ABSTRACT
Why a special issue on education in socialism, or education for socialism, in
2013, as we fast approach the 25th anniversary of the collapse of historical
socialism in Eastern Europe, and witness the ongoing rise of China driven by
its model of capitalist growth overseen by the Communist Party of China
(CPC)? Many would argue that we ought to concede that ideas of socialism, or
communism, have been definitively relegated to nothing more than objects of
historical study. Perhaps historical socialism is worthy of study but only to
investigate and further understand its historical legacy on the present, or to
pursue alternative historiographies interpreting the past. Surely, socialism
holds little salience for current and future policy, thinking and action/practice.
These sorts of responses are, we are sure, likely to be widespread within
educational communities, and in broad fields of study like comparative and
international education, just as they are in broader societies. According to Bauman (2011, 36), socialism, as an ambition in ‘solid’
modernity, sought to produce an organised ‘gardening state’: patterned,
regulated and ordered. In this utopian state, ‘complete control over the fate
and living conditions of human beings’ was hoped to be achieved. Construct-
ing human needs as finite and calculable and aiming to satisfy those by careful
tendering through legislation and the husbandry of societal resources were seen
as an achievable goal. Planning was supported by social sciences, identifying
what would and would not be cultivated and the conditions required to achieve
their growth. As ‘liquid modernity’ replaced its ‘solid’ form, finite human
needs transformed to infinite human desires and the ‘social structuring’
rationalities of ‘solid modernity’ proved to be inoperable to manage society
anymore. Bauman argues in this context that the socialist state was ill-prepared
to regulate the flow of capital, culture, technology and politics that extended
beyond the state. However, the conditions that social structuring addressed are
still firmly in place and there is an exponential increase in inequality and
poverty globally with the consequent and extensive human suffering in all parts
of the world remaining unaddressed. As Bauman (2011) vividly expresses the
post-socialist context: ‘the baby was thrown out with the bath water and is
crying’.
