Memoirs of a teacher of ‘sociological marxism’
Andrea Jenkyns who is a Tory Minister who has some responsibility for higher education claimed at the Tory Conference on Monday that Universities were teaching critical race theory, anti-British history and social (or possibly sociological) Marxism and this was a bad thing.
Anti-British presumably means covering all of British history with nothing left out, which Boris Johnson sometimes claimed he supported.
Social Marxism is more problematic since it has no clear meaning beyond its use by far right US Republicans to cover views they consider as ‘woke’ (Matthew Sweet alerted social media to this). Oddly however the New Statesman has reported that Gove has been at various Tory Conference fringe events promoting something called social capitalism.
In the late 1970s I was myself a promoter of social or sociological Marxism. I studied Marxism as part of my first degree, (and indeed often turned theory into practice with college sit-ins and demos) and then went on to get a PGCE teaching qualification as Sociology teacher.
I was briefly unleased on the pupils of Birmingham but the wider world intervened. Mrs Thatcher was elected in May 1979 and she was no keener on sociology or Marxism than Andrea Jenkyns. I looked elsewhere for employment..
Sociological Marxism essentially sees Marx as one of the great thinkers alongside others such as Weber. It significantly underplays the importance of Marx’s beard something I have always emphasised
Leave a Reply