The Future
of Critical Theory:
An Analysis given at the 1999
Meetings of SSSP
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SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES
by
A. Richard Della Buona, Kathryn Stout, Val
Burris, David Fesenfest and Walda-Katz Fishman organized a 4 hour session at SSSP to
discuss the Future of Critical Sociology. In addition to a wide array of scholars long in
the quest of emancipatory knowledge, a large contingent of graduate students helped map
out the future of Critical Sociology.
Below is an expanded version of my own contribution to the Session.
B. Critical Theory got is name and mission in the 1920's as it became clear that alienated
politics, art, literature, cinema and science deflected the quest for social justice and
transformed it into an ugly exploitative political economy, the exemplar of which was
National Socialism--Nazi for short.
Objective class position did not evolve into lucid class consciousness and progressive
politics as expected by structural marxist theory. A wide variety of alienated social
relationships intervened to distort and abort progressive politics: nationalism,
fundamental religion as well as what we now call Identity Politics--racism, patriarchy and
an abiding ethnicity served to ground social identity and social consciousness as a wide
ranging humanism was set aside by elitist control of newspapers, radio, university, cinema
and later television.
C. Critical Theory in general and Critical Sociology in particular has made great gains
since the 1920's. The events of the 60's were, in the USA, instrumental in transforming
American Sociology: anti-war activists, the women's movements, civil rights, the student
movement as well as a low profile labor movement helped refresh and renew interest in
progressive scholarship.
The works of Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas, Gramsci, Lukacs and other European
Scholars were avidly read and quickly absorbed to augment the bland, safe Sociology of the
1950's...before Critical Theory reached the USA, until then, C. Wright Mills, Thorstein
Veblen and Erich Fromm worked almost alone to preserve radical consciousness in academia.
The word, Marx was not mentioned in my own graduate work at U/Michigan in the 1950's; and only Alex Garber gave a seminar on Marxist Theory at U/Colorado in the 1960's...he lasted but a year on that faculty. I will never forget nor forgive those two faculties for their wide ranging ignorance of Critical Theory and Marxist theory. And on those faculties are scholars I respect and esteem; still I will never forgive them that they failed me and my generation of graduate students: Blalock, Sharp, Lenski, Mercer, Rose and Higman.
It was the graduate students at Berkeley,
UCLA, Oregon and Stanford who set up the Radical Caucuses and helped me learn and teach
Critical Theory. Al Syzmanski, Val Burris, Erik Olin-Wright, Pat Morgan, Joyce
Rothschild and Chris Chase-Dunn, all graduate students at the time, helped repair the
failings of my graduate faculty. Together, Wally Smith or Garth Massey and I would
make the long drive to California for the Socialist Sociology Meetings at Boulder Creek
and later, at Minaluta for post-graduate courses in Critical theory, Socialist Feminism
and Class Analysis...precious resources in a barren terrain.
D. In the USA, a diffuse Radical Caucus, Students for a Democratic Society, the Insurgent
Sociologist [now Critical Sociology] and Telos emerged as structural bases for radical
progressive sociology. The Red Feather Institute was only one of some 30 or 40
Critical/Marxist efforts to preserve and protect emancipatory knowledge in a hostile
political economy; URPE, Science for the People, and Mother Jones became priceless
resources for those of us in Sociology deprived of radical, emancipatory knowledge.
F. The Future of Critical Sociology. I have suggested four or five transformations which,
in my opinion, will greatly augment Critical Sociology and Emancipatory Knowledge in the
years to come. I suggest that, by 2025, these will combine to greatly improve and
extend emancipatory knowledge.
I. Theory. There are several developments in the sociology of knowledge and in research methodology which are most promising to the knowledge process.
a. Affirmative Postmodern Sensibility, especially in Feminist Theory and Methodology will greatly enhance and expand Critical Sociology. The number of journals and programs which help dethrone and dis-man-tle modernist attachments to dominant theoretical structures is large and daily increasing.
Postmodern Criminology has exploded in the last five years to challenge the state monopoly on Criminology and the study of crime.
Postmodern Religion, inspired in part by Liberation Theology offers a religious sensibility not contaminated by 4th century B.C.E. tribal rules for family and society.
Chaos theory and Complexity Research techniques will help us locate hidden patterns in art, science, cinema and literature which degrade and debase women, minorities, poor people and 3rd world peoples. Already that theory and that technology has helped dethrone the quest for certainty, prediction, control and reproduction of elitist social formations.
Already that theory informs a Postmodern Philosophy of Science which challenges and displaces monolithic quest of modern science for simple explanation, stable and universal causality.
II. Technology. The Internet offers great promise in enlarging and improving the quest for Emancipatory Knowledge. Already Critical/Marxist/Feminist and Affirmative Postmodern Scholars are linked to each other on a wide variety of interactive networks.
Together, we share analyses, data sets, critiques, solutions and programs in ways not possible when only text-books and journals were repository of the knowledge process.
Together, we can organize for social action which transcends national, regional or local interests; social movements which embody a wide ranging humanism not captive to narrow understandings of class, race, gender or generational interest.
The Internet offers social base for research which reaches beyond the classroom, the laboratory, the nation or the present to inform Critical Sociologists, Political Scientists, Economists and Psychologists of attitudes, opinions, behaviors and possibilities not found in those research limited in time and space to one small sample.
Feminist sensibility will expand to include the objective interests of 3rd world women; Class Analysis and Critique will expand to include the objective interests of 3rd world workers; struggles for Black power and Minority Rights will transcend European and North American conceptualizations of interest, action and policy.
The AARP deserves special mention...in the USA, it has begun these past ten years or so to transcend the narrow interest of those over 65 for dignity and resources; it has begun to take all generations as its social base...all generations in the USA, that is. In the next 25 years, I expect that the AARP will expand to give thought and support to the aged around the world; to the children around the world; to the exploited and immiserated around the world...it is the largest union in the USA with some 55 millions members. It may be the largest union in the world. It may become a voice for progressive social action.
Electronic Journals offer quick and inexpensive access to hundreds of thousands of scholars and to those who have never enrolled nor will ever enroll in a formal sociology course. And each Journal will link each article with dozens of related materials and those, in turn, will link the reader to hundreds more.
The knowledge process thus explodes in time and space...Critical Theory as a discipline and Critical Sociology as a Journal will surely be part of that great knowledge explosion by 2025.
III. Political Economy. I mention three developments which, I believe, will inform and inspire Critical Theory.
a. Globalization. The globalization of Capitalism is the globalization of social problems. And it requires the globalization of social justice. Critical Theory has always been oriented to European and North American problems in art, film, literature and science. Postmodern Critique has augmented that capacity. With globalization of cinema, advertizing, news, art and science, new challenges and new opportunities present themselves to Critical Theorists and Researchers...joined globally to challenge false consciousness and alienated politics.
b. Immiseration. Capitalism as a political economy has many, many positivities. Yet its negative tendencies remain only to be expanded and diffused as Capitalism encircles the Globe. A globalized research capacity transmitted broadly on Internet offers great possibility for Collective Action which transcends national and bloc definitions of problems and solutions.
Critical Scholars have a leading role in such endeavor. As racist, class and regional inequalities explode around the world, that data must be collected, collated and presented in every sociology class in North America and Europe...since it is North America and Europe which are the chief architects of the globalization of Capital.
c. Emergent Political Economies. I mentioned several places progressive scholars might watch for progressive solutions to inequality and immiseration. Cuba shows promise of making the transition to democratic socialism. Kerala State in Southeast India remains a showplace for good communist social policy. Some Italian cities and some co-ops in Northern Spain offer a model for social justice.
I would not dismiss China or Vietnam or even North Korea...since bureaucratic socialism has been discredited with the collapse of the Soviet Union, predatory capitalism in those regions should serve as warning to new generations of socialists in the far East...should and even might with our good help and friendly support.
IV. The Social Location of Progressive Movements in the West. I concluded my remarks at the SSSP Session on Critical Sociology by trying to imagine the social sources of emancipatory human agency in the first fourth of the next Century.
I made the point that I doubt very much that the USA and its working class will be in the forefront of Emancipatory Politics. I hope I am proved quite wrong on that point.
But, thinking globally, it seems to me that the major movements for social justice will be found in the 3rd world. And, it seems to me, that the USA will be chief obstacle to those movements. As capitalism is globalized, the capitalist State hives off domestic solutions to social problems yet retains and expands efforts to stabilize the global economy...largely via NATO and other military organs sponsored and controlled by the Big Seven...Russia not withstanding.
Religion, race and class will continue to fuel social movements...some ugly, some hopelessly romantic and some most helpful to the human project for social justice.
Religion, combined with patriarchy and ethnic identity will inspire millions and lead to a religious fascism which may be better than the lower reaches of the global economy but remains alienated to the human project.
Religion, oriented to the poor and oppressed might become a powerful resource for emancipatory politics...that is why Critical Theorists should work now in postmodern religion and theology.
Secular movements, oriented to nationalism, patriarchy and class inequality will continue to rip asunder all progressive politics and policies.
Social movements oriented to 3rd world women, 3rd world workers and 3rd world children, lead by 3rd world Students remain the most promising source of social justice as we move into the 21st Century.
V. Critical Scholars and Critical Sociology has a large role to play in the next 25 years...and that role may be definitive. If we can teach our own students that they sit on the leading edge of history; that marxist theory, feminist theory, postmodern critique and critical theory offers them the best way to read history-- the best way to act on the fullness of their own morality, then we may be able to turn the USA, Canada and Europe around...or at least neutralize the wealthy capitalist states a bit.
If we can join with colleagues in India, Asia and Latin America, we can provide a richer, more complete understanding of social dynamics than now offered in Economics, Sociology, Political Science or Cultural Studies.
If we can use the Internet and all the new technology that is now developing in the way of cable linkage, satellite linkage, television interfacing, and global networking, then we may be far more effective as a political force than now we imagine.
If we can transcend scholarly boundaries on learning and teaching, we can join with those in art, dance, theatre, literature, women's studies, minority programs and enriched honors programs to challenge the hegemony of a safe, depoliticized and falsely scientific sociology which now reigns supreme in North America if not in Europe...Canada, Australia and perhaps New Zealand aside.
There is much to do. I invite graduate students everywhere to be part of the doing.
TR Young, Director,
The Red Feather Institute for Advanced Studies
in Sociology