Real Critical Theory: How About a Critique of Leftism

In a review of Jordan B. Peterson's interview with Cathy Newman on BBC Channel 4, Uri Harris makes a point that drove home with me.

We need a Critical Theory of leftism, he proposes, on the same principle as the left's Critical Theory of the bourgeoisie. Following Marx, the left has conducted a nearly two-century critique of capitalism's claim to universalism.

Critical Theory draws heavily on Karl Marx’s notion of ideology. Because the bourgeoisie controlled the means of production, Marx suggested, they controlled the culture. Consequently, the laws, beliefs, and morality of society reflected the interests of the bourgeoisie. And importantly, people were unaware that this was the case. In other words, capitalism created a situation where the interests of a particular group of people—those who controlled society—were made to appear to be universal truths and values, when in fact they were not.

I think that this is an excellent point. It's all very well for the comfortable middle class to think that everyone should be like them, hard-working, responsible, assuming that the market economy that is so good to the bourgeoisie is also good for, e.g., the working class. The argument at the center of Marxism and now identity politics is that the market economy and "middle-class morality" is not good for the traditionally marginalized, and not good for creative types that want to live a live higher and better than mere responsibility and service. The market exploits the working class and constricts the creative class.

So I say, go for it, lefties. Critique capitalism and the middle class all you like.

But there is this. It turned out that the market economy, that Marx said would "immiserate" the working class, did nothing of the kind. The capitalistic economy, in the event, lifted all boats, and lifted the working class into the middle class. So maybe the claim of universal truth was not far off the mark. Nor was the market economy the enemy of traditionally marginalized groups. There is no doubt that white males have done best with the market economy; but everyone else has benefited too. If you wanted to keep blacks and women down you had to write laws to do so, because the market economy doesn't care who you are, it just cares what you can produce. And there is the bottom line to the market economy, the Great Enrichment. Per-capita income in the capitalist countries has risen by 3,000 percent in the last 200 years.

But now let us do a bit of Critical Theory on the left. Let's call it Real Critical Theory, and let us rephrase Uri Harris's words quoted above.

Real Critical Theory turns Karl Marx’s notion of ideology on its head. The problem is no longer the ideological superstructure of the capitalistic productive forces, but the ideological structure of the educated ruling class that not surprisingly privileges the creative pursuits and the power project of the educated class, from the arts to sexual experimentation to identity politics, as the highest and best form of life. Because the educated class controls the arts, the media, and education, we propose that they unjustly control the culture and marginalize all voices that might oppose their agenda. Consequently, the laws, beliefs, and morality of society reflects the class interests of the educated class. Increasingly, people are becoming profoundly aware that this is the case. In other words, progressivism creates a situation where the interests of a particular group of people—those who control the public square of ideas and approved thought—represent their selfish and unjust class interests as universal truths and values, when in fact they are not.

Of course my entire work and world view are intended as a critique of the left's world view and its selfish and unjust power project.

My reductive Three Peoples theory is intended to show how the educated class, the People of the Creative Self, stand in relation to the other main experiential groups in society, the People of the Responsible Self, and the People of the Subordinate Self, and how their whole project is designed to oppress and exploit the People of the Responsible Self.

My critique of the left's activism culture is intended to show the bankruptcy of activism, always searching for a reason to apply political force and "peaceful protest" to a society that really does not enforce injustice and can be easily persuaded to reduce injustice by the ordinary political process of elections and legislation and a peaceful discussion of the issues.

My notion of "little darlings" is intended to publicize the dead end in store for those that are today's beneficiaries of progressive identity politics. Like the white working class, the educated ruling class may loove you today. But the day will come when the ruling class casts you aside, like wounded soldiers have ever been cast aside by armies on the march.

My "left's errors" is a catalog of the errors and the human misery that left-wing and progressive ideas have caused in the last 200 years. 

My Perfect Plan is a solution to the murrain of leftism, for it proposes solutions to the two main evils of leftism. Against the policy of encouraging pre-urban cultural norms in its little darlings -- first the working class and now women and minorities -- I propose that our society should encourage, by all kind and gentle means, the traditionally marginalized to acquire the middle class culture of individual responsibility that is the key to a productive and meaningful life in the exchange economy and the urban society. Against he left's culture war on the middle class I propose a culture of compassion and tolerance in the People of the Creative Self towards the People of the Responsible Self lately anathematized as "deplorables."

And failing all else, there is always my Communism Week, a blow by blow critique of the left and everything it stands for.

The big thing is this. You can criticize capitalism and the mean and narrow-minded bourgeoisie all you like. But the middle-class culture has produced the Great Enrichment, a 3,000 percent increase in real individual income in the last 200 years. The fact is that leftism, communism, socialism, progressivism has failed every time it was tried. Most tragically it was tried and it failed in Russia, in China, and in India, by educated elites that thought that Marx's ideas were the secret ingredient to the west's dominance. Over a hundred million human deaths later, each of these great nations has realized that the opposite is true. Communism, Marxism, socialism, progressivism is the fastest route to national ruin ever devised by a canting intellectual. Hello Venezuela.

The reason that capitalism has worked is this. It extends the truth of social cooperation one step further. In the old days, animals and humans learned that social cooperation is beneficial, indeed, necessary for successful life on Earth, because it reduces the incidence and crippling costs of violence. In both animal and human society this social cooperation was achieved by a status and hierarchy culture that reduced the incidence of costly and destructive violence substituting force with shows of force. But we moderns have discovered another dimension to social cooperation: private property and the price system. These remarkable inventions allow social cooperation to proceed without the cost and pain of hierarchy systems, but simply through the daily fluctuations of prices in the exchange economy that tell everyone what to do, and more particularly, what not to do. It is the most astonishing discovery ever.

And yet our educated ruling class wants to return to the good old days: a neo-tribalism with identity politics, and neo-feudalism with the welfare state.

What is wrong with these people that a Real Critical Theory that exposes their errors and self-satisfied assumptions won't set right?