Some recent critiques of the meaning and effectiveness of liberal educational policy in the United States in this century have been heavily influenced by the work of Karl Marx although this lacks, as Herbert Gintis has stated, any explicit philosophical theory of education.1 Given John Deweyâs representativeness of liberal socio-educational philosophy, neo-marxist âexposuresâ of the âreal functionsâ of schooling under capitalism may tend to be seen (illogically) as refutations of Deweyâs relevance to the search for a marxist philosophy of education. It may be, as Sidney Hook once stated,2 that Deweyâs educational theory properly demands a socialist democracy for its general adoption and viability. Rather than assume, therefore, any necessary basic conflict between Dewey and Marx, this essay will attempt an exploration of their compatibility,3 conducted through these stages: first, an examination of the grounds for Deweyâs rejection of the marxism of the 1930s; second, a comparison of some philosophical views of Dewey and Marx, viz., conceptions of community, humanness, and the nature of knowledge; third, an inspection of Marxâs few statements of educational principle and a demonstration of their elaborated presentation in Deweyâs idea of occupations in the elementary school curriculum. My exposition is meant to suggest that Dewey may largely provide an âopenlyâ interpreted marxism with the normative philosophy of education which it does not explicitly contain.
I
John Dewey was vehemently opposed to âthe logic of general notionsâ in social theory, i.e., the mode of reasoning marked by the use of reified or hypostatic concepts.4 To speak of âthe individualâ or âthe stateâ or âsocietyâ as an abstract but active entity and thus ignore its empirical specificities or to speak of the âessential characteristicsâ pertaining to such concepts, was tantamount to metaphysical mystification. The logic of general notions prevented social inquiry and experimentation, which demand operational concepts and assume the provisional nature of knowledge. Such a logic, instead, preempted investigation by dictating in advance what must be the case. Empirical observations, which could not be made to lie down in the Procrustean bed of general notions, were explained away. Contingency, ambiguity, or novelty were brushed aside in the quest for certainty.
While pointing to certain similarities between Dewey and Marx, George Raymond Geiger has argued that
Deweyâs refusal to follow the philosophy of Marx (and, presumably, to accept the term socialist or communist) is, as might easily be expected, the refusal to accept metaphysical explanation for social and political problems. The Marxian dialectic, the class struggle, the labour theory of value â these are as abstract and, for Dewey, as essentially meaningless as any of the Hegelianisms or economic classicisms from which they derive.5
In the mid-1930âs, Dewey entered a debate, initiated by Theodore Brameld, on the directive value to educators of the marxist concept of class struggle.6 Dewey succinctly and clearly summarized âthe position of communists of the current Marxist-Leninist typeâ and remarked it was âclear-cut and simpleâ. He rejected adoption of the concept, even if empirically valid, as the source of educational policy, on these grounds: (a) that by itself, it was insufficient to provide practical guidance; those who believed that recognition of class struggle was enough to indicate policy
seem to convert a just plea that educators should become aware of the existence of social injustice, oppression, and disorder into the idea that this recognition suffices of itself to determine educational policies and methods ⌠such recognition forms a significant part of the problem of education, but it does not provide a key to its solution.7
(b) That instead of being a classificatory tool for social analysis, âthe class concept is a strictly realistic apprehension of the existing social reality and of that which will existâ, i.e., a reified concept; (c) that the concept of democracy was more appropriate, in the American context, as âthe frame of reference and the source of directive ideas of educational actionâ since it permitted consideration of a comprehensive social interest.8 Two years later, in reviewing Leon Trotskyâs Their Morals and Ours, Dewey again rejected the historical teleology of marxism implicit in its belief in the inevitability of class struggle and the revolutionary outcome of it in the establishment of socialism. He equated this marxism with âorthodox religionism and traditional idealismâ and supposed its determinism to be an Hegelian inheritance.9
As a seminal, incomplete and inconsistent body of work, classical marxism has lent itself to several interpretations in response to the political uses made of it. Dewey, among many, rightly condemned âdeterministic marxismâ. Marxâs theory of social structure and dynamics, commonly known through Engels as âhistorical materialismâ, was considered to have uncovered the âiron lawsâ of a new âscience of societyâ, even at times by Marx himself. This claim accorded with the scientific-technological spirit of the age. The triumph of socialism following the disintegration of capitalism through explosive class conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat was ineluctably assured. This version of historical materialism, held by the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party (e.g., Karl Kautsky), the Russian school of Plekhanov, and the Bolshevik theoretician Bukharin, became institutionalized dogma under Stalin and through his control of the Third International, in official communist parties of capitalist nations. This received version of marxism, now often called âvulgarâ or âmechanisticâ marxism, ignored the need for critical social analysis and downplayed autonomous human will in the politics of revolutionary change. Under Soviet hegemony, Western marxism remained deterministic until it came under noticeable attack from âhumanisticâ and âculturalâ revisionists by the mid-1950s. Through the âdiscoveryâ or Marxâs early writings, e.g., Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the first group emphasized the self-constitutive nature of the human species while the latter, developing Antonio Gramsciâs reading of Marxâs work, drew attention to the ways in which âideologyâ, as the popular world view of âalienated consciousnessâ, may make the course of social change highly problematic.
Shed of its scientistic claims of predictive certainty, Marxâs social model of economic âbaseâ and civil-political-ideological âsuperstructureâ is highly suggestive for the generation of hypotheses for molar inquiry. In marxist social theory, moreover, the meaning of the functions of an institution is not completely given through the workings of the institution itself. The ânatureâ of institutional processes is also (dialectically) understood through the conditions necessary for its existence. However, while Marxâs social model is in this way illuminating, it provides few opportunities for comprehending intra-institutional dynamics where knowledge is obviously most important if people are to re-create the conditions of their existence with critically informed freedom. Denis Gleeson has given an educational illustration of this point:
while the Marxist critique of the relations between schooling and capitalism asks us, with justification, to re-examine the over-all objectives of education, it fails to address the nitty-gritty issues of everyday school practice and thus ignores the possible strategies of intervention at the grass-roots level.10
The failure of marxist theory to address itself to internal institutional processes often leads to explanations where general notions (âcapitalismâ, âthe bourgeoisieâ, âthe economic baseâ, âthe social relations of productionâ, etc.) perform the illicit modes of reasoning castigated by Dewey and the âhumanisticâ Marx.
Deweyâs rejection of general notions and his preference for operational concepts restricted the development of a theory of social structure and change of comparable sweep to Marxâs. Dewey generally refused to conceptualize âsocietyâ in dimensions larger than small-scale groups. He confessed his bewilderment when âsocietyâ was spoken of âin large and vague waysâ. He wrote:
I often wonder what meaning is given to the term âsocietyâ by those who oppose it to the intimacies of personal intercourse, such as those of friendship. Presumably they have in their minds a picture of rigid institutions or some set and external organization. But an institution that is other than the structure of human contact and intercourse is a fossil of some past society; organization, as in any living organism, is the co-operative consensus of multitudes of cells, each living in exchange with others.11
Even when Dewey recommended that âWe should forget âsocietyâ and think of law, industry, religion, medicine, politics, art, education, philosophy â and think of them in the pluralâ,12 there is no indication how these activities, separately identifiable, might be structurally and dynamically interrelated.
When Dewey urged a renascent liberalism to view progress as âincrements of present meaningâ, his implicitly operative concept of society demanded that the increases must be small, arrived at painstakingly, and accomplished as ends-in-view, but also that the framework for progress must be âa unique and localized situationâ.13 Deweyâs pluralistic view of society, however, was not only a consequence of his hostility to the logic of general notions and âblock-universe theories of social causationâ. It was also a necessary implication of the experimental method of inquiry borrowed from the natural sciences without a sufficiently sensitive appreciation of the difficulties of its application to the domains of human social life.14 Dewey wrote that:
Scientific method would teach us to break up, to inquire definitely and with particularity, to seek solutions in the terms of concrete problems as they arise ⌠Wholesale creeds and all-inclusive ideals are impotent in the face of actual situations; for doing always means the doing of something in particular.1516
Just as there are multiplicit...
