ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the work of Marxist scholars Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci and Jacques Derrida to deconstruct capitalism and rethink education and society today. The philosophy of Karl Marx is often received as problematic due to the political failure associated with communism, and the subsequent and meteoric rise and dominance of capitalism. J. Anyon, reading Marx, claims that 'capitalism is a primary source of systematic, social, economic and educational inequality'. Althusser identified that capitalism reproduces itself through ideology, which is a 'system of ideas and representations that dominate the mind of a man or a social group'. Ideology is able to achieve this through two mechanisms: Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) and Repressive State Apparatus (RSA). At the heart of Gramsci's writing was a commitment to Marxism as a force for change. He considered Marxism as an ideology useful in guiding the masses towards cultural and political hegemony and continually subject to change and reformulation in emerging new historical contexts.
