Session Information
Contribution
Description: This paper indicates how neo-liberal policies of marketisation, commodification, and privatisation of public services comprise an intensification of "class war from above" by the capitalist class against the working class. The paper argues that in both empirical and theoretical terms it is the working class that is the essential and the major victim of neo-liberalism and of intensified capitalist exploitation. It addresses how these neo-liberal policy changes in the education sector result, inter alia, in (1) widening social class educational inequalities; (2) attacks on the key working class organisations, such as trade unions; and (3) worsening pay and conditions of education workers. The paper identifies and discusses these results as three "fronts" in the current class war from above.
The paper also contests the relative autonomy analysis of capitalism and anti-capitalist political project associated with what has variously been termed the "left liberal" analysis, or the "relative autonomy theory" of analysts such as Michael W. Apple. These analyses variously hide or deny the class nature of capitalism, or, in Apple's case, relegate class to just one form of structural exploitation, with equivalence to "race" and "gender" exploitation/ oppression.
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