Critical Perspectives on Activity

Explorations Across Education, Work,and Everyday Life

Edited byPETER H. SAWCHUK

CAMBRIDGEUNIVERSITY PRESS

Critical Perspectives on Activity

Explorations Across Education, Work, and Every day Life

Edited by

PETER H. SAWCHUK University of Toronto, Canada

NEWTON DUARTE Universidade Estadual Paulis ta, Brazil

MOHAMED ELHAMMOUMI Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Saudi Arabia

""~""' CAMBRIDGE ;:: UNIVERSITY PRESS

List 0/ Contributors

Foreword by Seth Chaiklin

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction: Exploring Activity Across Education, Work,and Everyday LifePeter H. Sawchuk, Newton Duarte, and Mohamed Elhammoumi

SECTION I: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THEORY

2 Is There a Marxist Psychology?Mohamed Elhammoumi

3 The Cultural-Historical Activity Theory: Some Aspectsof DevelopmentJoachim Lompscher

4 Epistemological Scepticism, Complacent Irony:Investigations Concerning the Neo-Pragmatismof Richard RortyMaria Celia Marcondes de Moraes

SECTION II: EDUCATION

5 The Importance of Play in Pre-School Education:Naturalisation Versus a Marxist AnalysisAlessandra Arce

6 Estranged bager LearningRay McDermott and Jean Lave

7 "Our Working Conditions Are Our Students' LearningConditions": A CHAT Analysis of College TeachersHelena Worthen and Joe Berry

page ixxi

Contents

List of Contributors

Foreword by Seth Chaiklin

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction: Exploring Activity Across Education, Work, and Everyday Life Peter H. Sawchuk, Newton Duarte, and Mohamed Elhammoumi

SECTION I: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THEORY

2 Is There a Marxist Psychology? Mohamed Elhammoumi

3 The Cultural-Historical Activity Theory: Some Aspects of Development Joachim Lompscher

4 Epistemological Scepticism, Complacent Irony: Investigations Concerning the Neo-Pragmatism of Richard Rorty Maria Celia Marcondes de Moraes

SECTION II: EDUCATION

5 The Importance of Play in Pre-School Education: Naturalisation Versus a Marxist Analysis Alessandra Arce

6 Estranged baber Learning Ray McDermott and Jean Lave

7 "Our Working Conditions Are Our Students' Learning Conditions": A CHAT Analysis of College Teachers Helena Worthen and Joe Berry

page ix

Xl

xv

35

52

75

89

123

vii

This chapter is in praise of the labor of reading profound and rich texts, inthis case, the essay on "Estranged Labor" by Karl Marx. Comparing in detailwhat Marx wrote on estranged labor with current social practices of learn-ing and education leads us to comprehensive and provocative ideas aboutlearning - including the social practices of alienated learning. We then em-phasize the importance of distribution in the institutionalized productionof alienated learning. And we end this chapter with critical reflections onthe importance of alienation for the relation between teaching and learningin the social practice of scholars.

In 1844, Karl Marx wrote "Estranged Labor," an essaywith a radical philo-sophical and political claim: labor, prices, profit, and ownership do not ex-ist as things independent of historical circumstance. Rather, they exist onlyin relations between persons and their productive work. To make mattersworse, claimed Marx, the same is true of the words and categories we haveavailable to understand, confront, and reorganize these building blocks orany other relations that define and control our lives: the very content of ourminds "takes for granted what it is supposed to explain" (Marx, 1844: 106).2Together, the two claims have it that the world is both complex and hidden,terribly so and politically so, even to us, its builders.

Note: A previous version of this article appeared in Outlines: Critical Social Studies, 4 (1), 2002.

I This chapter is a product of co-learning so intricate that questions of authorship feel inap-propriate. The usual criteria - who did what, who did it first, who did how much - are thevery stuff of estranged learning. For making a claim we must attend to, Karl Marx is the leadauthor, and the present paper is intended to be read in between two readings of Marx's essayon "Estranged Labor." Ole Dreier, Rogers Hall, Gill Hart, Rebecca Lave, Meghan McDermott,and Philip Wexler offered warm and helpful advice, and Seth Chaiklin's relentless critiqueforced us to phrase the limitations of our effort. In Tokyo, Naoki Veno generously arrangedthe first public presentation of our struggles with the text. Our appreciation to each and all.

2 Hereafter citations of "Estranged Labor" are limited to paragraph numbers (1-75).

6

Estranged Labor Learning

Ray McDermott and Jean Lave 1

INTRODUCTION

This chapter is in praise of the labor of reading profound and rich texts, in this case, the essay on "Estranged Labor" by Karl Marx. Comparing in detail what Marx wrote on estranged labor with current social practices of learn­ing and education leads us to comprehensive and provocative ideas about learning - including the social practices of alienated learning. We then em­phasize the importance of distribution in the institutionalized production of alienated learning. And we end this chapter with critical reflections on the importance of alienation for the relation between teaching and learning in the social practice of scholars.

In 1844, Karl Marx wrote "Estranged Labor," an essay with a radical philo­sophical and political claim: labor, prices, profit, and ownership do not ex­ist as things independent of historical circumstance. Rather, they exist only in relations between persons and their productive work. To make matters worse, claimed Marx, the same is true of the words and categories we have available to understand, confront, and reorganize these building blocks or any other relations that define and control our lives: the very content of our minds "takes for granted what it is supposed to explain" (Marx, 1844: 106) .2

Together, the two claims have it that the world is both complex and hidden, terribly so and politically so, even to us, its builders.

Note: A previous version of this article appeared in Outlines: Critical Social Studies, 4 ( 1), 2002.

' This chapter is a product of co-learning so intricate that questions of authorship feel inap­propriate. The usual criteria - who did what, who did it first, who did how much - are the very stuff of estranged learning. For making a claim we must attend to, Karl Marx is the lead author, and the present paper is intended to be read in between two readings of Marx's essay on "Estranged Labor." Ole Dreier, Rogers Hall, Gill Hart, Rebecca Lave, Meghan McDermott, and Philip Wexler offered warm and helpful advice, and Seth Chaiklin's relentless critique forced us to phrase the limitations of our effort. In Tokyo, Naoki Ueno generously arranged the first public presentation of our struggles with the text. Our appreciation to each and all.

2 Hereafter citations of"Estranged Labor" are limited to paragraph numbers (1-75).

89

To make the case, Marx delivered a phenomenon that, upon examition, could convince readers that every named thing in human life is tied

na-

every other named thing in ways that (1) feed current arrangements ~othe political economy and, worse, (2) keep the logic and consequences u;.the arrangements obscure, hidden from their participants, and reflexive~constitutive of problems participants might want to solve. Marx makes thYcase with a neat reversal of common-sense assumptions about the relatio:of labor to profit. Here are the four sentences of Paragraph 7:

The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his productionincreases in power and size.

The worker becomes an even cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates.

With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion thedevaluation of the world of men.

Labor produces not only commodities: it produces itself and the worker as a com-modity - and this in the same general proportion in which it produces commodities.

Counterintuitive? Yes.Arresting? No less. The harder someone works, themore the very same someone is rewarded. So goes Adam Smith's (1776)optimistic prognosis, and so now goes the cultural mainstream.3 But Marxsees, and so does anyone who looks beyond immediate rewards, that manyof the hardest at work get the least pay, rarely enough to make more thanthe necessities that bring them to work for another day: "labor producfor the rich wonderful things, but for the worker it produces privation(paragraph 17). And then Marx sees further. Even those who are seeminglypaid well are only paid off momentarily, until it is their turn, until their in-alienable rights are also sold off, until alienation becomes the primary faeof their lives. People, all people in a capitalist society, labor only to have the'products taken from them, alienated, literally alienated, turned over to oth-ers, and legally so. This is neither the spirit of capitalism nor the ProtestaDethic as Max Weber (1904) stated them. If alienation is ubiquitous in thhuman situation, and most destructive under capitalism, there is reason fidoubting where we stand, how, and why.There is reason for supposinglearning in schools might also be a commodified and alienated practic~ ..

Theorizing economy as abstracted and isolated from ongoing acbwas troublesome for Marx in 1844. Theorizing learning as abstracted fro

3 The opening words of The Wealth of Nations: "The annual labor of every nati~n i~ thewhich originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which It annconsumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce from otheror in what is purchased with that produce from other nations, According therefore.produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to th.e nallof those who are to consume it, that nation will be better or worse supphed Withnecessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion" (Smith, 1776: lix).

d -/:;fJhffF Learning 91Estrange

. of use and desire was similarly troublesome for Charles Dickens asituauonlst r as in the classroom of Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild:decade a e ,

be in all things regulated and governed," said the gentleman, "by fact. We"Youarehto before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, whoh pe to ave, . d? the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must dlscarWillfor~~ Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have,the WOIb' t of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don'tin any 0 ~eflcwers in fact. you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. Youwalkupon 0 '

. fi d th t birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery. You cannotdon t n a .' . k '"be ermitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your croc ery. IOUnever

p ·th adrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupedsmeet WI qu "

t d upon walls. You must use," said the gentleman, for all these purposes,represen e ., . . Ifi h' h

b· tl' ns and modificatIOns (Ill pnmary colours) ofmathemauca gures w ICcom ma 0 . . .tl'ble of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. ThiS ISfact.are suscep

This is taste." (Dickens, 1854: 11)

Learning seems long away from the school grind.choki~g ~e~e c~ildren.Yet the people characterized by Dickens have bUIlt an mstItutlOn Just forlearning, and there they insist children ~epeat on ~emand the fact~ of,~:arn-ing. They were hard on children who did not do It well. Factory hfe, m. allthings regulated and governed," delivers a narrow range of fact for learnmgand a narrow range of categories for thinking about learning. Gradgrind'stheory oflearning no doubt "assumes what it is supposed to explain."

Andwhat about now?The illusion of measured learning makes substantialwhat is not and reifies it into numbers that align children within hierarchiesthat replicate injustices in the distribution of access and rewards. Institution-alized education has done to the productive learner what Marx revealed wasdone to productive labor: schools have commodified learning to the pointthat every learner must worry more about what others know than about whatmight be learned if people worked together. The contemporary state offers

hools in which every child, like every capitalist in the larger world, hasto do better than everyone else. Similarly, every learner, like every laborerunder capitalism, is alienated from his or her own learning by virtue of thedominant concern for what every person does and does not know relative, ,and only relative, to each other.

Marx opposed a double-entry account book version of the human situ-ation - the version that records how much money comes in, against howmuch money goes out, with as much as possible left over for profit. Dickensagree.s:the same 'Just the facts" bottom line version strangling labor couldtrangle learning as well. Imagine Marx's response to the pretest/posttest,double-entry account book version of the human mind that we use today totrangle children in schools.

On the chance that reading Marx as if he were writing on estrangedlearn'. tog can suggest what he would say about contemporary schooling andgIve us as well a new slant on the political economy of learning, we have

go Ray McDermott and Jean Lave

To make the case, Marx delivered a phenomenon that, upon exam· • ld • d h d h' • h ina-uon, cou convmce rea ers t at every name t mg m uman life is tied

every other named thing in ways that ( 1) feed current arrangements ~o the political economy and, worse, (2) keep the logic and consequences•~ the arrangements obscure, hidden from their participants, and reflexive~ constitutive of problems participants might want to solve. Marx makes thy case with a neat reversal of common-sense assumptions about the relatio: of labor to profit. Here are the four sentences of Paragraph 7:

The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size.

The worker becomes an even cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates.

With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men.

Labor produces not only commodities: it produces itself and the worker as a com­modity- and this in the same general proportion in which it produces commodities.

Counterintuitive? Yes. Arresting? No less. The harder someone works, the more the very same someone is rewarded. So goes Adam Smith's (1776) optimistic prognosis, and so now goes the cultural rriainstream.3 But Marx sees, and so does anyone who looks beyond immediate rewards, that many of the hardest at work get the least pay, rarely enough to make more than the necessities that bring them to work for another day: "labor produces for the rich wonderful things, but for the worker it produces privation" (paragraph 17). And then Marx sees further. Even those who are seemingly paid well are only paid off momentarily, until it is their turn, until their in­alienable rights are also sold off, until alienation becomes the primary fact of their lives. People, all people in a capitalist society, labor only to have their products taken from them, alienated, literally alienated, turned over tooth­ers, and legally so. This is neither the spirit of capitalism nor the Protestant ethic as Max Weber ( 1904) stated them. If alienation is ubiquitous in th human situation, and most destructive under capitalism, there is reason for doubting where we stand, how, and why. There is reason for supposin? that learning in schools might also be a commodified and alienated pracuc~-.

Theorizing economy as abstracted and isolated from ongoing acUVl was troublesome for Marx in 1844. Theorizing learning as abstracted frolll

3 The opening words of The Wealth of Nations: "The annual labor of every nati~n i~ !he runcl which 01iginally supplie it with all the necessaries and conveniences oflife which it ann_ consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce from other naU or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. According therefore, as produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion_ to th_e 11 all of those who are to consume it, that nation will be better or worse supplied wi

th

necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion" (Smith, 1776: !ix)·

d -b{JIJM Learning £strange

91

. of use and desire was similarly troublesome for Charles Dickens a situauonl \ r as in the classroom of Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild: decade a e'

be in all things regulated and governed," said the gentleman, "by fact. We "You arelto, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who h Pe to 1a' e, d' d 0 h people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must 1scar

·11 force t e h WI ·d F cy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to ave, the wor an £ " d ,

b. t of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in act. ,ou on t in any o ~ec . "

fl Wers in fact· you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers m carpets. ,ou walk upon o '

. fi d th t birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery. You cannot don t n a . . · k " be ermitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your croc ery. ,ou never

p · h adrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds meet wit qu "

t d upon walls. You must use," said the gentleman, for all these purposes, represen e . . . . 1 fi h' h

b. u· ns and modifications (m pnmary colours) ofmathematlca gures w 1c com 111a o . . . tl.ble of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This 1s fact. are suscep

This is taste." (Dickens, 1854: 11)

Learning seems long away from the school grind _choki~g ~he~e c~ildren. Yet the people characterized by Dickens have bmlt an mstitution JUSt for learning, and there they insist children ~epeat on ~emand the fac~ of,~~arn­ing. They were hard on children who did not do it well. Factory hfe, m_ all things regulated and governed," delivers a narrow range of fact for learnmg and a narrow range of categories for thinking about learning. Gradgrind's theory of learning no doubt "assumes what it is supposed to explain."

And what about now? The illusion of measured learning makes substantial what is not and reifies it into numbers that align children within hierarchies that replicate injustices in the distribution of access and rewards. Institution­alized education has done to the productive learner what Marx revealed was done to productive labor: schools have commodified learning to the point that every learner must worry more about what others know than about what might be learned if people worked together. The contemporary state offers schools in which every child, like every capitalist in the larger world, has to do better than everyone else. Similarly, every learner, like every laborer under capitalism, is alienated from his or her own learning by virtue of the dominant concern for what every person does and does not know relative, • and only relative, to each other.

Marx opposed a double-entry account book version of the human situ­ation - the version that records how much money comes in, against how much money goes out, with as much as possible left over for profit. Dickens agree_s: the same ''.just the facts" bottom line version strangling labor could trangle learning as well. Imagine Marx's response to the pretest/posttest,

double-entry account book version of the human mind that we use today to trangle children in schools.

On the chance that reading Marx as if he were writing on estranged learn· . mg can suggest what he would say about contemporary schooling and give us as well a new slant on the political economy of learning, we have

been rereading "Estranged Labor" and keeping track of the changes thfollow from our initial alteration. Our method, to use Seamus Heaney~t(2000) phrasing, pays careful "duty to text," loaded with our Ownconcernof course, but careful to take Marx seriously on his own terms.4 The rewri~starts as simply as dutifully: Whenever the word labor occurs, with occa-sional exceptions, it is replaced by the word learning. Marx's argument andimagery stay intact, and we get to approximate his opinion on an issue ofmoment over a century later. "Estranged Labor" uses about 5,000 Wordsgrouped into approximately 75 paragraphs (depending on the edition)and we have found it productive to spend more than an hour on man;paragraphs translating from the English of political economy to the Engli hof learning theory. This method of "reading" has led to a deepened un-derstanding of Marx's essay with unanticipated ideas about the relationsbetween estranged labor and estranged learning. It has helped us critique-in parallel and simultaneously - theories of political economy and theoriesof learning, and it has led to questions about how ideas of learning, intelli-gence, creativity, genius, stupidity, and disability have developed in tandemwith ideas about production, consumption, exchange, and distribution.

Because we allow our analytic path to develop in detail along with Marx'text, the reader might need an account of where we are going. Simply put, incritiquing the theories of political economy available in 1844, young Marxunwittingly wrote a quite devastating critique of the theories of learningavailable in 2004. This is possible because education has been institutional-ized under advanced capitalism as an integral part of the political economy.In Capital, twenty-three years later, Marx gave a strong hint of the relationbetween the two spheres of production:

If we may take an example from outside the sphere of material production, a school-master is a productive worker when, in addition to belaboring the heads of his pupilshe works himself into the ground to enrich the owner of the school. That the latterhas laid out his capital in a teaching factory instead of a sausage factory, makes nodifference to the relation. (1867: 677)

The same critique applies to the workings of both economy and educationbecause they are two facets of the same history, two versions of institutiorooted in alienated relations of production, consumption, distribution, andexchange, one officially of goods, the other officially of ideas, and in bothcases, two sides of the same coin, the filthy lucre of commodified manualand mentallabor.5

4 Translating from one topic to another demands more than a subjectivism: "the .consciousness of one facing a text in a distant language, should not be confused with·sutivism,as some have suggested, for it isjust the opposite - a respect for another voice,notobsession with one's own" (Becker, 1995: 138).

5 We are not the first to reread "Estranged Labor" in other institutional registers: For a .gruence, variouslyconceived, between Marx on estranged labor and language, seeVol

d J:;aiJe'f LearningEstrange

.' to what we might learn about Marx, about learning, and aboutIn addluon . there is a historical continuity behind our re-reading. It

n learnmg, ··tharx 0 h Marx himself proceeded. He read volummously - Sml ,. lose to oW d . h'15 C b h Hess Proudhon - and woul enter mto ISnotes sys-I Feuer ac , ' . .lIege, l'n their phrasing. Even the older Marx, m Capttal (1867)tic changes .tema E h 10 'cal Notebooks (1880-1882), manipulated textual detaIl.

d the t no gt . f "E dan . . a glimpse of Marx at work around the Ume 0 strangeLobkoWlCZgIVeSLabor":

. Hegel's text paragraph by paragraph, and sometimes word byCommenung upon . d

f than not he became lost in a thicket of verbal arguments msteard more 0 ten . . .

o : Hegel's political philosophy as a whole. Soli thiS piecemeal proce-oftrymg to survey . 6'

b ht eorth some remarkable results. (1967: 249-250; see also StrUlk, 19 4,dure roug l'

Wheen, 1999)

metimes Marx would keep track of his editing, sometimes not.6 A goodexample of his making analytic use of his changes comes from the fol-lowing commentary, in Theories of Surplus Value (1860, Book 2: 349-5~),on a paragraph from Adam Smith (1776, Book I, Chapter IV: 61), wh~ch

arx underlines as he reads (here in italics) and adds, first, a runnmgcommentary in parentheses inside Smith's paragraph,. then. a com.m~nt onthe paragraph, and finally a rewrite of Smith side by SIdeWIth SmIth s ownords:

• in a civilized country there are but few commodities of which the exchangeablevalue arises from labour only" (here labour is identified with wages) "rent and profitcontributing largely to that of the far greater part of them, so the annual produce of xtslabour" (here, after all, the commodities are the produce of labour, although the wholevalue of this produce does not arise from labour only) "will always be sufficient topurr:haseor command a much greater quantity of labour than what was employed in raising,preparing and bringing that produce to market."

The produce of labour [is] not equal to the value of this produce. On the contrary (onemay gather) this value is increased by the addition of profit and rent. The produceoflabour can therefore command, purchase, more labour, i.e., pay a greater value

(1929) and Rossi-Landi (1968); on estranged labor and science, Sohn-Rethel (1976); ontranged labor and sexuality,MacKinnon (1982).

An example of not making his edits visible: "in a 'translation' from French to German ofPeuchet's essayon suicide," Marx (1945) "bends [the] text a bit, here changing Peuchet'sphrase 'fundamental defect' to 'deficient organization' and thereby making the critique::: social and less moralistic. At another point, without indicating that he has.done so,

adds a phrase of hiSown,writing that 'short of a total reform of the orgamzaoon of~ur Current s . , , db' . ,,, (AndoCiety, any attempt to lower the suicide rate woul e m vam erson,1999: 13).

92

been rereading "Estranged Labor" and keeping track of the changes th follow from our initial alteration. Our method, to use Seamus Beane~ (2000) phrasing, pays careful "duty to text," loaded with our own conce~ of course, but careful to take Marx seriously on his own terms.4 The rewn~ starts as simply as dutifully: Whenever the word labor occurs, with occa­sional exceptions, it is replaced by the word learning. Marx's argument and imagery stay intact, and we get to approximate his opinion on an issue of moment over a century later. "Estranged Labor" uses about 5,ooo words grouped into approximately 75 paragraphs (depending on the edition) and we have found it productive to spend more than an hour on man; paragraphs translating from the English of political economy to the Engli h of learning theory. This method of "reading" has led to a deepened un­derstanding of Marx's essay with unanticipated ideas about the relations between estranged labor and estranged learning. It has helped us critique_ in parallel and simultaneously- theories of political economy and theorie of learning, and it has led to questions about how ideas of learning, intelli­gence, creativity, genius, stupidity, and disability have developed in tandem with ideas about production, consumption, exchange, and distribution.

Because we allow our analytic path to develop in detail along with Marx' text, the reader might need an account of where we are going. Sim ply put, in critiquing the theories of political economy available in 1844, young Marx unwittingly wrote a quite devastating critique of the theories of learning available in 2004. This is possible because education has been institutional­ized under advanced capitalism as an integral part of the political economy. In Capital, twenty-three years later, Marx gave a strong hint of the relation between the two spheres of production:

If we may take an example from outside the sphere of material production, a school­master is a productive worker when, in addition to belaboring the heads of his pupils, he works himself into the ground to enrich the owner of the school. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory instead of a sausage factory, makes no difference to the relation. (1867= 677)

The same critique applies to the workings of both economy and education because they are two facets of the same history, two versions of institutions rooted in alienated relations of production, consumption, distribution, and exchange, one officially of goods, the other officially of ideas, and in both cases, two sides of the same coin, the filthy lucre of commodified manual and mental labor.5

· • • "the self. 4 Translating from one topic to another demands more than a subJecovism: .

consciousness of one facing a text in a distant language, should not be confused ";th·subJec­tivism, as some have suggested, for it is just the opposite - a respect for another voice, notall obsession with one's own" (Becker, 1995: 138).

5 We are not the first to reread "Estranged Labor" in other institutional registers: For a~ gruence, variously conceived, between Marx on esmmged labor and language, see VolOSJII

d l:,8/Je'FLearning Estrange

93

. . to what we might learn about Marx, about learning, and about In addition . there is a historical continuity behind our re-reading. It

· on Iearnmg, · S ·th Marx h Marx himself proceeded. He read volummously - m1 , • Jose to ow d • h" IS c ·b h Hess Proudhon - and woul enter mto 1s notes sys-I feue1 ac , , . . ttege .' chan es in their phrasing. Even the older Marx, m Capital (186?) temauc E hg lo ·cal Notebooks (1880-1882), manipulated textual detail.

d the t no gt • f "E d an . • a glimpse of Marx at work around the tune o strange I,obkow1cz gives Labor":

. Hegel's text paragraph by paragraph, and sometimes word by Commentmg upon 1 • d

f than not he became lost in a thicket ofverba arguments mstea word more o ten . . . 1 '. Hegel's political philosophy as a whole. StJII this p1ecemea proce-of tn1ng to survey .k 6 .

• b ht earth some remarkable results. ( 1967: 249-250; see also Stru1 , 19 4, dure roug 1 '

Wheen, 1999)

metimes Marx would keep track of his editing, sometimes not.6

A good example of his making analytic use of his changes comes from the fol­lowing commentary, in Thearies of Surplus Value (1860, Book 2: 349-5?), on a paragraph from Adam Smith (1776, Book I, Chapter IV: 61), wh~ch

arx underlines as he reads (here in italics) and adds, first, a runnmg commentary in parentheses inside Smith's paragraph,_ then_ a com_m~nt on the paragraph, and finally a rewrite of Smith side by side with Smith s own

words:

•As in a civilized country there are but few commodities of which the exchangeabl.e value arises from labour only" (here labour is identified with wages) "rent and profit contributing largely to that of the far greater part of them, so the annual produce of zts labour" (here, after all, the commodities are the produce of labour, although the whole value of this produce does not arise from labour only) "will always be sufficient to purchase or command a much greater quantity of labour than what was employed in raising,

preparing and &ringing that produce to market."

arx's comment on and rewrite of Smith's paragraph:

The produce of labour [is] not equal to the value of this produce. On the contrary ( one may gather) this value is increased by the addition of profit and rent. The produce of labour can therefore command, purchase, more labour, i.e., pay a greater value

( 192 9) and Rossi-Landi (1968); on estranged labor and science, Sohn-Rethel (1976); on estranged labor and sexuality, MacKinnon ( 1982). An example of not making his edits visible: "in a 'translation' from French to German of Peuchet's essa\' on suicide," Marx ( 1945) "bends [the] text a bit, here changing Peuchet's phrase 'fundamental defect' to 'deficient organization' and thereby making the critique :: social and less moralistic. At another point, without indicating that he has_ done so,

adds a phrase of his own, writing that 'short of a total reform of the orgamzaoon of our current s • • , d b • • "' (And OCJety, any attempt to lower the suicide rate woul e m vam erson, 1999: 13).

11

d -bfJ;/Jo'F Learning 95Estrange

of alienated labor in four successive steps encompassing the firsttheOl~Marx's essay. Part III of "Estranged baOOr/Learning" does the same,half °d. g the main points of that theory in terms of alienated learning.rerea 10 . d h 'A .

IV·s a selective rereadmg of the secon alf of Marx sessay. tone pomt,Part I . Hroposes an exerCIse for the reader, and we take up the challenge. eMarx Pts that relations internal to the keywords of political economy canugges . .be derived from alienate~ l~bor.and pnvate property. For o.ur exerCIse,.we£ s on education as a distributIOnal phenomenon and - sull engaged m a10CU b ""E dT-\...--/L·"ess of re-reading "Estranged La or as strange trtt:tt:tt- earnmg-pro~ore how alienated distribution can be derived from alienated learningexp O· . h IId private (educational) property. ur mtervenUon c a enges commonW I.waysof reading Marx and brings his work to bear on a current concern. tiSerious work done twice. At the end of the paper, we draw together what wehave learned about alienated learning and consider its relations with ourpractice of reading.

in labour, than the labour contained in it. This proposition would be correct if i~~~: t

According to Marx himself, it should read:

"As in a civilized country there are butfew commodities of which theexchangeable value resolves itself intowages only and since, for a far greaterpart of them, this value largely resolvesitself into rent and profit, so the annualproduce of its labour will always besufficient to purchase or command amuch greater quantity of labour thanwhat had to be paid" (and thereforeemployed) "in raising, preparing, andbringing that produce to market."

This is roughly the genre of translation we are offering. There is a versionof science ideally done this way,but not enough of it. Apprenticeship to textmay be far easier than duty to children in school, but they are identical intheir respect for complexity, their delight in cooperative learning, and theirappreciation of surprise.

We are engaged in reading and learning about alienated labor, alienatedlearning, and relations between them. We try to show what it is like to re-braid the text after introducing one significant change of topic, and then tomove forward by trying different ways of recasting what follows to deepenthe rewriting. We have read this text together and with students many times.Still, it would be a mistake to think of the rewrite as a concluded, polished,definitive "translation" displayed for the reader's consumption. It is not ourintention to be supposed experts on Marx, nor are we offering a predigestedaccount of our knowledge on work. Instead, ifwe can share our work bench,readers might follow the process of reading and re-reading, and work with ourre-writing in their own way, on their way to working further on "EstrangedLabor" and other texts.

The first two parts of the paper stay closer to how we did the work wdthe textual changes that developed along the way.Marx should not be readquickly, and our play with his text certainly insures that the reader has ~oslow down. In Part I, we offer the first paragraph of Marx's essay and explamhow we worked out a sense for the demands of the text and its possibilitie ,for what Becker (1995) calls deficient and exuberant readings of the text.In Part II, we move to an only slightly quicker account of Paragraphs 2-4 fora gloss of Marx's argument, and we apply our changes to institution~l e~u-cation in general and the diagnosis oflearning disability and the ascnpUon

of genius in particular.Mter working through the thorny thickets of paragraphs 1-4, readers

might benefit from a view of the forest. "Estranged Labor" elaborates a

Smith says:

"As in a civilized country there arebut few commodities of which theexchangeable value arises from labouronly, rent and profit contributing largelyto that of the far greater part of them,so the annual produce of its labourwill always be sufficient to purchase orcommand a much greater quantity oflabour than what was employed in raising,preparing, and bringing that produce tomarket."

PART I: ALIENATED CATEGORIES

In the beginning is Marx's first paragraph:

We have proceeded from the premises of political economy. We have accepted itslanguage and its laws. We presupposed private property, the separation of labor,capital and land, and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land -likewise divisionof labor, competition, the concept of exchange-value, ete. On the basis of politicaleconomy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the levelof a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that thewretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitudeof his production7; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation ofcapital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terribleform; and that finally the distinction between capitalist and land rentier, like thatbetween the tiller of the soil and the factory worker, disappears and that the whole ofsociety must fall apart into the two classes - the property owners and the propertylessworkers.

owwe can develop our own first paragraph. Once we have turned the topicfrom labor to learning, we must alter the first sentence: "We have proceededfrom the premises of. ... "

Many substitutes are possible: educational psychology, most specifically;educational ideology, most politically; the educational establishment, mostgenerally. Our choice is to use the most general reading, and if the text insists

7 As written, Marx describes a direct relation: the more richly the world's possibilities areproduced by workers, the more workers are deprived of them; usually, he makes the samepomt by describing an inverse relation: as workers produce more and more for those whopay their wages, they receive less and less of what they are producing for themselves. Wecomment only because this phrase has brought our reading to a halt repeatedly.

94 Ray McDermott and Jean Lave

in labour, than the labour contained in it. This proposition would be conect if i ~~~: t

Smith says:

"As in a civilized country there are but few commodities of which the exchangeable value arises from labour only, rent and profit contributing largely to that of the far greater part of them, so the annual produce of its labour will always be sufficient to purchase or command a much greater quantity of labour than what was employed in raising, preparing, and bringing that produce to market."

According to Marx himself, it should read:

"As in a civilized country there are but few commodities of which the exchangeable value resolves itself into wages only and since, for a far greater part of them, this value largely resolves itself into rent and profit, so the annual produce of its labour will always be sufficient to purchase or command a much greater quantity of labour than what had to be paid" (and therefore employed) "in raising, preparing, and b1inging that produce to market."

This is roughly the genre of translation we are offering. There is a version of science ideally done this way, but not enough ofit. Apprenticeship to text may be far easier than duty to children in school, but they are identical in their respect for complexity, their delight in cooperative learning, and their appreciation of surprise.

We are engaged in reading and learning about alienated labor, alienated learning, and relations between them. We try to show what it is like to re­braid the text after introducing one significant change of topic, and then to move forward by trying different ways of recasting what follows to deepen the rewriting. We have read this text together and with students many times. Still, it would be a mistake to think of the rewrite as a concluded, polished, definitive "translation" displayed for the reader's consumption. It is not our intention to be supposed experts on Marx, nor are we offering a predigested account of our knowledge on work. Instead, ifwe can share our work bench, readers might follow the process of reading and re-reading, and work with our re-writing in their own way, on their way to working further on "Estranged Labor" and other texts.

The first two parts of the paper stay closer to how we did the work and the textual changes that developed along the way. Marx should not be read quickly, and our play with his text certainly insures that the reader has ~o slow down. In Part I, we offer the first paragraph of Marx's essay and e~~l'."n how we worked out a sense for the demands of the text and its possibihtie • for what Becker ( 1995) calls deficient and exuberant readings of the text. In Part II, we move to an only slightly quicker account of Paragraphs 2-4 for a gloss of Marx's argument, and we apply our changes to institution~l. e~u­cation in general and the diagnosis of learning disability and the ascnpuon of genius in particular.

After working through the thorny thickets of paragraphs 1-4, readers might benefit from a view of the forest. "Estranged Labor" elaborates a

d -f,tt/Je'f Learning Estrange 95

of alienated labor in four successive steps encompassing the first tbeo1 Marx's essay. Part III of "Estranged babe-F/Learning" does the same, half

0d. g the main points of that theory in terms of alienated learning.

rerea 111 . , .

JV •s a selective rereadmg of the second half of Marx s essay. At one pomt, Part 1 . H roposes an exercise for the reader, and we take up the challenge. e Marx pts that relations internal to the keywords of political economy can ugges . .

be derived from alienate~ l~bor_and pnvate property. For o_ur exercise,_ we ,.. son education as a distnbut10nal phenomenon and - still engaged ma ,ocu b " "E d T ~h~-/L • " rocess of re-reading "Estranged La or as strange = earnm~ -P lore how alienated distribution can be derived from alienated learnmg exp O • • h 11 d private ( educational) property. ur mtervent.10n c a enges common ~ 1· ways of reading Marx and brings his work to bear on a current concern. t 1s erious work done twice. At the end of the paper, we draw together what we

have learned about alienated learning and consider its relations with our practice of reading.

PART I: ALIENATED CATEGORIES

In the beginning is Marx's first paragraph:

We have proceeded from the premises of political economy. We have accepted its language and its laws. We presupposed private property, the separation of labor, capital and land, and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land - likewise division of labor, competition, the concept of exchange-value, etc. On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production 7 ; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; and that finally the distinction between capitalist and land rentier, like that between the tiller of the soil and the factory worker, disappears and that the whole of society must fall apart into the two classes - the property owners and the propertyless warkers.

ow we can develop our own first paragraph. Once we have turned the topic from labor to learning, we must alter the first sentence: "We have proceeded from the premises of. ... "

Many ubstitutes are possible: educational psychology, most specifically; educational ideology, most politically; the educational establishment, most generally. Our choice is to use the most general reading, and if the text insists

7 As Written, Marx describes a direct relation: the more richly the world's possibilities are produced by workers, the more workers are deprived of them; usually, he makes the same pomt by describing an inverse relation: as workers produce more and more for those who pay the· th

• Ir wages, ey receive less and less of what they are producing for themselves. We comment only because this phrase has brought our reading to a halt repeatedly.

on a tighter formulation, that can be made obvious as we move through theparagraph. So we have our first line, and the second line is generic enoughto require no change:

We have proceeded from the premises of the educational establishment.We have accepted its language and its laws.

We presupposed private property,the separation of labor, capital and land,and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land -likewise division of labor, competition, the concept of exchange-value, etc.

As a substitute for private property, one of us suggested "controlled andstandardized knowledge (curriculum)" and the other suggested "inherentintelligence":

a. We presupposed standardized knowledge (curriculum) ...b. We presupposed inherent intelligence ...

This is a difference that seems to make a difference, the first focused, asMarx would appreciate, on an institutional phenomenon, the educationalbanking system (Freire 1969), and the second focused more on the indi-vidual account, or seemingly so, and available for institutional analysis onlyafter careful thought. The differences hardly make themselves felt in therest of the sentence:

We presupposed standardized knowledge (curriculum),the separation of learning, academic success, and natural capacities,and of grades, credentials, and earning potential- ...We presupposed inherent intelligence,- the separation of learning, knowledge, and assessed potentia~and of learning, degrees, and success- ...

If we continue to follow the two choices - curriculum vs. intelligence -through subsequent paragraphs, they do not organize readings as divergentas we anticipated. Although inherent intelligence at first invites other psy-chological terms to populate its semantic tree, it gives way to a picture ofthe institutional arrangements that make an exaggerated attention to mea-sured intelligence, reportable, recordable, and consequential. We can ~sestandardized knowledge (in the first line of translation a.), which constralOS

only slightly our choices for the second line. We cannot resist combining thetranslations of "rent of land"; instead of "natural capacities" (in the secondline of a.) and "assessed potential" (in the second line of b.), we opt forassessed capacities, for there are two uses of the word "assessment" in modern

r h: one for measuring land value, the other for measuring the value ofEng IS n's mind. The fit is difficult to ignore.a perso .

The remainder of the sentence stands on Its own:

_likewise division of labor, competition, the concept of exchange-value, ete.

In education as in political economy, the division of labor is ubiquitous inits relevance. Competition is everywhere. The concept of exchange-value,by which everything is theoretically exchangeable for everything else, forexample, knowledge in exchange for career line and/or profit, speaks tothe heart of what most people seek when they go to school (and certainlywhat people must attend to when they leave school). So now we have threesentences rewritten:

We have proceeded from the premises of the educational establishment. We have ac-cepted its language and its laws. We presupposed standardized knowledge (curriculum),the separation of learning, academic success, and assessed capacities, and of grades, cre-dentials, and earning potential-likewise division oflabor, competition, the concept ofexchange-value, ete.

We have translated "capital" into academic success and "profit from capital"into credentials. Both, of course, are won in competition: academic success isalwaysachieved over others, and credentials are less about what they allowtheir owners to do than their non-owners not to do. This is consistent withMarx's haiku-like definition of capital in the Manuscripts:

Capital,private propertytaken from other people's labor?

(1844: 79, poetic license ours)

Good news: with variation, changes made in the first paragraph can lastthrough the essay. The variations are interesting to trace, but are mostlyself-explanatory. In Tables 6.1 and 6.2, we separate the terms we had tochange (as we began analytically to pull apart, first, labor and learning and,second, political economy and education) from a few terms we did not haveto change because they apply equally to both of these thoroughly enmeshedspheres of production.

Nota bene: The conceptual shifts are not one-to-one. The concepts inMarx's text are mutually defined, and so it must be for the educationalt~rms. The changes must be read from top to bottom as well as from left tonght: The appearance of a one-to-one correspondence across terms wouldreq~~re the assumption of a one-to-one, and likely distorting, fit betweenpohtlcal economy and education. The power of the rewrite lies ultimatelym the relati dh' . ons among an across both sets of concepts as they have beenIstoncally established and fitted to different spheres of activity across quite

96 Ray McDermott and Jean Lave

on a tighter formulation, that can be made obvious as we move through the paragraph. So we have our first line, and the second line is generic enough to require no change:

We have proceeded from the premises of the educational establishment. We have accepted its language and its laws.

Now it gets difficult. Marx gives us:

We presupposed private property, the separation of labor, capital and land, and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land -likewise division of labor, competition, the concept of exchange-value, etc.

As a substitute for private property, one of us suggested "controlled and standardized knowledge (curriculum)" and the other suggested "inherent intelligence":

a. We presupposed standardized knowledge (curriculum) .. . b. We presupposed inherent intelligence . ..

This is a difference that seems to make a difference, the first focused, as Marx would appreciate, on an institutional phenomenon, the educational banking system (Freire 1969), and the second focused more on the indi­vidual account, or seemingly so, and available for institutional analysis only after careful thought. The differences hardly make themselves felt in the rest of the sentence:

We presupposed standardized knowledge (curriculum), the separation of learning, academic success, and natural capacities, and of grades, credentials, and earning potential- . .. We presupposed inherent intelligence, - the separation of learning, knowledge, and assessed potentia~ and of learning, degrees, and success- ...

If we continue to follow the two choices - curriculum vs. intelligence -through subsequent paragraphs, they do not organize readings as divergent as we anticipated. Although inherent intelligence at first invites other psy­chological terms to populate its semantic tree, it gives way to a picture of the institutional arrangements that make an exaggerated attention to mea­sured intelligence, reportable, recordable, and consequential. We can ~se standardized knowledge (in the first line of translation a.), which constrams only slightly our choices for the second line. We cannot resist combining the translations of "rent of land"; instead of "natural capacities" (in the secoo<l line of a.) and "assessed potential" (in the second line of b.), we opt for assessed capaciti,es, for there are two uses of the word "assessment" in modern

d -be/Je'f Learning Estrange 97

r h: one for measuring land value, the other for measuring the value of Eng ,son's mind. The fit is difficult to ignore. a pers . .

The remamder of the sentence stands on its own:

- likewise division of labor, competition, the concept of exchange-value, etc.

In education as in political economy, the division of labor is ubiquitous in its relevance. Competition is everywhere. The concept of exchange-value, by which everything is theoretically exchangeable for everything else, for example, knowledge in exchange for career line and/or profit, speaks to the heart of what most people seek when they go to school (and certainly what people must attend to when they leave school). So now we have three sentences rewritten:

We have proceeded from the premises of the educational establishment. We have ac­cepted its language and its laws. We presupposed standardized knowledge (curriculum), the separation of learning, academic success, and assessed capacities, and of grades, cre­dentials, and earning potential- likewise division of labor, competition, the concept of exchange-value, etc.

We have translated "capital" into academic success and "profit from capital" into credentials. Both, of course, are won in competition: academic success is always achieved over others, and credentials are less about what they allow their owners to do than their non-owners not to do. This is consistent with Marx's haiku-like definition of capital in the Manuscripts.

Capital, private property taken from other people's labor?

(1844: 79, poetic license ours)

Good news: with variation, changes made in the first paragraph can last through the essay. The variations are interesting to trace, but are mostly self-explanatory. In Tables 6.1 and 6.2, we separate the terms we had to change (as we began analytically to pull apart, first, labor and learning and, econd, political economy and education) from a few terms we did not have

to change because they apply equally to both of these thoroughly enmeshed pheres of production.

Nota bene: The conceptual shifts are not one-to-one. The concepts in Marx's text are mutually defined, and so it must be for the educational t~rms. The changes must be read from top to bottom as well as from left to nght.' The appearance of a one-to-one correspondence across terms would req~~re the assumption of a one-to-one, and likely distorting, fit between political economy and education. The power of the rewrite lies ultimately Ill the relati d h' . ons among an across both sets of concepts as they have been

,stoncally established and fitted to different spheres of activity across quite

of society must fall apart into the two classes - the credentialed and the non-credentialed.s

Paragraph 1: Initial rewriting of Marx's concepts of political economy intoeducational terms (variations from later paragraphs are listed in parentheses)

political economy and its classical theory -+ educational establishment and itstheory (educational theory, learning theory)

private property -+ controlled and standardized knowledge (curriculumand tests)

labor -+ learningcapital -+ academic success (achievement), all at the expense of othersland -+ capacities (access)wages -+ gradesprofit of capital -+ credentials, appropriated from othersrent of land -+ assessed capacitiescapitalist -+ knowledge accumulator (scientists and scholars)land rentier -+ knowledge distributors (teachers and testers)his (man, him, he) -+ their (humankind, people, she and he)

For the next three paragraphs, Marx develops his argument: Experts onpolitical economy can populate the world with supposed entities abstractedfrom the sensuous give and take of daily life and then struggle to writelaws for how the entities interact, but they cannot explain how the entitieshave developed historically along with the partial perspectives that makethem look real. For most modern thought, reality has been irremediablyperspectival, but for Marx, all perspectives are also irremediably political.Objective reality not only depends on where one is standing, but where one isstanding in relation to everyone else, whether measured by lineage, money,or access to power.9 Might the same be true for a critique of theories ofeducation? Might where one stands in relation to everyone else be measuredas easily by grades earned as by lineage, money, or access? For Paragraphs2-4, we present the economic arguments of "Estranged Labor" and theeducational arguments of "Estranged I::mber/Learning" side-by-side for aneasy to view contrast:

Paragraph 2:

different time lines. Although we stress similarities across concepts that serveboth theories of political economy and theories of education, what does nottranslate isjust as revealing, as when we argue, in Part IV, that productionin education might be more akin to what Marx calls distribution in politicaleconomy.

The rest of the first paragraph turns into education as it might get artic-ulated in a class-based democracy:

On the basis of educational theory itself, in its own words, we have shown that thelearner sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretchedof commodities; that the wretchedness of the learner is in inverse proportion to thepower and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competitionis the accumulation of academic success in a few hands, and thus the restorationof monopoly in a more terrible form; and that finally the distinction betweenthe knowledge accumulator (scientist and scholar) and the knowledge distributor (teacherand tester), like that between the kinds of learner, disappears and that the whole

(2) Political economy starts with thefact of private property, but it does notexplain it to us. It expresses in general,abstract formulas the material processthrough which private property actuallypasses, and these formulas it then takesfor laws. It does not comprehend these

(2) The educational establishment startswith the fact of standardized knowledge,but it does not explain it to us. Itexpresses in general, abstract formulasthe material process through whichcurriculum actually passes, and theseformulas it then takes for laws. It does

S A note on the concept of production: In "Estranged Labor," the internal relations of "pro-duction" that give it its meaning are labor under capitalism, workers' relations with whatthey produce in the workplace, workers' relations with capital and capitalists, and relationsbetween alienated labor and private property. We explore comparable relations among learn-ers, their self-formation, learning, the commodified products oflearning in schools, learners'relations with teachers, schools, and the educational establishment including its theorists andapologists. We compare the latter to the classical political economists, exploring with respectto educational theory Marx's critique of political economic theory. Later in the chapter weconsider production/distribution relations as a matter of alienated labor and learning. Weare aware that exploration of the relations between political economy and education poten-tially raises distinctions between production and reproduction, distinctions of which we arecritical. To maintain a critical perspective, we must remember that relations between laborand learning, political economy and education, the learning implied in estranged labor andthe labor in estranged learning, ar:e multiple and entangled.

9 Objective reality: "all that is appropriate to, noticeable within, and marked by the self-directed,or practical, actions of collectivities in situations of conflict" (Brown, 1986: 15)·

Paragraph 1: Concepts applicable to both domains (variations from laterparagraphs are listed in parentheses)

division of laborcompetition (meritocracy, showing off)exchange-valueproductioncommoditymonopoly (nobility, knowledge)

98 Ray McDermott and Jean Lave

TABLE 6.1. Conceptual Changes -Political Economy to Education

Paragraph 1: Initial rewriting of Marx's concepts of political economy into educational terms (variations from later paragraphs are listed in parentheses)

political economy and its classical theory ➔ educational establishment and its theory (educational theory, learning the01-y)

private property ➔ controlled and standardized knowledge (curriculum and tests)

labor ➔ learning capital ➔ academic success (achievement), all at the expense of others land ➔ capacities (access) wages ➔ grades profit of capital ➔ credentials, appropriated from others rent of land ➔ assessed capacities capitalist ➔ knowledge accumulator (scientists and scholars) land rentier ➔ knowledge distributors (teachers and testers) his (man, him, he) ➔ their (humankind, people, she and he)

different time lines. Although we stress similarities across concepts that serve both theories of political economy and theories of education, what does not translate is just as revealing, as when we argue, in Part IV, that production in education might be more akin to what Marx calls distribution in political economy.

The rest of the first paragraph turns into education as it might get artic­ulated in a class-based democracy:

On the basis of educational theory itself, in its own words, we have shown that the learner sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the learner is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of academic success in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; and that finally the distinction between the knowledge accumulator (scientist and scholar) and the knowledge distributor (teacher and tester), like that between the kinds of learner, disappears and that the whole

TABLE 6. 2. Conceptual Continuity - Political E_conomy and Education

Paragraph 1: Concepts applicable to both domains (variations from later paragraphs are listed in parentheses)

division of labor competition (meritocracy, showing off) exchange-value production commodity monopoly (nobility, knowledge)

Estranged ~ Learning 99

of society must fall apart into the two classes - the credentialed and the non­credentialed.s

PART II: ALIENATED PROBLEMS AND ALTERNATIVES

For the next three paragraphs, Marx develops his argument: Experts on political economy can populate the world with supposed entities abstracted from the sensuous give and take of daily life and then struggle to write laws for how the entities interact, but they cannot explain how the entities have developed historically along with the partial perspectives that make them look real. For most modem thought, reality has been irremediably perspectival, but for Marx, all perspectives are also irremediably political. Objective reality not only depends on where one is standing, but where one is standing in relation to everyone else, whether measured by lineage, money, or access to power.9 Might the same be true for a critique of theories of education? Might where one stands in relation to everyone else be measured as easily by grades earned as by lineage, money, or access? For Paragraphs 2-4, we present the economic arguments of "Estranged Labor" and the educational arguments of "Estranged -baber/Leaming" side-by-side for an easy to view contrast:

Paragraph 2:

(2) Political economy starts with the fact of private property, but it does not explain it to us. It expresses in general, abstract formulas the material process through which private property actually passes, and these formulas it then takes for laws. It does not comprehend these

( 2) The educational establishment starts with the fact of standardized knowledge, but it does not explain it to us. It expresses in general, abstract formulas the material process through which curriculum actually passes, and these formulas it then takes for laws. It does

8 A note on the concept of production: In "Estranged Labor," the internal relations of "pro­duction" that give it its meaning are labor under capitalism, workers' relations with what they produce in the workplace, workers' relations with capital and capitalists, and relations between alienated labor and private property. We explore comparable relations among learn­ers, their self-formation, learning, the commodified products oflearning in schools, learners' relations with teachers, schools, and the educational establishment including its theorists and apologists. We compare the latter to the classical political economists, exploring with respect to educational theory Marx's critique of political economic theory. Later in the chapter we consider production/ distribution relations as a matter of alienated labor and learning. We are aware that exploration of the relations between political economy and education poten­tially raises distinctions between production and reproduction, distinctions of which we are critical. To maintain a critical perspective, we must remember that relations between labor and learning, political economy and education, the learning implied in estranged labor and the labor in estranged learning, are multiple and entangled.

9 Objective reality: "all that is appropriate to, noticeable within, and marked by the self-directed, or practical, actions of collectivities in situations of conflict" (Brown, 1986: 15).

laws, i.e., it does not demonstratehow they arise from the very natureof private property. Politicaleconomy does not disclose the sourceof the division between labor andcapital, and between capital andland. When, for example, it definesthe relationship of wages to profit,it takes the interest of the capitaliststo be the ultimate cause, i.e., ittakes for granted what it is supposedto explain. Similarly, competitioncomes in everywhere. It is explainedfrom external circumstances. As to howfar these external and apparentlyaccidental circumstances are but theexpression of a necessary course ofdevelopment, political economyteaches us nothing. We have seen howexchange itself appears to it as anaccidental fact. The only wheels whichpolitical economy sets in motion aregreed and the war amongst the greedy -competition.

not comprehend these laws, i.e., it doesnot demonstrate how they arise fromthe very nature of standardized knowledge.Educational theory does not disclose thesource of the division between learningand achievement, and between degrees andassessed capacity. When, for example, itdefines the relationship of grades tocredentials, it takes the interest of theknowledge accumulators to be the ultimatecause i.e., it takes for granted what it issupposed to explain. Similarly,competition comes in everywhere. It isexplained from external circumstances.As to how far the external andapparently accidental circumstances arebut the expression of a necessary courseof development, educational theoryteaches us nothing. We have seen howteachingllearning exchanges and knowledgedistribution appear as accidental fact.The only wheels which educational theorysets in motion are ambition and the waramongst the ambitious - competition.

Apparent Apparent RealProblem invites Solution because Causes masking Conditions

Doctrine of Doctrine ofMonopoly +---+ Competition +- Accident +- II +- NecessityDoctrine of Doctrine ofFreedom of +---+ Freedom of +- Premeditation +- II +- Inevi tabili tyGuilds Crafts

Doctrine of Doctrine ofBig Estates +---+ Division of +- Violence +- II +- Naturalness

LandedProperty

It is tempting to read Marx's argument from left to right, across therows one column at a time, as if the problem and solution pairs, sayMonopoly +--? Competition, could be understood, mistakenly, as causedby Accident, whereas the real connection is one of Necessity. Because wecannot always tell the difference between Necessity, Inevitability, and Nat-uralness and do not always see reasons for traditional political economistschoosing between Accident, Premeditation, and Violence, we have mergedthese categories considerably. So we have three problem and solution pairs,each accounted for, inadequately, byAccident, Premeditation, and Violence,whereas each might be better accounted for by Necessity, Inevitability, andNaturalness.

Substitutions become more complex in Paragraph 3. The argument ismore layered, and each substitution must be paired across levels of analy-sis. In Paragraphs 1-2, Marx could say we had terrible problems and littleanalytic vocabulary for confronting them, an argument that holds for ed-ucation as well as political economy. In Paragraph 3, Marx claims that theresolutions we devise for our historic problems are not only inadequate, butsystematic products of, and thereby reflexively constitutive of the very sameproblems. In defining a problem and articulating a possible solution, it ispossible to lose sight of the conditions that created the problem and moveforward with the proposed solution:

1. In an economy of monopolistic control, access to competition mustlook like a wonderful alternative. But monopolies are the systematicoutcome of competition run amuck. Monopolies make competitionvisible and attractive. It is not noticed that the institutionalized com-petition that led to monopolies necessarily, inevitably, and naturally ledto a reform by the invocation of still more conipetition.lO

2. In an economy of repressive guilds, access to free crafts must look likea wonderful alternative. Guilds are the systematic outcome of accessto a market run amuck. Guilds make free crafts visible and attractive.It is not noticed that the market freedoms that led to repressive guildsnecessarily, inevitably, and naturally led to a reform by the invocation ofstill more freedom.

3· In an economy of big estates, access to a more equitable division oflanded property must look like a wonderful alternative. Big estates

Precisely because political economy does not grasp the way the movement is con-nected, it was possible to oppose, for instance, the doctrine of competition to thedoctrine of monopoly, the doctrine of the freedom of the crafts to the doctrine ofthe guild, the doctrine of the division of landed property to the doctrine of the bigestate - for competition, freedom of the crafts and the division of landed propertywere explained and comprehended only as accidental, premeditated and violentconsequences of monopoly, of the guild system, and of feudal property, not as their'necessary, inevitable and natural consequences.

It is a difficult paragraph. In Table 6.3, we offer a schematic of how Marxdevelops the argument in three parts of four steps each:

10 So long as there is no disruptive transformation in the terms of debate, prescriptions for"new solutions" inevitably end up reproducing old problems, albeit in new trappings. Weread "necessarily, inevitably, and naturally" (the italics belong to Marx) in hegemonic terms,not as a stjltement of absolute determination.

100

laws, i.e., it does not demonstrate how they arise from the very nature of private property. Political economy does not disclose the source of the division between labor and capital, and between capital and land. When, for example, it defines the relationship of wages to profit, it takes the interest of the capitalists to be the ultimate cause, i.e., it takes for granted what it is supposed to explain. Similarly, competition comes in everywhere. It is explained from external circumstances. As to how far these external and apparently accidental circumstances are but the expression of a necessary course of development, political economy teaches us nothing. We have seen how exchange itself appears to it as an accidental fact. The only wheels which political economy sets in motion are greed and the war amongst the greedy -competition.

Ray McDermott and Jean Lave

not comprehend these Jaws, i.e., it does not demonstrate how they arise from the very nature of standardized knowl,edge. Educational theory does not disclose the source of the division between !,earning and achievement, and between degrees and assessed capacity. When, for example, it defines the relationship of grades to credentials, it takes the interest of the knowl,edge accumulators to be the ultimate cause i.e., it takes for granted what it is supposed to explain. Similarly, competition comes in everywhere. It is explained from external circumstances. As to how far the external and apparently accidental circumstances are but the expression of a necessary course of development, educational theory teaches us nothing. We have seen how teaching/1,earning exchanges and knowl,edge distribution appear as accidental fact. The only wheels which educational theory sets in motion are ambition and the war amongst the ambitious - competition.

Substitutions become more complex in Paragraph 3. The argument is more layered, and each substitution must be paired across levels of analy­sis. In Paragraphs 1-2, Marx could say we had terrible problems and little analytic vocabulary for confronting them, an argument that holds for ed­ucation as well as political economy. In Paragraph 3, Marx claims that the resolutions we devise for our historic problems are not only inadequate, but systematic products of, and thereby reflexively constitutive of the very same problems. In defining a problem and articulating a possible solution, it is possible to lose sight of the conditions that created the problem and move forward with the proposed solution:

Precisely because political economy does not grasp the way the movement is con­nected, it was possible to oppose, for instance, the doctrine of competition to the doctrine of monopoly, the doctrine of the freedom of the crafts to the doctrine of the guild, the doctrine of the division of landed property to the doctrine of the big estate - for competition, freedom of the crafts and the division of landed property were explained and comprehended only as accidental, premeditated and violent consequences of monopoly, of the guild system, and of feudal property, not as their · necessary, inevitable and natural consequences.

It is a difficult paragraph. In Table 6.3, we offer a schematic of how Marx develops the argument in three parts of four steps each:

Estranged l::,ttlJfff Learning 101

TABLE 6. 3_ The Logic of Paragraph 3

Apparent Apparent Real Problem invites Solution because Causes masking Conditions

Doctrine of Doctrine of Monopoly --Competition - Accident -11- Necessity Doctrine of Doctrine of Freedom of --Freedom of - Premeditation -11- Inevitability Guilds Crafts

Doctrine of Doctrine of Big Estates --Division of - Violence -11- aturalness

Landed Property

It is tempting to read Marx's argument from left to right, across the rows one column at a time, as if the problem and solution pairs, say Monopoly +--➔ Competition, could be understood, mistakenly, as caused by Accident, whereas the real connection is one of Necessity. Because we cannot always tell the difference between Necessity, Inevitability, and Nat­uralness and do not always see reasons for traditional political economists choosing between Accident, Premeditation, and Violence, we have merged these categories considerably. So we have three problem and solution pairs, each accounted for, inadequately, by Accident, Premeditation, and Violence, whereas each might be better accounted for by ecessity, Inevitability, and Naturalness.

1. In an economy of monopolistic control, access to competition must look like a wonderful alternative. But monopolies are the systematic outcome of competition run amuck. Monopolies make competition visible and attractive. It is not noticed that the institutionalized com­petition that led to monopolies necessarily, inevitably, and naturally led to a reform by the invocation of still more competition. 10

2. In an economy of repressive guilds, access to free crafts must look like a wonderful alternative. Guilds are the systematic outcome of access to a market run amuck. Guilds make free crafts visible and attractive. It is not noticed that the market freedoms that led to repressive guilds necessarily, inevitably, and naturally led to a reform by the invocation of still more freedom.

3. In an economy of big estates, access to a more equitable division of landed property must look like a wonderful alternative. Big estates

10 So long a,, there i no disruptive transformation in the terms of debate, prescriptions for "new soh.1tions" ine~~tably end up reproducing old problems, albeit in new trappings. We read "neceuaril)\ inevitably, and naturally" {the italics belong to Marx) in hegemonic tenns, not as a sullement of absolute determination.

are the systematic outcome of the relations of private property runamuck. Big estates make individual land holding visible and attractive.It is not noticed that the rules ofland ownership that led to big estatesnecessarily, inevitably, and naturally led to a reform by the invocation ofstill more private ownership.

Now we can rewrite Marx to see if it gives us an account of a reasonablebut invidious pairing between educational problems and educational solu:tions, all produced in ways that confuse" accidental, premeditated, and violentconsequences" with "necessary, inevitable, and natural" ones. As Marx givesthree examples, we give three examples. Marx's examples - struggles to re-place monopolies with competition, guilds with free crafts, and large estateswith a more equitable division of land - are quite distinct from each other.Our educational examples - struggles to replace access to knowledge byelites only with a meritocracy, replacing education by privilege with equalaccess to education, and transforming an enforced conformity to a culturalcannon with self-cultivation - seem less distinct. As much as we are pointingto the continuities from political economy to education, the differences arealso instructive. Marx was talking about large social changes across manycenturies, whereas we are focusing on much smaller changes within a spe-cific institutional setting across the last century.

[Paragraph 3] Preciselybecause educational theory does not grasp the waythe move-ment is connected, it was possible to oppose, for instance, the doctrine of meritoc-racy to the doctrine of elite knowledge, the doctrine of level playing field to the doc-trine of privileged access, the doctrine of cultivation of the self (individualism and multi-culturalism) to the doctrine of a forced allegiance to a cultural - for meritocracy, levelplayingfields, and self-cultivation were explained and comprehended onlyas acciden-tal, pre-meditated and violent consequences of nobility, of privileged access, and ofa forced allegiance to a cultural cannon, not as their necessary,inevitable and naturalconsequences.

1. The enforcement of a meritocracy may well look better than in-heritance by a nobility, but neither challenges the principle of un-equal access. The systematic outcome of competition among eli~e.srun amuck, displays of inherited knowledge make competition VlSl-

ble and attractive, if only because they developed together, as part ofthe same economic circumstances. It is not noticed that the institu-tionalized competitions that led to inherited entitlement necessarily,inevitably, and naturally led to a reform by the invocation of still morecompetition. .

2. Equal access to education certainly sounds preferable to access toexpertise by privilege, but it leaves hierarchy eventually in place. 'f.h~systematic outcome of access to a market run amuck, expertise by~nV1dleged access makes meritocracy visible and attractive. It is not nouce

that the institutionalized freedoms that led to repressive expertisenecessarily, inevitably, and naturally led to a reform by the invocation ofstill more expertise.

3. A focus on self-cultivation (self-realization, self-actualization, self-efficacy) simply wallows in decency in contrast with an enforced cele-bration of elite culture, but, no matter how hard fought for, individualrights are hollow until paired with control of the conditions for stagingselvesin relation to each other; in education, a focus on the motivatedcognitive self seems an improvement over race and gender as explana-tions for school success and failure. Even if successfully claimed, it canstill leave everyone relatively mired in place until the conditions for re-defining knowledge, intelligence, and success are more in the serviceof the poor and disenfranchised than in the service of the already richand knowledgeable. The systematic outcome of commodified selvesrun amuck, enforced conformity to a cultural cannon, makes a pri-vate cultivation of the self visible and attractive." It is not noticedthat the cult of well-groomed self-expression that led to the successfulindividual as the center of social relations necessarily, inevitably, andnaturally led to a reform by the invocation of still more attention topersonal desire.

The logic of Marx's argument in Paragraph 3 lends itself to a more ex-tended reading of problem and solution pairs popular in contemporaryeducation. For example, two products of contemporary educational theoryare learning disabled children and geniuses. The first is about seventy yearsold. The second has a longer history (Latin: genio), but has referred to asingle person consistently of great ability for only about 300 or 400 years.12

:: On this point, see an excellent discussion by Wexler (1983, 1993).See Murray (1988) for historical biographies of the term "genius" in use and DeNora and~ehan (1993) on the relation between genius and learning disabilities. A rough reconstruc-tIon of genius, starting with Ruane (1575), distinguishes:

• a medieval and renaissance genius as the medium of moment for rare gifts from super-natural sources, often tied to madness, mystical states, and drunkeness;

• an eighteenth-eentury genius, still rare, as a kind of person across context and circum-stance;

• ~ turn-of-the-nineteenth-eentury genius, less rare, as a social role, with every generationIts representatives;

• the romanti· h .c nmeteent -century gemus, as role and goal, sought after, trained for, anddependent on others to realize and celebrate.

In the late nineteenth century, the very idea of genius begins to fragment and becomes:

• an inheritance and soon thereafter a genotype,• a stereotype in invidious racial comparisons,• an Identifier of h t 1 . .. w a most peop e are not, and therefore a source of unproductIve alien-

atIon.

102 Ray McDermott and Jean Lave

are the systematic outcome of the relations of private property run amuck. Big estates make individual land holding visible and attractive. It is not noticed that the rules ofland ownership that led to big estates necessarily, inevitably, and naturally led to a reform by the invocation of still more private ownership.

Now we can rewrite Marx to see if it gives us an account of a reasonable but invidious pairing between educational problems and educational solu~ tions, all produced in ways that confuse "accidental, premeditated, and violent consequences" with "necessary, inevitable, and natural" ones. As Marx gives three examples, we give three examples. Marx's examples - struggles to re­place monopolies with competition, guilds with free crafts, and large estates with a more equitable division of land - are quite distinct from each other. Our educational examples - struggles to replace access to knowledge by elites only with a meritocracy, replacing education by privilege with equal access to education, and transforming an enforced conformity to a cultural cannon with self-cultivation - seem less distinct. As much as we are pointing to the continuities from political economy to education, the differences are also instructive. Marx was talking about large social changes across many centuries, whereas we are focusing on much smaller changes within a spe­cific institutional setting across the last century.

[Paragraph 3] Precisely because educational theory does not grasp the way the move­ment is connected, it was possible to oppose, for instance, the doctrine of meritoc­racy to the doctrine of elite knowl,edge, the doctrine of level playing field to the doc­trine of privil,eged access, the doctrine of cultivation of the self (individualism and multi­culturalism) to the doctrine of a forced all,egiance to a cultural - for meritocraC)\ level playingfields, and self-cultivation were explained and comprehended only as acciden­tal, pre-meditated and violent consequences of nobility, of privil,eged access, and of a forced all,egiance to a cultural cannon, not as their necessary, inevitable and natural consequences.

1. The enforcement of a meritocracy may well look better than in­heritance by a nobility, but neither challenges the principle of un­equal access. The systematic outcome of competition among eli~e­run amuck, displays of inherited knowledge make competition VISI­ble and attractive, if only because they developed together, as part of the same economic circumstances. It is not noticed that the institu­tionalized competitions that led to inherited entitlement necessarily, inevitably, and naturally led to a reform by the invocation of still more competition. .

2. Equal access to education certainly sounds preferable to access to

expertise by privilege, but it leaves hierarchy eventually in place. ~h~ systematic outcome of access to a market run amuck, expertise by ~nVI~ leged access makes meritocracy visible and attractive. It is not nonce

103

that the institutionalized freedoms that led to repressive expertise necessarily, inevitably, and naturally led to a reform by the invocation of still more expertise.

3_ A focus on self-cultivation (self-realization, self-actualization, self­

efficacy) simply wallows in decency in contrast with an enforced cele­bration of elite culture, but, no matter how hard fought for, individual rights are hollow until paired with control of the conditions for staging selves in relation to each other; in education, a focus on the motivated cognitive self seems an improvement over race and genderas explana­tions for school success and failure. Even if successfully claimed, it can still leave everyone relatively mired in place until the conditions for re­defining knowledge, intelligence, and success are more in the service of the poor and disenfranchised than in the service of the already rich and knowledgeable. The systematic outcome of commodified selves run amuck, enforced conformity to a cultural cannon, makes a pri­vate cultivation of the self visible and attractive." It is not noticed that the cult of well-groomed self-expression that led to the successful individual as the center of social relations necessarily, inevitably, and naturally led to a reform by the invocation of still more attention to personal desire.

The logic of Marx's argument in Paragraph 3 lends itself to a more ex­tended reading of problem and solution pairs popular in contemporary education. For example, two products of contemporary educational theory are learning disabled children and geniuses. The first is about seventy years old. The second has a longer history (Latin: genio), but has referred to a single person consistently of great ability for only about 300 or 400 years. 12

:: On this point, see an excellent discussion by Wexler ( 1983, 1993). See Murray ( 1988) for historical biographies of the term "genius" in use and DeNora and ~ehan ( 1993) on the relation between genius and learning disabilities. A rough reconstruc­tion of genius, starting with Huarte ( 1575), distinguishes:

• a medieval and renaissance genius as the medium of moment for rare gifts from super­natural sources, often tied to madness, mystical states, and drunkeness;

• an eighteenth-century genius, still rare, as a kind of person across context and circum­stance;

• ~ tum-of-the-nineteenth-century genius, less rare, as a social role, with every generation its representatives;

• the romanti • h · c mneteent -century gemus, as role and goal, sought after, trained for, and dependent on others to realize and celebrate.

In the late ninetee th th · . . n cenn,ry, e very idea of genms begms to fragment and becomes:

• an· h • 111 entance and soon thereafter a genotype,

• a stereotyp • • ·d· . . e m lllVJ 10us racial comparisons, • an identifier of h t 1 • . . w a most peop e are not, and therefore a source of unproductive alien-

ation.

If the terms have developed along with the rise of capitalism, they should fitinto Marx's critique of terms from political economy.

And sure enough, Learning Disability (which is, so they say, smart, butnot quick to learn reading and writing) could develop as an alternativeto a school system that was rendering so many children officially stupid, atheory of multiple intelligences could hold out hope for school failures, andappeals to self-esteem could be opposed to the hard truth that, in a systemin which everyone has to do better than everyone else, there is only so muchself-esteem to go around (McDermott, 1993; Mehan, 1993)· Paragraph 3translates easily into disability discourse:

Learning Disabilities in Paragraph 3:

Precisely because learning theory does not grasp the way the movement is connected, itwas possible to oppose, for instance, the doctrine of learning disability to the doctrineof stupidity, the doctrine of multiple intelligences to the doctrine of one general intelli-gence, the doctrine of self-esteem (individualism and multi-culturalism) to the doctrineof institutional discipline - or learning disabilities, multiple intelligences, and self-esteemwere explained and comprehended only as accidental, pre-meditated and violentconsequences of theories of stupidity, generaLintelligence, and institutional discipline, notas their necessary, inevitable and natural consequences.

as accidental, premeditated and violent consequences of madness, privileged access,and high birth, not as their necessary, inevitable and natural consequences.

Paragraph 4 nicely sums up the situation from the point of view of politicaleconomy and educational theory'3:

(4) Now, therefore, we have tograsp the essential connectionbetween private property, greed, andthe separation of labor, capitaland landed property; betweenexchange and competition, valueand the devaluation of men, monopolyand competition, ete. - the connectionbetween this whole estrangement andthe money system.

(4) Now, therefore, we have to graspthe essential connection betweenstandardized knowledge, ambition, and theseparation of learning, achievement, andaccess;between teaching andcompetition, between diagnosticassessment and the devaluation ofchildren, between knowledge andshowing-off, ete. - the connectionbetween this whole estrangement andthe educational banking system.

Alienation, Marx tells us in four steps, is created, first, in labor's products(paragraphs 7-8) and, second, in the process of laboring (paragraphs 20-

23)· Third, it follows from the first two that alienation characterizes humanrelations with nature and with the self (paragraphs 25-36). Finally and to-gether, these relations result in the alienation of everyone from everyoneelse (paragraphs 36-42). These four aspects form the armature of the con-cept of alienation in "Estranged Labor."'4

Similarly, genius can be read as a possible solution to the problem of howto talk about persons who think in new ways in a system articulate about,gauged by, and limited to celebrating performances by a chosen few on testswith a culturally pre-established content in a predigested format. Throughthe middle ages, the category of genius overlapped considerably with mad-ness, and creativity was easily confused with special breeding and high birth.A few centuries later, the same people were more likely to be thought of asingenious, exceptional, and creative individuals. This seems like a great im-provement until the search for creativity became routinized into a search, bywayoflQ tests and the like, for children who know what has been predefinedas knowledge by adults. The limits of the first system of categories (geniusas madness) invites solutions (genius as conformity) that get reworked tofit new relations of production, consumption, exchange, distribution, andrepresentation. If intelligence cannot be measured by how much a personknows the answers to standardized questions, but is better tested by what aperson does when no one knows what to do, then high degrees of intelli-gence, of genius, should be virtually unrecognizable and certainly untestableby non-geniuses working at testing services. The world of tests offers no newterrain for brilliance, and ifit did, who would be able to grade it?

Genius in Paragraph 3:

'3 The theoretical "essential connections" of paragraph 4 should not be construed as fixedin functionalist terms, for those very essential connections in practice - like those we arediscussing in relation to schooling- slip, twist, get mangled and transformed, often sustainedby efforts to address what they are supposed to be, but are no longer.

14 There is an order to the way Marx analyzes estranged labor. He proceeds dialectically fromabstract accounts of how labor functions in capitalism and gradually rises to a concretehistorical comprehension of real persons suffering estrangement. Marx gives flesh to theconcept of alienation as he moves from:

- the abstract political-economic fact of alienation in production (in the first sentence ofparagraph 7:

"The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his productionincreases in power and size.")

- to an analysis of the relations that compose the concept of alienation in (roughly) thefirst half of the essay,

- then turning to brief observations on the relations of alienation in real life,- interspersed with a discussion of other relations that must be elaborated to discern alien-

ation in a wide range of social events, for example, learning (on Marx's own descriptionsof method, see paragraphs 43-5'; also, Marx, 184T 112-137; 1857: 112-137; see alsoHall, '973; Beamish, 1992). .

Precisely because learning theory does not grasp the way the movement is connected,it was possible to oppose historically, for instance, the doctrine of genius to thedoctrine of madness, the doctrine of exceptional individuals to the doctrine of privilegedaccess, the doctrine of creativity to the doctrine of high birth and good breeding - forgenius, exceptional individuals, and creativity were explained and comprehended only

104 R.ay McDermott and Jean Lave

If the terms have developed along with the rise of capitalism, they should fit into Marx's critique of terms from political economy.

And sure enough, Learning Disability (which is, so they say, smart, but not quick to learn reading and writing) could develop as an alternative to a school system that was rendering so many children officially stupid, a theory of multiple intelligences could hold out hope for school failures, and appeals to self-esteem could be opposed to the hard truth that, in a system in which everyone has to do better than everyone else, there is only so much self-esteem to go around (McDermott, 1993; Mehan, 1993). Paragraph 3 translates easily into disability discourse:

Learning Disabilities in Paragraph 3:

Precisely because learning theory does not grasp the way the movement is connected, it was possible to oppose, for instance, the doctrine of learning disability to the doctrine of stupidity, the doctrine of multiple intelligences to the doctrine of one general intelli­gence, the doctrine of self-esteem (individualism and multi-culturalism) to the doctrine of institutional discipline - or learning disabilities, multiple intelligences, and self-esteem were explained and comprehended only as accidental, pre-meditated and violent consequences of theories of stupidity, generaLintelligence, and institutional discipline, not as their necessary, inevitable and natural consequences.

Similarly, genius can be read as a possible solution to the problem of how to talk about persons who think in new ways in a system articulate about, gauged by, and limited to celebrating performances by a chosen few on tests with a culturally pre-established content in a predigested format. Through the middle ages, the category of genius overlapped considerably with mad­ness, and creativity was easily confused with special breeding and high birth. A few centuries later, the same people were more likely to be thought of as ingenious, exceptional, and creative individuals. This seems like a great im­provement until the search for creativity became routinized into a search, by way ofIQ tests and the like, for children who know what has been predefined as knowledge by adults. The limits of the first system of categories (genius as madness) invites solutions (genius as conformity) that get reworked to fit new relations of production, consumption, exchange, distribution, and representation. If intelligence cannot be measured by how much a person knows the answers to standardized questions, but is better tested by what a person does when no one knows what to do, then high degrees of intelli­gence, of genius, should be virtually unrecognizable and certainly untestable by non-geniuses working at testing services. The world of tests offers no new terrain for brilliance, and if it did, who would be able to grade it?

Genius in Paragraph 3:

Precisely because learning theory does not grasp the way the movement is connected, it was possible to oppose historically, for instance, the doctrine of genius to the doctrine of madness, the doctrine of exceptional individuals to the doctrine of privileged access, the doctrine of creativity to the doctrine of high birth and good breeding - for genius, exceptional individuals, and creativity were explained and comprehended only

Estranged £ehm, Learning 105

as accidental, premeditated and violent consequences of madness, privileged access, and high birth, not as their necessary, inevitable and natural consequences.

Paragraph 4 nicely sums up the situation from the point of view of political economy and educational theory 1 3:

(4) Now, therefore, we have to grasp the essential connection between private property, greed, and the separation of labor, capital and landed property; between exchange and competition, value and the devaluation of men, monopoly and competition, etc. - the connection between this whole estrangement and the money system.

(4) Now, therefore, we have to grasp the essential connection between standardized knowledge, ambition, and the separation of learning, achievement, and access; between teaching and competition, between diagnostic assessment and the devaluation of children, between knowledge and showing-off, etc. - the connection between this whole estrangement and the educational banking system.

PART III: ALIENATED LEARNING

Alienation, Marx tells us in four steps, is created, first, in labor's products (paragraphs 7-8) and, second, in the process oflaboring (paragraphs 20-

23). Third, it follows from the first two that alienation characterizes human relations with nature and with the self (paragraphs 25-36). Finally and to­gether, these relations result in the alienation of everyone from everyone else (paragraphs 36-42). These four aspects form the armature of the con­cept of alienation in "Estranged Labor. "14

13 The theoretical "essential connections" of paragraph 4 should not be construed as fixed in functionalist terms, for those very essential connections in practice - like those we are discussing in relation to schooling-slip, twist, get mangled and transformed, often sustained by efforts to address what they are supposed to be, but are no longer.

14 There is an order to the way Marx analyzes estranged labor. He proceeds dialectically from abstract accounts of how labor functions in capitalism and gradually rises to a concrete historical comprehension of real persons suffering estrangement. Marx gives flesh to the concept of alienation as he moves from:

- the abstract political-economic fact of alienation in production (in the first sentence of paragraph T

"The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size.")

- to an analysis of the relations that compose the concept of alienation in (roughly) the first half of the essay,

- then turning to brief observations on the relations of alienation in real life, - interspersed with a discussion of other relations that must be elaborated to discern alien-

ation in a wide range of social events, for example, learning (on Marx's own descriptions of method, see paragraphs 43-51; also, Marx, 1s4r 112-137; 185T 112-137; see also Hall, 1973; Beamish, 1992).

I

II

I