Marxist Educational Theory: Reflections on Cambodia

Abstract

Marxist educational thinkers have produced, in recent years, a powerful humanist critique of educational practice and theory. Yet, the Cambodian Government's assault upon its own people, the obliteration of those deemed to have ‘higher knowledge’, and the sack of Cambodia's educational establishment belies the humanism of the Marxism in general and the Marxist educational critique in particular. It is intellectually disingenuous to argue that the unsavoury actions of Marxist governments is unrelated to Marxism; that it is an unfortunate consequence of activism; or that it is unrelated to Marxism as an intellectual enterprise. It is argued that the grammar of the Marxist Weltanschauung bifurcates into two interacting grammars. The domain of these two grammars constitutes the language of Marxism. And within this domain we find the intellectual threads that suggest the ‘thinkability’ of Marxist humanism and the contemptuous anti-humanism evident in the recent events of Cambodia's history. Marxist educational theory is interesting in so far as it implies a means for realizing the humanism of Marxist thought without mortgaging political and social evolution to a 19th century romantic faith in the purifying effects of social violence. It is argued that Marxist educational theory fails because it offers no plausible method of transcending capitalist ideology. All Marxist educational theories, despite all the rhetoric about ‘theories of reproduction’, ‘hegemonic-state reproduction models’, and ‘theories of resistance’, leave those who toil precisely where they began - enmeshed within ideology from which there is no means of escape. Technically speaking, Marxist theories of education fail because they are based upon a general failure of knowledge demonstrated in Marx's theory of ideology. The theory of ideology fails because, as Wittgenstein demonstrates, there is no such project. It is argued that the appeal of Marx's theory of ideology and Marxist educational theory is mostly attributable to its ad hominem attack upon liberal versions of knowledge.