ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between capitalism and educational inequality. From a Marxist perspective, inequality is a long-term and inevitable consequence of the capitalist system. Education does not stand alone and remote from the practices and thought processes of society in general. It both refl ects and supports the social inequalities of capitalist culture. The “education industry” is a signifi cant state apparatus in the reproduction and replication of the capitalist social form necessary for the continuation of “surplus value” extraction and economic inequality. Hence, Marxists argue that there are material linkages between educational inequality, exploitation, and capitalist inequalities in general. This has been brought into much sharper relief during the current reactionary phase of neoliberal capitalism in such countries as Thatcherite/post-Thatcherite Britain and Reaganite/post-Reaganite United States.
