The end of the twentieth century saw the collapse of communist state systems and a brief moment of Western triumphalism that has given way to new uncertainties as deep-seated economic and political problems re-emerge. Even so, there are areas of social life where capital’s drive to create a society after its own image is hard at work, despite the wider issues. One of these is education. Now that Karl Marx is back on reading lists as a source of insight into today’s world, we want to know if he makes a useful contribution to debates over our schools and universities. The evidence for Marx’s views on education comes from texts throughout his career. They include not only well-known passages from the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written with Friedrich Engels, and the first volume of Capital, but also documents of the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA) that are known to be his work.1