Fundación McLaren
Contenido  
  La Fundación
  Peter McLaren
  => Entrevistas a Peter McLaren en Venezuela
  => McCarthismo en la UCLA
  => Peter McLaren en la Universidad de Birzeit de Palestina
  => Peter McLaren: doctor Honoris Causa, Universidad de Lapland, Finlandia
  => La Pedagogía Crítica: Lectura Renovada que Fortalece al Marxismo
  => La obra de McLaren: una constante contra la injusticia y la opresión
  => Peter McLaren: una pedagogía revolucionaria
  => I see red: the revolutionary critical pedagogy of Peter McLaren
  => Peter McLaren como intelectual público
  Principal
  Paulo Freire
  "Che" Guevara
  Videos
  Contacto
  FUNDACION MCLAREN
  Galería de Fotos
I see red: the revolutionary critical pedagogy of Peter McLaren
I see red: the revolutionary critical pedagogy of Peter McLaren


As Peter McLaren has made abundantly clear in his political work, the "war on terrorism" signifies that the inherent contradictions of imperialism have now raised themselves in the form of the historic alternative of what Rosa Luxemburg referred to as "socialism or barbarism." Just look at what has happened over the past four years as moribund capital resorts to increasing state intervention and imperialist war to resolve the disruptions and crises that erupt from the falling rate of profit.

Amidst a fast rising sea of discontent, Peter McLaren argues that as the contradictions of the imperialist system worldwide come to the fore, bringing forth spontaneous outbursts of protest and rebellion, opportunities for revolutionary work are opening up. Still, it is hard to ignore the fact that despite significant developments such as the outpouring of protest against the war in Iraq , the present situation is not one characterized by vast numbers of people engaged in active debate and action against a social system, which is the cause of barbarity that is descending upon the entire planet. Part of the problem is that symptomatic of capitalism's degeneration, the ruling class and its supporting state apparatuses have created command structures to pulverize and atomize the consciousness of workers in a desperate id to hold society in a state of equilibrium. But despite such blows against the consciousness of the working class, especially in the aftermath of the collapse of the first socialist experiments, Peter McLaren argues that it is semi-religious to think that capitalism will last forever. While it is easy to lose sight of hope when you become blinded or paralyzed by structural powers that cannot be defeated right now, rather than view the current situation as static and bleak, Peter McLaren urges us to see every outbreak of protest and rebellion as a training or staging ground in preparation for revolutionary opportunities in the future. The point here is not to fall prey to the Economist line but to remain flexible and ready in any period to consciously intervene in class struggle, both ideologically and practically, by responding to the demands of various social movements for political and educational action, whether in small activities to establish neighborhood protest campaigns or in vast mobilizations to establish or re-establish internationalist organization.

Wherever or not people agree with Peter McLaren's politics and opinions, his writings and public statements cause topics to get discussed. They cause people to get worked up and I count myself as one of them. What Peter McLaren is trying to do -principally creating broad revolutionary public opinion around major events, topics and questions of the day- is to reach out to the forces being drawn into political life today as part of a strategy to accumulate revolutionary strength, in tempo with the objective situation. Recognizing that public opinion is deeply divided and that the crisis ahead looms far deeper for U.S. imperialism, Peter McLaren's work is laying the practical groundwork for the possibility of a revolutionary situation by "stretching out" a Marxist line into various social movements through what Lenin (1975) termed, "all-round political exposures," which focused on "living examples" of the "shameful outrages" committed by the bourgeoisie are organized to bring the "inner workings" of capitalism into question (pp. 101, 43).Without imposing a one-size fits all pedagogy, Peter McLaren believes that the ongoing cycle of dialogue, reflection and critique produced by these "vivid exposures," will have a tremendous impact on the different class forces operating in the field today by breaking down the class structure of bourgeois thought, thereby creating the necessary pedagogical conditions for the development of revolutionary thought and a whole repertoire of practices capable of bringing people consciously into motion against this oppressive system, which is the aim of revolutionary critical pedagogy (Lenin 1975). Does revolutionary critical pedagogy seem utopian? Only, as Peter McLaren reminds us, if we blindly or cynically accept as a matter of fact the rule of capitalism and its tyranny of exploitative relations that systematically deny human beings the full exercise of their capabilities. At the same time, while we should not underestimate the political knowledge embedded in the collective capacity of diverse spontaneous elements, we do need to realize that to decisively defeat and abolish "the ready-made state machinery" of the bourgeoisie, which it has built up over the centuries to protect and serve its own narrow private profit interests, the proletariat will have to build, from the base up, their own political and ideological forms of revolutionary organization in order to seize the levers of history and carry the day in revolutionary combat (Marx cited in Lenin 1965, p. 44). Objectively, as we have seen, with the gradual weakening of the anti-globalization and anti-war movements in the face of the superior forces of the bourgeois state, although these manifestations of spontaneous protest and revolt do help in stimulating class consciousness as millions of people come pouring out together in the streets to march for "peace," these struggles do not necessary go over into a higher struggle for political power but often crash on the rocks of reformism. As Marx noted, we find ourselves in a world not of our own making and in this regard I believe that Peter McLaren is right to point out that the revolution cannot be viewed as a "pure" or "single" act (Lenin 1975). What is important to remember here is that the development of class-consciousness is an active process of strengthening "and instinctive sense of solidarity and of antagonism" and in order to prevent that revolutionary capacity from being either hopelessly dispersed or crushed it must be institutionalized to build effective forms of political organization (Callinicos 1999, p. 212). As Peter McLaren has often remarked, the struggle for socialism is bigger than any single person and I think that one of the great things about the Fundacion McLaren is that reflecting this outlook it will be able to archive, nurture and widen the horizon of revolutionary practice that he has developed through its collective impulse and enterprise, which is on display here today at the University of Tijuana, Mexico.

 

References:

Callinicos, A. (1999). Social Theory: A Historical Introduction.

New York : New York University Press.

Lenin, V. I. (1965) .The State and Revolution, Peking : Foreign Languages Press.

Lenin, V.I. (1975).What is to be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement.

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