Open AccessEnduring Resilience of Capitalist Power: The Role of Capitalist Education as a Technology of Governance
Author(s) -
Javed A. Ansari,
Abid Shahzad
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of education and educational development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2313-3538
pISSN - 2310-0869
DOI - 10.22555/joeed.v4i2.1737
Subject(s) - capitalism , socialism , marxist philosophy , subjectivity , capitalist state , sociology , hegemony , corporate governance , economic system , neoclassical economics , economics , political science , law , communism , epistemology , politics , philosophy , finance
Capitalism has experienced several crises since its emergence but its present global dominance apparently remains unassailable. This paper argues that capitalism’s resilience is grounded in the systemic hegemony of capitalist individuality—an individuality, committed to freedom as an ultimate end and seeking abundance in this world. It has been argued that the successful manufacturing of capitalist subjectivity is significantly dependent on the inculcation of capitalist values to the subject of capital through capitalist education. Section one focuses on freedom as capitalism’s telos and sketches the historical emergence of capitalist subjectivity formed by processes of capitalist governance. Section two investigates the formational role of capitalist education as a technology of capitalist governance. It analyzes capitalist education as a means for the construction of capitalist individuality. Section three argues that capitalism’s main antagonists, especially Marxist socialism, cannot effectively challenge capitalist hegemony in the lifeworld or at the level of the state because they (i.e. main antagonists) endorse freedom (the core capitalist value) as an ultimate end in itself. Socialism does not propose to alter the subjectivity of an individual that the capitalist education constructs.