ABSTRACT
The economic collapse of the Soviet Union and its eventual disintegration has become the prized testimony of Cold War hawks in their impassioned verdict that capitalism has defeated socialism due in part to the immanent democratic nature of the free market. The orgy of smug self-congratu-lation that has surrounded the rhetoric of conservatives and liberals in the United States has led many to proclaim that history is on the side of international capitalism and political leadership of the United States. Western capitalism has become the most successful claimant of the right to determine the new world order. The cultural apparatuses of the West have represented the dismantling of the Soviet bloc as the triumph of individualism over the hegemony of the totalitarian state. The image of the communist has been hypertrophied into that of a global ideologue troleur living off the detrius of capitalism in the back alleys of the crum-bling Eastern marketplace. In fact, what has been described as the autonomous logic of the free market has been accorded a sacerdotal status despite the misprision surrounding such claims and the proliferation of corruption scandals involving business and government leaders. While capitalism produces its own limits and creates conditions that work immanently against its success, its socially reproductive effects on schooling show little sign of abatement at this present historical conjuncture. Suc-cessful as a trompe-l’oeil for the great social equalizer, schools still serve as vigorous mechanisms for the reproduction of dominant race, class, and gender relations and the imperial values of the dominant sociopolitical order.
