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Neoliberalism as a new historical bloc:

a Gramscian analysis of neoliberalism’s
common sense in education
a
Carlos Alberto Torres
a
Department of Education , University of California , Los
Angeles , USA
Published online: 19 Jun 2013.
To cite this article: Carlos Alberto Torres (2013) Neoliberalism as a new historical bloc: a
Gramscian analysis of neoliberalism’s common sense in education, International Studies in
Sociology of Education, 23:2, 80-106, DOI: 10.1080/09620214.2013.790658
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International Studies in Sociology of Education, 2013
Vol. 23, No. 2, 80–106, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2013.790658
Neoliberalism as a new historical bloc: a Gramscian analysis of

neoliberalism’s common sense in education
Carlos Alberto Torres*
Department of Education, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Reading neoliberalism in a Gramscian key, this article argues that neo-

liberalism is not merely an ideological agenda but a new civilization
design, what Gramsci termed a new historical bloc. Using the concept of
Downloaded by [University of Glasgow] at 11:05 21 July 2013
new common sense as an analytical framework, the article offers 16

theses exploring different areas of education and policy impacted by
neoliberalism.
Keywords: neoliberalism; common sense; historical bloc; Antonio
Gramsci; educational policy; politics and education; higher education
Neoliberalism’s new common sense

The main argument of my analysis is that the emergence of neoliberalism in
the late seventies and early eighties has dramatically altered the notion of
common sense in education.1
Michael Fielding observes that it is difficult, if not impossible, to sepa-
rate ideology from common sense:
Common sense can contain certain profound insights that are the results of a
depth of lived human experience together with elements of scientific and
philosophical ideas that continually enrich it and ensure its dynamism. … It is
by no means necessarily the case that common sense is ideologically virgin or
epistemologically privileged. A large number of tenets of any common sense
are the received truths of those who control society, ‘truths’ that have impreg-
nated social life through the main socialising agencies, one of the most impor-
tant being schools. My final remarks on common sense highlight its essential
incoherence and its sharply different variants within society. Any common
sense will contain many contradictions within its boundaries. Further, these
contradictions will not merely be inconsistencies or non-sequiturs. There will
also be the kind of contradiction that is born of different social groups and
classes. (Fielding, 1976, pp. 135–138)
*Email: catnovoa@aol.com
Ó 2013 Taylor & Francis
International Studies in Sociology of Education 81
Assuming that any argument about common sense implies an argument

about ideology, there are three terms that merit definition. First, what is
common sense? Second, there was a dominant common sense prevailing in
education worldwide that was modified by the advent of neoliberalism?
Third, how can this new neoliberal common sense be defined in theoretical
terms?2 We sometimes refer to common sense as ‘normal native intelli-
gence’. These definitions present two important concepts. One is that com-
mon sense may become ‘naturalised’ in the lives of people as something
normal that we do or ought to do just to get by, survive, or prosper.
Common sense is a generalised truth about something. It is the normal way
to do things, that is, the normal way of becoming human beings.
Yet, and though it seems contradictory, the idea of common sense is also
based on culturally shared understandings or values. That means that what
is common sense for some people may not be common sense for others – at
a certain level, common sense is variable across cultures. However, the pro-
cesses of globalisation has crossed borders, creating relatively similar frame-
works across cultures, thus leading to the implementation of notions of
educational common sense in policy and practice worldwide.
Common sense as a rhetorical device is different than common sense as
a conceptual or practical tool of transformation. That is to say, if one begins
to argue that a given common sense has been substituted by another com-
mon sense, we must first define what the previous ‘New School’ or progres-
sive common sense was all about, along with how the new neoliberal
common sense came into being, displacing the first one.3
Education and society: the prevailing common sense

Perhaps there has never been (or never will be) a complete agreement on
the aims, mission and contributions of education to society. Moreover, one
of the most difficult questions that we face is that of whether education can
change society. Michael Apple’s new work on this topic has shown that the
question cannot be easily and unilaterally answered once and for all
(Apple, 2013).
The role of education and the ways in which it may result in a certain
kind of educational common sense are important questions that need to be
addressed. Despite the lack of educational consensus, I believe that the pre-
vious predominant common sense in the United States (and to a large extent
in other parts of the world) was connected with the experience of the New
Deal, educational progressivism, and the model of the New School – a
policy model that is now celebrating 80 years of its impact in countries like
Brazil. It would be beyond the premises of this analysis to go into detail
about what this common sense means, or how it came into being; however,
it is necessary to drawout some salient elements.
82 C.A. Torres
First, unlike traditional models of education, progressivism, or the New

School movement based on the educational theories of William H.
Kilpatrick, John L. Childs, George S. Counts and William W. Brickman, but
particularly through the influence of John Dewey, becomes student-centred
and experiential rather than abstractly cognitive. Second, it is connected with
the welfare of society and should contribute to the development of the over-
all equality and equity premised by liberalism as part of the notion of ways
of taming capitalist societies. Third, borrowing from the logic of the
Enlightenment, education’s aim is to enhance humanisation, reason and
conflict resolution. Fourth, education is central to and organically linked to
public policy in the construction of democracy and citizenship. Fifth, educa-
tional policies should increase social mobility and social cohesion. Finally,
educational expenses, both individual and social, should not be considered
as merely expenditure but as an investment in human capital. This premise,

which began to take precedence in the fifties and early sixties, a time of
educational expansion, opened the door for an economic view of educational
goals.
This liberal common sense, so well represented in the work of John
Dewey (see John Rogers’ article in this special issue) is not without its
detractors, particularly from socialist and communist traditions. For instance,
George Snyders, a French intellectual closely aligned with the French Com-
munist Party, criticised Dewey’s theory of education for its pedagogical limi-
tations and its acceptance of capitalism as a mode of production. Among the
critiques are the following: Dewey’s analysis weakens discipline in educa-
tion, his influence on education is anti-intellectual, his pragmatism unduly
emphasises professional education, and he exaggerates the uniqueness of his
‘active classroom programme (Gadotti, 1996; Novack, 1978; Oelkers &
Rhyn, 2000; Snyders, 1981).
Following Kuhn’s (1962) theory of paradigmatic shifts, there are changes
in the way that science progresses vis a vis our concept of ‘common sense’.
There is little resemblance, despite positivistic thinking, between the logic
of the natural sciences and the logic of the social sciences (Torres, 2009a).
Yet, one may see a paradigmatic shift in the way education has been con-
ceived in the past 80 years or so. That is, the normal science that emerged
with the ‘progressivists’ developed a logic-in-use, or a paradigm that I have
chosen to term ‘common sense’. Once some of the foundations of a model
began to be challenged, there was a paradigmatic shift, resulting in another
‘common sense’, namely the emergence of neoliberalism in education.
Clearly, Kuhn has instructed us that a shift in scientific paradigms results
in incommensurate logics, that is, the new paradigm cannot be proven or
disproven by the rules of the old paradigm and vice versa. Not surprisingly,
the new paradigm (in this case, the new neoliberal common sense) also
brings with it changes. These relate to terminology and narratives, how the
key players (social scientists, policymakers, professional associations) see
the field and, more importantly, a host of critical questions about which indi-
cators give credence to basic premises in the field (e.g. what is quality of
education) and the rules to define what is truthful. Taken together, these
changes ultimately produce a new hegemonic common sense.
With paradigmatic shifts and incommensurability of discourses in hind-
sight, my most generic hypothesis is that the notion of common sense
becomes an ideology playing a major role in the process of constructing
hegemony as moral and intellectual leadership in a given society.4 From this
hypothesis, we can move beyond my previous analysis focusing specifically
on higher education (Torres, 2011) to a more general set of theses, which I
will outline in the following section.
Neoliberalism’s common sense in education as a new historical bloc:

theory and analysis
Thesis one: neoliberalism is the new paradigm or logic-in-use that has
replaced progressivism
The first thesis states that over the past three decades or so, we have wit-
nessed the growing presence of neoliberalism as the dominant ideology in
public policy and governance. Neoliberalism has produced a radical shift of
paradigms, which coupled with the presence of neoliberal globalisation has
created a ‘new common sense’ that has percolated into all public and private
institutions and, by implication, despite their own autonomy, into institutions
of higher education (Torres, 2009a, 2009b).
Liberalism has been displaced by neoliberalism, deeply affecting
education and social policies:
Liberalism itself is under concerted attack from the right, from the coalition of
neo-conservatives, ‘economic modernisers’, and new right groups who have
sought to build a new consensus around their own principles. Following a
strategy best called ‘authoritarian populism’, this coalition has combined a
‘free market ethic’ with populist politics. The results have been a partial dis-
mantling of social democratic policies that largely benefited working people,
people of colour and women (these groups are obviously not mutually exclu-
sive), the building of a closer relationship between government and the capi-
talist economy and attempts to curtail liberties that had been gained in the
past. (Apple, 2004, p. xxiv)
Neoliberal governments promote open markets, free trade, reduction in

the public sector, decreased state intervention in the economy and deregula-
tion of markets. The premises of the economic restructuring of advanced
capitalism that have been under criticism particularly after the crash of 2008
implied the reduction in public spending, reduction in programmes consid-
ered wasteful, the sale of state enterprises and mechanisms of deregulation
to prevent state intervention in the business world. Together with the afore-
84 C.A. Torres
mentioned, it is proposed that the state should participate less in the provi-
sion of social services (including education, health care, pensions and retire-
ment, public transportation and affordable housing) and that these services
should be privatised. The notion of ‘private’ (and privatisations) is glorified
as part of a free market. It implies total confidence in the efficiency of com-
petition because the activities of the public or state sectors are seen as ineffi-
cient, unproductive and socially wasteful. In contrast, the private sector is
considered efficient, effective, productive and responsive to changes in
demand and supply. In contrast to the model of the welfare state in which
the state exercises the mandate to uphold the social contract between labour
and capital, the neoliberal state is decidedly pro-business, supporting the
demands of the corporate world. Nevertheless, as Schugurensky (1994)
rightly points out, this departure from state interventionism is differential,
not total. It is not possible to abandon, for symbolic as well as practical rea-
sons, all of the state’s social programmes. It is necessary to diffuse conflic-
tive and explosive areas in the realm of public policy (Schugurensky, 1994).
It is clear that we have seen the failure of the neoliberal model in spaces
across the globe, starting with the Argentine crisis of 2001, in which the
country that was considered emblematic for the implementation tout court
of the neoliberal model collapsed and the model was drastically altered. A
few years later, the political economic neoliberal model worldwide was dee-
ply affected by the financial crises of 2007, calling for a most serious reas-
sessment of the role of the state in rescuing the capitalist world system from
its most serious crisis since the Great Depression. Despite the ostensible fail-
ure of the political economy of neoliberalism, the politics of culture that it
has brought about are still firmly in place. In fact, it is not too risky to argue
that we have now at least one, or perhaps even two, generations of youth
that have grown up and have been educated under a neoliberal common
sense that has infiltrated most models of governance, as well as educational
institutions, including the politics of culture in general (Torres, 2011).
The reliance of neoliberalism on markets is equivalent to a religious or
theological position. I concur with Apple (2013) when he argues:
I say religion here, because neoliberalism – a vision that sees every sector of
society as subject to the logics of commodification, marketisation, competition
and cost benefit analysis – seems to be immune to empirical arguments, espe-
cially but not only, in education. As I demonstrate in Educating the ‘Right’
Way (Apple, 2006), in very few nations of the world has setting the market
loose on schools and other social institutions consistently led to greater equal-
ity. The religious status of neoliberalism assumes particular things. Choice,
competition, and markets – all of these supposedly will lead us to the prom-
ised land of efficient and effective schools. And such schools will play major
roles in transforming the public into the private. In the process, this will lead
to a rosy economy as we ‘regain our competitive edge in the global market-
place’. The key word here is ‘supposedly’. This is a crucial caveat, since we
know that school choice policies, especially those involving marketisation and
privatisation, often involve schools choosing students and parents as much as

parents choosing schools. (p. 6)
Thesis two: neoliberalism has deeply impacted higher education worldwide

The second thesis that I would like to defend is that the institutional
dynamics of higher education have been affected by changes at several
levels. Perhaps the most important one in the last century is a process
deeply connected with the process of globalisations. Consider how universi-
ties have been transformed: In terms of access, they have evolved from
being elite institutions into democratic institutions and, most recently and
particularly in advanced industrial societies, into transnational institutions of
knowledge production, change, distribution and consumption (Teodoro,
2010). As this argument has been amply explained in my previous work, I
do not see a need to repeat it here (Torres, 2011).
Thesis three: neoliberal globalisation has galvanised the model of

neoliberal common sense in education
The third thesis that I outline here is that neoliberal globalisation,5 the most
prominent model of globalisation that has been predicated on the dominance
of the market over the state and particularly through deregulatory models of
governance, has deeply affected the university in the context of ‘academic
capitalism’. As Raymond Morrow has incisively argued:
The great benefactor of the de-sacralisation of the university as a cultural

institution has been the increasing penetration of market forces into higher
education and the reorganisation of university governance around ‘playing the
game’ of academic capitalism … In this context, the market becomes the Tro-
jan horse for undermining academic autonomy by ostensibly non-ideological
and non-coercive means based on the interest of the ‘consumers’ of education
and research. (Morrow, 2006, pp. xxvi–xxvii)
Thesis four: neoliberal public managerialism is supposed to solve the

crises of higher education
The fourth thesis that I would like to present here suggests that by introduc-
ing managerialism – that is to say, if organisations are given the right finan-
cial incentives, the top managers who run those organisations will deliver
the right outcomes – as a new form of higher education institutional gover-
nance and the mercantile function of the university via the commodification
of knowledge and subjects of higher education, universities have deepened
and magnified their crises. Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa
Santos sees the university facing three pressing crises: the crises of hege-
mony, the crises of legitimacy and the institutional crises. The crisis of hege-
mony is the result of the growing intellectual deprivation of the university
86 C.A. Torres
as it is increasingly called on to produce commercial knowledge at the

expense of other forms of knowledge. The crisis of legitimacy is the result
of the increasing segmentation of the university system and the growing
devaluation of university diplomas. The institutional crisis of the university
is the result of the decreased support by the state and the erasure of the pub-
lic benefit mission that universities, especially public ones, have traditionally
served. Concentrating on the institutional crisis served only to exacerbate
the problems of hegemony and legitimacy. A key point of Santos’ argument
is that the nature of university knowledge has been transformed from
scientific knowledge to what he terms ‘pluriversity knowledge’ Pluriversity
knowledge is ‘application oriented and extramurally driven’ (Torres &
Rhoads, 2006, p. 28).
Thesis five: neoliberal common sense is predicated on the power of

possessive individualism
The fifth thesis is that neoliberalism implemented and extended the basic
notion of possessive individualism originally developed by liberalism into a
new realm. The theory of possessive individualism was very well captured
in the work of Canadian political theorist Macpherson, originally published
in 1962 (2011). This theory argues that individuals possess skills, dexterities
and knowledge that belong to them and for which they owe nothing to soci-
ety. These skills are commodities to be sold and bought in a market. There-
fore, possessive individuals act like rational actors in a consumer’s market
behaving in a selfish manner. Yet this selfishness – neoliberals would argue
– rebounds in positive societal effects. Macpherson would assume that for
liberalism, consumption is itself the central principle of human nature.
Therefore, possessive individualism is the antipode of any kind of collectiv-
ism as a rational principle of social organisation.
Thesis six: neoliberalism’s common sense in education undermines the

public responsibility of the state in promoting the ‘common good’
The sixth thesis argues that a central premise of neoliberalism is to under-
mine the state as caretaker of the public good. As such, neoliberalism has
traditionally demonised the state and privileged the role of the market. One
of the most significant developments of citizenship theory in the past
century has been the linking of the welfare state to the full expression of
democratic citizenship. T. S. Marshall’s celebrated 1949 essay ‘Citizenship
and Social Class’ articulated the post-war consensus around the notion of
the liberal welfare state as a precondition for the exercise of citizenship in
capitalist societies (Held 1983, pp. 248–260; Marshall, 1950).
Marshall sought to show that something like modern civil rights devel-
oped first in early nineteenth-century England. Political rights developed
next, although the principle of universal political citizenship was not fully
recognised until the early twentieth century. The expansion of social rights
began in the late nineteenth century with the development of public elemen-
tary education, but it was not until the twentieth century that social rights in
their modern form were fully established. Marshall based this historical
account on the emergence of the modern welfare state. The great distributive
measures of the post-war welfare state, including health services, social
security and progressive taxation, created better conditions and greater
equality for the vast majority of those who did not flourish in the free
market. Furthermore, they provided a measure of security for those who
were vulnerable, especially if they fell into the trap of poverty. Marshall
maintained that social rights mitigated the inequalities of the class system in
a society that remained hierarchical (Held, 1989, 191).
Thesis seven: if there is no solidarity built on the premise of the

attainment of the ‘common good’, then cut-throat competition and not
citizenship collaboration is the key to capitalist development
The seventh thesis that I would like to suggest is that competitiveness and
not collaboration prevails in the neoliberal educational model. Thus, stan-
dards, hierarchies and even new and powerful concepts such as ‘world-class
universities’ are heralded in ways that promote a kind of erasure of the his-
torical efforts that were developed to extend quality education to the major-
ity of the population. As such, this erasure of history is also a way to
undermine organised forms of social solidarity, now being left to the activi-
ties of civil society (e.g. social movements, community organisations,
NGOs, etc.) and individual or corporate philanthropy.
For instance, the question of ‘world-class universities’ is intimately tied
to the discussion of the purpose and validity of global university rankings
and dovetails nicely with the struggle for international competition. The
impact of neoliberal globalisation on universities raises several important
questions, including: Do shifts towards a market-oriented ideology within
the wider society suggest similar and inevitable shifts within universities?
Do such shifts bring about the inevitable commodification of professional
activities, family life and the environment or the life of the professoriate? If
such responses are unavoidable, does this necessitate a move in the direction
of a free-market ideology on a global scale, meaning that we need compara-
tive data to assess who is who in higher education? To what extent can the
emergence of a global monoculture in higher education be expected once
we have established a firm ranking of quality universities on a world scale?
While not all these questions can be addressed in a conceptual article like
this one, a different study in progress may provide a set of tentative answers
that can help to guide empirical research on the subject.
88 C.A. Torres
Thesis eight: neoliberalism not only reproduces existing inequalities but

also creates new ones. The paradigmatic shift towards neoliberalism may
be responsible for and/or has deepened larger civilisation crises than
could have previously been imagined
The eighth thesis is that there is a most important ethical crisis that dovetails
quite naturally with the installation of neoliberalism as the predominant
model of policymaking. Michael Apple has been quite vocal in warning us
about these developments:
It has become clear both nationally and internationally that markets can indeed
not only reproduce existing inequalities but that they can and often do create
even more inequalities than existed previously. When they are combined with
an increased emphasis on national and state testing – which usually accompa-
nies such proposals in a considerable number of nations – the results from this
combination of neoliberal market initiatives and neoconservative pressure to

standardise and impose a supposedly common culture and also to mandate
reductive accountability measures can be truly damaging to the most
oppressed people. (Apple, 2013, p. 6)
While I have written extensively about the number of civilisational crises

that we are confronting, perhaps the most important are the ethical crises,
which some people would like to denominate as moral crises of society.
A large number of youth, children and adults have been experiencing
these crises at several levels and through several layers of their lives. There
is a most serious conflict of ethnicities, religious beliefs, class, gender and
of course racial and ethnic exchanges, in our educational institutions and
practices. This conflict is aggravating the way children, youth and adults
cope with the moral and cognitive crises that they experience in their
societies. Lost in the struggle for meaning and identity is the same notion of
tolerance – that we indulged as one of the premises of the Enlightenment –
despite its failures and weaknesses.6 Some political scientists will also argue
that one of the effects of this moral crisis is a growing crisis in the
governability of democracies.
There are many other symptoms of these crises, such as the pervasive
corruption in so many public sectors and the lack of transparency and
checks and balances in the business world revealed by the extraordinary
gaps in compensation between employers and CEOs both in industrially
advanced and in emerging societies. A recent report by the OECD shows
that ‘In the three decades prior to the recent economic downturn, wage
gaps widened and household income inequality increased in a large
majority of OECD countries. This occurred even when countries were
going through a period of sustained economic and employment growth’.7
Moreover,
there was a rise in the share of top-income recipients in total gross income in
the three decades from 1980 to 2010 in all countries, with considerable varia-
tion from country to country. It was most marked in the United States: prior
to the onset of the financial and economic crisis in 2008, the share of the rich-
est 1% in all income reached close to 20%.
Not surprisingly, these civilisation crises has been aggravated by the

greedy and predatory business practices that led to the macro-financial crisis;
the presence and action of narcotrafficking as parallel power in many socie-
ties; the merchants of death selling arms and feeding militias, in many cases
including children as soldiers; or the systematic annihilation of populations
and genocides such as the most recent experience of Darfur. Unfortunately,
examples abound across the globe.
In addressing these crises, Cornel West has spoken of an undeniable cul-
tural decay in the United States that frightens him more than anything else:
‘By unprecedented cultural decay I mean the social breakdown of the nur-
turing system for children. The inability to transmit meaning, value, purpose,
dignity and decency to children’ (West, 1993, p. 196).
Confronting these crises is tantamount to solving the dilemmas of our
time. No government, organisation or individual should remain neutral.
Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy, The Book of the Inferno claimed
that God had reserved the darkest places in hell for those who maintain their
neutrality at times of moral crisis.8
Thesis nine: deregulation is the cornerstone of the political economy of

neoliberalism
The ninth thesis is that neoliberalism brought as a central premise of analy-
sis the question of deregulation, postulating that the only efficient state is a
small state. This assumption in turn, particularly with the financial and fiscal
events of the year 2007, brought about the crisis of deregulation that has
deeply affected the world system.
Neoliberal models of deregulation promote notions of open markets,
unchecked free trade, the reduction in the public sector, the decrease in state
intervention through regulations in the economy and the deregulation of
markets. This agenda includes a drive towards privatisation and decentralisa-
tion of public education, a movement towards educational standards based
on decontextualised definitions of quality of education and the testing9 of
academic achievement, usually through multiple-choice exams to determine
the quality of education at the level of students, schools and teachers.
Accountability, defined more as a means of social control than as a peda-
gogical device, is another key tenet of the model.
As a concept, accountability is indeed difficult to define. Some people
talk about as the ‘byzantine complexity’ of accountability (Lindberg,
90 C.A. Torres
2009). In an insightful unpublished paper, Portuguese sociologist Almer-

indo Afonso equates accountability to answerability, using the classifica-
tion of Schedler that ‘accountability has three structural dimensions: an
information dimension, a justification dimension and a dimension of
enforcement or sanction. In a more immediate reading, answerability may
be regarded as the pillar that supports or condenses the first two: the
right to ask for information and to demand justifications, and, in either
case, it is expected that the other party has the obligation or duty (leg-
ally regulated or not) to pay heed to what is requested’ (Afonso, 2010,
p. 3).
The financial and policy prescriptions of deregulation models are now
being challenged with a reorganisation of the world system, and predictably,
will have impacts on the politics of culture and education.10
One of the clear consequences of these crises and the reaction to neolib-
eralism is the emergence of the new social movements of the twenty-first
century such as the indignados, Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring.
An analysis of the impact of these movements challenging neoliberalism in
education should be the subject of another article, and, given the extensive
body of work, cannot even be summarised here. For an analysis of the Arab
Spring, see Kellner’s article in this volume.
Thesis ten: neoliberal globalisation simultaneously produces

fragmentation and homogenisation in the polity
The tenth thesis is that globalisation simultaneously produces fragmentation
and homogenisation, with differential impacts. Let us take as an example
higher education. At a general level, one may argue that the impact of
globalisation on colleges and universities is both direct and indirect:
An example of a direct effect is the way in which national economies are

restructuring their systems of support for higher education as a consequence
of shifting economic priorities and structural adjustment policies mandated
from above. Examples of indirect effects include the manner by which the
war against terrorism has come to limit academic freedom and the transna-
tional flow of scholars and students and the way in which academic culture at
some Latin American universities is shifting from a collectivist orientation to
ideas associated with individualism. What is clear is that the various manifes-
tations of globalisation have the potential to produce different kinds of effects,
although disentangling cause and effect can be quite problematic. (Torres &
Rhoads, 2006, p. 10)
I have said in another place that these processes are coupled with attempts
to infuse market logics into higher education, ‘undermining its mission as an
independent source of knowledge and inquiry’ (Torres & Van Heertum, 2010,
p. 155). This fits with the attempt to limit the effectiveness of universities as
sites of contestation of the global order.
I have further argued that processes of neoliberal globalisation, in partic-
ular the deepening of relationships between business and education, have
served to disempower educational institutions and actors:
Increased entrepreneurialism in post-secondary education, especially in the

most developed countries, has been led by efforts to expand revenue (or sim-
ply to replenish losses from decreasing state and federal support) through a
variety of profit-seeking endeavours, including close collaboration with busi-
ness in research, satellite campuses and extension programmes around the
world. This has been coupled with recent efforts to bring accountability
regimes similar to No Child Left Behind to the university level, ensuring
increased homogeneity and standardisation and disempowering professors and
counter-hegemonic ideas. In sum, neoliberal globalisation has attempted to

undermine the broader goals of education, pushing it to serve as the primary
source of sorting and initial training for corporations. It has also attempted to
undermine the ideological and political power of education, specifically disem-
powering teachers and teachers’ unions. In many cases, neoliberal reforms
have limited access and opportunity along class and racial lines, including
limiting access to higher education through the imposition of higher tuition
and reduced government support to institutions and individuals. (Torres &Van
Heertum, 2010, 156)
It is a non-sequitur to suggest that the combined effects of the crises

mentioned previously have produced a most serious deterioration of values
in contemporary capitalist societies. This includes a blurring of the private–
public distinction, the inability to keep in check the tensions between indi-
vidual and community and the predominance of freedom over need. Many
scholars will link this value crisis to the logocentrism, Eurocentrism and the
colonial experience that has undermined First Nation’s civil societies and
even more so the same constitution of civic consciousness.
Thesis eleven: privatisation is the key to neoliberalism’s new common

sense
The eleventh thesis will emphasise that by promoting the privatisation of
education (at several levels, not only with the emphasis on user-fees brought
about as a response to the fiscal crisis of the state), this new common sense
underscored the mercantilisation and commodification of education, particu-
larly higher education. The debates promoted by the World Trade Organisa-
tion in the past decade around the notion of making higher education as the
last frontier for mercantilisation exemplifies this new theology of the market.
Under this prevailing ideology, education becomes a consumer good not an
inherent right. Hence, students are increasingly seen in terms of their ‘pur-
chasing power’ rather than as citizens seeking to fulfil their basic rights.
92 C.A. Torres
Thesis twelve: neoliberalism sees students as consumers not citizens

The twelfth thesis will argue that the shifting of public policies through a
model of instrumental rationality modified the public discourse where con-
sumers, not citizens, are considered the main beneficiaries of education. Let us
take the example of adult learning education. As I have documented in several
writings, I have identified several models and rationalities of adult learning
education and contextualised them in view of the dynamics of globalisation
processes affecting the world system (Torres, 2013). I have criticised the
implementation of adult learning education (ALE) programmes based on
instrumental rationality and compensatory legitimation, attributing most of the
weaknesses of the field, and the lack of implementation of the recommenda-
tions of CONFINTEA V,11 to a lack of political will from the public sectors as
well as strong differences between potential providers and civil society.
It has been shown that adult education typically has been co-opted by the
state and employed as an instrument of social legitimation and extension of
state authority more than as a tool for the self-reliance of individuals and
communities, particularly in the poorer sectors of Third World societies. But
it also has been argued that left to the dynamics of deregulated markets, adult
learning education programmes may not flourish. Without the particular,
forceful, and robust intervention of the democratic state in alliance with key
institutions of civil society, the power of adult learning education to promote
social transformation, empowerment, and more importantly improvement in
the working and living conditions of individuals, families and communities,
will be neglected. By implication, the contributions of adult learning educa-
tion and lifelong education to the knowledge society will be neglected or
their impact quite limited, undermining the democratic nature of a knowledge
society model. Finally, it has been argued that the nature of educational
change in ALE is related to the nature of the state (its ideology, its commit-
ments and its modus operandi) and the possible intersections and collabora-
tions with vigorous institutions from civil society, particularly social
movements.
In a critical examination of the EU agenda setting for competence devel-
opment, Milana (2012) discussed the ‘regulatory ideal’ that directs current
educational reforms in European member states, thus sustaining the above-
mentioned trend that reduces adult education to vocational and work-related
education:
This ‘regulatory ideal’ is based on a simplified account of the social problem

it aims to address, that is, a lack of productivity within the Union, which is
grounded on few assumptions. First, there exists a bottleneck in the single
market due to a lack of skills availability among the population. Second, edu-
cation and training provision represent the only means by which to break this
bottleneck. Third, it is possible to reach a perfect equilibrium between the
quantity and quality of skills workers have and jobs require. Lastly, the skills
workers acquire via education and training correspond to the jobs they can
obtain. (p. 114)
In short, at every level, education has been undermined as a human right

and a process of humanisation and has been largely converted to a sorting
device and initial training mechanism for corporations.
Thesis thirteen: is lifelong learning for a knowledge society a creature of

neoliberalism?
The thirteenth thesis is based on the premise that all paradigmatic shifts
imply a change of concepts, methods and policy orientations in science and
in policymaking. This thesis will argue that under the shadows of neoliberal-
ism, new terms have been coined – two of which are particularly relevant
for the discussion of non-formal education: lifelong learning and the knowl-
edge society. Lifelong learning appears as a cultural strategy in the process
of integral and holistic development. The role of international and bilateral
organisations to achieve these outcomes at global levels is paramount. A
learning society is a premise for a knowledge society. Organisational analy-
sis speaks of learning organisations, a central component of the knowledge
society and knowledge economy. The idea that knowledge becomes a third
productive factor, jointly with capital and labour, is the essence of the notion
of the knowledge society.
UNESCO and other international and multinational organisations have
been playing around with the implications of this concept for culture and
education (UNESCO, 2005). The notion of a knowledge society/knowledge
economy, sometimes defined as an information society, has been aptly
defined in the Declaration of Lisbon, stating the strategy for the development
of higher education in the European University Association (EUA). The strat-
egy of Lisbon argues that the central task of EU higher education is:
to equip Europe’s population – young and old – to play their part within the
knowledge society, in which economic, social and cultural development
depend primarily on the creation and dissemination of knowledge and skills.
Modern societies, much more than the agricultural and manufacturing societies
of past centuries, depend on the application of knowledge, high-level skills,
entrepreneurial acumen and the exploitation of communication and informa-
tion technologies.12
Adult education as social engineering or corporatism conceives education

as primordially an exercise of social engineering in a post-industrial society,
where there is a bureaucratic rationality that will make all social distinctions
and differences (particularly social class differences) disappear or become
irrelevant for social practices. An elite, be it bureaucratic, technical, profes-
sional or scientific, will play a central role in conceiving a model of social
planning that will solve ideological and political differences among many
94 C.A. Torres
strata in the population, creating a scientific and objective rationality of

planning and action. From a political theory analysis, there is a sense of
‘organicism’ in this perspective, focusing on decentralised yet controlled
political participation of semi-autonomous groups.
There is a pyramidal network of interactions, with the state playing a
fundamental role in the strategic model of development, articulating diverse
interests (e.g. business and working class interests, for instance) with the
state playing a role of mediator. Seen from this perspective, adult education
plays a dual role: it can be a key element in the process of forced moderni-
sation of the most traditional roles, practices and cultures in a society and/or
can be a model of franchisement of disenfranchised populations, increasing
social demand for good and services.
Literacy training becomes one of the central concerns as a means of
social mobilisation. The overall model of adult education is top-down,

authoritarian and compensatory, with the wishes and demands of the
communities challenged through patrimonial or corporatist structures of
interest representation controlled by bureaucratic or technocratic institu-
tions. Thus, adult education could play a subsidiary role as mass recruit-
ment and training, challenging alternative and traditional channels of
political participation such as political parties or trade unions. As such,
adult education could eventually become part of a policy of political
clientelism. The ideological foundation is the premise of technical pro-
gress through policy and planning, with the expansion of massive sys-
tems of adult education, particularly in rural and underprivileged areas,
with limited concern for quality of education provision. Thus, as a per-
spective of political clientelism, any of the proposals for semi-autono-
mous participation of the communities (e.g. idealist pragmatism,) or
complete autonomy of the communities (e.g. popular education) are
rejected in benefit of corporatist channels of political representation. Eur-
ope is particularly instructive in the way that new models of educational
regulation in adult lifelong learning are aimed at a re-skilling of the pop-
ulation with basic competences (Torres, 2013).
Thesis fourteen: neoliberalism promotes and benefits from the culture of

science in education
The fourteenth thesis argues that the predominance of rational choice has
affected education in different ways. One of them is by giving ‘numbers’
the ability to ‘speak for themselves’ and hence play a key role in the new
‘science of education’. A recent book argues against the ‘culture of science’
currently dominating education discourse, instead favouring a more critical
understanding of various modes of inquiry (Baez & Boyles, 2009; de Sousa
de Sousa, 2007):
The entire discourse on education science reflects a number of distinct, but

mutually constitutive, political forces or movements using science to shape
what we can think, and thus, what we can become in the so-called postmod-
ern age. These forces or movements are briefly (1) the movement to profes-
sionalise educational researchers, (2) the attempts to restrict democracy via
scientism, (3) the uses of academic classification for organising the world into
social groups, (4) the imperatives of the informational society, which seek pre-
cision in order to convert the world into ‘data’ for governing, and (5) the
effects of transnational capitalist exchanges, which convert everything into a
cost-benefit analysis and make us all complicit in ways we do not fully grasp.
(Baez & Boyles, 2009, p. vii)
This culture of science, which could also be termed scientificism, separates

culture from knowledge, dissociating also power from human interest. Science
then emerges as a powerful and unchallenged principle of social rationalisa-
tion, which serves only analytical goals, though eventually could be imple-
mented in specific policies. Science seems then narrowly defined as a mixture
of positivism and instrumentalism and defended on the grounds of statistical
rigor and objectivity.
Thesis fifteen: a fundamental myth of neoliberalism common sense is that

the nation-state has or will wither away
Peter Mayo offers an analysis of this myth and deserves to be quoted at
length:
One of the greatest myths being propagated in this contemporary neoliberal

scenario is that the nation state is no longer the main force in this period
characterized by the intensification of globalization. Deregulation was
brought in by governments to expedite the process where various forms of
provision, private and formerly public, were left to the market. And yet the
credit crunch starkly laid bare the folly of this conviction as new forms of
regulation are being put in place with the state, the national state, intervening
to bail out banks and other institutions in this situation. I consider this an
opportune moment to look at the function of the state and assess its role
within the contemporary scenario of ‘hegemonic globalization’, to adopt the
term used by the Portuguese sociologist, (de Sousa Santos in Dale and Rob-
ertson, 2004, p. 151), and its underlying ideology, neoliberalism. (Mayo,
2011, p. 18)
These crises call into question the role and effectiveness of the State as a
moderniser and social regulator. Paradoxically, during the seventies and
eighties, the Left had been criticising the ideological and repressive appara-
tus of the State. Since the nineties, some business analysts like (Ohmae,
1990, 1995) denounce the nation-state as a creature of the past, arguing that
the real centres of wealth creation are the region-states.
For Ohmae, the four I’s (that is, investment, industry, information tech-
nology and individual consumers) drive the expansion and operation of the
96 C.A. Torres
global economy, taken over the economic power once held by the nation-
state. The result of this economic process is the rise of the region state,
defined simply as an area that often comprises communities situated across-
borders that develop around a regional economic centre having a population
of a few million to twenty million people.
From a neoliberal perspective, Ohmae offers a devastating critique to the
nation-state, coupled with a critique to liberalism and democracy, because
these are unable to satisfy popular demands while at the same time offering
a minimum of public services. Ohmae’s argument could be considered a
right-wing perspective of what O’Connor called in the seventies the ‘fiscal
crisis of the state’, or what has been termed in a famous Jürgen Habermas
book the dilemmas of legitimacy of the capitalist state (Habermas, 1975;
O’Connor, 1973; Torres, 2009b).
It is perhaps unnecessary to argue about the relevance of these questions

for education, particularly when in the twentieth century, the educational
systems and practices have been sustained, organised, regulated and certified
by the state. In fact, public education is a function of the state, in terms of
legal order or financial support. The specific requirements of certification for
the basic teaching qualifications, textbooks and curriculum are controlled by
official agencies and defined by specific politics of the State’ (Torres, 1998,
p. 14).
Thesis sixteen: there is an elective affinity between bi-national,

multinational and international organisations and neoliberal governments
The sixteenth, and final, thesis will argue that this shift in public policy
management is the product of an elective affinity between international and/
or bilateral organisations or think-tanks (such as the World Bank, IMF, the
Washington Consensus, and the OECD) and governments that have
advanced the neoliberal agenda by implementing the models outlined by
those think-tanks but doing so in terms of their own policy advantage. After
all, if and when something goes wrong, these neoliberal governments could
blame the international organisations for the premises that they implemented
as public policy: ‘This shift in public policy discourse in a decidedly right-
ward and instrumental direction is not as seamless as its advocates hope,
nor can it mask numerous contradictions’ (Berman, Marginson, Preston,
McClellan, & Arnove, 2007).
Having outlined these theses of the new neoliberal common sense, it will
be prudent to bring them together into a singular conceptual framework.
The following section provides a brief summary of the main elements of
each thesis, illuminating their interconnections and demonstrating how they
work together to form the new neoliberal common sense.
The new common sense as an analytical framework

Let us summarise the previous theses in conceptual terms, giving shape to
the substance of neoliberalism’s new common sense.
Seeking to establish its hegemonic leadership through the moral and ethi-
cal ideology that underscores neoliberalism, it is centred on the concept of
possessive individualism and by implication it is against any and all forms
of collectivism.
Demonising the capitalist state as the central player in the pursuit of the
defence of the ‘public common good’, neoliberalism assumes a theology of
the free markets. These markets cannot and should not be restrained, leaving
the free hand of the market to rule.
Definitions of quality of education are intimately linked to competitive-
ness principles and hence to standards and hierarchies. Not surprising then,
there is a debate about world-class universities that reflects a specific univer-

sal common sense.
Because of this emphasis on competition rather than collaboration, there
is an erasure of history and any models of solidarity that in the past may
have ‘tamed’ the brutal and fierce Darwinian social struggle of survival of
the fittest in the markets. As part of a model of neoliberal globalisation, pro-
cesses of fragmentation and homogenisation simultaneously coexist in the
world system.
Deregulation emerged as the neoliberal recipe for allowing privatisation
to reign, and as the only possible way to allow the market to succeed in
resource allocation, productivity and surplus. With this emphasis on deregu-
lation, a small state, and unfettered capitalism, ethics and morality suffered
to the point that one of the key explanations of the 2007 crises was the
‘moral hazard’ ingrained not only in the pursuit of individual interest at any
cost, but also a systemic risk almost unpreventable if deregulation should be
the form of interaction among the state, markets and civil society. A funda-
mental myth of neoliberalism is that the nation-state has withered away.
With these moral and ethical lapses, a deterioration of private and public
values emerged, affecting the two central tensions of Western societies’
political philosophy: the tension between freedom and need, and the tension
between individual and community. The neoliberal resolution of these ten-
sions was to bet on expanding possessive individualism even at the risk of
undermining all community sources and resources and highlighting the need
for freedom to prevail (in a sort of unlimited utilitarian libertarianism), even
as it deeply affected the identification and solution of key social, family and
individual needs. Hence, the extraordinary increase in income inequality in
most societies, which has been well documented (OECD, 2112).13
With the mercantilisation and commodification of social and symbolic
actions, particularly in the field of education, both education and health care
emerged as the last frontiers for capital to reach, colonise, and profit from.
98 C.A. Torres
A fundamental outcome of the implementation of these principles is the

dual process of transformation of students to learners, and from students as
citizens to students as consumers.
The various Enlightenment principles that inspired mass, compulsory and
free educational policy have been subject to a systematic reduction to a
basic sorting and initial training mechanism for corporations. Educational
quality is restricted to its programmatic impacts on national and international
competition in generating skills, abilities and dexterities defined as basic
competencies.
While knowledge emerged as the new factor of production and standards
became the solution to identifying quality of education based on the ‘best
practices’ of teaching and learning, the measurement strategies of those
standards were mostly restricted to high-stakes testing and models of
accountability (very often defined as public management of education).

With the decline in public funding to higher education in particular,
entrepreneurship seems to be the only possible orientation for higher educa-
tion governance. In K-12, these models will propel performance-based pay
and the logic of financial incentives to articulate the growing privatisation of
public education.
The impact of the neoliberal common sense crossed borders thanks to an
elective affinity between these hegemonic neoliberal principles and models
and neoliberal think-tanks in the world system, represented by international,
bilateral and multilateral organisations. These think-tanks are primarily
represented not only by the World Bank and OECD but also by other seg-
ments of the United Nations system, including UNESCO. This elective
affinity is further reflected in the logical narratives, priorities and praxis of
governments and philanthropic foundations that have bought into and
disseminate the ethics and principles of the neoliberal common sense and by
implication the neoliberal logic.
Reading neoliberalism in a Gramscian key

How can we theorise these sets of formulas that have nurtured the neoliberal
common sense? I propose thinking about the new neoliberal common sense
in Gramscian terms.
Gramsci’s contribution to education can be summarised by five main hypothe-

ses: (1) insofar as hegemony is founded on coercion and consensus, it is an
educative relationship; (2) despite the fact that hegemony is exerted by the rul-
ing class, it is organised in capitalist society by a particular social category: the
intellectuals; (3) education is the process of formation of ‘social conformism’;
(4) the state, as an ‘ethical state’ or, indeed, as an educator, assumes the func-
tion of building a new ‘type’ or ‘level’ of civilisation; thus, it constitutes an
instrument of rationalisation; and (5) the establishment of a classless society
and the building of a collective must be achieved through intellectual and moral
reform. (Gramsci, 1975–1977, vol. 1; Thomas, 2009; Torres, 1992, p. 41)
All of these elements can be applied paripassu to neoliberalism. What

neoliberalism has tried to do is construct a new historical bloc. Gramsci uses
the notion of a ‘historical bloc’ as a symbol of unity among opposites, as
the consolidation of a new historical synthesis, with ethico-moral elements
that allow for articulation between rulers and the ruled, between structure
and superstructure as a concrete totality, as well as between ideology and
praxis on both an individual and a collective level with a minimum of con-
tradictions. Here is how Gramsci himself put it: ‘the concept of “historical
bloc”, that is, unity between nature and spirit (structure and superstructure),
unity of opposites and of distincts’ (Gramsci, 1980, p. 137).
Gramsci points out that ‘structures and superstructures form a “historical
bloc”. That is to say, the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of
the superstructure is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations of
production’ (Gramsci, 1980, p. 366). He elaborates his hypothesis at an indi-

vidual and collective level: ‘Man is to be conceived as a historical bloc of
purely individual elements and of mass and objective or material elements
with which the individual is in an active relationship’ (Gramsci, 1980, p.
360). The mutual indispensability between objective and subjective, individ-
ual and collective, or structural and superstructural is ever present in Gram-
sci. The relationship between ideologies and material forces is perhaps the
best formulation he found to link both the individual–collective and the
structural–superstructural levels.
A new historical bloc is not simply an alliance, or a coalition but a new
civilisation design, as Mignolo will argue: ‘Neoliberalism is not just an
economic and financial question but a new civilising design’ (Mignolo,
2000, p. 279). Alliances or coalitions can be created for several purposes, in
different institutional settings and historical circumstances. Not so historical
blocs. These develop over long periods of time through particular deep
forms of historical articulation of forces and agents.
In the constitution of this new historical bloc, the relationship between
intellectuals and the masses acquires not only a disciplinary but also a con-
sensual perspective in which consciousness prevails in the pedagogical rela-
tionship. Common sense for Gramsci does not constitute an intellectual
order – though it is infused in the masses by intellectuals. Common sense
cannot be reduced to unity and coherence either in the individual or the col-
lective consciousness (Gramsci, 1980, p. 326). Yet there are practical differ-
ences in the philosophy elaborated by intellectuals and the philosophy
practiced by the common man and woman – an important distinction for
showing the passage from one moment, the philosophy of high culture, to
that of the common sense of the people-nation: ‘In philosophy, the features
of individual elaboration of thought are the most salient: in common sense
on the other hand, it is the diffuse, uncoordinated features of a generic form
of thought to a particular period and a particular popular environment’
(Gramsci, 1980, p. 330).
100 C.A. Torres
The rise of neoliberalism has been put into question on multiple fronts,
including the global financial crises of 2008 and the emergence of alternative
hegemonic models that represent the attempt to infuse economics from a dif-
ferent rationality than neoliberalism (see Van Heertum in this issue). In par-
ticular, the constant and tenacious challenge of social and political
movements such as the indignados, Occupy Wall Street, and the Arab Spring
shows that this conception that has been imposed on the ‘people-nation’ may
be deeply challenged. For Gramsci, all hegemonic leadership is unstable and
subject to conflict and contestation. Hegemony itself is a contested terrain.
One of the principles of this challenge is to find a good nucleus in the
prevailing neoliberal common sense that can be used to explode the logic of
the model from within. Yet Gramsci is clear that
for reasons of submission and intellectual subordination, [the people, sub-

altern classes] adopted a conception which is not its own but is borrowed
from another group; and it affirms this conception verbally and believes itself
to be following it, because this is the conception which it follows in ‘normal
times’ – that is when its conduct is not independent and autonomous, but sub-
missive and subordinate. (Gramsci, 1980, p. 327)
The key concept here is ‘normal times’. Clearly, we are not living in the
‘normal times’ of neoliberalism, and conflict and contradiction are emerging
within the critique of the neoliberal common sense as the hegemonic direc-
tion of the society.
In his discourse on the sciences, and from a different vantage point than
Gramsci, Boaventura de Sousa Santos offers an insightful description of the
nature and purposes of common sense as a way of knowing in post-modernity:
Common sense collapses cause and intention. It rests on a worldview based

on action and on the principle of individual creativity and responsibility. Com-
mon sense is practical and pragmatic. It reproduces knowledge drawn from
the life trajectories and experiences of a given social group and asserts that
this link to group experience renders it reliable and reassuring. Common sense
is self-evident and transparent. It mistrusts the opacity of technological
objectives and the esoteric nature of knowledge, arguing the principle of equal
access to discourse, to cognitive and linguistic competence. Common sense
is superficial, because it disdains structures that cannot be consciously
apprehended. (de Sousa Santos, 2007, p. 41)
There are many different ways of interpreting these challenges. Left to

itself, de Sousa Santos argues, ‘common sense is conservative and may well
legitimate claims to superior knowledge. However, once articulated with sci-
entific knowledge, it may be the source of a new rationality – a rationality
comprised of multiple rationalities’ (de Sousa Santos, 2007, p. 41).
In this article, we have defended the idea that the neoliberal common
sense has not only displaced other traditional forms of common sense in
education, but also has become a moral and intellectual philosophy so per-
vasive that even though the political–economy foundation of neoliberalism
has shown in practice, through the phenomenal economic crises of the past
few years, that its principles precipitated the limitations of their theoretical
orientation, it remains solidly established in the politics of culture as a phi-
losophy or a conception of the world that guides educational development.
Gramsci asserts that there is no such a thing as a common global philos-
ophy. ‘Philosophy in general does not in fact exist. Various philosophers or
conceptions of the world exist’ (Gramsci, 1980, p. 326). The task of the
philosophy of praxis that he proposed in understanding, making explicit and
developing the ‘good sense’ present in common sense should be a ‘criticism
of common sense’ basing itself initially, however, on common sense in order
to demonstrate that ‘everyone is a philosopher and that it is not a question
of introducing from scratch a scientific form of thought into everyone’s indi-

vidual life, but of renovating and making “critical” an already existing activ-
ity’ (Gramsci, 1980, pp. 330–331).
There are echoes of this proposition evident in the gnoseological perspec-
tive of Paulo Freire and other advocates of the pedagogy of liberation. Such
a model entails beginning educational practices with the knowledge refined
by the common people, accepting this knowledge as a critical theory in a
practical state and not just as popular wisdom, and contributing (through the
introduction of scientific techniques and knowledge, especially from
the social sciences) to a more programmed development connected with the
praxis of transformation of consciousness (or what Freire called a pedagogy
of the oppressed and a cultural action for freedom, two stages of the same
progressive process).
Years ago in criticising neoliberalism I was concerned with Gramsci’s
warnings that:
when we do not have the initiative in the struggle, and the struggle itself
comes eventually to be identified with a series of defeats, mechanical deter-
minism becomes a tremendous force of moral resistance, of cohesion, and of
patient and obstinate perseverance. (Gramsci, 1980, p. 336)
Certainly, given the crumbling of the theoretical political economy edifice of

neoliberalism, there is no need today for any kind of ‘mechanical determin-
ism’. On the contrary, the task ahead is very clear. Once the onset of the cri-
ses passes, and neoliberalism begins to fade away, which will neither be
automatic nor immediate since every historical bloc persists historically for
at least a little while, we should continue to disaggregate, inspect and criti-
cise its principles, programmes and practices. At the same time, we must
seek to recreate from the potential nucleus of good sense that may emerge
from this critique, new programmes and new educational sciences inspired
above all by a new educational utopia.
102 C.A. Torres
Today more than ever, Gramsci’s apothegm comes true: Let freedom ring
from the pessimism of the intelligence to the optimism of the will.
Acknowledgements
I am thankful to Robert Arnove, Pedro Noguera, Peter Mayo and Gabriel Jones for
their comments on a previous version.
Notes
1. It will become evident in the analysis that the neoliberal common sense is not
specifically oriented to education but emerges as part of a larger strategy, a
global effort to dismantle the welfare state in the USA and elsewhere. Similar
transformations are occurring in important human services such as healthcare
and transportation.
2. In the United States the concept of common sense has an important political
sentiment, which is intimately linked to the tradition of the American Revolu-
tion. Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet entitled ‘Common Sense’ that was anony-
mously published on 10 January 1776 and is considered one of the most
powerful arguments for the American Revolution. Paine argued against the
legitimacy of the colonization. His pamphlet, with its incendiary tone and
biblical connotations, unleashed a revolutionary fury against British domination
in the American colonies. Trying to evoke the spirit of Thomas Paine, conserva-
tive pundit Glenn Beck, in his agenda intimately connected with the rise of
neoliberalism and neoconservativism in the United States, in 2009 published a
book entitled Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Govern-
ment, Inspired by Thomas Paine. Leaving aside Thomas Paine’s pamphlet or
the pathetic resemblance of Glenn Beck’s book of a similar title, it would be
appropriate to say that generally speaking people invoke common sense in
reference to sound practical judgment that is independent of specialised
knowledge, training or the like.
3. Some scholars prefer the term ‘regimen of truth’, drawing from Foucault’s
theoretical arsenal rather than ‘common sense’, which is more closely related to
the Gramscian tradition. I have discussed the similarities and differences of both
concepts in Torres, 2011.
4. Hegemony in Gramsci ‘refers to a process of intellectual and moral leadership
established as a consensus that is shared on the basis of common sense. This
common sense, however, is dynamic and not static. It invariably emerges from a
struggle or confrontation among social forces, ideologies, philosophies, and gen-
eral conceptions of life. Despite Gramsci’s antinomies, he understand hegemony
as a process of social and political domination in which the ruling classes estab-
lish their control over the classes allied to them through moral and intellectual
leadership. Hegemony acquires a pedagogical character, but Gramsci also refers
to hegemony as the dual use of force and ideology to reproduce social relations
between the ruling and the subordinate classes. (Torres, 1998, pp. 13–14).
5. I have developed a systematic analysis of neoliberal globalisation in several
works, including: Van Heertum, Richard, Liliana Esther Olmos, and Carlos
Alberto Torres eds. (2011) In the shadows of neoliberal globalisation: educa-
tional reform in the last 25 years in comparative perspective E-Book, Bentham
Books; Torres, 200a9, 2009b.
6. The Enlightment, particularly in post-colonial traditions, has been the subject of

strong critiques as Eurocentric, Logocentric, Malecentric, and racist.
7. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. OECD, 2011.
Divided we stand: Why inequality keeps rising.http://www.oecd.org/els/social-
policiesanddata/dividedwestandwhyinequalitykeepsrising.htm.
8. This quote is in http://www.memorable-quotes.com/dante+alighieri,a2027.html.
At the entrance of the Hell, in the 3rd Canto, Dante and his guide Virgil pass
by a group of souls who were outside the proper entrance of the inferno in the
‘Ignavi’ circle (ignavi = slothful or sluggish person). Virgil explained to Dante
that those people, when they were alive, remained neutral at a time of great
moral decision. In Dante’s words, they ‘lived without Disgrace and without
praise’ colour/chevissersanza ‘nfamia e sanzalodo (III/36). So they cannot enter
either the Hell or the Paradise, because during their life they did not decide
where to stay. The lines are: canto 3/34–36: [Virgil speaking] Ed Elli a me:
‘Questomisero modo tegnonl’anime triste di coloro che vissersanza ‘nfamia e
sanza lodo. The great Italian poet Dante portrays very intensively the character
of those who do not have the strength and the courage to make any choice. So
end neither in the hell nor in the Paradise. They are in the Vestibule, a sort of
entrance to Hell), but they suffer forever. They must follow a sign eternally tor-
mented by vasps and hornets. See the English translation (http://www.italian-
studies.org/comedy/Inferno3.htm), particularly lines 31–69.
9. Testing has a long tradition in places like China, which for the past 1300 years
has used examination procedures to select the most able public servants.
10. While I do not have the time to outline the scenario of crises in this article, I
must point out that there are several interlocked crises affecting our own
post-industrial civilisation. Just to summarise, there is an ethical (or moral)
crisis. There is the crisis of deregulation. There is a crisis of human rights,
immigration and multiculturalism as the bedrock of citizenship. There is a plan-
etary crisis, and finally, and very close to our own state of affairs in the univer-
sity, there is an epistemological crisis (for a discussion of the epistemological
crises see de Sousa Santos, 2007).
11. International Conference on Adult Education.
12. The Lisbon Declaration resulted from the discussions that took place during the
fourth EUA Convention of Higher Education Institutions hosted by the five Lis-
bon Universities and the Portuguese Rectors’ Conference from 29–31 March
2005. It was formally adopted by the Council of the EUA on 13 April 2007.
The original theme, with the presence of more than 700 universities and partners,
was ‘Europe’s Universities Beyond 2010: Diversity with a Common Purpose’.
13. ‘There was a rise in the share of top-income recipients in total gross income in
the three decades from 1980 to 2010 in all countries, with considerable varia-
tion from country to country. It was most marked in the United States: prior to
the onset of the financial and economic crisis in 2008, the share of the richest
1% in all income reached close to 20%’ (OECD, 2012).
Notes on contributor
Carlos Alberto Torres is a professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education;
and the division head of SSCE; and the director of the Paulo Freire Institute at
UCLA. He is also the founding director of the Paulo Freire Institute in São Paulo,
Brazil (1991), Buenos Aires, Argentina (2003), and UCLA (2002). Former director
of the Latin American Center at UCLA (1995–2005), past president of the
Comparative International Education Society (CIES), and past president of the
104 C.A. Torres
Research Committee of Sociology of Education, ISA, he is also the author or

co-author of more than 62 books and 250 research articles and chapters in books.
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International Studies in Sociology of

Neoliberalism as a new historical bloc:

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Neoliberalism as a new historical bloc: a Gramscian analysis of

Department of Education, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Reading neoliberalism in a Gramscian key, this article argues that neo-

new common sense as an analytical framework, the article offers 16

Neoliberalism’s new common sense

Assuming that any argument about common sense implies an argument

Education and society: the prevailing common sense

First, unlike traditional models of education, progressivism, or the New

as merely expenditure but as an investment in human capital. This premise,

Neoliberalism’s common sense in education as a new historical bloc:

Neoliberal governments promote open markets, free trade, reduction in

privatisation, often involve schools choosing students and parents as much as

Thesis two: neoliberalism has deeply impacted higher education worldwide

do not see a need to repeat it here (Torres, 2011).

Thesis three: neoliberal globalisation has galvanised the model of

The great benefactor of the de-sacralisation of the university as a cultural

Thesis four: neoliberal public managerialism is supposed to solve the

as it is increasingly called on to produce commercial knowledge at the

Thesis ﬁve: neoliberal common sense is predicated on the power of

Thesis six: neoliberalism’s common sense in education undermines the

Thesis seven: if there is no solidarity built on the premise of the

Thesis eight: neoliberalism not only reproduces existing inequalities but

combination of neoliberal market initiatives and neoconservative pressure to

While I have written extensively about the number of civilisational crises

Not surprisingly, these civilisation crises has been aggravated by the

Thesis nine: deregulation is the cornerstone of the political economy of

2009). In an insightful unpublished paper, Portuguese sociologist Almer-

Thesis ten: neoliberal globalisation simultaneously produces

An example of a direct effect is the way in which national economies are

Increased entrepreneurialism in post-secondary education, especially in the

counter-hegemonic ideas. In sum, neoliberal globalisation has attempted to

It is a non-sequitur to suggest that the combined effects of the crises

Thesis eleven: privatisation is the key to neoliberalism’s new common

Thesis twelve: neoliberalism sees students as consumers not citizens

This ‘regulatory ideal’ is based on a simpliﬁed account of the social problem

In short, at every level, education has been undermined as a human right

Thesis thirteen: is lifelong learning for a knowledge society a creature of

Adult education as social engineering or corporatism conceives education

strata in the population, creating a scientiﬁc and objective rationality of

social mobilisation. The overall model of adult education is top-down,

Thesis fourteen: neoliberalism promotes and beneﬁts from the culture of

The entire discourse on education science reﬂects a number of distinct, but

This culture of science, which could also be termed scientiﬁcism, separates

Thesis ﬁfteen: a fundamental myth of neoliberalism common sense is that

One of the greatest myths being propagated in this contemporary neoliberal

It is perhaps unnecessary to argue about the relevance of these questions

Thesis sixteen: there is an elective afﬁnity between bi-national,

The new common sense as an analytical framework

there is a debate about world-class universities that reﬂects a speciﬁc univer-

A fundamental outcome of the implementation of these principles is the

accountability (very often deﬁned as public management of education).

Reading neoliberalism in a Gramscian key

Gramsci’s contribution to education can be summarised by ﬁve main hypothe-

All of these elements can be applied paripassu to neoliberalism. What

production’ (Gramsci, 1980, p. 366). He elaborates his hypothesis at an indi-

for reasons of submission and intellectual subordination, [the people, sub-