DOCSLIB.ORG

Challenging the Dominant Neo-Liberal Discourse

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Challenging the Dominant Neo-Liberal Discourse EMERY J. HYSLOP-MARGISON AND ALAN M. SEARS CHALLENGING THE DOMINANT NEO-LIBERAL DISCOURSE From Human Capital Learning to Education for Civic Engagement INTRODUCTION Neo-liberalism has dramatically shifted the context of contemporary society by dismantling the public mechanisms that previously protected individuals from the ravages of ‘capitalism with the gloves off’ (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2000, p. 26). Within the sphere of education, public schools and universities have not escaped the influence of neo-liberal policies, as these institutions are focused more and more on human capital development and far less on critical inquiry into the economic, social and political conditions that lie at the heart of democratic citizenship. Universities, once a bastion of social critique and intellectual freedom, face increasing pressure to conform to the dictates of neo-liberal regimes and a corporate hegemony that places profit over people (Chomsky, 2002). In this chapter and in response to this trend, the authors argue that educators must mount a more concerted resistance to the myriad of contemporary challenges to authentic citizenship education. We propose that meaningful democratic dialogue requires revealing neo-liberal ideologies to students and reclaiming such educational concepts as lifelong learning, critical thinking and literacy as primary democratic learning practices (Hyslop-Margison & Sears, 2006). THE NEO-LIBERAL CONTEXT: PRIVATE PROFIT AS A PUBLIC GOOD The 1970s witnessed a dramatically shifting political and economic paradigm among virtually all industrialised countries. These nations, including the US, Canada, Great Britain and other members of the then G7, were about to suffer a series of crippling recessions that continued throughout the decade. In Das Kapital Marx accurately predicted that capitalism, by its very nature, experiences inexorable and recurring crises of over-accumulation that inevitably result in unavoidable cycles of economic decline (Marx, 1933). In periods of over- accumulation like the 1970s, capital becomes so plentiful that industry cannot dispose of its product profitably and production is therefore correspondingly reduced. The tightening of consumer spending through increased interest rates results in widespread job losses among the working class members of society. The M.A. Peters, A. Britton and H. Blee (Eds.), Global Citizenship Education: Philosophy, Theory and Pedagogy, 299–315. © 20087 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. EMERY J. HYSLOP-MARGISON AND ALAN M. SEARS economy eventually recovers from each over-accumulation crisis but with each recovery the entire cycle begins all over again with every subsequent collapse, according to Marx, more serious than its predecessor. The economic fallout from the over-accumulation crisis of the 1970s and early 1980s impacted negatively on many citizens of the world’s industrialised democracies. As industry limited production and lending institutions tightened the reins on available capital, mass layoffs of workers throughout the manufacturing and transportation sectors occurred to protect corporate profits. Interest rates witnessed a significant jump that in turn prompted a dramatic increase in the number of personal and small business bankruptcies (Hyslop-Margison & Welsh, 2003). One noted economist describes the fiscal decline of the 1970s as ‘a disaster that would rival the great crash of 1929’ (Mahar, 2003, p. 39). Many members of the working class lost their jobs, homes and savings as they struggled to carve out a new niche for themselves in the emerging leaner, and decidedly meaner, neo- liberal order. Neo-liberalism has not only redefined the role of the democratic citizen but also our understanding of what constitutes the national or state interest. As the Cold War faded with a triumphant capitalist victory, most notably symbolised by the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the challenges facing Western democracies became increasingly viewed in economic terms rather than in political or moral ones. Success no longer depended on winning hearts and minds from communism to capitalism but in maintaining the economic stature and advantage of the corporate class. The complete collapse of Eastern European and Soviet communism removed the only substantial obstacle to unfettered capitalism. With the spectre of socialism all but vanished from the political horizon, capital was free to reach into the far corners of the globe for new exploitative opportunities. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels (1998) anticipated this global assault by observing that, The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. (p. 40) In the two decades preceding the 1970s, governments from industrialised countries adopted a range of policies and programmes that enhanced quality of life for many of their most vulnerable citizens. In Canada, unemployment insurance programmes, national healthcare and enhanced social assistance programmes protected the most susceptible members of the population from slipping below subsistence levels of income. In the US, where the welfare state was far less instantiated in a national consciousness founded on romanticised notions of rugged 300 .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism. Introduction
    tripleC 19 (1): 1-14, 2021 http://www.triple-c.at Engels@200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism. Introduction. Christian Fuchs University of Westminster, [email protected], http://fuchs.uti.at, @fuchschristian Abstract: This piece is the introduction to the special issue “Engels@200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism” that the journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique published on the occasion of Friedrich Engels’s 200th birthday on 28 November 2020. The introduction introduces Engels’s life and works and gives an overview of the special issue’s contributions. Keywords: Friedrich Engels, 200th birthday, anniversary, digital capitalism, Karl Marx Date of Publication: 28 November 2020 CC-BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons License, 2021. 2 Christian Fuchs 1. Friedrich Engels’s Life Friedrich Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen, a city in North Rhine- Westphalia, Germany, that has since 1929 formed a district of the city Wuppertal. In the early 19th century, Barmen was one of the most important manufacturing centres in the German-speaking world. He was the child of Elisabeth Franziska Mauritia Engels (1797-1873) and Friedrich Engels senior (1796-1860). The Engels family was part of the capitalist class and operated a business in the cotton manufacturing industry, which was one of the most important industries. In 1837, Engels senior created a business partnership with Peter Ermen called Ermen & Engels. The company operated cotton mills in Manchester (Great Britain) and Engelskirchen (Germany). Other than Marx, Engels did not attend university because his father wanted him to join the family business so that Engels junior already at the age of 16 started an ap- prenticeship in commerce.
    [Show full text]
  • 150 Years Karl Marx's “Capital”
    150 years Karl Marx’s “Capital” Reflections for the 21st century INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 14-15.1.2017 | Olympia Hall – Garden of Zappio Athens - Greece 2 150 YEARS KARL MARX’S “CAPITAL” 150 ΧΡΌΝΙΑ ΚΑΡΛ ΜΑΡΞ ΤΟ ΚΕΦΆΛ150 YEARSΆΙΟ KARL MARX’S “CAPITAL” 150 years Karl Marx’s “Capital” Reflections for the 21st century INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 14-15.1.2017 Olympia Hall – Garden of Zappio Athens - Greece CONTENTS PREFACE . 9 INTRODUCTION ◊ John Milios . 11 New Readings and New Texts: Marx’s Capital after MEGA2* Michael Heinrich. 15 Old readings ◊ New readings since the 1960s ◊ New insights from new texts in MEGA2 ◊ Not one, but two critical projects since 1857 ◊ The disparate character of Capital manuscripts ◊ Value theory ◊ The law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall ◊ Crisis theory after 1865 Comments: Dimitris Papafotiou . 26 Money in Marx: from value-form analysis to an understanding of modern capitalism Spyros Lapatsioras and Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos . 35 1. Money, commodity, and value-form ◊ 2. Credit-money: money as a means of payment ◊ 3. The form of capital ◊ 4. Money as capital ◊ 5. Derivatives ◊ 6. Epilogue: the dynamics of contemporary capitalism ◊ References Comments: Christos Vallianos . 55 If you don’t understand the Second Product, you understand nothing about Capital Michael A. Lebowitz . 63 Capitalism as an organic system ◊ The fearful symmetry of hats and men ◊ Marx’s plan ◊ The missing second product Comments: George Economakis . 82 1. The ‘second product’ in Capital ◊ 2. Wages in Capital and the “symmetry” of hats and men ◊ 3. An initial critical commentary ◊ 4. The issue of the real wage as a set amount of means of subsistence in Marx and the ‘Ricardian Default’ ◊ 5.
    [Show full text]
  • Anti-Duhring
    Friedrich Engels Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science Written: September 1876 - June 1878; Published: in Vorwärts, Jan 3 1877-July 7 1878; Published: as a book, Leipzig 1878; Translated: by Emile Burns from 1894 edition; Source: Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring. Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science, Progress Publishers, 1947; Transcribed: [email protected], August 1996; Proofed and corrected: Mark Harris 2010. Formerly known as Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, Engels’ Anti-Dühring is a popular and enduring work which, as Engels wrote to Marx, was an attempt “to produce an encyclopaedic survey of our conception of the philosophical, natural-science and historical problems.” Marx and Engels first became aware of Professor Dühring with his December 1867 review of Capital, published in Ergänzungsblätter. They exchanged a series of letters about him from January-March 1868. He was largely forgotten until the mid-1870s, at which time Dühring entered Germany's political foreground. German Social-Democrats were influenced by both his Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Sozialismus and Cursus der Philosophie als streng wissenschaftlicher Weltanschauung und Lebensgestaltung. Among his readers were included Johann Most, Friedrich Wilhelm Fritzsche, Eduard Bernstein – and even August Bebel for a brief period. In March 1874, the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party paper Volksstaat ran an anonymous article (actually penned by Bebel) favorably reviewing one of Dühring's books. On both February 1 and April 21, 1875, Liebknecht encouraged Engels to take Dühring head-on in the pages of the Volksstaat. In February 1876, Engels fired an opening salvo with his Volksstaat article “Prussian Vodka in the German Reichstag”.
    [Show full text]
  • Nomination Form
    International Memory of the World Register Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, draft manuscript page, and Das Kapital. Erster Band, Karl Marx’s personal annotated copy (The Netherlands and Germany) 2012-21 1.0 Summary (max 200 words) The Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (Communist Manifesto, 1848) and Das Kapital. Erster Band (Capital. Volume 1, 1867) are two of the most important publications of the 19th century, hugely influential to the present day. Both were written by Karl Marx, in cooperation with Friedrich Engels. Both were translated in practically every language, and published world-wide. These writings had a tremendous impact on the development of socialist, communist and other revolutionary movements throughout the 19th and 20st century. In recent years, Marx is recognized for his deep insights into the mechanisms of economic crises. The Manifest and the first volume of Das Kapital are textbook examples of the vulnerability of documentary heritage. The original manuscripts for both publications were lost. One remaining page of a draft version of the Manifest and Marx’s personal annotated copy of Das Kapital are the nearest equivalents. Marx’s and Engels’ remaining papers made a difficult and dangerous journey before arriving in safe storage with good conditions for access. They are being studied intensively to the present day in order to discover how these extraordinarily important publications developed, and to establish the exact words behind the many interpretations. 2.0 Nominator 2.1 Name of nominator (person or organization) a) Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (International Institute of Social History, IISH), Amsterdam b) The German Commission for UNESCO 2.2 Relationship to the nominated documentary heritage a) Custodian of the nominated items b) Initiator of this nomination idea 2.3 Contact person(s) (to provide information on nomination) a) Prof.
    [Show full text]
  • Review Articles / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 167–210 Karl Marx, Das Kapital. Kritik Der Politischen Ökonomie, Dritter B
    Review Articles / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 167–210 195 Karl Marx, Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Dritter Band, Hamburg 1894, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Gesamtausgabe (MEGA). Zweite Abteilung, Band 15, hg. von der Internationalen Marx Engels Stiftung Amsterdam. Bearbeitet von Regina Roth, Eike Kopf und Carl-Erich Vollgraf unter Mitwirkung von Gerald Hubmann, mit einer Einführung von Bertram Schefold, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004 (XI, 1420 pp. [860 pp. text, 560 pp. apparatus]) Twelve years after Marx’s death and a few months before Fredrick Engels died, the third volume of Marx’s Capital, edited by Engels, appeared in December 1894. Two years later, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, a well known representative of the Austrian school of marginalism, published the first comprehensive critique based on all three volumes of Capital. In December 2004, exactly 110 years after Engels’s edition of Capital’s third volume appeared, the same text was published as Volume 15 of the second section of the complete works of Marx and Engels (MEGA). Th is second section contains Capital and the works preparatory to Capital in chronological order. Numerically and chronologically, Volume 15 is the last one of this section.1 Because some earlier volumes are still unpublished, readers have still to wait some time until the second section will be actually complete. For a further critique of Marx, readers of this MEGA volume will not have to wait so long: radically breaking with the new 1993 editorial guidelines of the MEGA, this volume contains a strongly slanted ‘introduction’, written by Bertram Schefold, a neo-Ricardian economist, presenting a devastating critique of Marx as if it were an undisputed judgement of contemporary economic science.
    [Show full text]
  • Marx: 'Das Kapital'
    University of Dayton eCommons Imprints and Impressions: Milestones in Human Commentaries on the Exhibit’s Works Progress November 2014 Marx: ‘Das Kapital’ Follow this and additional works at: http://ecommons.udayton.edu/rosebk_commentary Recommended Citation "Marx: ‘Das Kapital’" (2014). Commentaries on the Exhibit’s Works. 28. http://ecommons.udayton.edu/rosebk_commentary/28 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Imprints and Impressions: Milestones in Human Progress at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Commentaries on the Exhibit’s Works by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Reflections on the various works in the exhibit Imprints and Impressions: Milestones in Human Progress Highlights from the Rose Rare Book Collection, Sept. 29-Nov. 9, 2014 Roesch Library, University of Dayton Karl Marx Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy) Hamburg, 1867 Volume 1; first edition arx’s Capital has been making 150 years ago when Capital was first something of a comeback in published in Germany in 1867. Indeed, M recent years. Discarded after whatever influence Capital has come to have the collapse of the Soviet Union, the book on the world stage, it must surely be has once again garnered interest due to the understood in the first instance as a severity of the recent recession and talk of repudiation of Adam Smith’s free-market income inequality, the “1 percent,” and the economics and his Wealth of minimum wage. In addition, the study of Nations. For Capital lays bare the flaws in political economy, long considered a classical political economy, which, during dinosaur of a genre by economists, has Marx’s lifetime, put paid to the most likewise made a surprise return, most influential economic thinkers of the day, notably with Thomas Piketty’s unlikely namely Adam Smith, but also David bestseller Capital in the 21st Century.
    [Show full text]
  • Karl Marx's Changing Picture of the End of Capitalism
    Journal of the British Academy, 6, 187–206. DOI https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/006.187 Posted 30 July 2018. © The British Academy 2018 Karl Marx’s changing picture of the end of capitalism Master-Mind Lecture read 21 November 2017 GARETH STEDMAN JONES Fellow of the Academy Abstract: This essay examines three successive attempts Marx made to theorise his conception of the ‘value form’ or the capitalist mode of production. The first in the 1840s ascribed the destruction of an original human sociability to the institution of private property and looked forward to its destruction and transcendence in the coming revolution. This vision was shattered by the disenchanting failure of the 1848 revolutions. The second attempt, belonging to the 1850s and outlined in the Grundrisse, attempted to chart the rise, global triumph, and the ultimate destruction of what Marx called the ‘value form’. Its model of global triumph and final disintegration was inspired by Hegel’s Logic. But the global economic crisis of 1857–8 did not lead to the return of revolution. Marx’s disturbed reaction to this failure was seen in his paranoia about the failure of his Critique of Political Economy (1859). Marx’s third attempt to formulate his critique in Das Kapital in 1867 was much more successful. It was accompanied by a new conception of revolution as a transi­ tional process rather than an event and was stimulated by his participation in the International Working Men’s Association and the accompanying growth of cooper­ atives, trade unions, and a political reform movement culminating in the Reform Bill of 1867.
    [Show full text]
  • Marx and Keynes: from Exploitation to Employment
    Institute for International Political Economy Berlin Marx and Keynes: from exploitation to employment Author: Fritz Helmedag Working Paper, No. 113/2019 Editors: Sigrid Betzelt, Eckhard Hein (lead editor), Martina Metzger, Jennifer Pedussel Wu, Martina Sproll, Christina Teipen, Achim Truger, Markus Wissen, Reingard Zimmer Marx and Keynes: from exploitation to employment Fritz Helmedag* Abstract Marx’s and Keynes’s analyses of capitalism complement each other well. In a rather general model including the public sector and international trade it is shown that the labour theory of value provides a sound foundation to reveal the factors influencing employment. Workers buy ‘necessaries’ out of their disposa- ble wages from an integrated basic sector, whereas the ‘luxury’ department’s revenues spring from other sources of income. In order to maximize profits, the wage good industry controls the level of unit labour costs. After all, effective demand governs the volume of work. On this basis, implications for economic policy are outlined. JEL-classification: E11, E12, E24 Keywords: Employment, Marx, Keynes, Surplus value * Chemnitz University of Technology, Economics Department, Thüringer Weg 7, D-09107 Chemnitz, Germany. Email: [email protected] Paper presented at the IPE 10th Anniversary Conference: Studying Modern Capi- talism – The Relevance of Marx Today, Berlin, 12-13 July 2018. 2 Fritz Helmedag 1. Surplus value and the rate of profit The essence of this article is that the great economic thinkers mentioned in the title make a good couple not only regarding their exposure of capitalism’s mal- functions but also, and more importantly, from an analytical point of view.
    [Show full text]
  • Keynes and Marx by Claudio Sardoni University of Rome “La Sapienza”
    Keynes and Marx by Claudio Sardoni University of Rome “La Sapienza” I. Introduction Soon after the publication of The General Theory, Keynes manifested his dissatisfaction with the ‘final product’ of the intellectual process which had started in 1931-32 and he stated an intention to re-cast his ideas in a clearer and more satisfactory way. Joan Robinson thought that starting from Marx, rather than orthodox economics, would have saved Keynes ‘a lot of trouble’ (1964: 96). The object of this chapter is to inquire into the possibility that Keynes could have re-written The General Theory by giving Marx more attention and more credit than he did in the 1936 edition of the book. The interest in this issue does not derive, however, from any evidence that Keynes changed his opinion of Marx after 1936: it remained highly critical. Such interest rather derives from the fact that, in the quest for a clearer formulation of his fundamental ideas, Keynes, in my opinion, could have chosen to go, at least partly, ‘back’ to the approach that he had followed earlier on in the process which led to the publication of The General Theory. In fact, at a relatively early stage (1933) of this process, Keynes’s analysis of a capitalist economy and his critique of the orthodox view had come close to Marx’s approach. Keynes soon abandoned his 1933 approach and, in The General Theory, he formulated the critique of orthodox economics in a different way from Marx. In the chapter, I argue that the reason for the change may be found in the fact that the economic theory criticised by Keynes was significantly different from the Ricardian theory to which Marx referred.
    [Show full text]
  • Frederick Engels: Co-Founder of Marxism
    XXXVI, 3-4 July-December 2020 ENGELS 200: Frederick Engels: Co-Founder of Marxism Sitaram Yechury Frederick Engels is often referred to as the world’s first Marxist. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Engels was a collaborator of Marx, contributing in equal measure to the evolution of the Marxist world outlook. However, with his characteristic self-effacing modesty, Engels may have proudly accepted this status. Marx and Engels jointly wrote prefaces to every new edition of the `Communist Manifesto’ on its frequent republication in several languages. To the 1883 German edition, published soon after Marx’s death, Engels wrote the following moving preface: “The preface to the present edition I must, alas, sign alone. Marx, the man to whom the whole working class of Europe and America owes more than to any one else – rests at Highgate Cemetery and over his grave the first grass is already growing. Since his death [March 14, 1883], there can be even less thought of revising or supplementing the Manifesto. But I consider it all the more necessary again to state the following expressly: “The basic thought running through the Manifesto – that economic production, and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom, constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of the primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage 1 where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles – this basic thought belongs solely and exclusively to Marx.
    [Show full text]
  • The Marxist Thought on Ecological Civilization Wang Wei
    Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 559 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Language, Art and Cultural Exchange (ICLACE 2021) The Marxist Thought on Ecological Civilization Wang Wei Sichuan Technology and Business University, Chengdu 620000, Sichuan Province, China Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT Although there is no clear thought of ecological civilization in Marxism, its theory emphasizes that the relationship between human and nature is the harmonious unity of internal civilization. The thesis expounds the Marxist view of nature from three aspects: the superior relation between human and nature, the dependence relation between human and nature, and the symbiosis and co-prosperity relation between human and nature. The thesis expounds Marxist ecological civilization thought from the aspects of "harmony between human and nature" ideological foundation, historical view, values, development view and system, etc. These thoughts have important guiding significance for the construction of ecological civilization construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and also provide theoretical reference for the transformation of China's development concept. Keywords: viewpoint of nature; the unification of harmony and practice 1. INTRODUCTION species-being ... Only then did nature manifest itself in his works and his reality.” It is human who distinguishes In the 19th century when Marx and Engels lived, himself from nature, who distinguishes the human world ecological problems were not obvious, but Marx and from nature. This also highlights the most distinctive Engels had already discovered the ecological problems feature of Marxist theory “practice”, firstly, practice caused by the capitalist industrial revolution, and began promotes the transformation of nature from natural nature to think about solving the problems of ecological to humanized nature; secondly, practice combines the environment and resources.
    [Show full text]
  • From Piketty's Capital to Marx's Das Kapital
    From Piketty’s Capital to Marx’s das Kapital Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has created a very new platform for a discussion of the global economy. There is possibly no other book on economy which has been published in so many languages, printed in so many copies, and has found its way to such a varied global public. Piketty’s Capital has been discussed in many high ranked academic journals, and at the same time, it has come out to a broader audience with advertisements in places like the underground public transportation in metropolises around the world. The title of the book is also very ambitious in so far as the title Capital claims to be a follow up of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital for the twenty-first century. Piketty is similar to Marx in his ambition to give a large historical, or a world historical perspective on the significance of capitalist economy for the development of global society. Given this background it could be interesting to consider the relations between Piketty’sCapital and Marx’s Das Kapital. Main Thesis My main thesis is that although Piketty gives a very essential theoretical and historically based prognosis and critique of the development of inequality as he expects it to increase in the twenty-first century. Ultimately, he is not able to provide a conceptual critique of capitalism which can surpass the basic market perspective in Adam Smith’s tradition of classical and neoclassical economy. On this basis my thesis is that Marx’s conceptual determination of the capital, das Kapital, the capitalist mode of production, and capitalism in general could contribute to sharpen the outcome of Piketty’s enormous empirical and historical research on the development of inequality in capitalist societies beginning from the French Revolution.
    [Show full text]