Understanding the proliferation of critical theory – how reformulations of the Marxist dialectic find their appeal in an age of capitalist prosperity and what to do about it.
TL;DR Critical theory, and critical race theory by extension, is a supremely capable virus of the mind on the level of evangelizing religions. Fighting its spread must be undertaken with the same tools you would use against a creeping religion: inoculation via attacking its epistemology to those who have not yet taken it up, loud rejection of its moral underpinnings in the public sphere, and denying it mentally weak hosts that will be easy to take over.
To those of you who are familiar with some prominent heterodox academics like James Lindsay, some of what I’m going to say will be old hat, but I’m going to try to go a step further than them and approach critical theory less like a historical phenomenon and more like a virus, since that’s how it behaves in the here and now. It has hosts, vectors of transmission, and an endless array of mutations accumulated over the last few decades, the most dominant of which are the ones we are dealing with now, with applications to race being the most dominant of that elite group. Iron sharpens iron, and those mutations have produced quite strong strains that take some effort to understand, and therefore to combat effectively. I’ll be looking at a few of its strengths here and how to address them in our own lives.
Moral Concerns
The morality of critical theory is not a universal one, despite the universal normative claims it makes to justify itself. The virus is dependent on mutually contradictory behaviors to spread itself, and it has evolved to justify them all. It is also dependent on a lack of competition, hence the fact that these chickens are coming to roost in an era of declining religion and societal trust.
To make a parallel to religion, the virus convinces you that you have an ailment other than itself that you are born with and can never get rid of. Sounds a lot like original sin, right? Certainly, only it only exists for one part of the dialectic. Which part of the dialectic one belongs to is not assigned by actions or thoughts, but by immutable characteristics. To repurpose Christopher Hitchens, “you are created sick and ordered to be made well,” only now there is not even a Jesus to make you well. One half of the dialectic is, through no action of its own, born in infinite debt to the other and ordered to make payments regardless. It should be obvious that this is a tiered morality, but it does make pretenses to universality by appealing to objective evils in competing frameworks. For example, most people consider police brutality to be evil, and their belief in this simple, relatively non-controversial idea makes them susceptible to catching the virus if the virus is loud enough to drown out competition in explaining that evil and offering a solution. How many previously well-adjusted people went off the deep end after the death of George Floyd?
If you are on the “original sin” side of this, the morality of critical theory is almost totally hopeless. It’s a Sisyphean effort to expunge your own evil when the same framework that casts you as evil tells you that you always will be. That said, it offers a sense of purpose in making the effort regardless, and in an era of plenty with little material struggle, such a moral struggle may be the only sense of greater purpose in someone’s life. This can be fantastic motivation to seek converts, therefore spreading the virus. If you are on the “clean” side, you may be motivated to advance these ideas as a show of power against those with the original sin, also spreading the virus. You also can do so with the approval of your conscience and a ready-made body of moral legitimacy with little competition with any virility.
Epistemology
To put it simply, the epistemology of critical theory is a short circuit, and this has worked to its advantage. There are no real underpinnings in observable reality, but it is conducive to its success to behave as if that is the case sometimes. Recall the proliferation of the phrase “my truth” and the elevation of lived experience above data and empiricism in general. Likewise remember that all other frameworks we use to know things are said to belong to the wrong side of the dialectic (the scientific method as an example of Western domination, for example). Now try to square that away with the central premise of the dialectic, which is that a single grand narrative of two opposing sides explains all wider cultural circumstance – this, you will notice, is an objective claim about a shared reality. Marx’s dialectic was that between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, and its formulations have swapped those out for terms that are more familiar to our current circumstances, like whiteness/people of color, men/women, and so on. We then have our thesis and antithesis, but what the synthesis is supposed to be seems up in the air. Prominent critical race theorists like Ibram X. Kendi have made it abundantly clear that a post-racial society is not that synthesis, and their strain is winning out. Perhaps the synthesis is merely the continued proliferation of the virus; the Dar as-Salam of neo-Marxism.
Dealing specifically with critical race theory, this has one of two effects on an adherent depending on the race of that adherent. A white adherent will defer to subjective claims from all non-white adherents and so be resistant to believing his/her own lying eyes. It’s plain to see how that helps to maintain the infection; a natural immune response (observation of objective reality) has been disabled. A non-white adherent will seize upon his/her own subjective experience as both confirmation of the grand narrative (ignoring the contradiction) and a means of seizing power. There, the virus maintains its hold by motivating the host against getting rid of it.
Eschatology
I made the comparison above with religion, and here is one of the strongest parallels. The virus must ensure that the host is unmotivated to take measures to get rid of it, and I discussed one example of that above, but another is the promise that it is going somewhere. My hypothesis for what the synthesis is in the dialectic is the domination of the dialectical mode of thinking, and the utopian nature of the ideas it evolved from seems to corroborate that. Any communist dictator in the last century surely would have justified the worst of crimes as if the next kulak to be starved would be a necessary paving stone to the perfect society. Likewise, the domination of this mode of thinking has supplanted all other distant goals as the highest good achievable in this mortal life, and so the host is resistant to let qualms about “lesser” issues stand in its way. After all, what concern to you are a few people’s lives ruined, who are the wrong skin color anyways, if not ruining their lives would have stymied progress towards utopia? If the virus has convinced you that spreading it is not only a moral imperative, but the highest moral imperative, you will guard it jealously against even your own misgivings.
What can we do?
Someone who is deeply invested in critical theories has already discarded means of knowing and understanding the world that have proven to be useful. “Deconverting” such a person is not likely to be easy, and it will be next to impossible within philosophical frameworks that are clearly more useful for almost any other purpose. Stressing the implausibility of the looming utopia and the lack of personal utility critical theories have to the adherent may be the best ways forward, as the former would interrupt the virus’s hijacking of a well-meaning person’s desire to improve the world and the latter would more selfishly activate one’s own sense of self-preservation.
The true battleground will be over the 90% of the population that has not yet succumbed. They can be inoculated by presenting the ideas underpinning critical theory: its broken epistemology, its simplification of the world into grand narratives, its conflation of individual and collective action wherever convenient, and its refusal to interact with concepts like “evidence.” This must be done before critical theorists are allowed to present these ideas unopposed, as in a college classroom. Teach your children about these ideas so that they will recognize them when they appear at school under friendly names like “anti-racism.” If you are a religious person in a religious community, ensure that the primacy of universal morality remains unchallenged. If you are an atheist or know a lot of atheists, employ other frameworks that arrive at universalist conclusions. The virus dislikes competition, and one with a healthy sense of the innate dignity in all humans and purpose in his/her own life will have little need for the siren song of social justice activism and dialectical thinking.
Cultivate health and mental fortitude in all your circles and they will resist. Don’t and they will be consumed.