ABSTRACT
The second reason I have stressed the tension between good and bad sense-aside from my profound respect for Antonio Gramsci's writings about this-has to do with my belief that we have witnessed a majoreducational accomplishment over the past three decades in many countries. All too often, we assume that educational and cultural struggles are epiphenomenal. The real battles occur in the paid workplace-the "economy." Not only is this a strikingly reductive sense of what the economy is (its focus on paid, not unpaid, work; its neglect of the fact that, say, cultural institutions such as schools are also places where paid work goes on, etc.),l it also ignores what the right has actually done. Conservative modernization has radically reshaped the commonsense of society. It has worked in every sphere-the economic, the political, and the cultural-to alter the basic categories we use to evaluate our institutions and our public and private lives. It has established new identities. It has recognized that to win in the state, you must win in civil society. The accomplishment of such a vast educational project has many implications. It shows how important cultural struggles are. And, oddly enough, it gives reason for hope. It forces us to ask a significant question. If the right can do this, why can't we?
