Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Navigating The Indeterminate Relationship Between Politics And Pedagogy. A Response To "Education As Commons, Children As Commoners: The Case Study Of The Little Tree Community”, Derek R. Ford

Democracy and Education

In their article, Pechtelidis and Kioupkiolis added a case study to research at the intersection of politics, pedagogy, and the commons. Examining the Little Tree Community to deepen our understanding of how education can operate as a common practice, they raised key questions about the political possibility of subjectification in an education in the commons, leaving the question of politics and pedagogy open. Case studies in general, especially in the article format, require a delicate balance of theoretical exposition, contextual explication, data presentation, and analysis. In this response, I propose one way we might refine the politics assumed in the …

Capitalism, Migration, And Adult Education: Toward A Critical Project In The Second Language Learning Class, Alisha M.B. Heinemann, Lilia Monzó

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Migration has become both a consequence of and support structure for global racialised capitalism. A presumed source of support for the people who migrate is adult education, especially the second language learning class. However, as a state organized institution, the policies and practices that govern second-language courses serve to inculcate the ideologies and values that support a racialised capitalist system. We draw on two case examples – the U.S. and Germany – to demonstrate these entanglements. We engage Freire’s critical pedagogy wherein learning contexts encourage students to question the realities of their lives, and Foucault’s ideas regarding heterotopian places where …

Scallywag Pedagogy, Peter Mclaren, Petar Jandrić

Education Faculty Books and Book Chapters

This chapter explores the dynamic between truth and deceit in twenty-first-century transnational capitalism, emerging neo-fascist movements, and post-truth media landscapes marked by the Covid-19 pandemic and the anthropogenic bioinformational challenge. It establishes the centrality of the concept of truth in revolutionary critical pedagogy and underscores the importance of linking true words with true actions in the formation of critical praxis. Revolutionary praxis consists of the dialectical process of self and social formation, while critical educators are situated as protagonistic agents who work in and through history. Truth is therefore not about a timeless or objective state we name history. Action …

Africa And An Economy Of Universal Human Solidarity: In The Footsteps Of Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium, Laurenti Magesa

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

In his recent Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium or The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis indicated the shortcomings of capitalism, the economic order dominant in the world today. The inhuman social conditions Francis has attributed to global capitalism can be observed concretely in the lives of the peoples of the African continent. As a result, there exists within Africa itself, on the one hand, and between Africa and other regions of the world, on the other, a cavernous gap between the rich and the poor classes. The main problem is that poverty revolves around fundamental injustices in the creation, distribution, …

Latin America: When The Pope’S Economic Message Finds Home, Denise Chrispim Marin

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

When Pope Francis wrote that “we have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality”, this new “commandment” could not find a more challenging audience than in Latin America. According to United Nations Development Program (UNPD) data, Latin America was the only region in the world that has managed to reduce the income inequality in the last decade. In this same region, alternative forms of doing business are flourishing as a result of the social, cultural and environmental engagement of old and new companies, either for the sake of their image or for their own conviction. …

Economy Of Exclusion: Global Perspectives On Pope Francis On Capitalism, Charles Clark

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

Twenty-eight years after the fall of communism and final victory of capitalism, there is increasing unease with the ideology and lived reality of capitalism around the world, and even in America (the Cold War victor). While it is impossible for any one entry to fully represent a continent’s perspective, it is hoped that geographic diversity will also reflect the diversity in the lived experience of capitalism. In challenging capitalism, Pope Francis is thus joining a long tradition of popes who have critiqued both the ideal and the reality of it. The values of capitalism are those that led the rich …

Revolution And Education, Lilia D. Monzó, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Denied the right to recognize patterns of violence and their relationship to class and specifically to the capitalist mode of production through an institutionalized historical amnesia, we live our lives as mere passengers on a train that stops at death’s door. In the self-proclaimed greatest super power, the United States, the mythical alliance to democracy serves to obfuscate its systematic plundering of life and earth in service to the transnational capitalist class. We have been brainwashed through state and corporate-sponsored lies, myth, and a national zealotry to forget and continue to repeat the atrocities of our past. We have been …

Comrade Jesus: An Epistolic Manifesto, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Set against the backdrop of the contemporary crisis of capitalism and world-historical events, this article examines the advance of globalized imperialism from the perspective of a Marxist-humanist approach to pedagogy known as “revolutionary critical pedagogy” enriched by liberation theology. It is written as an epistolic manifesto to the transnational capitalist class, demanding that those who willingly serve its interests reconsider their allegiance and calling for a planetary revolution in the way that we both think about capitalism and how education and religion serves to reproduce it at the peril of both students and humanity as a whole.

A Theory Without A Movement, A Hope Without A Name: The Future Of Marxism In A Post-Marxist World, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Just as Marx's insights into capitalism have been most strikingly vindicated by the rise of neoliberalism and the near-collapse of the world economy, Marxism as social movement has become bereft of support. Is there any point in people who find Marx's analysis useful in clinging to the term "Marxism" - which Marx himself rejected -- at time when self-identified Marxist organizations and societies have collapsed or renounced the identification, and Marxism own working class constituency rejects the term? I set aside bad reasons to give on "Marxism," such as that the theory is purportedly refuted, that its adoption leads necessarily …

In Defence Of Exploitation, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

The concept of exploitation is thought to be central to Marx's Critique of capitalism. John Roemer, an analytical (then-) Marxist economist now at Yale, attacked this idea in a series of papers and books in the 1970s-1990s, arguing that Marxists should be concerned with inequality rather than exploitation -- with distribution rather than production, precisely the opposite of what Marx urged in The Critique of the Gotha Progam.

This paper expounds and criticizes Roemer's objections and his alternative inequality based theory of exploitation, while accepting some of his criticisms. It may be viewed as a companion paper to my What's …

The Paradox Of Ideology, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a …