Toward a Political Economic Theory of Education: Use and Exchange Values of Enhanced Labor Power

I explore theoretical conceptions of the use and exchange values of mathematics education within cultural-historical activity theory perspectives. The case of education in England is compared with that of health care (due to Engestrom). Then I draw on Lave and McDermott’s study of estranged learning from the early Marx, and from Marx’s later analyses in Capital. They deduced the source of learners’ alienation from learning in the enforced conditions of education, run by the educational establishment. However, I find their analogy limiting and hence erroneous. I turn to Capital to find the Marxian analysis of the “peculiar” commodity: Enhanced labor power. I conclude that the use-value of mathematics education derives from (a) learners’ immediate consumption, and (b) their enhanced (mental) labor power. Although this explains the root, economic contradictions, cultural systems of exchange explain how these are symbolised in cultural forms of use and exchange value.