One of the interesting things I’ve noticed in the last few years is that some of the most astute and interesting analyses of modern Critical Theory (CT) – whether podcasts, articles, or even books – actually come from the Christian right. I have also noticed that as the culture starts to catch up with CT, the books and articles that analyze the movement have begun to get more serious and are written by more qualified scholars and writers rather than culture warriors.
Both of these trends converge in a fascinating recent book called To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse, written by a British professor of religion named Carl Trueman. It is one of the most accessible and insightful analyses of Critical Theory I have ever read; that he wrote it explicitly for a Christian audience should not put secular readers off of this book either.
Trueman traces the roots of CT not only back to Karl Marx, but then to later Marxist thinkers such as Karl Korsch and Georg Lukacs, and, most significantly, to the Frankfurt School thinkers such as Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. Many other commentators nod to the importance of these German intellectuals, but see modern CT as descending more from the post-structuralist thought of Michel Foucault, whose fascinating, seductive, more than slightly paranoid notion of power as the animating, if impersonal – and to my mind highly implausible – source of nearly all of the things that happen in the world I have written about before and which seems to undergird much of the belief structure of many thinkers at the nexus of postmodernism and Critical Theory.
Trueman, refreshingly, gives Foucault his due, but argues that “the basic rules of the game are established” in the Frankfurt School (9), and that “the similarities between the two streams are such that a study for Horkheimer and company is enlightening” because both systems “were concerned with the historical conditions and social structures that governed what counted as rational thought and knowledge” (9) and because both systems made the point that “that which appears true and natural . . . [is] produced by historical circumstances and serve the interests of power” (9-10). And both strands of thought saw understandings of human nature “as contingent and functions of dominant ideologies” (10).
And it is this question – a question of anthropology – “what is man?” – to which Trueman, to my great admiration, continually returns as the most compelling and most pressing question of all. He tells us early on while CT as practiced in the Frankfurt School “is clear on what humanity is not – the alienated individuals that capitalism has produced. But what humanity is is not so clear” (13). This is a theme to which Trueman returns again and again, and this critique in my view is right on target. Critical Theory:
“ . . . is clear on what is wrong with society – pretty much everything – but it lacks the ability to articulate in clear terms what should replace it. It ultimately offers no vision of what it means to be human, whether because (as with the Hegelian Marxists) human nature has yet to be realized or, with the more postmodern critical theorists, it is ultimately a meaningless question” (14). On the other hand, as Trueman will bring up later in the book, Christianity stands directly opposite CT in providing a substantial vision of what humans are and should be.
The Historical Timeline
Trueman starts his historical timeline with the thinking of GWF Hegel, the German thinker whose historicism was key to later thinkers’ understanding of human thought and essence as being historically contingent on, for instance, culture. Additionally important for the development of CT was Hegel’s notion of history as not only a process of becoming, but as a process of becoming-through-conflict (or, through dialectic). Trueman cites Hegel’s famous dialectic of the lord and the bondservant. This anecdote demonstrates, for Hegel, the way that human self-understanding is shaped not only by the recognition of others around us, but in tension with the power dynamics – the struggle for dominance over others, for control, and for recognition from others – that entwine human existence. This is different, of course, from the dorm-room (or perhaps tinfoil hat) musings about power we get from Foucault – all of it about abstract currents and forces moving through us; Hegel’s dialectic, as outlined by Trueman is recognizably human and holistic, and I made a note to myself after reading this passage to tackle the original Hegel one day. Either way, it is a short step from here to CT’s focus on the power relationships between members of social structures and different identities – what Trueman calls the “historicist concern for human self-consciousness in Hegel” (24) which he calls foundational for CT.
But first of course one has to go through Karl Marx, the most influential reader of Hegel, and the starting point, Trueman writes, for all substantive Critical Theory. Marx first of all replaces the lord and bondsman relationship with the worker and capitalist dialectic. And while Hegel maintains the bondsman develops great benefits from serving the lord – the ability to cook, or to work teaches him self-discipline, and valuable skills, Marx’s subordinate worker does not generate new skills and freedom, but becomes alienated from his or her humanity – which for Marx is his or her ability to self-consciously create and build. This is the basic dialectical relationship – oppressor and oppressed – that undergirds modern CT.
Trueman also highlights Marx’s notion of ideology – the notion that not only do humans create physical goods, but also ideas. Not only does the ruling class exploit labor, it but produces ideas and concepts to justify the economic conditions: a whole network of ideas, justifications, and premises that are used to explain the world-as-it-is and – as Trueman helpfully underscores – to shape the world as it is, as well. This is ideology. It is not “true” in any non-historical sense.
This creates a “critical” task for philosophers to follow: as Trueman puts it, “in unmasking the material foundations of ideas, he also raises the question of how those ideas function and whose interests they serve” (32). The philosopher’s task is to expose the mystifications that hide the real interests at heart and – most critically – to destabilize the current society in an effort to promote revolution, leading toward a classless society. Trueman highlights a key line from Marx that he claims is definitive for later Critical Theory: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
It is this that “the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School will take as their lodestar” (28).
***
Next is a short, useful section on post-Marx Marxist philosophers, focusing in particular on Karl Korsch and Georg Lukacs.
Korsch is another fascinating thinker, but one whose opinions sound off-the-wall. His main belief, as outlined by Trueman, is that one way to speed along the revolution is not only by changing material or economic conditions, but by destroying false consciousness on the part of the proletariat. In one striking passage, Trueman highlights how, for Korsch, the classic notion of the correspondence theory of reality as determining truth is dismissed as so much “naive realism” (54) and that instead truth claims must be measured by, according to Trueman, “whether a particular idea of claim furthers the revolutionary cause” (54). This is an absolutely head-scratching notion that I definitely did not understand. Here Trueman finds the beginnings of CT’s dismissal of liberalism’s calls for evidence and logic as being merely rooted in the dominant ideology of the times.
Trueman then turns to an examination of Georg Lukacs, particularly for his notion of reification – the turning of humans into things – as leading to alienation. Trueman writes that for Lukacs, “to realize what it means to be truly human is to move beyond the alienation that capitalism involves” (70). This proves important for later Critical Theorists, who believe that “reification is a form of essentialism. And critical theory rejects essentialism in all of its forms as inherently oppressive” (73). Modern CT for Trueman is opposed to the putting of human beings into boxes or giving them labels, because this can inhibit individual freedom and growth and expression and a great many other things.
Yet this impulse to categorize our experiences is, Trueman reminds us, a deeply human impulse, not just a function of capitalism – the need to understand and to make sense of our world. He asks, “If all categories are abolished, is any kind of real society possible? Or, if all categories are destabilized, does power not remain in the hands of those who already possess it?” (76). This is a critical question: is a normless society possible (or even desirable)?
The Frankfurt School
Soon, Trueman hones in on the thinkers who make up the Frankfurt School, starting by fleshing out Max Horkheimer’s seminal article, “Traditional and Critical Theory.” A traditional theory, for Horkheimer, is one that merely employs the worldview of whatever the dominant ideology of the time is. Its practitioners are not even aware “of the ideological framework that shapes their approach” (85). A critical theory, on the other hand, unmasks these apparently neutral, objective, or commonsensical observations and shows us how they are in fact underpinned by “the latent interests of the dominant group” (85) with the goal of destabilizing the status quo to promote revolution.
Although Horkheimer’s work, unlike that of a social reconstructionist like George Counts, offers no specific political vision to aim for, Trueman reminds us that unlike Foucault and his ilk, Horkheimer is no relativist. “There is a human reality for Horkheimer; it is simply one that has yet to be realized. How does Horkheimer know this? He knows it from the alienation that the current mode of existence involves” (92).
For the Frankfurt School, “only when alienation is brought to an end will the cycle of dialectical negations conclude,” writes Trueman. “Only then will men and women realize themselves as truly human. Only then will they know what being truly human means” (143).
In reading about the Marxist concept of alienation, as written about by Marx, or as refracted through the beliefs of the Frankfurt School, I am struck by the parallels with the Christian notion of man’s fall from grace through sin. Man is alienated from his true nature as being made in the likeness of God, and must achieve redemption through grace or good works. In Marxism, man is alienated from his true nature as a cooperative, social, creative, work-focused being by capitalism, which turns him into a working drone with no connection to others or to his labor. He is redeemed by the resolution of the contradictions of the economic system which empower him to realize his true nature as a creator – the dawn of communism.
This makes me recall a quote that I once read (and have just relocated) by Isaiah Berlin:
“Marx inherited the structure of the Christian story but secularized it. Without the divine guarantee, the happy ending is no longer assured.”
The more I think about this, the more I agree. Marx’s vision, on the one hand, seems rooted in a quasi-scientific study of economics, sort of an extended observation of “this system has internal contradictions and is guaranteed to fall apart, scientifically.” On the other hand, though, it feels more like a moral claim – or at least a normative one – disguised as a scientific one: a belief that humans are inherently good, cooperative, altruistic, and peaceful – one that is contradicted by so much of human history.
But Marx and CT are quite different, of course, from Christianity. Trueman highlights this: for Christians, the church can be the place where alienation is overcome, largely because the church sees human nature as a stable (if very much imperfect) feature. Critical theorists, meanwhile, have no substantive anthropological vision. They simply reject “any attempt to talk about human nature in normative terms as clandestine attempts by one dominant group to control the categories by which everyone is to understand the world” (144). The “Achilles heel of so much critical theory” is that its “historicism and deep suspicion of essentialism prohibits it from articulating a clear anthropology that then prevents it from offering a cogent view of the future in anything more than hopeful pieties” (178-179). Critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, in particular, believes that “if one can only tear down the current system of sexual codes, a new, better system – a system undefinable beyond vague, aspirational jargon – will arise to replace it” (175).
Critical theorists leave us “with nothing more than the pious hope that an unalienated humanity will emerge from the historical process” (143).
***
Trueman has an interesting section in the final chapter of the book where he explains how Christianity, at its best, offers a powerful response to the “spirit that negates” – Critical Theory: through the daily practice of the church, rather than through mere argument. He writes, “the church makes the claim that [being a free individual and belonging to a community] is already realized in the here and now in the church itself” and that “alienation has already in one sense been brought to an end” through the communal practices of Christianity (225) – offering charity, forgiveness to others, and sacrificing one’s self in service to fellow human beings.
Although most Christian communities are far from perfect, yet they are certainly, Trueman notes wryly, much closer to perfection “than the Hungarian communist regime within which Lukacs played such a craven and sinister role” (226). While the Critical Theorists saw that humanity “was not what it should be,” the Church sees such problems not as the result of culture, but of “human fallenness” which paradoxically gives it “real hope” in helping to create a better world on earth through religious practice. It was an interesting section.
As someone who is not religious and did not grow up with any sort of strong religious tradition, when writers and thinkers start talking about God, I glaze over. The problem is that I don’t understand it. It’s so far outside of my understanding of the world that it might as well be a foreign language.
But Trueman’s arguments, particularly his central thesis that CT is bereft of any substantive anthropological vision of human nature, are quite compelling. He’s the first writer I’ve read in a long time who has zeroed in on exactly what it is that has bothered me about Marx and his descendents – that his vision of humanity seems to be something to be realized in the future as perfection, rather than something that is. I agree 1,000% with Trueman on this point – these thinkers offer nothing more than a “pious hope” that if we destabilize the status quo and move into a normless beyond, we’ll somehow realize perfection. On the one hand, it’s a welcome development that we now have true scholars like Trueman on the CT case; on the other hand, I think the small-l liberal job will finally be done when we have more books starting to be written about the actual horrors of some of the regimes that flowed from this utopian promise.
Whenever I read about the desire to point out the immanent contradictions in an economic or political system, or to ascribe to any sort of normative or empirical claims the basest of motives about a lust for power and domination, I find myself asking, “But isn’t a system with some contradictions often the best we can do?” The old Winston Churchill line about democracy as the worst form of government except for all of those other kinds comes to mind. The notion that human nature can be realized someday seems dangerous to me, and one day I hope there will be more books written like Trueman’s that trace out the horrors that have happened in revolutionary regimes that have flowed from Marx’s ideals. It seems far more rational to me, far better for the maximum development and freedom of every individual to try instead to get as much out of human nature as possible by understanding and checking its inherent limitations, and maximizing its known strengths. This is a process of course that requires constant reform, both the ecclesiastical kind that Trueman references, as well as the social, political, and educational kind familiar to all of us in the land of a “more perfect union.”
Trueman’s book has given me a better appreciation here for just how a liberal society must regard Critical claims. Because Trueman constantly reminds us that CT’s goal is *not* reform but revolution, an overthrowing of the liberal system. In return, the liberal system is designed to take the critiques of CT at their word, and to be strong enough to bend but not break in response. CT is thus channeled into reform and improvement, rather than toward political revolution. Trueman’s book, I think, is very helpful in this project.
Again, it is curious for me to read a book like this (and to read other articles and listen to podcasts) that level fairly substantive philosophical critiques at contemporary movements from a Christian perspective. It is one thing to read a critique of CT from the center-left, like The Identity Trap by Yascha Mounk, calling for a return to John Stuart Mill-style liberal values; it’s quite another to read a book written by a real, live Christian that actually advocates attending church and worshipping God as the true way to answer CT’s critiques.
For someone of my generation, who grew up not only a-religious, but in the shadow of such deeply tarnishing events for the church as the early-2000s revelations of widespread sexual abuse of minors by parish priests, or the prolonged drubbing the evangelical right has taken in the culture wars since the 1990s, or the absolutely unforgivable, soul-selling embrace by the Christian right of Donald J. Trump, it is often hard for me to imagine that the Christian right has much to say of value about much of anything. But seeing the parallels with religion within the modern CT movement (Trueman doesn’t touch this topic, but much has been written about this elsewhere), it’s hard to ignore the fact that there was clearly something more going on in the modern CT movement than just the desire to improve people’s lives. Quite simply, it makes it – or it has made it, for me – hard to ignore the religious impulse present in human beings. And in reading a book like Trueman’s, which makes such a straightforward and compelling case for Christian practice, it certainly makes someone like me think about these issues in a new light.