JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, III

 

[Note:  This posting is subject to further editing.]

An advocate of critical theory continues his/her presentation[1] …

This current series of postings is reporting on the basic elements of critical theory, the main antithetical view to the dominant natural rights view that Americans mostly favor when it comes to governmental/political thought.  Critical theory is a view that focuses its concern on political qualities of domination and authority.  Readers are invited to review the last two posting of this blog for how it, the blog, has introduced this construct.

          Part of that reportage was describing how critical theory grew out of the efforts of a multidisciplinary group of scholars who established the Frankfurt Institute.  Their initial efforts, due to German politics during the 1930s, found these scholars moving the Institute eventually to New York City.  After the ensuing years in which World War II transpired plus some stabilizing years, the Institute moved back to Frankfurt, Germany. 

Changing its name once again – to the Frankfurt School – they were able to skillfully advocate their political positions and garnered a good degree of influence in a conservative West Germany.  With this re-establishment in their original location, this group during the 1950s and ’60s aimed most of its efforts at attacking positivism.  That is, these scholars found a good deal of fault with the trend among the social sciences to adopt more rigorous scientific protocols in conducting their studies. 

This specifically meant that social sciences – which relied heavily, up to that time, on more narrative/historical forms of research – focused on hypothesis testing methods in which observations of human behaviors were measured to discover significant correlations between independent and dependent variables.  This was deemed to be a major obstruction to the School’s main aim, i.e., to change society. 

Why?  Because the behavioral approach objectified the study of politics while the Frankfurt group’s change-oriented aim relied heavily on normative questions – change presupposes value determinations.  And adding fuel to this disaffection of the prevalent social sciences was, at that time, a highly emotional development, that being the student anti-war movement – mostly a reaction to the Vietnam War – that both Europe and the US was experiencing. 

The resulting disruptions between those in power and anti-war demonstrators with allies like leftists from the Frankfurt School, grew and featured concerns over the various forms of subjugation the School was highlighting which mostly affected either low-income groups or targeted groups of prejudicial policies or both.  And this fed into the School’s concern with social science modes of research.

The “establishment” – made of those who belonged to privileged groups – was adopting behavioral approaches in their analyses of social realities and they stood in support, for the most part, with the war footing against Communism.  Partly due to World War II lessons – appeasing aggression from “foreign” invaders – and capitalist aims to expand their markets across the world, there seemed to be tunnel vision among the power centers as to what appropriate policy should be adopted concerning such developments as those being witnessed in Southeast Asia. 

The School found itself, again, in an uncomfortable domestic environment in Germany due to the disruptions associated with the anti-war movement.  At that time, though, new blood was making its way into the School’s ranks.  One such newcomer was Jurgen Habermas, who introduced a very influential communication theory.

That theory points out the necessity for participating actors of various social arrangements – whether they be federated (in agreement) or antagonistic – to recognize the intersubjective validity among their claims so that social cooperation can be achieved.[2]  This is veering critical thought further from pure Marxist thinking (a trend pointed out in previous posting), albeit not in contradiction to it.

Was there a complete divorce between Marxists and critical theorists by what critical theorists were promulgating through the School or other platforms?  One area that these critical scholars seem to have maintained a strong link with Marxist thinking was their rejection of purely objectified social science research. 

And by transcending the boundaries among the various social sciences – becoming highly interdisciplinary – and other related disciplines (such as linguistic or aesthetic studies), these writers started to find fault with segregating these objectified studies from normative political theory as indicated above. 

In so doing, they fell squarely with Marx and his views that it is essential to keep social science protocols (of either historical or behavioral-based types) and social criticism relatable to each other.  The former provides the means, but the latter keeps such efforts along justifiable rationales which, in turn, help those involved in exerting the energy and expending the resources such research demands.

Despite this link, Marxist scholars, for their part, found it offensive that critical theorists would be disposed to seemly leave behind Marxist focus on proletarian revolution and the energetic adoption of going into other non-Marxist sources of scholarship to inform the substance of their research and writings. 

But, as time passed, this separation of research such as between positivist studies (based on factual information) and normative studies (based on values), lost its fervor and has come to be seen today as artificial.  The concern eventually fell from overall academic importance.  In that, critical theorist played an important role.

And as critical theory further developed, certain inconsistencies have materialized among those affected scholars.  The next posting will delve into these inconsistencies and report on how they, ironically, further diversified the interests of those who claim to be critical theorists or exponents of this construct.  Many a movement was generated or overwise inspired by critical theory and its advocates.

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[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] For interested readers in this generalization, see “Jurgen Habermas,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007/2014), accessed March 18, 2023, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/#:~:text=Habermas's%20theory%20of%20communicative%20action,on%20which%20social%20cooperation%20depends.  It is beyond the purposes here to delineate Habermas’ argument at this point.

JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, II

 

[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.

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[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.