[OPE] Lack of education as the cause of inequality in Britain

From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@tiscali.nl)
Date: Tue Jun 03 2008 - 16:53:15 EDT


Jerry

It is not my intention to clutter listspace with a lot of rubbish - but as an Education graduate, I marvel at the clarity in this neoliberal argument being put forward, it is a sort of "exemplar" for a style of argument. It is also interesting how this sort of story persists, despite four decades of careful empirical research which casts very strong doubts on the kind of causal chain being suggested. 

Because I am not a Marxist, whatever my admiration for Marx and Engels, I tend to be more sympathetic to liberal viewpoints than Marxists are - I recognize that liberal ideology is immensely preferable to all kinds of savage, barbaric and reactionary ideology that dehumanises people and oppresses them; at least liberal ideology offers the potentials for progressive change which other ideologies rule out. I think Marxism doesn't have a good critique of liberalism, because Marxism is crucially ambivalent about the ethics of freedom. Milton Fisk http://www.miltonfisk.org/ for example tries to make a critique, but I am rather doubtful about its strength.  

The difference between the 1970s radicalism that influenced me in my youth, and contemporary radicalism, is that contemporary radicalism is in practice constructed completely around the experience of individual and collective freedom. But almost nobody has anything profound to say about it.

Jurriaan



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