Teacher work and formation in the face of platformization, the financialization of education, and digital sovereignty

Interview: José Claudinei Lombardi

Abstract

Professor and intellectual José Claudinei Lombardi (Zezo) anchors his reflections in Marxism to reflect on the discussions raised during the interview. According to the author, Marxist ontology conceives of the social being in its materiality, understanding technology as an expression of objectified human labor, mediated by productive processes and historically determined by social relations. Drawing on Marx, Engels, Gramsci, Mészáros, and Antunes, he argues that, under the foundations of capital, innovations increase productivity, reinforce domination, and make work precarious. Terms like "digital capitalism" and "surveillance capitalism" capture circumstantial aspects but can obscure the essence: the exploitation of living labor as the basis for the accumulation of surplus value. In the educational field, Lombardi highlights that technicism and neo-technicism subordinate pedagogy to an instrumental logic, deepened by the processes of platformization and financialization, which imply a loss of autonomy and digital sovereignty. The intellectual defends Historical-Critical Pedagogy, omnilateral education, and the unveiling of fetishism. He concludes by proposing three tasks: a critique of bourgeois education; a praxis that democratizes systematized knowledge; and political education focused on human emancipation.