Beyond the current political economy of competence development

Competence is a concept imported into the adult and continuing education arena from
the psychological terminology of human resource development in work organizations. It
has been elevated to a societal and political level as part of a new discursive regime.
This article points out the significance of the particular circumstances in which the
competence discourse has emerged, and argues for its critical investigation within a
Marxist framework. A new discourse of learning and competence reflects a new
material dependency of capital(ism) on the concrete quality of work and workers,
requiring a total program of learning for work. This opens a new arena of political
struggle over the direction of learning processes and the participation of workers in
work and society. The socio-economic realities and a new understanding of the
interrelationship between knowledge, skills, learning and practice central to the
competence concept, raises a potential issue about the role of work and the living
worker in a capitalist economy. This requires a re-development of the notion of
economy based in the value and interest of working people, and enabled by the full
development of the competences of the workers themselves. A notion of the “political
economy of working people” is proposed as a framework for investigating the
potentials of competence development for enhanced democracy.