Introduction: Western Marxism in educational philosophy and theory

This volume examines the place of Marxist theory in the history of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory. It illustrates the evolution of Marxist thought in the field and journal primarily through the selection and exploration of typical and significant articles exploring Marxist-related themes in the journal over time. The title, From Radical Marxism to Knowledge Socialism: An Educational Philosophy and Theory Reader, Volume XI, reflects this historical approach. In the 1960s and 1970s in western philosophy of education and in the journal, Marxism was considered to be a radical, extreme ‘political’ theory, while western liberalism and a free-market economy were largely taken for granted as natural phenomena. More recently, Michael Peters (Peters, Besley, Jandric, & Zhu, 2020) among others has theorized in the neoliberal age about knowledge socialism, reflecting the need for decentring the alternative normal presuppositions of knowledge capitalism as the latest iteration of western liberalism and neoliberalism. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Michael A. Peters and Liz Jackson; individual chapters, the contributors.