En Passant

Is the national curriculum a Marxist plot?  Nationals’ Senator Ron Boswell certainly thinks so. He says that Labor’s ‘new curriculum reads like a learner manual for international socialism.’

This is a bit surprising since Labor is not a Marxist party. It is no longer even a social democratic one. It is one of the conservative factions of capital.

Admittedly it is not in the same faction as Boswell. So this is really an internecine battle between reaction and conservatism.

Partly Boswell is appealing to his petit bourgeois rural social base which sees enemies everywhere threatening its comfortable position in society. Thus it is that Boswell says:

Year 9 history involves learning about ‘the main features of the factory system and its effects on productivity, consumption, social structure, labour conditions and the division of labour’ – this reads like a Marxist learner.

No doubt this is to prepare our young for the anti-capitalist class struggle.

No doubt, Ron, no doubt.  Now try as I might, I can’t find any discussion of the labour theory of value in the national curriculum or  Marx’s ideas about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Nothing either about the emancipation of the working class being the act of the working class.

It’s a funny Marxist primer that doesn’t deal with the basics of Marxism.

The curriculum does give passing mention to some of the brutal aspects of our colonial past. It doesn’t however describe the original English invasion as the genocide it was. 

But even these watered down references to our past have sent Christopher Pyne, the Liberals’ shadow Minister for Education, into a rage. He is concerned that ‘Australian students will be taught a particular black armband view of our history without any counterbalancing.’

By counterbalance he means teaching that reflects the obsequiousness of some sections of the Australian ruling class to our former colonial masters and sweeps the genocide of aboriginal people under the carpet at Buckingham Palace.

Education under capitalism is a contradiction. It has to balance between producing creative thinkers who can take the system forward and propagating myths that unite us over and above class.

What those who oversee the process fear most is creating thinkers who might actually question the system.

Yet the whole institutional structure of the state is aimed at making sure the numbers who do begin to think outside the political and economic box is as small as possible.

The Labor Party and the trade union leadership are they key to this. They are that special group in society whose role is to bargain between capital and labour.

These leaders are the retailers of labour to capital.  This reflects the actually reality of life for workers.

Social democracy and the ideas of reform from above spring from the way society is organised under capitalism, from the very sale of workers’  labour power.

Of course as I have argued elsewhere reforms themselves are dependent on the health of the system and the balance of class forces.

The crisis of profitability over the last 30 years and the quiescence of the Australian labour movement mean that we are now in the period of reformism without reforms that impose costs on capital. Instead they impose the costs of reform, such as they are, on labour.

The Labor Party, with its links to the working class through the trade union bureaucracy, is uniquely positioned to do this. Its Workchoices Lite is a classic example of this.

Capitalism needs a well educated workforce. It needs to socialise its next generation of workers into accepting the anti-human nature of capitalism as natural and train that generation to become wage slaves. The education system performs that function.

The changing nature of Australian capitalism, in particular the national and international nature of production, make the states as policy developers and implementers less and less relevant.

In education a parochial state based understanding of the nation and world conflicts with that internationalised and nationalised production process.

The national curriculum is one attempt to address that, and at the same time modernise some of the more backward state curriculums and drag them out of the grasp of yesterday into the realities of today and as a preparation for  tomorrow.

The Liberals and Nationals oppose that because they fear there is a danger that the process of socialisation might be challenged.

Labor on the other hand has no such fears since it believes that the the very process of questioning and critical thought (within strict boundaries) produces or may produce a more productive labor force.

But in doing that Labor also wants a numerate and literate workforce attuned to the needs of modern capital.  

A reflective and critical approach does that and opens up space for creative pro-capitalist thought at the same time.

Contrary to Ron Boswell’s bleatings the national curriculum is not a Marxist plot. It is an attempt to modernise the socialisation process to produce the next generation of educated wage slaves attuned to the needs of capital.