Looking Forward Backwards

Abstract

Critiques of capitalism have constituted the backbone of political economies addressing living, working, and learning conditions in a variety of forms of capitalism. This paper explores different approaches to representations of the future of (adult) education in capitalist Europe. It examines the 1960s and 1970s as a period when rapid technological change was addressed in studies of the future in Europe by proponents of post-industrial society, New Left public intellectuals, professional futurologists, and critics of late capitalism, envisaged quite different futures for both society and organised adult learning. Attention is subsequently focused on the pan-European project Educating Man for the 21st Century during the early 1970s which envisaged the future as ‘neo-industrial/neo-capitalist society’ in the year 2000. In conclusion, the paper offers a critical account of early encounters with neoliberal politics during the 1970s and early 1980s, particularly the cultural materialist work of Raymond Williams.