Martin Carnoy’s Marxism: Applying Neo-Marxist Educational Theory to Contemporary Market Reforms

• In Event: Marx, Education, Today

Abstract

Contemporary education policy discourse champions market-based solutions as liberating alternatives to bureaucratic public schooling, yet these reforms may represent sophisticated mechanisms of social reproduction rather than genuine transformation. This study examines the theoretical consistency of Martin Carnoy's neo-Marxist educational framework when applied to contemporary school choice policies, investigating whether his theoretical constructs can explain the dynamics of market-based educational reforms.
Drawing from neo-Marxist scholarship, this analysis employs Carnoy's theories of state mediation and educational contradictions as analytical lenses. The study utilizes Carnoy's foundational work Education as Cultural Imperialism (1974) and his later Education, Economy, and the State (2017) to establish a theoretical framework for understanding how educational systems serve ruling class interests while creating contradictory spaces for potential resistance. This neo-Marxist perspective reveals how seemingly progressive reforms can maintain class reproduction through new institutional arrangements.
The methodology centers on theoretical consistency testing, applying Carnoy's early framework to school choice policies as a thought experiment. This approach examines whether theoretical constructs developed for colonial educational contexts retain explanatory power when applied to contemporary market reforms within the same structural capitalist system. The analysis draws on Carnoy's published theoretical works alongside empirical evidence from his research on voucher programs and charter school outcomes.
The theoretical consistency test demonstrates that Carnoy's framework successfully predicts school choice outcomes. His theories of state mediation reveal how market reforms resolve contradictions between capital accumulation and democratic legitimacy by redirecting attention from structural inequality to individual consumer choice. The analysis shows that choice policies create new forms of stratification through information networks, transportation capacity, and cultural capital while maintaining the ideology that outcomes result from merit rather than class advantage. These mechanisms may be more effective than traditional sorting because they appear to result from individual preferences rather than structural constraints.
This research contributes to critical education policy scholarship by demonstrating the continued relevance of neo-Marxist theory for understanding contemporary reforms. The framework remembers the dynamics invisible to approaches focused primarily on test scores and cost-effectiveness, indicating why market reforms consistently fail to subvert unequal educational outcomes and fail to maintain political support. The study suggests that meaningful educational transformation requires challenging the relationship between schooling and capitalist social relations rather than simply rearranging institutional mechanisms, and affirms the importance of maintaining structural perspectives in educational economic analysis.

Author

• Mia Fullerton, Reed College