Searching for Missing Links: neo‐Marxist theories of education

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Abstract
Since the appearance of Bowles & Gintis’ (1976) ‘correspondence thesis’, neo‐Marxist theorizing about educational change has gone in several directions. Different approaches have emphasized capitalist reproduction requirements, contradictions between these requirements and the democratic state, hegemony theory and processes of class formation. While studies with affinity to a Marxist problematic of subordination and oppression have become more theoretically open and empirically grounded, some of the core explanatory ideas of the historical materialist perspective tend to have been ignored or dismissed. In consequence, the main conceptual, empirical and theoretical limitations of the correspondence thesis are being repeated, notably in arguments about a ‘post‐Fordist’ form of education. After a discussion of the contemporary relevance of historical materialism's core ideas for explaining educational change, the limited foci of neo‐Marxist theories of education are critically reviewed. Some suggestions are then made for overcoming these persistent limitations—most notably a hyper‐rationalistic image of education and a lack of direct attention to both production relations and educational relations per se.