ABSTRACT
It is a tribute to Schooling in Capitalist America (SCA) that debates surrounding its themes are still reverberating in the sociology of education. But history has moved on, and so have Bowles and Gintis. In this chapter I want to examine their current theoretical position and assess the extent to which it offers a way of improving upon, or correcting the deficiencies in their original arguments. Whilst it is more clearly spelt out, more comprehensive in scope and applied to a range of issues beyond the analysis of education, their current position mirrors the theoretical themes which structure the work of most of the prominent Anglo-American elaborators of what I have described elsewhere as the new orthodoxy (Sharp, 1986b). Given the new orthodoxy's significance in defining the terrain of legitimate postures within radical educational discourse a careful examination of the work of two of its leading exponents seems warranted. It is, of course, by no means confined to the sociology of education. In North America, in Europe, in Australia and New Zealand, both in theory and in politics, the majority on the left have decreed that classical Marxism is in terminal crisis. History has failed to vindicate the truth of its major premises. The working class as an agent of social transformation is dead. To grasp adequately the new reality, we must modify, reformulate, restructure both our theoretical lenses and our politics to be true to the socialist project in the present conjuncture.
