The critical examination of society's circumstances, institutions, and cultural predispositions and values can help detect problems and injustices and can suggest opportunities for improvement. Neo-Marxist critical theorists of the Frankfurt school are committed to work of this kind, but their perspective is informed by Marxian precepts, and their effort is to render Marx in modern terms consistent with what they see as the spirit of Marxism, rather than to engage in an open-minded and critical inquiry into prevailing social values. This paper begins with a critical examination of the assumptions and conclusions drawn by these theorists, who have taken on the task of explaining why history has failed to unfold according to Marx's prophecies of inevitable class conflict in western capitalist nations. It is argued that Marxist "dialectical method" consists ultimately of the application of a point of view that is assumed rather than tested, which can only yield conclusions that are based on ideology rather than on inquiry. The second part of the paper explores the viewpoints of Marxist critical theorists with respect to educational administration. In contrast to the critical theorists, the author contends that educational administration requires an ethical perspective that emphasizes the use of reflective methods to make concrete moral choices. (TE)