Critical Theory in general eschews the materialist basis of Marxism in favor of idealistic "oppressor" and "oppressed" dichotomies. Marxism is materialist, and the arrival at the conclusion that the capitalist class is an "oppressor" comes via the economic analysis that capitalists exploit workers for their surplus value, rather than the fact that capitalists vaguely have more power than workers do. Critical Theory strips the material basis from Marxism and repositions it's assertions as idealist ones. That is why I oppose it. Critical race theory is just another offshoot of the broader critical theory movement that emerged out of academia in the postwar US-hegemonic west. It's no coincidence that these academics were nobodies on the European left until the US dominated Western Europe and started the cold war. Look around the global south and try to find communists who take the Frankfurt School folks seriously. You won't. They're only taken seriously in the west, because their theories clashed with the ideological foundations of the USSR and the PRC, and were less antagonistic to those of the capitalist West.
I understand what you're talking about. There has been much scare mongering amongst the western far right about """cultural Marxists""". Like many conspiracy theories, they're partially right, but through the lack of sound analytical framework, they arrive at horribly wrong conclusions.
We have successfully frozen their brand—"critical race theory"—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think "critical race theory." We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.
- Chistopher Rufo, the reporter who got the CRT debate going, and why CRT discussions are so chaotic (different definitions of CRT)
(Spoiler) Earlier comment of mine on the discursivity of identity if needed
Gender and race are discursive traits in the sense that they require the existence of an Other to have meaning. Just like it doesn’t make sense to talk about boneless pizza, it doesn’t make sense to talk about gender when you’re the only person in existence. This due to the definition “man” being useless without a contrastive “woman.”
But discursive identities are “performed” - at least if you follow Judith Butler’s school of thought, there’s no such thing as “a woman” so much as (and this is the phrasing she uses) her experience of “been being a woman.” That is to say the gender doesn’t exist in the person themselves, but rather in the communication between two people and the understanding springing therefrom (because we established earlier the need for an Other). So in critical race theory and queer theory and such, people are not “black” but rather “being black,” which allows for changes in what black means (and blackness can change because it’s a shared understanding and not an inherent trait).
Conversely to discursive, performed identity, class is a material relation to power. That is, in contrast to gender and race, it does make sense to talk about class when you're the only person in existence. You are either reaping the full benefit of your labor or you are not, sort of like being asleep or awake, which can happen in the absence of an Other.
Class reductionism holds that all oppression not along class lines falls away once class struggle is resolved. This is an ignorant position, and also is utilized by reactionaries to shut down any progress in those important arenas in favor of waiting on a revolution springing from the imperial core (won't happen) and therefore only functions as an impediment to real issues. However, this difference between the material and discursive is important in understanding how, for example, the conversation slips into Robin DiAngelo-esque co-opting of these issues into a massive corporate diversity industry, more aligned towards pacification than actual change, springing up from the need to avoid discrimination lawsuits, that doesn't even increase workplace diversity.
Quotes from Harvard Business Review link for the lazy
After Wall Street firms repeatedly had to shell out millions to settle discrimination lawsuits, businesses started to get serious about their efforts to increase diversity
It shouldn’t be surprising that most diversity programs aren’t increasing diversity. Despite a few new bells and whistles, courtesy of big data, companies are basically doubling down on the same approaches they’ve used since the 1960s—which often make things worse, not better.
This conversational slip occurs because, to utilize a common framing of racism, if we view such as "power + prejudice" the current focus is on eradicating the prejudice, leaving power unmolested. It should go without saying that prejudice has existed since time immemorial and will continue to exist for quite some time after this. People kill each other over football games, for chrissake. It also lends itself to an individual-level critique "you, Mr. Trump, are a racist" as opposed to system-level. Its fluidity (like annexation of Irish into whiteness) is not a proof of its soon to-be distruction: racism was propagated to serve the function of uniting the white West against all others, and now must be eradicated due to American multiculturality and reliance on, for example, PhDs from the third world. These particular expressions of a universal jingoism are abandoned once they are no longer useful (in the environment where their use has diminished).
Analogue from the Manifesto about sexism
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex
The current construction of power, on the other hand, does not suffer this issue. It is important to treat symptoms as well as disease, but don't mix the two up, and don't fall into the trap of either "symptoms all gone once disease gone" or "treating symptoms fixes disease." The former downplays women's, minorities', and the queer community's progress. The latter is reformism and merely shifts the burden (see "white feminism" et al).
I think it just forgets (in worse interpretations) that initial dynamic of oppressed is coming from worker/burger relationship. If you look at how america was racist through years, the pattern of being racist to “unskilled” labor is unmistakeable. Codifying this racism into law is further offshoot of this, as separating workers into unskilled/skilled in law is hard, while doing it by race is easy and sellable to populace
i don't really feel CRT runs counter to marxist ideology at all. critical race theory is basically an acknowledgement of systemic racism that is prevalent in the US, seeming to only have mutated rather than dissolved in the last 70.
crt has basis in fact, in the material conditions of people being oppressed, and therefore i don't really feel it's idealist. there are concrete, substantial, and documented statistics that show that people of color are treated on a different basis than white people in the US.
Look around the global south and try to find communists who take the Frankfurt School folks seriously. You won’t. They’re only taken seriously in the west, because their theories clashed with the ideological foundations of the USSR and the PRC, and were less antagonistic to those of the capitalist West.
perhaps they're taken more seriously here because we stripped africans of their culture and heritage in such a vast number, and CRT here is seen as a response to an extremely flawed, but evolving society, built on the backs of black people, slowly pulling itself away from years of racial oppression.
the two theories are not in opposition to each other. both are based in fact. workers of the world are being oppressed, as are people of color.
Critical Theory in general eschews the materialist basis of Marxism in favor of idealistic "oppressor" and "oppressed" dichotomies. Marxism is materialist, and the arrival at the conclusion that the capitalist class is an "oppressor" comes via the economic analysis that capitalists exploit workers for their surplus value, rather than the fact that capitalists vaguely have more power than workers do. Critical Theory strips the material basis from Marxism and repositions it's assertions as idealist ones. That is why I oppose it. Critical race theory is just another offshoot of the broader critical theory movement that emerged out of academia in the postwar US-hegemonic west. It's no coincidence that these academics were nobodies on the European left until the US dominated Western Europe and started the cold war. Look around the global south and try to find communists who take the Frankfurt School folks seriously. You won't. They're only taken seriously in the west, because their theories clashed with the ideological foundations of the USSR and the PRC, and were less antagonistic to those of the capitalist West.
I understand what you're talking about. There has been much scare mongering amongst the western far right about """cultural Marxists""". Like many conspiracy theories, they're partially right, but through the lack of sound analytical framework, they arrive at horribly wrong conclusions.
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deleted by creator
- Chistopher Rufo, the reporter who got the CRT debate going, and why CRT discussions are so chaotic (different definitions of CRT)
(Spoiler) Earlier comment of mine on the discursivity of identity if needed
Gender and race are discursive traits in the sense that they require the existence of an Other to have meaning. Just like it doesn’t make sense to talk about boneless pizza, it doesn’t make sense to talk about gender when you’re the only person in existence. This due to the definition “man” being useless without a contrastive “woman.”
But discursive identities are “performed” - at least if you follow Judith Butler’s school of thought, there’s no such thing as “a woman” so much as (and this is the phrasing she uses) her experience of “been being a woman.” That is to say the gender doesn’t exist in the person themselves, but rather in the communication between two people and the understanding springing therefrom (because we established earlier the need for an Other). So in critical race theory and queer theory and such, people are not “black” but rather “being black,” which allows for changes in what black means (and blackness can change because it’s a shared understanding and not an inherent trait).
Conversely to discursive, performed identity, class is a material relation to power. That is, in contrast to gender and race, it does make sense to talk about class when you're the only person in existence. You are either reaping the full benefit of your labor or you are not, sort of like being asleep or awake, which can happen in the absence of an Other.
Class reductionism holds that all oppression not along class lines falls away once class struggle is resolved. This is an ignorant position, and also is utilized by reactionaries to shut down any progress in those important arenas in favor of waiting on a revolution springing from the imperial core (won't happen) and therefore only functions as an impediment to real issues. However, this difference between the material and discursive is important in understanding how, for example, the conversation slips into Robin DiAngelo-esque co-opting of these issues into a massive corporate diversity industry, more aligned towards pacification than actual change, springing up from the need to avoid discrimination lawsuits, that doesn't even increase workplace diversity.
Quotes from Harvard Business Review link for the lazy
This conversational slip occurs because, to utilize a common framing of racism, if we view such as "power + prejudice" the current focus is on eradicating the prejudice, leaving power unmolested. It should go without saying that prejudice has existed since time immemorial and will continue to exist for quite some time after this. People kill each other over football games, for chrissake. It also lends itself to an individual-level critique "you, Mr. Trump, are a racist" as opposed to system-level. Its fluidity (like annexation of Irish into whiteness) is not a proof of its soon to-be distruction: racism was propagated to serve the function of uniting the white West against all others, and now must be eradicated due to American multiculturality and reliance on, for example, PhDs from the third world. These particular expressions of a universal jingoism are abandoned once they are no longer useful (in the environment where their use has diminished).
Analogue from the Manifesto about sexism
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex
The current construction of power, on the other hand, does not suffer this issue. It is important to treat symptoms as well as disease, but don't mix the two up, and don't fall into the trap of either "symptoms all gone once disease gone" or "treating symptoms fixes disease." The former downplays women's, minorities', and the queer community's progress. The latter is reformism and merely shifts the burden (see "white feminism" et al).
thanks for sharing your thoughts and giving feedback, I think I better understand where you're coming from, now
I think it just forgets (in worse interpretations) that initial dynamic of oppressed is coming from worker/burger relationship. If you look at how america was racist through years, the pattern of being racist to “unskilled” labor is unmistakeable. Codifying this racism into law is further offshoot of this, as separating workers into unskilled/skilled in law is hard, while doing it by race is easy and sellable to populace
How does CRT “Strip Marxism of its material basis and repositions it’s assertions as idealist ones”?
Could you be more specific and give examples of this ideological striping
i don't really feel CRT runs counter to marxist ideology at all. critical race theory is basically an acknowledgement of systemic racism that is prevalent in the US, seeming to only have mutated rather than dissolved in the last 70.
crt has basis in fact, in the material conditions of people being oppressed, and therefore i don't really feel it's idealist. there are concrete, substantial, and documented statistics that show that people of color are treated on a different basis than white people in the US.
perhaps they're taken more seriously here because we stripped africans of their culture and heritage in such a vast number, and CRT here is seen as a response to an extremely flawed, but evolving society, built on the backs of black people, slowly pulling itself away from years of racial oppression.
the two theories are not in opposition to each other. both are based in fact. workers of the world are being oppressed, as are people of color.
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