Capitalist Development and Educational Structure

and arcane world of game theory (where, ironically, it is also unwelcome!), and to the even more distant reaches inhabited bl political scientists, sociologists, and Galbraith. If ‘every economic actor is a price taker’, or if, more pointedly, as Samuelson tells us it makes no difference whether the capitalist hires the worker or the other way around, we can safely forget about power in the competitive model. The institutional structures which define the relations among the economic actors are not an object of economic analysis or of liberal policy. Symptomatic of this approach is the pre sumption that egalitarian social and economic policy can operate primarily through a redistribution of productive resources, imposed, as it were, from ‘on high’ by .democratically elected or at least enlightened government ‘decisionmakers’.6 The ‘outputs’ of the school system are represented as ‘skills’ or other capacities embodied in individuals. Egalitarian educational reform, it is said, redistributes these skills, . much as an agrarian reform redistributes titles to ownership of land.7 The importance of schooling in the economic growth process and in the distribution of its rewards seems indisputable, though, to be sure, for quite different reasons than those proposed by the human capital school. However, even the most cursory reading of the history of capitalist societies suggests that the liberal view of the state as independent and egalitarian, will not provide an adequate basis for investigating the relationship between economic growth, education, and inequahty.s Nor will it shed muchlight on the dynamics of educational development in the context of capitalist growth.’ I present here an alternate view of the state and education in capitalist society. lo In this interpretation, the state serves to reproduce the social relations which define the position of the capitalist class and other dominant groups of the society. State policies, and the structure of the state itself are severely limited by the prevailing economic structure and its class relations. The economic structure itself is influenced by the state, ordinarily in ways which increase the power and income of the politically powerful groups. The educational system, as an important influence on political life, ideology, and the development of labour power as an input into the production process, is one of the main instruments of the state. The ‘output’ of the school is the reproduction or transformation of social relations; the distribution of ‘skills’ embodied in individuals represents but one aspect and not even the most important of this process. The impact of educational structures on the social relations of production the configurations of property and power in the labour process represents the critical connection between schooling and the economy, and at the same time points to the structural limits to egalitarian reforms in capitalist social formations. Both educational inequality and inequality of income reflect the class structure of capitalist societies. I conclude that the contribution of educational policies to either growth or equality is severely circumscribed by the prevailing class relations and by the role imposed on schooling by the dominant class, namely the reproduction of the class structure of the dominant mode of production. To understand the position of education in capitalist social formations, then, requires an analysis of the dynamics of class relations. In order to illuminate the link between the social organization of work and the school and to locate both in the dynamics of the capitalist economy as a whole, I use the Marxian concept, class, rather than other conceptual social aggregates based on status, income, or type of commodity produced. Two quite different types of class relation are presented: relations within a given labour process, for example, capitalist-worker, and relations which span distinct labour processes, for example, peasant-worker. In the former, direct relations of control and exploitation are defined within the labour process itself. Class relations connecting groups involved in distinct labour processes which are related primarily through markets or through the state are necessarily less well defined by the structure of production. To capture the open-endedness of class relations in a social formation characterized by a multiplicity of distinct modes of production, I will consider the problem of coalition formation among classes. The rejection of the most abstract two-class model of capitalist society and recognition of the indeterminacy added by the concept of class alliances suggests a heightened importance of political and ideological aspects of social change. Equally important, a multi-class analysis invites a reconsideration of the state as ‘a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’.’ ’ The state, in th< formulation presented here, may also be an arena in which class alliances are formed and in which no single class can use the state solely as CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATIONAL STRUCTURE 785 its own political instruments. The multiplicity of class relations, the structural limits on state policy, and the attendant problematic nature of class power in the state also remind us not to assume that a given state policy reflects the conscious and successful implementation of the class interest of any single class. If any doubt remains, let me confirm that this essay is primarily theoretical, later appearances of regression equations and rate of return estimates notwithstanding. My intent is to identify fundamental dynamic structural relationships which, if I have been successful, will provide a starting point for the concrete analysis of particular social formations. In any concrete application the definition of class boundaries and modes of production, the international aspects of the problem and the fact that the state can never be reduced totally to a simple (or even complex) expression of class relations would demand close attention. I _ THE DYNAMICS OF DISTRIBUTIONAL CONFLICT The salient characteristics of the capitalist growth process can be captured in a simple analysis which focuses attention on the internal organization of a capitalist and a traditional mode of production and their interactions. While the economic actuality of different modes of production may differ in the commodities produced, the technologies used, and other important respects it is the social relations of production that make a form of economic activity a distinct mode. Thus the capitalist mode of production exhibits technological dynamism and a relatively rapid rate of expansion. But what distinguishes it as a mode of production is its social organization; the great majority of producers do not own what they need to secure their livelihood. Therefore, they do not sell their product; they sell their labour time for wages. This group, wage labour, has no claim on the product of its work; nor does it exercise any direct control over the choice of commodities to be produced, technologies to be used, or organization of work. The archetypal production unit in the capitalist mode of production is the factory, the large business office, or the modern plantation.’ 2 In contrast, the traditional mode of production is characterized by the insignificance of wage labour. (‘The traditional mode of production’ is used here merely as a general expression for a variety of possible non-capitalist modes, whose more precise elaboration can be bypassed for the purposes at hand.’ 3 ) The traditional mode of production may produce cash crops for the world market. It may produce subsistence crops, or handicrafts. Although the social relations of production may vary, the family farm, communal production or the craft shop are archetypal production units. In this mode, the direct producers own or at least exercise significant control over the means of production. In addition, they exercise considerable discretion over their hours and methods of work, and often own a large part of the product of their labour. Property ownership in the traditional mode may support an exploiting class, often landowners who have little or no direct role in production, but expropriate the meager agricultural surplus through a system of sharecropping or rent tenancy. Where there is a landlord class, this group or a part of it may constitute what I call a traditional elite. It may have allies in other elites, such as the military, tribal chiefs or the established religion. For simplicity I will refer to the direct pro ducers in the traditional mode as peasants, and the exploiting class as landlords. The subsequent analysis may readily be modified to include a land-owning independent peasantry, or independent petty commodity producers of non-agricultural goods. Under the impact of modern health technology, and in the absence of effective state systems of redistribution and mutual support which might undermine the incentive for large families, rates of population increase are likely to be considerable in both modes, at least in the early stages of capitalist development. ’ 4 The expansion of the capitalist mode of production the accumulation process is accompanied by the recruitment of new wage workers from the traditional mode of production. The integration of new workers into the capitalist mode, as well as the technological dynamism and class relations of capitalist production, provide the impetus for educational expansion and the evolution of the structure of the school system. The associated process of accumulation and the resulting uneven development of the social formation as a whole the counterpoint of dynamism in the capitalist mode and stagnation in the traditional are the primary forces that generate economic inequality and pose the limits to egalitarian educational reform. My task is then to outline the relationship between the accumulation process, education, and economic inequality. To explore this complex relationship I will develop a necessarily simplified interpretation of the interaction between the two modes of 786 WORLD DEVELOPMENT production. The most important simplifying assumptions are motivated by the open international economic setting of most social formations which constitute the periphery of the capitalist world system. I abstract from problems of aggregate demand and assume that relative commodity prices are externally determined. ’ ’ The modification of external prices through transportation costs, tariffs, and other state policies presents no problem in this model, but for the purposes at hand such an extension is an unnecessary complication. The degree of economic inequality in the social formation as a whole may be represented by three components: the degree of inequality within the traditional and capitalist modes of production and the degree of inequality between modes.16 We will consider each in turn. The division of the total product of the traditional mode between the consumption of the direct producers and the rents paid to landlords is represented by a fractional rent share, determined by a history of conflict between the two classes. The small surplus of production over necessary subsistence in the traditional mode poses a relatively low limit to the degree of inequality in economic reward particularly as compared to the capitalist mode.’ ’ In the capitalist mode the division of the product between capital and labour depends upon the relative bargaining strength of workers and capitalists. This in turn depends on economic conditions in both modes of production and on political and ideological conditions in the social formation as a whole. I will concentrate here on the economic aspects. As long as wages in the capitalist mode exceed incomes of the direct producers in the traditional mode, wage workers will be in a relatively weak position. Their weakness is due to a ‘reserve army’ of potential wage workers in the traditional mode, who can be recruited to replace anyone unwilling to work for the going wage. The size distribution of income in the capitalist mode will therefore depend upon the outcome of this struggle over the product, and on the degree of concentration of wealth. The class income distribution of the entire society will, of course, change over time in response to changes in the following: the distribution of labour between the two modes, the comparative productivity of the two modes, the bargaining power of capital and labour, and the rent share. The capitalist mode’s technological dynamism and superior ability to reinvest output together with the ceiling imposed on wages by the reserve army, tends to increase inequality in the capitalist mode and between the capitalist mode and the traditional mode. This is the uneven development characteristic of capitalist development, particularly in its early stages. ’ * Consider now the interests of each class in this distributional process. It is in the immediate interest of worker3 in the capitalist mode to promote labour scarcity, and thus to increase their bargaining power. This may be done by resisting labour-saving innovations and by imposing employment restrictions that limit the ability of the capitalist to substitute new labour from the traditional mode for those already employed in the capitalist ‘mode. Competition from the reserve army based in the traditional mode will also be inhibited by productivity increases in the traditional sector and by a decline in the landlords’ rent share, both of which increase the consumption levels of the peasants, and thus raise the minimum price at which capital can recruit labour, Rapid accumulation in the capitalist mode will likewise promote labour scarcity-and enhance labour’s position. By contrast, the capitalist class will oppose restrictions on hiring in order to have free access to all potential workers, and thus to depress the wage more nearly to the low levels of consumption prevalent among the peasantry. Capital’s economic interests are furthered by impoverishing the peasantry, either through increases in the rent share or a retardation of productivity increases in traditional production. The accumulation process will, of coarse, encroach on traditional production, bringing capitalist social relations to some forms of agricultural and other production. But as long as population growth and labour-saving technical change are sufficiently rapid to guarantee a labour reserve to the capitalist mode, there will be n6 need to increase productivity in the traditional mode (or to eliminate it) so as to release workers for employment in the capitalist mode of production. Further, in the open economy the relative price of food (or other wage goods) is determined independently of the conditions of domestic agricultural (or other) production, thus giving the capitalist class no interest in raising the productivity of noncapitalist agriculture. ’ ’ These facts may represent a major difference between the early accumulation process in the currently advanced capitalist countries and that in the contemporary capitalist periphery.*’ We shall see that this contrast in the nature of the accumulation process is associated with a parallel contrast in the dynamics of the educational system. CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATIONAL STRUCTURE 787 The interests of the landlord class are generally opposed to those of the capitalist class; landlords, unlike capitalists, benefit from raising the productivity of traditional production. Conflict between these two classes may thus focus on the direction of research and development in new technologies as well as on the more conventional economic variables. Rapid accumulation in the capitalist mode gives the peasantry alternative sources of livelihood, and hence contributes to an enhanced bargaining power of the peasantry and a lowering of the rental share. Both capitalist and landlords, however, share a common interest in maintaining a high rental share. While the educational implications of this analysis remain to be discussed, it should be clear that changes in the structure, content and availability of schooling at all levels may play a crucial role in the distribution of economic reward and in the distributional strategies of each class. Further, given the complex pattern of conflicting and congruent economic interests, educational policy may play a central political and ideological role in the formation or inhibition of class coalitions and in the development or retardation of class unity. 2. CONTRADICTORY DEVELOPMENT AND STATE POWER The simple mechanics of this analysis reveal the process by which incomes are distributed, but only hint at the drastic institutional changes and social conflicts which accompany the integration of workers into the wage labour system. The expansion of the capitalist mode of production undermines the traditional mode, and thus tends to weaken the political and ideological forces which served to perpetuate the old order. The capitalist class is thus faced with difficult problems of reproduction as well as production. The expansion and survival of the capitalist mode depends critically on both the productivity and the politics of the growing working class. Achieving high levels of labour productivity and assuring the reproduction of a set of social relationships that allows a substantial portion of the product of labour to be appropriated as profits by the capitalist class are thus the requisites of successful capitalist development. But neither objective is easily achieved, and in many circumstances they may be contradictory. Capitalist profits depend on (among other things) the average productivity of wage labour. Yet the social attitudes and technical skills necessary for a productive capitalist labour force are generally scarce in the populations of the traditional mode of production.21 The movement of labour out of the traditional mode increases the demand for skills not easily acquired through emulation of parental roles in production. Growing up in a traditional community is no preparatiop for the demands of factory life, since the capitalist enterprise is a vastly different social organization, with a set of social relations quite distinct from those of the family or the pre-capitalist community.22 The wage worker, whether in the factory, plantation, or office, has to learn time consciousness, new forms of discipline, new sources of motivation, and respect for authority outside the kinship group. He or she has to adjust to detailed supervision in highly routine and fragmented tasks.2 3 Capitalist profits also depend on the power of capitalists over workers. But with the rapid expansion of the capitalist relations of production, it becomes difficult to thwart class consciousness and militant political activity among workers. While the existence of a reserve army in the declining traditional mode of production weakens the position of workers in the capitalist mode, the living and working conditions of these workers strengthen their capacity to undertake collective action against capitalists. Workers are thrown together in large factories, often in large urban areas. The social isolation of peasant production, which had helped to maintain quiescence in the traditional mode, is broken down. With an increasing number of families no longer owning or attached to the land, the workers’ search for a living results in large-scale labour migrations. ‘Transient’ elements come to constitute a major segment of the population, and begin to pose seemingly insurmountable problems of assimilation, integration, and control, Inequality of wealth becomes more apparent, and is less easily justified and less readily accepted. Integration of an increasing number of workers into the capitalist mode of production thus produces a potential antagonist to the capitalist class the growing class of wage labourers. This class, unlike the peasantry and the landlord class, grows in number and becomes potentially more powerful with the expansion of the capitalist mode. Their demands and their entry into political life threaten to disrupt the profit-making process and to transform the class structure. This contradiction between accumulation and the reproduction of the class structure has appeared in militant class struggle and other forms of 788 WORLDDEVELOPMENT political activity in the growth of labour organization, mass strikes, nationalist movements, populist revolts, and the rise of socialist political parties. It is in the interest of the preservation of the capitalist order and the expansion of capitalist profits that class conflict be confined to the isolatkd daily struggles of workers in the individual production unit. The ever present contradiction between accumulation and reproduction must be repressed, or channeled into demands easily contained within the structure of capitalist society. The contradiction may be temporarily managed in a variety of ways: through ameliorative social reform, through the coercive force of the state, through heightening the racial, ethnic, tribalist, linguistic, sexual, and other distinctions upon which the divide and rule strategy is based, and through an ideological perspective which fosters popular disunity and otherwise serves to reproduce the capitalist order. 3. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM AS RECRUITER AND GATEKEEPER In the capitalist social formations, the school system has embodied or contributed to each of the above strategies for stable capitalist expansion, and has thus been an important complement to the armed force of the state in managing, at least temporarily, the contradiction between accumulation and reproduction. In most capitalist countries, the school system serves as both recruiter and gatekeeper for the capitalist sector. I will consider the gatekeeping role shortly. As a recruiter, the school system helps to produce a labour force able and resigned to work productively in the novel social setting of the capitalist firm. Schooling can help increase the producfivity of workers in two closely related ways: first, by transmitting or reinforcing the values, expectations, beliefs, types of information, and modes of behaviour required both for the adequate performance on the job and for the smooth functioning of basic institutions such as the labour market, and second, by developing technical and scientific skills necessary to efficient production. Although few of the academic skills learned in school are directly transferable to the capitalist workplace, basic scientific knowledge, communication skills, and mathematical abilities are essential to competence in some occupations. More important, these capacities are a critical ingredient to effective on the job learning of many directly productive skills. The contribution of schooling to the expansion of the forces of production cannot easily be separated from the second main aspect of schooling as labour recruiter for the capitalist mode: the reproduction of the social relations of production. The preparation of young people for integration into the capitalist mode is facilitated when the social relations of the school system take a particular form. Students and their parents are denied control of the educational process. Success is measured by an external standard, grades and exams, which become the main motivation for work. This structure subordinates any intrinsic interest in knowledge the product of one’s effort or in learning the process of production. Class, race, sexual, tribal, linguistic and other distinctions are reflected in differential access to schooling, drop out rates and promotion prospects. In short, the social relations of production are replicated in the schools. The central role of institutional structure as opposed to formal content is summarized in what Herbert Gintis and I term ‘the correspondence principle’: the capitalist class will attempt to structure the social organization of schooling so as to correspond to the social relations of production. What educators often call ‘the hidden curriculum’ is thus of paramount importance. Whether relationships among students are hierarchical and competitive or egalitarian and cooperative, whether relations among students, teachers and the larger community are democratic or authoritarian, are better indicators of what students actually learn in schools than texts or formal curricula. Of course human development, or more narrowly, the formation of the labour force, does not begin or end in the school. Family structure and child-rearing practices are an important part of the early socialization process. After school, the social relations of production on the job exert a continuing influence on personality development. Some types of behaviour are rewarded; others are penalized. The nature of the capitalist labour process itself limits the range of attitudes, values, and behaviour patterns which people can exhibit. But schooling does play a central role in the formation of the work-force, particularly in periods of rapid social change. The correspondence between the social relations of schooling and the social relations of production does not mean that all children receive the same education. Capitalist production, characterized by a hierarcnical division of: labour, requires that a relatively small group of future technical and managerial personnel CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATIONAL STRUCTURE 789 develop the capacity to calculate, decide, and rule, while a much larger group ‘learns’ to follow instructions accurately. This stratification of the future labour force is partly accomplished by making different amounts and types of schoolingavailable todifferent children. Thus, the school system incorporates a capitalist class structure Though it will not concern us directly here, the correspondence principle has an international dimension: where the international division of labour results in a class structure dominated at the top by foreign management and technical personnel (often located in New York or Tokyo), a corresponding underdevelopment of the employment demand for indigenous college graduates may be anticipated.24 The capitalists’ interest, I have argued, is to pattern the structure of schooling after the social relations of capitalist production. Analogously, it is in the interest of the capitalist class to regulate the quantitative growth of the school system according to the expansion of the capitalist mode of production. In part because of the widespread ideological emphasis on education as the road to success, popular demands for rapid educational expansion may often exceed the rate appropriate to the employment needs of the capitalist mode of production. This will be particularly true when the accumulation process embodies very laboursaving technology. Nonetheless, pressures for mass education, even for youth destined to work in the traditional mode, may be met if the ideological or political benefits of expansion are seen as particularly great, or if the capitalist class is unable to control the rate of educational expansion. From the standpoint of the capitalist class, the risks of over-expansion are evident. First, education for all might facilitate productivity increases and technological progress in the traditional mode of production, a development which capitalists would oppose in the interests of maintaining a very ready supply of cheap labour.* 5 Second, the fiscal costs of educational over-expansion represent a tax burden on capitalists and a diversion of state fiscal resources away from projects and sudsidies which may be more beneficial to profits. Third, if the entire population of a specific age group were to receive a fairly high level of education, all might anticipate employment in the capitalist mode. The result might be urban migration, massive urban unemployment, and outrage at frustrated expectations on the part of the unsuccessful. While the resulting downward pressure on wages would be welcome to the capitalist class, there are less expensive and less dangerous methods of maintaining the reserve army. In any case, the possibility that universal education would facilitate the development of a common consciousness between peasants and wage workers may more than offset any shortterm economic advantage. Thus, in addition to preparing some young people for wage work, the school system, if it is to contribute to the capitalist growth process, must also act as a gatekeeper. The use of school credentials as job requirements serve this purpose well, for they provide an apparently objective means for keeping a certain number of people out even when the ‘learning’ signified by the credentials has little bearing on the jobs in question. 4. CLASS ALLIANCES AND EDUCATIONAL