Rural Capitopia

So the passage on 106-107 in which Starr scoffs at Marxist historians reveals some interesting assumptions in his argument. In response to a somewhat poorly rephrased argument about the role of public schools in training people for their future as producers in a capitalist system, he argues that "the rise of popular education in America preceded industrial capitalism" (106). So industrial capitalism is the only kind? That's not how I understand it - in Capital, Marx devotes significant portions of his thinking to pre-industrial capitalism, which - although it hadn't yet reached the awesome proportions of the factory system, turning humans into automatons in droves, still very much relied on the exploitation of labor. Also, it seems important to point out that the urban factory isn't the only form of capitalism. Industrial agriculture works on the same principles. Starr seems continually returns to a kind of idealization of rural, agricultural America that seems to want to set his America apart from those dark, backwards, industrial European states (thus the extreme overreliance on de Tocqueville). Why does he do this? Is it fair to question a historical text that invokes nostalgia for an unattainable historical moment? I think I brought this up befre, but it's still bugging me.

Oh, and the Marxist historians he cites are Bowles and Gintis, writing in 1976. A well-known argument, but one that's been thoroughly revised and developed in the last thirty-two years.