From Marx to Theory to Wokeness: The Liberal Backbone Chapter 5

The first draft of Chapter 5 of my next book, The Liberal Backbone. It's a brief summary of the roots of woke thinking, which should make the woke left more understandable, especially for liberals trying to sort out what they do and don't stand for.

More at Dastardly Cleverness.com/liberal-backbone-chapter-5 and at Substack.com/@spencercritchley.

— Spencer

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Dastardly Clevernessin the Service of Good.

(00:02):
I'm Spencer Critchley.
This time, the first draft of Chapter
5 of my next book, The Liberal Backbone.
This chapter is called From Marxto Theory to Wokeness.
You can find the text version of thisand the other chapters
at Dastardly cleverness.comand at Substack.
I hope you'll follow me on Substackat substack.com/@Spencer Critchley.

(00:26):
Those versions have links and footnotesas well.
As always, I welcome any comments,suggestions, or corrections.
They've already been very useful.
Here we go.
Like many people of his time,Karl Marx believed that
Isaac Newton had discovered immutablelaws of nature, and he thought he had done
the same with his theory,or as he called it, “science” of history.

(00:50):
That's why he was sure the globalcommunist revolution was coming soon,
so sure that he believed itdidn't matter much
what anyone tried to do about it, foror against.
Communism was the goal of history.,when humanity
would awaken from its illusionsand achieve full consciousness.
He declared, “Communismis the riddle of history solved,

(01:11):
and it knows itself to be the solution.
” But early Marxists
found themselves in a positionsimilar to that of the early Christians.
They expected the kingdom of heavenany day now., yet that day didn't come.
Decades after Marx died,there had been a revolution in Russia,
but it had been far more complicated thanthe proletarian uprising Marx predicted.

(01:35):
And it happened in the wrong country.
Proletarians were industrialworkers, and Russia had very few.
The uprising should have begun in an industrialized nation like England or Germany.
Capitalism should have caused
its own destructionafter making workers ever more miserable.
Instead,it had adapted to reforms demanded

(01:57):
by protesters, trade unionsand governments.
Wages and working conditions had improved.
Revolutions did start in Germany,
Hungary and elsewhere,but they fizzled out.
Given the choice,most workers rejected communism.
But the doctrine itself couldn't be wrong.
Hadn't Marx proved that?

(02:17):
Confidence in Marxist thought was so highthat the Third International organization
of Communist parties declared itto be a science of nature and history.
That certainty was behind the useof reeducation in the new Soviet Union.
If you disagreed with the doctrine,you were simply wrong.
It was early Marxist-Leninists who coined

(02:39):
the term “politically correct.”
So Marx couldn't have been wrong.
There must be some other explanation.
Marxist philosophers got to work on one.
Several concluded that Marx had beenright, but his predictions had gone wrong
because he had underestimatedthe power of illusions.

(02:59):
Marx hadn't lived to see the breakthroughsin psychology
and sociology made by Sigmund Freud,Max Weber, and others.
Neither could he have anticipatedthe effects of the new mass
media like radio, movies and advertising.
All worked together to make capitalismlook not only normal, but desirable.
Religion, philosophy,and culture were more

(03:22):
than just “superstructure,”as Marx had described them.
They created a fully immersive reality.
The Hungarian MarxistGyörgy Lukács described
how what we believe can becomewhat's real, or “reified.”
So if we're made to believein capitalist concepts like property
and individualism,those concepts become our reality.

(03:45):
The Italian Antonio Gramsci analyzedwhat he called “cultural hegemony.”
The bourgeoisiedidn't need to rule by force.
They could do it by controlling culture.
All those pop songs, radio dramas, moviesand ads
showed us a world of money,consumption, glamor and entertainment.
So we lived in that world.

(04:06):
In Frankfurt, a group now knownas the Frankfurt School went further.
As much as Marx criticized liberals,he shared their commitment
to Enlightenment reason.
But the Frankfurt School concludedthat even reason could
be a vehicle of oppression.
Enlightenment philosophers
like John Locke and Immanuel Kanthad seen reason as liberating:

(04:27):
by relying on reasoninstead of dogma, people
would be able to think for themselvesand rule themselves.
But the Frankfurt School arguedthat Enlightenment
reason didn't liberate our minds,it confined them.
It trained us to think only in termsof scientific order,
efficiency, productivity and mastery.

(04:47):
And thinking that way didn't serve us,
it served capitalism — or worse.
According to the Frankfurt School'sMax Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno,
Enlightenment reason had prepared the wayfor the mechanized horrors of Nazism.
Their essay The Concept of Enlightenmentopens with this:
“Enlightenment,understood in the widest sense

(05:09):
as the advance of thought,has always aimed at liberating human
beings from fearand installing them as masters...” “Yet
the wholly enlightened earthis radiant with triumphant calamity.”
The Frankfurt School philosophersbelieved that in order
to truly liberate people,you had to liberate their minds.

(05:30):
That was the purposeof what they called Critical Theory,
a precursor of what'snow just known as Theory.
And here we come to another sourceof confusion for liberals.
Remember how we talked about the word“woke” having more than one meaning?
Well,so do the words “critical” and “theory.”
Liberals usually think of those wordsthe same way Enlightenment scientists

(05:52):
and philosophers did, as expressingthe search for objective truth.
To think critically is to followobjective evidence and logic
wherever they lead,independent of any biases or beliefs.
Similarly, a theory is supposed to bebased on objective evidence and logic.
This is not what the Frankfurt Schoolmeant by critical theory.

(06:15):
Far from it.
Their kind of critical theory attacksthe very idea of objectivity.
Remember,Marx believed that in our natural state,
we live communally in harmony with natureand with our fellow human beings.
Yes, it appearsnow that we must struggle to master nature
and we must compete with each other.

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But that's because we've been alienatedfrom our natural state.
Even the belief that we're subjectsseparate from objects
can be a symptom of our alienationfrom the rest of the world.
According to the Critical Theoristsand those who came after,
supposedlyobjective truths only appear to exist
if we separate themfrom our subjective experience.

(06:57):
And that, according to critical theory,
is how you end up with capitalism,the most extreme alienation of all.
To live in a capitalist societyis to be alienated
from subjective reality, which includeseverything that makes life worth
living like love, creativity,and community.
If you feel unhappy about that,all of the available solutions

(07:19):
— success, luxury, entertainment —turn out to involve making
or spending money, which will just keepyou alienated from what really matters.
Liberalpolitical reforms won't work either,
because politics keeps us alienated too,as separate, competing individuals.
The only true liberationis through revolution., according to Marx.

(07:42):
Or through critical theory,according to the Frankfurt School.
Critical theory can be thoughtof as an ongoing revolution of the mind.
The point is to constantly reassertyour humanity
by challengingor critiquing everything you see or hear.
You do that by startingfrom the assumption that it's all
an illusionthat serves the interests of power.

(08:05):
A theory that doesn't do thatonly serves to maintain the illusion,
and therefore oppression.
Since critical theorywas formulated by the Frankfurt School,
it has taken many forms,as I mentioned in Chapter 3.
There are criticaltheories of race, culture, language,
gender, colonialism,and potentially any other topic.

(08:27):
Critical theory has also absorbedmany new influences
since the Frankfurt Schoolgot together in the 1920s.
For our purposes, I'm only going to lookat one of the most significant ones:
postmodern philosophy, in particular,as found in the work of Michel Foucault.
Foucault, who died in 1984,
was influenced by Marx,but went well beyond him.

(08:50):
He once said, “Marxism exists in 19thcentury thought like a fish in water...”
“That is,it is unable to breathe anywhere else.”
Foucault argued that power doesn'toriginate only in private property
or a class hierarchy,or any particular source.
It operates everywhere and in everythingany of us does, says, or thinks.

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Like other postmodernists, Foucaultbelieved we can't know anything for sure.
All attempts to establish a securefoundation for knowledge have failed,
whether that foundationwas God, or science,
or anything else,including Marx's science of history.
Therefore, according to Foucault, to claim
to know anything is to claimpower over reality.

(09:37):
He said that every society establishesa “regime of truth.”
What's true is defined according to whatwill maintain power in that society.
The Enlightenment
had establishedthe modern disciplines of knowledge,
and he argued that they werein fact designed to impose discipline.
He said, “Schoolsserve the same social functions as prisons

and mental institutions: to define, classify, control (09:59):
undefined
and regulate people.” Even a person'sidentity was not their own.
It had been determined for themby their sanctioned role in society.
It extended to whether they were maleor female,
healthy or unhealthy,sane or insane, innocent or guilty.

(10:20):
He pointed out that being gayor otherwise sexually unconventional
was considered a diseaseor a crime in most places and times.
For Foucault, every definition,
every statementwas a potential act of domination.
Domination was even embedded in Western

languages (10:38):
subjects dominate objects.
So saying anything at allmight be an act of oppression,
especially if your identity grantsyou extra power,
like if you're a straight,white, educated male.
By now, you're
probably recognizing ideasyou've encountered in day to day life.
If you've been puzzled by them,I hope it's now becoming more clear

(11:02):
where they came fromand what they signify.
If I wanted to demand more of your time— way, way more of your time —
we could explore many other sources,including philosophers, historians,
cultural critics, psychologists,linguists, educators, and more.
But I'll close this quick tourwith some examples of how the influence

(11:23):
of all those sources shows up todayamong the woke left.
First,what's become known as “cancel culture.”
For liberals, the right to free speechis one of the most important of all.
It's essential to individual freedom,and it's essential to progress,
which happens faster if we don'tfreeze out potentially useful new ideas.

(11:45):
But the woke left sees some
free speech as potentially dangerous,or even violent.
Remember, if the only thing that's realis what we say is real,
everything we say can bean act of domination.
Lived experience.
Liberals tend to assumethat in scientific research, courts

(12:05):
of law, politics, and other domainswhere we must work together,
we can use objective standards of evidenceto come to an agreement.
But you may hear people insistingthat their lived experience contradicts
whatever this supposedlyobjective evidence dictates.
This is another termthat can sound like something
a liberal would readily endorse —why would anyone who cares

(12:28):
about people denythe importance of their lived experience?
But the phrase often carriesan ideological payload
with anti-liberal implications,as in someone claiming
lived experienceas a reason for rejecting evidence.
Gender identity.
Most liberals have long since acceptedthat there are more

(12:48):
than two gender identities,
and they believe people of all identitiesshould have equal rights.
But gender theorists focus on howgender identity is determined by power,
which may need to be taken backfrom society.
Judith Butler goes so far as to saythat gender is entirely
a social construction,independent of biology.

(13:10):
People who agree with this vieware likely to argue for maximum freedom
for anyone who wants to change genders,and to believe there should be few
or no gender-based restrictions in sportsor anywhere else.
And they may see addressing someoneby the wrong name or pronoun as not just
thoughtless or disrespectful, but hostile,a claim of dominion over their identity.

(13:34):
Identity politics.
Liberals believe in equality.
Society should welcome people of all kinds
because they have equal, universal rights.
But theorists thinkthe liberal concept of equality erases
people's differing identities,which are formed by their differing
cultures,genders, lived experience, and more.

(13:55):
They see the concept of universal rightsas typical
of the structural oppressivenessof the Western worldview.
The European colonizers imposed
their universal concepts on the peoplesthey colonized.
Those people lost not only their land,but their cultures and identities
as they were expected now to liveand think like Europeans.

(14:17):
Latinx.
If language can create reality,that means a gendered
language can create a realityin which one gender is dominant.
This is why some people stoppedsaying “Latino” and switched
to the gender-neutral “Latinx,”although that word hasn't been widely
adopted by Latinos.
Defund the police.

(14:39):
Some people who use this slogan meanthey want to reduce funding for police
and invest more in addressingthe social factors, like poverty,
that make crime much more likely.
Most criminologists and many policechiefs agree with the general idea,
but many people influenced by theorywant to abolish the police entirely.

(14:59):
They see police forcesas structurally oppressive,
serving and protecting power, not people.
Many also refuseto use the word “criminal”
because they think what's calledcrime is only determined by power.
Instead, they'll say somethinglike “justice-involved person.”
The word “abolish” also has a specialmeaning in Theory, going back to Marx

(15:22):
and before him to one of his biggestinfluences, the philosopher Georg Hegel.
Liberalsbelieve in progress through reform,
but Marx thought reform just propped upthe old order.
He believed progressrequired abolishing the old order.
He and Hegel called ita dialectical process.
They meant that it always involveda clash of two opposites,

(15:45):
which abolishedthe old order and produced a new one.
Okay.
I think you can see how this works.
When you know some of the history behindwoke ideas, it's a lot easier
to understandwhat the woke left stands for and why.
Next, we'll move on to what liberalsstand for and why it's different.
Thanks for listening. I'll be back soon.