege yields opportunity, and opportunity confers responsibilities. An individual then has choices”.

These responsibilities are linked to the principle of adopting or rejecting the capitalism’s framework of values and practices. The choice to adopt and reproduce it encompasses all spheres of Capital, from its economic-philosophical principles to its violent and unscrupulous processes of control, domination, and destruction.

Upon the structure of the educational system falls the social and historical responsibility to educate individuals who adopt and reproduce, in general and in the details, the framework of values and practices of the system and the formation of the intellectuals of the dominant class that will be responsible for the sociocultural circulation of ideas and reproduction of the Capital’s system of values and practices.

Specifically, Mészáros (1970, p. 303, author’s highlights)MÉSZÁROS, István. Marx’s Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin Press, 1970. indicates that:

The present the crisis of formal education is but the ‘tip of the iceberg’. For the formal educational system of the society cannot function undisturbed unless it is in accord with the comprehensive educational structure – i.e., the specific system of effective ‘interiorization’ – of the given society.

We draw attention to the importance of considering the formal and informal systems in the macrostructural analysis of education. For both Williams (1980)WILLIAMS, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso Books, 1980. and Mészáros (1970)MÉSZÁROS, István. Marx’s Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin Press, 1970., formal education represents, therefore, only part of society’s complex educational system.

Among the ideological functions of the formal system is the training of workers who can meet the system’s labour demands for the successful continuation of “[…] the prevailing system of production” (Mészáros, 1970MÉSZÁROS, István. Marx’s Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin Press, 1970., p. 289). That is, it not only works as a mechanism for the internalization of the value system, but it trains workers who submit to “[...] capitalistically alienated social relations of production” (Mészáros, 1970MÉSZÁROS, István. Marx’s Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin Press, 1970., p. 290).

Some elements are fundamental so that the formal education may continue to reproduce passive individuals who subject themselves to the relations of production of the capitalist system. Despite so many others that could be listed, we will address two: 1) the atomization and hierarchization of the working class and 2) the dismantling of the educational system for the working class.

The Marxist analysis conceives the relationship between capital and labour as the founding contradiction of the capitalist structure (Harvey, 2014HARVEY, David. Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. New York: Apple Books; Oxford University Press, 2014.). Therefore, for the preservation of the relations of domination, given the revolutionary potential of the working class (Marx; Engels, 2008MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. Manifesto do partido comunista. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2008.), this class must be alienated, atomized, organised in a hierarchical structure, and it is essential that individuals do not recognise themselves as part of the working class (Marx, 2010MARX, Karl. Manuscritos econômico-filosóficos. Tradução, apresentação e notas: Jesus Ranieri. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2010.; Harvey, 2014HARVEY, David. Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. New York: Apple Books; Oxford University Press, 2014.; Mészáros, 2012MÉSZÁROS, István. The Necessity of Social Control. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012.). As Mészáros (2012, p. 87)MÉSZÁROS, István. The Necessity of Social Control. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012. argues:

In the course of human development, the function of social control had been alienated from the social body and transferred into capital that thus acquired the power of grouping people in a hierarchical structural/functional pattern, in accordance with the criterion of a greater or lesser share in the necessary control over production and distribution.

The ‘power of grouping people in a hierarchical pattern’ depends on the process of technical and social division of labour and, concomitantly, the economic, cultural, and social division of the working class and then its hierarchization.

In relation to the first process, Harvey (2014, p.215)HARVEY, David. Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. New York: Apple Books; Oxford University Press, 2014. elucidates that:

[by technical decision] I mean a separate task within a complex series of operations that anyone in principle can do, like minding a machine or mopping the floor, while by [social division] I mean a specialised task that only a person with adequate training or social standing can do, like a doctor, software programmer or hostess at a five-star restaurant.

Much more than the technical division, the social division of labour presupposes educational training processes for the exercise of that activity. The social division of labor, made possible due to the specialized training of the workforce to meet the productive needs of the system, atomizes the working class, and splits it into groups, “[…] in accordance with the criterion of a greater or lesser share in the necessary control over production and distribution” (Mészáros, 2012MÉSZÁROS, István. The Necessity of Social Control. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012., p. 87).

Capital’s ideological movements of alienation, atomization, agglutination and hierarchization of the members of the working class trigger a process of fragmentation of the class itself. This fragmentation becomes clearer when we take into consideration the founding contradictions of the concept of a so-called ‘middle class’ within the relations of production of capitalism. We will not linger here on the complex epistemological elements that involve the concept, but we would just like to point out some roles played by formal education in this process.

Therefore, formal education plays a role in training workers for the Capital, especially regarding the social division of labour. The hierarchization of the working class creates a false feeling of belonging to another class, a so-called ‘middle class’ that would be positioned between the ‘ruling class’ and the ‘working class’. However, it is essential to consider that the concept of ‘middle’ is to be placed between an ‘upper’ and a ‘lower’ class, given that the opposite of ‘working class’ is ‘ownership of the means of production’ (Williams, 2013WILLIAMS, Raymond. The long revolution. Cardigan: Parthian, 2013.) and not just being in a negligible economic advantage in relation to the lower classes. As Deirdre O’Neill (2021, p.12)O’NEILL, Deirdre. Mais a Temer do que Esperar: educação radical e classe trabalhadora. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/cQHrVDQ3HvTJXZ3MnXYXM5k/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
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argues, in Little to Hope and Much to Fear: radical education and the working class:

It is the middle classes that provide the dialectical dynamic of contemporary capitalism. Caught within the conflicting and contradictory pathological demands of capitalism, the professionals and managers of this class desire the bourgeois (for what they have) and fear the proletariat (for their potential).

This means, in many ways, that the formal educational system is organized within the ideological boundaries of social classes, as considered by Wayne and Cabral (2021)WAYNE, Michael; CABRAL, Vinícius Neves de. Capitalismo, Classe e Meritocracia: um estudo transnacional entre o Reino Unido e o Brasil. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/QfPgJhMxBvKPg7YgnMvJwGs/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
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. There is a meritocratic educational system that reproduces the conditions of social class through the ideological structure of its practices, values, symbols, and signs. This reproduction encompasses the dismantling of the educational system for the working class.

In Brazilian education, Chauí (2014, p. 97, free translation)CHAUÍ, Marilena. A ideologia da competência. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2014. 3 v. analyses this process during the military-bourgeois dictatorship (1964-1985):

[...] during the dictatorship, the ruling class, on the pretext of opposing subversion, but in reality, aiming to serve the interests of one of its portions (the owners of private schools), nearly destroyed public primary and secondary schools. Why could they do it? Because, in this country, education is considered a privilege, not a citizen’s right. How did they do it? Firing its best teachers, abolishing the Normal School in the training of first grade teachers, creating the shorter licentiate degrees, altering the curricula, creating unreal training courses, establishing a book policy based on the disposable and on multiple-choice tests and, of course, withdrawing funding for the maintenance and expansion of schools and, above all, scandalously reducing the salaries of the teachers.

In agreement with Chauí (2014)CHAUÍ, Marilena. A ideologia da competência. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2014. 3 v., Kamille Vaz (2021, p.13, author’s highlights)VAZ, Kamille. Professor Sem Ensino: projeto de escola e professor para educação especial (1996-2016). Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/rfyVSQ3STPtxtcpnzGt8jWv/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/rfyVSQ3...
, in Teacher Without Teaching: school and teacher project for special education (1996-2016), brings the discussion to the specific area of teacher training. The author indicates that there is “[…] a strategy for adapting workers to the demands of the labor market”. With neoliberal policies disguised as projects of social transformation:

[...] these positive speech premises, the idea of teaching professionalization gains strength among the category itself. Thus, teacher training policies, forms of hiring and remuneration were justified to make them education professionals, stimulated and qualified, but in the productivity logic of doing more with less.

The objective of the dismantling of Brazilian public schools is clear. It happens so that the school may be reduced to the task of teaching students to read and write and to train them as cheap workers for the labour market (Chauí, 2014CHAUÍ, Marilena. A ideologia da competência. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2014. 3 v.). We are currently facing a process of ongoing and intensification of this process of dismantling, disqualifying, and attacking educational institutions, as may be perceived in the analyses written by Ciavatta (2021), Hill (2021)HILL, Dave. Neo-Fascismo, Capitalismo e Educadores Marxistas. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/4YcLY95WRvSy4g4bpmq4zvn/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/4YcLY95...
, and Vaz (2021)VAZ, Kamille. Professor Sem Ensino: projeto de escola e professor para educação especial (1996-2016). Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/rfyVSQ3STPtxtcpnzGt8jWv/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/rfyVSQ3...
.

It is an ideological movement of a “[...] consciously pursued practice of the worker’s miseducation and ideological mystification, exercised in the interest of their national capital, [erecting] mountain-size obstacles to the development of labour’s international consciousness” (Mészáros, 1995MÉSZÁROS, István. Beyond Capital: towards a Theory of Transition. London: The Merlin Press, 1995., p. 115). That is, through the dismantling of public education and the ideological structuring of education within the limits of the classes, the system imposes on each individual its system of values and social, exercises an ideological control over workers, and reproduces passive acceptance among the class of the revolution. It is in this direction, that O’Neill (2021, p. 4)O’NEILL, Deirdre. Mais a Temer do que Esperar: educação radical e classe trabalhadora. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/cQHrVDQ3HvTJXZ3MnXYXM5k/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/cQHrVDQ...
argues that:

Class prejudice occurs at each level of education ensuring the working class receive a schooling that is not fit for their purpose but for the purpose of situating them within the hierarchal stratification system upon which neoliberalism is built and upon which those with power and wealth utilise education as a means to passing on that power and wealth.

This is the third educational limit of the Capital.

On the other hand, it unfolds in a fundamental contradiction of the educational system: its transformative and revolutionary potential. As explained above, at the same time that it reproduces the unscrupulous class conditions of the Capital, education – formal and informal – incorporates the possibility of promoting itself as a space for criticism, contestation, and opposition. To O’Neill (2021, p.8)O’NEILL, Deirdre. Mais a Temer do que Esperar: educação radical e classe trabalhadora. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/cQHrVDQ3HvTJXZ3MnXYXM5k/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/cQHrVDQ...
:

[...] any radical political education concerned with the relationship between class and education in the present moment must stake as its major claim the idea that a radical political education must necessarily take place away from the institutions and evaluative practices of formal schooling.

On the other hand, O’Neill’s unquestionable arguments should not serve as a justification to excuse formal education of its responsibility as an institution that should promote the critical thinking and the opposition to the ideological, economic, and cultural systems of the Capital, given that:

Developing a theoretical and practical, politically committed, radical pedagogy will take time and careful planning. To begin with the question is not so much of creating a changed world but of orientating ourselves in the direction where a changed world becomes a possibility

(O’Neill, 2021O’NEILL, Deirdre. Mais a Temer do que Esperar: educação radical e classe trabalhadora. Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 3, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/cQHrVDQ3HvTJXZ3MnXYXM5k/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 06 dez. 2021.
https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/cQHrVDQ...
, p. 15).

We may argue that the process of creating the possibility of a changed world demands support from the spaces of resistance and opposition of formal educational institutions. It is important to understand that education cannot be “[...] a training for jobs, or for making useful citizens (that is, fitting into this system)” (Williams, 1989WILLIAMS, Raymond. Resources of Hope: culture, democracy and socialism. London; New York: Verso Books, 1989., p. 14).

Final Remarks

It is significant to return to a fundamental element that constitutes the entire structure of the critique presented in this article, that “[...] the limits of capital carry with them an approach that tries to exploit even [the] vital human concerns in the service of profit-making” (Mészáros, 2012MÉSZÁROS, István. The Necessity of Social Control. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012., p. 96). This is equivalent to saying that, in the first and last instance, the entire structure of the Capital is geared towards one objective: the production and accumulation of wealth in one pole and the concomitant reproduction of poverty on the other (Marx, 2013MARX, Karl. O capital. Tradução: Rubens Enderle. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013.).

It is in the construction of a loose, paltry, and weak critique, disguised as a transformative one, that “[...] the most urgent demands of our times, directly corresponding to the vital needs of a great variety of social groups” (MÉSZÁROS, 2011MÉSZÁROS, István. Para além do capital. Tradução: Paulo Cezar Castanheira, Sérgio Lessa. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2011., p. 818) have been treated as isolated problems, when they should have been approached “[...] jointly, as parts of the overall complex that constantly reproduces them as unrealized and systematically unrealizable demands” (Mészáros, 1995MÉSZÁROS, István. Beyond Capital: towards a Theory of Transition. London: The Merlin Press, 1995., p. 700).

According to Mészáros (2008, p. 12, free translation)MÉSZÁROS, István. Filosofia, Ideologia e Ciência Social. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2008., despite the criticism, “[...] the problem remains the same, that is, how to solve ‘through the struggle’ the fundamental conflict related to the structural interest in controlling socialmetabolism as a whole [...]”, given that the proposal of Historical Materialism, not only as a theoretical-methodological framework, but as a practical opposing ideology, is the total disruption with any class society and not just the dismantling of one for the establishment of another.

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Edited by

Editor-in-charge: Carla Vasques

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    21 Jan 2022
  • Date of issue
    2021

History

  • Received
    01 Nov 2021
  • Accepted
    13 Dec 2021
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