Political Education and Equality: Gramsci Against “False Consciousness”

Traditional theories of political education usually assume a mass false consciousness that justifies political elitism. Plato sired these theories; thinkers as diverse as Locke and Marx have only altered them slightly. A major accomplishment of Antonio Gramsci was to substitute for false consciousness the notion of an ambiguous common sense. This allowed Gramsci to develop a theory of institutional and experiential education that prefigured the transitions from elitist pedagogy and politics to mutual education and social equality. Gramsci was perhaps the first modern theorist to wed political education to equality in a way that did not require waiting for an uncertain future.