ABSTRACT
Robin Small offers a representative account of the ‘pulse’ of thought on Marxist philosophy of education in his time (the article was originally published in 1983), by focusing selectively on a critical analysis of two recent books with Marxist views of knowledge and ideology. In giving a conceptual account Small also prefaces his examination by noting that Marxism may or may not align with Marx’s writings, which should he argues should also be accounted for. He notes that both books are concerned with empiricism and Small argues that their accounts of empiricism are overly hasty. In relation, both works, in Small’s view, are overly critical of realism. Small argues that both authors clearly see that there is reality, but rather mean to critically articulate the way that the relation between facts and theories is often treated in social sciences. He goes on to assess the way Marxism, materialism, knowledge and observation are regarded by the two texts, in the course diving into epistemological debate of history and contemporary social science and philosophy. How false consciousness is conceptualised, and the sense of ideology as false appearance or misrepresentation, is also critically assessed in Marx and in the work of Small’s contemporaries. Thus, Small provides an epistemologically-oriented assessment of Marxism, of the nineteenth century and the 1980s, considering how realism, relativism, and knowledge interact with ideology in the course.
