[Note:
This posting is subject to further editing.]
An advocate of critical
theory continues his/her presentation[1] …
The last posting established what has been the
main concerns for critical theorists.
That has been domination and authority.
These main issues were taken on by those scholars that initiated the
Frankfurt Institute which got started in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. And that posting further gave readers a brief
overview of how those scholars, with the backdrop of political turmoil
(revolving around the Nazis struggling to attain power); they found their
environment anything but hospitable.
Due to that backdrop, the Institute first moved
to Geneva and then on to New York City in 1935.
In the ensuing years, members of the institute began extensive research
into various social factors that related to their initial concerns of
subjugation of various groupings. They
all shared a certain, qualified allegiance to Marxist thought. While domination and authority are not
foreign concerns to Marxist thinking, their emphasis on those concerns began to
develop with a variance from pure Marxist analysis.
Where Marxists bore down on economic interests
and exchange values, critical theorists began to see dominance as a more basic
motivator than material well-being.
Specifically, the critical theorists judged material motivations as more
of a means toward dominance which intuitively is less of an economic issue than
a psychological issue.
So, instead of the Marxist emphasis on surplus-value,
one finds analysis of surplus-repression being critical theorists’ main point
of interest. This, as was noted in their
writings, was, in part, a reaction to Sigmund Freud’s promotion of suppression
as a social prerequisite in managing modern states. Here one finds a critique among these scholars
of what had been assumed characterizes the legitimate exercise of political
power. That being the “rational exercise
of authority.”
Instead of accepting being rational as the good
and proper thing to pursue, one first needs to reflect upon which mental
construct serves as a basis for determining what constitutes rational thought –
upon what is rationality based? That is,
one can determine a paradox at play, for example, in liberal Western states,
rational policies and behaviors, under the reasoned parameters of the given
dominate ideology (liberal democracy), it rationalizes subjugating realities.[2]
To round this out, though, what in the West has
been praised as historical liberation, attributed to the effects of
enlightenment – rational thought, science, objectified research, positivism,
reductionist studies – was deemed by critical thinkers as subjugating forces. And here a mental exercise might be helpful.
Imagine an unaligned, neutral thinker facing a
promoter of capitalism. The capitalist
touts the accomplishments of capitalist economies – outstripping any other
economic output, by far, of any current or historical system. In responding, the unaligned thinker asks the
capitalist: does he/she believe populations
of people, by the designs of nature, are equal in the distribution of talents?
The unaligned questioner, in order to make
clear what the questioner is asking, quickly adds, “Yes, one can concede that among
individuals, there is variance, but in terms of groupings – race, nationality,
religion, people of different geographic origins, even differing familial
strains – are people, in total among those groups, equal?
Not to sound prejudicial, the capitalist says yes,
and capitalism’s true proponents have fought to equalize legal restraints among
these groupings. The law should be blind
to such distinctions. Yet the unaligned
person further asks: “Why, then, are
there notable variances among those groups in terms of asset distribution? Why are the poor more likely to be members of
some groups as opposed to other groups?”
Further, the questioner asks, why do capitalist
nations sustain and in some cases support policies that either ignore, uphold,
or otherwise promote systems in which meaningful distribution of assets – wage,
wealth, education, health care, etc. – favor some groups (in the US, white,
male Anglo people) and disfavor other groups (African Americans, Latinos,
indigenous people, to some degree, Asians, and others)?
If one cannot cite natural distinctions among
these groups, then “enlightened” logic would claim, something, given the
realities, is not fair, something is subjugating these unfavored people. And if one follows the main argument of
capitalist thinking, then one would be prone to argue that government – in the tradition
of laissez-faire economics – should not be disposed to do anything to “fix”
this state of affairs.
With this mental exercise in hand, which is offered
by this blogger and not necessarily proffered by critical theorists, this
account hopes to point out an insight critical theorists hold fairly central to
their overall argument. That is, as with
the shortsightedness of the above capitalist, people unreflectively ascribe to
rationales that are prevalent and do so even at subconscious levels.
In terms of capitalist, liberal democracies –
enlightenment style – what one has are rationales drawn from the prevailing ideology. That is, what people find (or perhaps don’t
even realize) as being true reflects their mode of thinking and speaking – it
is “the water in which people swim.” It
functions as a dominating force; and as such, a formula can be deduced: enlightenment, as Herbert Marcuse points out,
equates to totalitarianism.
This has all led to a criticism offered by
critical theorists, that the culture – the mode of thought, beliefs,
prioritization, and feelings – of Western industrial and postindustrial
societies – has become pervasive and beyond reproach. It is well ensconced in those peoples’ minds. This cultural approach more than any other
aspect of critical theory defines the early work of these initial scholars.
And it points out the interaction of political,
sociological, and psychological factors in how people who live in industrial,
capitalist societies – even with democratic features – are so entrapped in
subjugating rationales that they have real negative effects on disfavored
groups. The above capitalist may very
well not even be conscious of how levels of destitution might exist in that
person’s society or in societies in general.
And even if a number of people know of it, they
might simply chalk up such realities to individual shortcomings – they didn’t
work hard enough, they didn’t study hard enough, they didn’t play the game
smartly enough, etc. These individuals
simply do not see or care to see the institutional nature of such injustices. And they further don’t see how the various
elements of the society play a role in “hiding” what is actually happening.
What readers might find of interest along these
lines, is the work that these researchers conducted over cultural realms of
interest (e.g., aesthetic works). But
this did not preclude critical commentary on the behavioral turn the social
sciences took in the post-World War II years and affected the substances of
what was taken as common knowledge. More
specifically, they took aim at scientism, positivist studies, and empiricism. More on this aspect of critical theory will
be shared in the next posting.
[1] These postings that convey the basic information regarding
critical theory heavily depends on the overview provided by William Outhwaite. See William Outhwaite, “Critical Theory,” in The
Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought, edited by David Miller, Janet
Coleman, William Connolly, and Alan Ryan (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd), 106-109.
[2] But less one simply dismisses
this sort of thinking as anti-American or anti-West, a higher degree of
castigation by critical theorists was aimed at the East where, under the label
of socialism (an occidental ideology), was experiencing higher degrees of
subjugating authority and domination.
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