Is it simple to be a marxist in school finance?
Last year, a colleague Lucas Pellisari from Brazil got in touch with me. He was putting together a collection on education and modes of production, focusing on Althusser’s thinking on contemporary issues in education. He asked if I had anything I wanted to submit.
I’d given a lecture to the Marxian-SIG of the American Educational Research Association, riffing on Althusser’s great essay “Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy?” which is one of my favorite pieces to tell people about when they want to start readings Althusser’s work.
My lecture was called “Is it Simple to be a Marxist in School Finance?” I traced my own work in the field to that point, using Althusser’s framework to think about issues in education and money, making a philosophical argument about the difference between application and activation.
My Brazilian colleague was excited about adding this piece to the collection. It was translated into Portuguese and published recently.
Since I probably don’t have a lot of Portuguese speaking readers, I’m sending along the original English essay here for this week!