ABSTRACT. We live in circumstances where the future is uncertain, and problematic, and the global form of organising resources and relationships, global capitalism is so structured that it cannot flourish in circumstances of financial and ecological decline. Therefore it seeks to expand where it can (this is the reason for Schumpeter’s insistence on entrepreneurs and innovation), and if or when it has run out of overseas markets and sources of labour and raw material it must find them at home. Hence the drive to: Recruit new markets by means such as CDOs; marketise government services including education; and adopt a mercantilist approach to education. The task of philosophy of education in this context is to: challenge the priorities of capitalism as the only or ‘realistic’ priorities’; reassert other concepts such as ‘use value’ which have fallen into disuse; and to maintain the value, including but not limited to the utility, of education in a world in which some of the traditional utilitarian functions of education are increasingly irrelevant. pp. 108–117

Keywords: education; global capitalism; deflation; demographic and ecological decline; entrepreneurs; innovation; mercantilism; ‘use value’