Critical Pedagogy: It's Time to Join the Party

• In Event: Education and Counterinterpellation: A New Look at Louis Althusser

Abstract

Marxism is supposed to be one of the main foundations upon which critical pedagogy has been built (Giroux, 1983; Kincheloe, 2008; McLaren, 2005). Against this assumption, I argue that critical pedagogy has historically been anti-Marxist, or at least anti-Communist, in its opposition to actually-existing socialism and the Party-form. I trace this legacy in part back to Henry Giroux’s (1983) classic Theory and Resistance and the mis-reading and subsequent dismissal of Althusser contained therein. While Giroux no doubt acknowledges some positive contributions that Althusser can make to critical pedagogy, such as his nuanced take on the base and superstructure, he ultimately concludes that “Althusser has developed a notion of power that appears to eliminate human agency” (p. 82).
The work of Althusser available to English-speaking scholars at the time of Giroux’s book provides ample evidence against this assertion, such as Althusser’s (1971) nod to teachers who teach against dominant ideology—as does Althusser’s activity in the French Communist Party. The recent translation of On the Reproduction of Capitalism, from which his famous essay on ideology was extracted, however, provides a more comprehensive picture of Althusser’s conception of agency and the possibility of revolutionary transformation in advanced capitalist societies. This presentation returns to the question of revolution and agency through an examination of the Party-form developed by Althusser (2014). This entails a careful understanding of ideological state apparatuses—such as education—and their relationship to and difference from repressive state apparatuses, the latter of which always, in the last instance, provide the backing for the state and the dominant mode of production.
I show that engaging Althusser’s comments on the scholastic apparatus seriously reveals how this apparatus—which is not synonymous with the school but rather a complex network of institutions and organizations—is fragile, vulnerable, and amenable to the generation of oppositional (i.e., proletarian) ideologies. Yet Althusser’s ultimate point is that the entire state apparatus has to be destroyed and recreated, not just altered from within. This is where I return to the Party and its role in leading the transition to socialism. I clarify precisely what is meant by leadership and vanguard, to counter the skepticism toward both that currently debilitates the U.S. left (Dean, 2012). In the end I argue that critical pedagogy has to establish a relationship with the Party in order to contribute effectively to the movement against capitalism.

References
Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Althusser, L. (2014). The reproduction of capitalism: Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. London and New York: Verso.

Dean, J. (2012). The communist horizon. London and New York: Verso.

Giroux, H. (1983). Theory & resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. New York: Bergin & Garvey.

Kincheloe, J. (2008). Critical pedagogy primer (2nd edition). New York: Peter Lang.

Author

• Derek Ford