Abstract
Turning towards history — to be contrasted with turning away from history — captures the Marxian sense of education. Marx worked out the elements of a theory of political education in relation to history by equating education with the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and people. This theory received its most comprehensive yet succinct and attractive expression in the Communist Manifesto. The Manifesto is used as a means of analyzing the foundations of political education — the circumstances of history, class struggle and Utopia — from a historical materialist perspective. These foundations, which define an educative view of history, remain necessary to the further development of Marxian educational theory and practice in the contemporary world.