59. IS THIS BLOG DANGEROUS? - On Indoctrination, Ideology and the DfE
The UK Department for Education proclaimed last week that anti-capitalism was an “extreme political stance” and that “Schools should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters. This is the case even if the material itself is not extreme, as the use of it could imply endorsement or support of the organisation.”
The order, of course, entails that this blog can no longer be used as a teaching resource for school-aged philosophy students, despite the many teachers who have thanked us for being so useful, and the students who have benefitted from having a space to share their ideas. I am, as the one-person “organisation” who runs it, unashamedly anti-capitalist. The blog itself is free precisely because I see no reason to turn it into a profit-seeking enterprise and reject the capitalist assumption that things only have value if they come at a price. I don’t run ads on the site, I don’t collect and sell-on user data. I want this resource to be available for all and don’t need to make money from it. But also much of the content is anti-capitalist too. When you cast a philosophical eye over current affairs you are asking critical questions and unpacking assumptions and arguments buried beneath rhetoric to better clarify justifications and see if they withstand scrutiny. Many times that means considering alternatives (and, crucially, recognising that there can be alternatives, even to the most entrenched social norms). In a capitalist country, where many of society’s ills stem from issues of access to money and the resources such money provides, it is only right that this (entirely artificial and human-constructed, therefore changeable) economic framework is part of the analysis and, if discovered to be responsible, or contributory to, any or all of those ills, then advocating for a better alternative might necessarily feature as part of one’s conclusions.
In many of my own posts, and several student posts, this is the case. Capitalism’s demonstrable and repeated failures are highlighted within this open forum where anyone is free to defend it in the comments section or write their own post providing a different point of view. That our readers so far have not jumped to capitalism’s defence is perhaps a further piece of evidence that capitalism is not quite the holy grail of human organisation the DfE seem to believe it to be? However, such content means this blog must now be considered too radical for British schools.
And remember, the DfE order said “Schools should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters…even if the material itself is not extreme”. Even if there was nothing radical on Philosophy Unleashed at all, it is still a blog run by a person - me - who has taken an extreme political stance on many matters in my book, Authentic Democracy: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism. A book which not only advocated ending capitalism, but suggests that the current “democracy” we live in is not what authentic democracy looks like. Instead, I argue, we ought to live under anarchism, effectively advocating to abolish government entirely - another extreme political stance allegedly at odds with our “fundamental British values”. According to the DfE edict, my views, and my ownership of this blog, makes anything on here unusable as a classroom resource. It is complicit with anarchism and anti-capitalism by association.
The DfE clearly do not understand philosophy (or understand it only too well and don’t want our children getting anywhere near it). I, and this blog, are not anti-capitalist out of some blind ideological adherence to a dogma. There are strong, logical, defensible reasons to be anti-capitalist, which years of debate and discussion on all sides has led me to. And ideas are presented on this blog not as propaganda to be swallowed wholesale, but as discourse. As provocations to inspire further thought and reflection, not merely to the reader but for the writer too. As I often tell my students when they ask why I don’t eat meat: I don’t want to be a vegetarian. It makes life, especially travel, difficult. But so far I haven’t heard any argument good enough to convince me the suffering caused by my eating meat is justified. The same is true of anti-capitalism. It is not easy being anti-capitalist in a fiercely capitalist world. It puts you at odds with many standard assumptions about life and its purpose and can make you feel like quite an outsider. Not to mention the frustration you experience every day seeing things which could be so much better being done so badly because they are targeting the objective of profit before anything else. It is not my preference to be anti-capitalist, it is just that so far I have yet to hear a convincing argument to justify the copious amounts of material and mental suffering caused by the capitalist economic system.
Importantly, unlike the politician, doomed to blind allegiance to whatever colour team they are playing for, on whatever side of the aisle, the philosopher has loyalty only to the truth. If you can show me my argument is wrong, I am not only willing to change my mind, logic dictates that I have to.
The fear the DfE shows when they ban schools from using resources provided by “extreme” organisations (which, by the way, means not only this blog and others like it, but no more books in schools published by Penguin, as they definitely published my old tatty copy of The Communist Manifesto…and, as a recent legal action has highlighted, no more lip service to Black Lives Matter, decolonising the curriculum, or the environment as, unsurprisingly, much that has been written about the slave trade, British imperialism and climate change paints capitalism as the principle problem there too) is the same fear every authoritarian regime has shown throughout history: the people cannot be exposed to ideas which differ from official state doctrine as it might make them think, ask questions, and ultimately ask for change. Once we remember that our economic and political systems are not naturally occurring phenomena, but artificially created, entirely changeable institutions, we recognise that the current political and economic norms - capitalism, representative democracy, etc. - are impermanent and completely open for debate. While it is true that opening up such a discussion could open the door to our “least worst” system being replaced with something “more worst” than capitalist representative democracy, to treat them as “settled science” is to ignore the long raging disputes and controversy around them, and the possibility of their replacement with something better. It is ideology pure and simple: strict and dogmatic adherence to a specific narrative of the world.
Therefore in banning the use of materials from organisations which “take extreme political stances on matters” the DfE are not protecting our vulnerable children from ideological manipulation and propaganda; they are merely attempting to preserve the ideological manipulation and propaganda of the state. The constant drip-feed of the limiting message that this is the best system we can ever have. That success means conforming, not resisting, and that questioning such norms is dangerous, even criminal. Schools can produce radical neoliberals preaching “free markets über ales”. They just can’t be allowed to produce people who might want to put people before profit.
The school, under such a regime, is not a place of intellectual development and free thought, but a factory for the exact sort of brainwashing and radicalisation we are led to believe is the hallmark only of predators.
So this blog will continue to run, whether the DfE likes it or not. And I encourage teachers and students to continue using it as a resource. I especially welcome anyone to write me a post defending capitalism. Unlike the DfE, I would not be afraid to publish it and have mine and my readers’ views challenged. Philosophy is not about taking sides for the sake of taking sides but about discourse, dispute and discussion. If the argument is there, I’m open to being convinced.
Author: DaN McKee
Buy my book - AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism - HERE (I know - seems kind of capitalist, right? Don’t worry - the publisher is a non-profit 😀)