Marx & the Education Crisis in Chicago
Karl Marx explains the capitalistic society to us, which is broken down into the proletariat and the bourgeois. The proletariat are the working class, those who do not own any means of production. The bourgeois are the upper class, the ones that do own all the means of production. The economy is basically controlled by the bourgeoisie. Members of the bourgeoisie are many times born into this class, meaning it is nearly impossible to become part of the class through labor. Capitalism in itself makes it almost impossible for the proletariats to move up. The bourgeoisie have power in belonging to this class, something the proletariats lack. The only way for the proletariat to ever have a chance at power is to join together and revolt against the bourgeois. This is the only solution Marx sees fit. In doing so communism will be reign supreme. This brings us to the issue at hand; educational imbalance all over the country.
Although there is an imbalance in education all over the country, for this paper I will focus on Chicago. In 2013, 50 public schools were closed in Chicago, and since then there have been ongoing threats that more will close. This issue deals directly with there not being enough capital to keep these schools open. Schools provide an education for the children of the proletariat, so it would follow that policy makers and those in power (the bourgeois) would not make it a priority on their agenda to ensure the future proletariat are educated. The whole point of capitalism is to keep the proletariat in their place. This is ensured because the bourgeoisie are the ones in charge of the school issues. In their eyes, the lack of education handed down to these children will continue to reinforce the cycle in place of workers and those who own the workers, and that is the exact cycle they would like to keep running smoothly. This issue relies solely on capital, and as we have talked about in class money is extremely powerful and the true ruler of our capitalist society. Therefore, this issue deals directly with the capitalistic society we currently live in, which Marx offers an explanation for.
Marx firmly believes that our capitalistic society is a system composed of two classes. He also claims that capitalism will continue to create crisis after crisis until the proletariat unites to change the system and establish communism. Because of this, I believe that he would explain the educational crisis in Chicago as another crisis created by capitalism put in place to motivate the proletariat to unite and change the economic system put in place. However, there is a dark paradox in place here. In order to have the tools necessary to unite and change the system, the proletariat need access to a good education. Unfortunately, access to a good education is the exact crisis that they are dealing with because we are under a capitalistic system. The bourgeois use this to their advantage and continue to oppress the proletariat so that they cannot rise up against them and overthrow the capitalist system. Other than an education, those in the working class are given nothing that could possibly help them rise to the capitalists, “for he is sacrificed from youth upwards and, within his own class, has no chance of arriving at the conditions which would place him in the other class” (Marx, 1978: 200). Because of their lack of ownership of property, the working class will always remain in the working class, they will always have to work to live and they will never have power. They have no control over this, and have no control over the capitalists control over their lives, which includes their education.
In addition to the education crisis being a crisis created by capitalism, Marx would argue that the poor education level the working class receives continues to alienate them further from each other, from the capitalists, and from any chance they have of understanding capitalism. Understanding capitalism would act as the first stepping stone toward defeating the system of capitalism and moving toward communism. Since capitalists own the means of production, they hold immense amounts of power over the social status and social experience that those in the working class will have. This includes alienating them from their only chance to understand how the capitalistic society functions. Education is extremely important to not only unite the proletariat, but to give them the knowledge necessary to understand the means of their production. Jane Addams in her book The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, talks about how it is incredibly important for workers to become educated to understand how their labor is crucial to the whole of the production of an item. This understanding saves their state of mind. This ties in with Marx’s reasoning of why so many workers become alienated from each other, the product, and themselves, because they do not understand how their labor ties into the production as a whole. The crisis of education in Chicago only feeds this alienation more.
Chicago is a major metropolitan city. Many areas of this country and even the world rely on the labor and education that comes out of the city. There are several private schools in which the children of the capitalists attend, and the crisis of education is directly affecting only those who are children of the working class. There is an extremely large population in Chicago, although the majority of the population here is working class. Marx discusses the topic of urban and rural towns in his book, “the bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and this rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life” (Marx, 1978: 477). Although the bourgeois has “rescued” this population from the “idiocy” of rural life, it has created a new crisis which is that there are too many working class children that need to be educated, and the capitalists are not willing to spread the share of wealth in order to provide that education for them. The working class does not have the means to provide for their children to gain the necessary education, which only furthers the oppression they face by the bourgeois. So, when the bourgeois seem to be trying to help the working class by moving them into the urban setting, they are actually continuing to oppress them by overcrowding schools and not sharing the adequate wealth needed to help educated the future working class, because educating the future working class might jeopardize their reign as the bourgeois.
Marx believed that the only way for the proletariat to achieve overthrowing this capitalistic society and working towards a communist society would be to join together. However, when they are faced with issues such as lack of a good education system, it becomes even more difficult for the proletariats to join together and take back their rights and power. Education is one of the first steps. With this they can come to realize that they need to in fact join together in fighting back against the bourgeois in order to change the society they live and function in. Especially since it is a society that is set up for them to stay in a certain inferior status. Without this necessary education, the hopes of overthrowing the capitalist society are not very high. Unfortunately, they actually need the help from the bourgeois to gain the education that they so desperately need. The bourgeois are aware of this issue. However, it is in their best interest to keep things the way they are as to not threaten their current high-power statuses. This society operates in a way where the proletariats are the ones who need the bourgeois. The only thing that the bourgeois need from the proletariat is their labor. They need them to work and to work hard. they are low on production and need to work the proletariat even harder. By stripping them of the necessary education, more working class children are forced to go into the workforce early to provide the basic needs to survive on their own and help out their families. This just creates an even larger working class, which is exactly what the bourgeois needs. They need a larger working class to produce more capital for them to gain so that the capitalistic society is set in stone permanently.
Although the bourgeois feel like they own all the power, there is a scenario where the bourgeois actually depend on the proletariats and this is the political arena. This dependence can serve as a way out of this social crisis. If he were alive, Marx would say this is the only way to solve the education crisis. In his book he describes this scenario, “in all these battles it [the bourgeois] sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeois” (Marx, 1978: 481). Until both the bourgeois and the proletariats realize that the proletariat’s help in the political arena is vital, the education crisis will stay where it is. I do not know if there will come a time where the capitalists will need the working class’s help, but when that day comes, that would be the only solution to the education crisis. This is the only solution because like it was mentioned before, the proletariat does not have the means to fix this education crisis on its own. The bourgeois has limited their wealth and their power so much that there is very little that they are capable of doing in order to solve this issue.
Education is a key factor in empowering the proletariat in their fight against the bourgeois. The bourgeois is aware of this, and because of this, they will not supply the wealth or power necessary to fix this crisis, because it would make working class a little too powerful for the capitalist’s liking. This educational crisis will remain the way that it is in order to continue the oppressive hold the bourgeois has over the proletariat, and the only way to solve this crisis would be when the bourgeois feels that they need the proletariat’s help in the political arena, for it is then that they will provide the working class with the general education that they so desperately need.
