Abstract
The chapter discusses the profound changes in Brazilian education resulting from the new forms of commodification of education brought about by the movement of capital, especially its financial fractions, conforming to a reality that places Brazil in the world vanguard of the commodification of education. Referring to Marx (especially Capital, V. III) and Lenin (Imperialism), it maintains that commodification results from the association with the State and, therefore, is not limited to private education, but also affects public education. With Fernandes it analyzes the particularity of dependent capitalism and indicates the main fronts of capital expansion in higher education and basic education, focusing on the emergence of holding companies with shares on stock exchanges that operate in the segment of educational systems and platforms inserted in information and communication technologies. It highlights the need for new forms of internationalism to broaden resistance and to demercantilize world education, essential challenges to face the process of expropriation of knowledge of teachers and the working classes as a whole.
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Notes
- 1.
Karl MARX: Inaugural Message of the International Workingmen’s Association, 1864; Resolutions of the Geneva Congress, 1866; VARIOUS: Resolutions of the Brussels Congress, 1868; Karl MARX: Discourses On Education in Modern Society, 1869, all available from MUSTO (2014).
- 2.
Dependent capitalism, as Florestan Fernandes characterizes ‘the peripheral and dependent form of monopoly capitalism (which inexorably and inextricably associates the “national” and “foreign” forms of finance capital).’ ‘It materializes through over-expropriation and autocracy, characterizing what Florestan Fernandes calls savage capitalism. It combines dependent economic growth with despotic misery and exclusion, and the absence of rights outside the dominant social sectors’ (Cardoso, 1995).
- 3.
Commodification,n. Second edition, 1989; online version November 2010. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/37198.
- 4.
- 5.
In Brazil, private for-profit institutions came into existence after the regulation of the Law of Directives and Bases of National Education in 1996. Until then, all higher education institutions were philanthropic, confessional, or community-based. Thus, the commercialization of education was camouflaged by philanthropy.
- 6.
BRAZIL. Anísio Teixeira Brazilian Institute of Educational Studies and Research (INEP). Census of Higher Education. Brasília, DF, 2022. Available at: https://download.inep.gov.br/educacao_superior/censo_superior/documentos/2021/apresentacao_censo_da_educacao_superior_2021.pdf. Access on: 1/12/ 2022.
- 7.
Gabriel Teixeira. Anísio Teixeira Seminar, PPGE/ UFRJ, 6/1/22, Holding in the education sector. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPNDFev%2D%2Dew.
- 8.
Thiago Domenici. Laureate uses robots in place of teachers without students knowing. Agência Pública, 04/30/2020, available at: https://apublica.org/2020/04/laureate-usa-robos-no-lugar-de-professores-sem-que-alunos-saibam/.
- 9.
Thiago Domenici. Laureate: o raio-x de uma fraude para reconhecer uma graduação no MEC. Agência Pública, 13/11/2020. https://apublica.org/2020/11/laureate-o-raio-x-de-uma-fraude-para-reconhecer-uma-graduacao-no-mec/.
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The chapter was translated from Portuguese to English by Silvia Iacovacci.
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Leher, R., Costa, H.B. (2023). Commodification and Financialization of Education in Brazil: Trends and Particularities of Dependent Capitalism. In: Hall, R., Accioly, I., Szadkowski, K. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Marxism and Education. Marxism and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37252-0_16
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