How to reverse-engineer Marxist theory

The theory-as-device model can help us make sense of the various elements of Marxist theory, if we apply a kind of 'reverse engineering' approach.

Imagine we are trying to devise an ideology that will have the power to generate regime change: from a predominantly capitalist system, with representative democracy; to a predominantly collectivist system, with coalitions competing for political power but no elections. In what follows, I refer to this hypothetical anti-capitalist ideology as the Ideology. What features might the Ideology have? How might philosophical arguments be used to push people away from capitalism, and into the arms of authoritarian collectivism?
   Bear in mind that — notwithstanding a considerable volume of writing labelled 'social science' — very little is known about how societies work. One can get away with pretty much any theory, for a phenomenon such as social class, that is vaguely consistent with the facts (short of 'extraterrestrial superbeings arranged it that way').
   One important thing the Ideology will not do is to label itself as 'ideology'. It will present itself as 'truth', and reserve the term 'ideology' for rival systems of thinking that it wants people to regard as false.

(A) EMPHASISING/INVENTING THE BAD
1) The Ideology will of course seek to exploit any apparent defects in current society, exaggerating where necessary, or even inventing. Crucially, the defects identified by the Ideology will need to be attributed to capitalism, in order to promote the belief that eliminating capitalism will also eliminate the defects.
2) The Ideology will, where possible, link the term 'capitalism' with other phenomena that have negative associations, such as colonialism, war, militarisation, and so on, regardless of whether there is a sound basis for doing so. The hope would be that, eventually, the definition of 'capitalism' will include those features. Again, the point is to encourage the belief that eliminating capitalism will also eliminate those features.
3) The Ideology will try to paint capitalism as immoral. Emotive terms such as 'exploitation', 'oppression', and 'selfish individualism' will be employed.

So far, I have listed features likely to be present in any new political ideology that tries to become dominant. An old system clearly has to be painted as negative, if people are to accept its displacement by a new one. The next two possible characteristics for anti-capitalism ideology are less obvious.
4) The Ideology might try to paint capitalism as somehow irrational.
5) The Ideology might argue that capitalism is unsustainable, and that replacement by the new system of ideas is therefore inevitable. (This approach contains a possible inconsistency: if capitalism will inevitably fail, why should it be necessary to work towards its abolition?)

(B) BELITTLING THE GOOD
The Ideology will seek to deprecate any benefits that appear to follow too obviously from capitalism. Assume, for purposes of our thought experiment, that the following aspects of capitalism are regarded as good:
- the potential freedom which savings and capital generate (for those who have some), and the resulting capacity to make individualistic choices;
- the room for individualistic activities – beyond merely keeping oneself fed, clothed and housed – which capital makes possible;
- the resulting individualistic cultural products, generating permanent assets for current and future societies: art, music, literature, science, philosophy;
- the relative freedom from censorship, and freedom to purchase/consume the cultural products you want, that result from a relatively low level of state intervention.
   Leaving aside the question of whether or not the above characteristics should be regarded as 'good', consider how our hypothetical ideology might seek to undermine these possible arguments in favour of capitalism.
1) The Ideology might argue that the purpose of the culture developed under capitalism was to brainwash people into accepting capitalism, and prevent them from realising that collectivism would be much better.

[According to Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse] political repression in the Soviet Union is matched by the oppressive practices of the 'culture industry' in the West, particularly America ...
   Western populations are in effect programmed to think, and consume, in the way that its capitalist rulers dictate.*

2) The Ideology might try to weaken people's attachment to capitalist-bourgeois culture by arguing that the culture was somehow complicit with any political oppression or economic exploitation that took place during the time the culture was produced.
3) The Ideology might argue that cultural products are creations of society, not of individuals, implying that individuals aren't relevant. If specific individuals are not needed for cultural activity or cultural progress, it is easier to persuade people that the individual in general doesn't matter.

(C) WAR AGAINST A CLASS
If capitalism, including those features of it regarded as potentially beneficial, is closely associated with a particular group in society, that group should be attacked. They should be portrayed as having any and all of the characteristics regarded as negative: greedy, ruthless, selfish, cruel, stupid, manipulative, repressed, deluded, conspiring against virtuous folk, etc (cf. antisemitism in Nazism).

(D) UNDERMINING ASSUMPTIONS
Collectivism is likely to mean abandoning elections in favour of a permanent programme of 'running things in everyone's best interests'. Therefore anything which attacks the existing system of representative democracy is good. So, for example, it should be argued that any apparent consent of citizens in a democratic society is a fiction (see e.g. Noam Chomsky on 'manufactured consent').

(E) CULTURAL APPROPRIATION
With some elements of bourgeois-capitalist culture, it may be better to claim/pretend to be on their side: critical rationality, progress, liberation, enlightenment, self-knowledge, science, individualism — but only selective or distorted versions of these things.

(F) NOVELTY
Offer people something new: rebellion, revolution, freedom, ability to criticise the establishment and the status quo, the opportunity to punish those currently above you in the hierarchy. Once capitalism has been sufficiently eliminated, and the Ideology has become dominant, the purpose of these baits ceases and they can be removed.

(G) A GLORIOUS FUTURE
The Ideology would pretend to side with those who see themselves as members of underdog groups in society. It would promise them greater power and wealth in the new society.

(H) BLOCKING CRITIQUE
Suppression of dissent, and suppression of potential dissenters, are key tasks for an ideology that hopes to acquire and maintain dominance. Criticism of the Ideology must therefore be blocked, using intellectual devices, as well as by more obvious means involving the state apparatus.
- The Ideology may try to portray individuals as mere social products. The implication: an individual cannot really say anything original, and cannot criticise his or her own society meaningfully; only groups or classes can do so (or those held out by the Ideology as spokespersons for those groups or classes).
- The Ideology may try to portray language and meaning as too complex and politically charged to be available to an individual in a way that would allow him/her to criticise the Ideology.

(I) CHOICE OF PERSPECTIVE
There are areas of debate within the humanities which amount to little more than a choice between two possible perspectives that are both valid. However, some of those perspectives will be more helpful to the Ideology than others; these are likely to be promoted aggressively given that there is no evidence to disprove them. For example:
- Which is more important, the individual or society?
Approved answer: Society.
- Is knowledge real, or merely what is socially agreed?
Approved answer: Socially agreed.
For the rationale behind these preferred answers, see 'Blocking Critique' above.

(J) OTHER POSSIBLE STRATEGIES
1) Make hierarchy and inequality seem evil ('oppressive'), implying that some other state of affairs ought to be possible but that capitalism prevents it.
2) Keep asserting that things need to change, and suggest that anyone who doesn't want things to change either wants to keep their own privileges (which is 'bad'), or is being stupid ('false consciousness'). Members of the working class or other underdog groups who don't agree are to be regarded as brainwashed; what they say they want can therefore be ignored.
3) Keep complaining about power, again portraying it as intrinsically oppressive and a reason why things must be changed, and again implying some alternative is possible and that capitalism is preventing it.

NB:
While engaging in 'reverse engineering', we need to bear in mind the answers to two questions:
1) Who is responsible for producing and promoting theories in favour of collectivism?
Answer: Intellectuals, particularly those financed by the state.
2) Why do they do it?
Answer: Probably because of intellectuals' greater potential for power in a more collectivist society.

NOTES
The above is an extract from my forthcoming book The 12 tropes of cultural Marxism: Unmasking 'Critical Theory'.
   'Reverse engineering' isn't quite the right term in this context. Nevertheless, there is an analogy here: we are looking at end results, and trying to work backwards to the original designs or motives that generated those results.
* S. Sim and B. Van Loon, Introducing Critical Theory, Icon Books 2009, p.41.

Marxist theory is a device

At first sight, Marxism is simply a set of theories about human societies — a set that has grown increasingly complex over the decades, so that it is now difficult for anyone to engage with it without first being trained in how to employ its arcane concepts. This is certainly how the cultural arm of Marxism is currently presented to undergraduates, in Literature Studies and other humanities subjects: as a set of theories that can be used to interpret cultural phenomena, without this necessarily having political implications.
   Traditional political Marxism itself sometimes tries to present itself as no more than a scientific theory, with the anti-capitalist politics merely following as a consequence.
   But Marxism is not a theory that just happens to have political implications. Marxist theory is essentially a device; a device designed to produce regime change. The theory may be the part that most catches the eye of intellectuals, but it is strictly secondary to the political goal.
   Marx himself made this aspect of his thinking very clear: he despised social theorising unless it had a political objective. His attitude is encapsulated in his well-known assertion:

Philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

Marx's idea of 'change' was not one of slow improvement, or of bringing society more into line with the preferences of the less well-off. Marx disapproved of piecemeal politics, and he wasn't greatly interested in what individual workers wanted. What he aimed at was complete revolution: revolution of rulership, revolution of the economy, and revolution of thinking.
   Marx's intellectual followers, by and large, adopted the same attitude: social theorising must always have a practical goal, and the goal should be revolutionary rather than partial. Those followers set out to help their master's plans, by constructing complex social and psychological theories which would help to convince people that Marxist doctrine was correct and that it should be implemented.
   This goal-driven approach to theorising has had — via intellectuals' embracing of Marxism — a major impact on research, and on the university environment. Social theories are now often blatantly judged, even in academic contexts, not by how well they correspond to reality, but by whether they are more likely to lead to political action or inaction. (Action good, inaction bad.)

* * * * *

The important thing to realise about any given element of Marxist theory is: there is always an agenda. However abstract or obscure a component theory may seem, there is likely to be a political purpose driving it.
   To attempt to understand a Marxist theory purely on its own terms — as though it is only about what it seems to be about — is futile. Most of the theories of cultural Marxism can only be properly understood by recognising what is driving them. The question to ask in each case is: what are the consequences of accepting that this theory or perspective is correct? How is accepting it likely to affect the way people see themselves, one another, their society, and the notion of government? Will acceptance of the theory facilitate the Marxist agenda?
   The pseudo-rebellious impression often generated by cultural-Marxist theorising — its air of 'anything is possible' or 'all speculations are allowed' — should be regarded as a deception. This impression of philosophical rebellion or playfulness is best interpreted as one of the tropes of Marxist theory. That is to say, it is a specific device, used to achieve a specific effect, while masquerading as something more genuine.
   Similarly, Marxism's attempts to gain the moral high ground, by exploiting sympathy for less privileged social groups, and implying that application of its ideas would improve matters for those groups ('implying' because, for good reasons, Marxists rarely spell out how precisely their ideal society will avoid differentials of privilege), should be seen as yet another political device, rather than as a theory intended to have correspondence with reality.

Extract from my forthcoming book The 12 tropes of cultural Marxism.

cultural Marxism — the Article

My posts on cultural Marxism are now available as an article. Readers already familiar with them may wish to jump to the concluding remarks, which are new.
   My hope is that there is scope for 'deprogramming' some of the many people who have been brainwashed with cultural-Marxist ideology at university, or at least that the numbers being added annually to the population of the brainwashed may start to decline.
   Sections 8 and 9 of the article are extracts from my forthcoming book, The 12 tropes of cultural Marxism: Unmasking 'Critical Theory', which is expected to be published later this year or early next.
   Thanks to the readers who sent feedback to myself and to my colleague Dr Celia Green.

cultural Marxism's obsession with Language – final part

The term ‘cultural Marxism’ is here used to mean:
the corpus of Marxist ideology, excluding the parts that are overtly about economics or politics,
not the ‘Cultural Marxism’ conspiracy theory, usually spelt with a capital C.

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extracts from my forthcoming book:

Trope 8: Language

One of the curious features which an impartial observer is likely to notice when first encountering cultural Marxism is its obsession with the topic of language. Any Critical Theory text worth its salt is almost certain to expound on this topic. Referencing the enigmas of linguistics in a work of literary criticism, especially if the name ‘Saussure’ is also mentioned, could almost function as the basic criterion of cultural Marxism.
   The purpose of invoking the mysteries of language appears to have more to do with exploiting uncertainty and confusion than with generating any genuine insights.

Promoting the culture-is-social perspective is relatively easy in the case of language. This is presumably one reason why references to the topic are popular with cultural Marxists.
   There are academic subjects which actually study the basic principles of language. The question of how combinations of sounds, or combinations of characters, can stand for (represent, refer to, signify) elements of reality, and the nature of the relationship between the signifier and what is signified, are problems that continue to baffle. This may be partly because those problems are intertwined with the problem of consciousness, which remains as intractable as it did four centuries ago. Our understanding of the fundamentals of language has advanced a little, but not much, during the history of the subject since the nineteenth century.
   Swiss humanities professor Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) is often presented as a key figure in this history. However, it is not clear that his contributions in this area actually amount to much. Space is given to Saussure in textbooks on linguistics, but this seems to be primarily because he was the first to analyse language in a way that strongly emphasised its social aspects, and which provided other social theorists with the tools for promoting cultural collectivism. It is difficult to see his theories about the fundamentals of language as constituting genuine advances on which later linguisticians were able to build.
   The following trio of sub-tropes seems to have developed into a kind of mantra within the liberal arts:
• the idea that there is something mysterious, and intrinsically political, about the way language works;
• using terminology to discuss the topic of language in a way that engenders bewilderment rather than genuine comprehension;
• citing Ferdinand de Saussure.

Introductory texts on Critical Theory invariably give prominence to the language issue. The book Introducing Cultural Studies, for example, a sort of Critical Theory for Dummies, brings linguistics in right at the start. This in spite of the fact that, for the average reader, leaping into such abstruse theory at an early stage is surely neither necessary nor helpful.

To understand how cultural studies is done, we need to equip ourselves with a few of its key concepts and principles. A major concept in cultural studies is that of sign. A sign has three basic characteristics ...
   The physical form of the sign is known as the signifier ... what the sign refers to, its mental association, is known as the signified ...
   The theory of signs developed from the work of Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. He argued that language is a cultural phenomenon; and it generates meaning in a special way. Language produces meaning by a system of relationships, by producing a network of similarities and differences.
   Saussure’s followers developed a study of signs – semiotics – to establish the basic features of signs and explain the way they work in social life. [ICS, pp.10-11]

Saussure’s assertions about the social nature of language are used to make analogous sweeping claims about culture, society and politics – though it’s by no means clear that Saussure himself would have approved of this (ab)use of his ideas.

Signs are often organized as codes governed by explicit and implicit rules agreed upon by members of a culture or social group. A system of signs may thus carry encoded meanings and messages that can be read by those who understand the codes. A signifying structure composed of signs and codes is a text that can be read for its signs and encoded meanings.
   When the social and power relationships are examined, the historical forces shaping the text are understood.
   The combination of signs and significations is considered, and the general environment within which the text exists is recognized. [ibid, p.13]

* * * * *

The intellectual movement called ‘linguistic philosophy’, inspired by Cambridge philosophy don Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), was based on the claim that our understanding of reality is highly dependent on language. The extremer versions of this asserted that experience itself is impossible without language. Literature professor Terry Eagleton is clearly a fan of this perspective.

Husserl speaks of a purely private or internal sphere of experience; but such a sphere is in fact a fiction, since all experience involves language and language is ineradicably social. To claim that I am having a wholly private experience is meaningless: I would not be able to have an experience in the first place unless it took place in the terms of some language within which I could identify it ... [Literary Theory, p.52]

Eagleton exploits the fact that we have only limited understanding of how language conveys meaning. He uses our ignorance to make vague assertions which – conveniently – do not contradict any known facts. Such assertions do not have genuine informational content, but instead appear to have a propaganda purpose. The point, apparently, is to convey the sense that culture is primarily social, and not the product of individuals.

Dealing in grand generalities in the absence of facts, Eagleton is able to jump from one vague and unsupported claim (‘we cannot have meanings without language’) to another (an individual’s experience is ‘social to its roots’). Such claims are best seen as serving an emotional purpose rather than actual analysis.

The hallmark of the ‘linguistic revolution’ of the twentieth century, from Saussure and Wittgenstein to contemporary literary theory, is the recognition that meaning is not simply something ‘expressed’ or ‘reflected’ in language: it is actually produced by it.
   It is not as though we have meanings, or experiences, which we then proceed to cloak with words; we can only have the meanings and experiences in the first place because we have a language to have them in.
   What this suggests, moreover, is that our experience as individuals is social to its roots; for there can be no such thing as a private language ... [ibid, pp.52-53]

* * * * *

Attempts to shift emphasis away from individuals and towards a social model of culture may seem relatively easy in the case of language. However, it has also been attempted in relation to specific cultural products, such as novels and paintings. One of the most infamous exemplars of cultural Marxism is Roland Barthes’s idea of the death of the author, according to which a book is not the creation of its author but simply a ‘tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture’. The following extract from a Canadian university’s online literature course captures the idea quite well.

A number of arguments militate against a text being written by an intentional individual. The concept of the stable ego has been challenged — it has been suggested that ‘we’ are in fact processes of symbolization. The idea of ‘the individual’ has been seen as an ideological conception, a product of capitalist revolution in the seventeenth century.*

* * * * *

The obsession with language started to become prominent within cultural Marxism in the era of so-called ‘structuralism’ during the 1950s and 60s. The continuing centrality of the name Saussure seems to be partly a residue of that era.
   Here is one book’s take on how structuralism’s theory of language supposedly proves there is no self in the traditional sense, thus undermining the idea of the individual:

The self as a consistent entity enduring over time – an ‘inner essence’ that we always suppose to be there – evaporates into the conditions of language. [Introducing Critical Theory, p.67]

Let us briefly recall the political purpose behind cultural attempts to magic away the individual — whether by subordinating him/her to language, or by means of other intellectual devices. The point is to generate legitimacy for collectivism. Collectivism means: comprehensive rule by political and technocratic elites, supposedly in everyone’s best interests.
   The concept of the individual as an autonomous entity, with innate characteristics that vary from person to person, is an awkward obstacle for collectivism. Any theory which diminishes the significance of the individual is therefore highly attractive to collectivists.

* * * * *

The movement referred to as post-structuralism supposedly involved a rejection of some of the key dogmas of structuralism. On the issue of language, however, its agenda is essentially the same as that of structuralism. Here, for example, is a summary of the notoriously verbose Jacques Derrida’s post-structuralist theory of language:

Derrida argues that the standard conception of meaning in the West depends on an assumption of a ‘metaphysics of presence’, that is, the full meaning of a word is held to be ‘present’ to the speaker, or writer, in their mind, as they use it. He has named this assumption logocentrism  ...
   Such transparent presence of meaning can never be achieved, according to Derrida, because of the action of différance. He made up this word in French to describe the process by which meaning ‘slips’ in the act of transmission. Words always contain within themselves traces of other meanings than their assumed primary one. [ibid, pp.88-89]

The message is: language is very complicated; it doesn’t work the way you think it does; it’s beyond ordinary people to understand its mysteries; only cultural-Marxist experts can make sense of its enigmas.
   This kind of mystification is perfectly suited to blocking critique. ‘Not only are you, as a layman, insufficiently trained to be able to comprehend what is expressed by experts in social theory. You would not in any case be able to express any meaningful criticism of it, since language eludes your grasp. Give up, already!’

It is one of the paradoxes, or perhaps one should say hypocrisies, of cultural Marxism that its apparent preoccupation with understanding language and meaning is paralleled by a presentational style that, with few exceptions, is opaque at best and intentionally obscurantist at worst.
   Obfuscation is achieved via a number of strategies, of which boggling about language is only one. Another strategy involves the continual invention of new terminology, without anything new being said. This is apparently required in order to create the illusion that progress is being made in ‘research’ on social theory.

Applying a sociological perspective to the phenomena we are considering, the purpose of obfuscation, and of blocking potential criticism, can be assumed to be: to protect the academic class’s professional and ideological power.
   Whether the motivation at work is conscious or unconscious must be a matter for speculation. However, at times it is hard to avoid the conclusion that deliberate deception is involved.

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part 1: introduction
part 2: terminology
part 3: ‘ideology’
part 4: which ideology is dominant?
part 5: ‘good’ and ‘evil’
part 6: ‘culture is a social product’
part 7: Language

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REFERENCES
* Brock University online English course notes, quoted in: Fabian Tassano, Mediocracy: Inversions and Deceptions in an Egalitarian Culture, Oxford Forum 2006, p.37.
Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (second edition), Blackwell 1996.
Z. Sardar and B. Van Loon, Introducing Cultural Studies, Icon Books 1997.
S. Sim and B. Van Loon, Introducing Critical Theory, Icon Books 2009.

cultural Marxism's obsession with Language – part 6

The term ‘cultural Marxism’ is here used to mean:
the corpus of Marxist ideology, excluding the parts that are overtly about economics or politics,
not the ‘Cultural Marxism’ conspiracy theory, usually spelt with a capital C.

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extracts from my forthcoming book:

Trope 7: ‘culture is a social product’

Is culture the product of individuals, or of society? Strictly, the question is meaningless. Much of Western culture was created by individuals working alone, supported by others, but those individuals were influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, by the society in which they lived. And society is of course made up of individuals; hence one can always say that anything done by individuals is, in effect, done by society. The question is really one of perspective, or emphasis.

   Initially, intellectuals in the West reacted to the extraordinary flowering of culture that took off in the eighteenth century by shifting ideological emphasis in the direction of the individual. Great works of art, literature and science – produced by individual artists and scientists – seemed to demonstrate that individuals had a more significant role than Christian ideology had taught.

   This first reaction is sometimes identified with the movement called Romanticism. It can also be seen in aspects of the intellectual revolution referred to as the Enlightenment. The latter, at least some of the time, stressed the importance of individuals thinking for themselves – rather than simply accepting what was generally believed to be true, or what was held out as ‘truth’ by intellectual authorities.

   However, another aspect of the Enlightenment was a desire to make individuals conform to models of ‘rationality’ that were deemed correct by philosophers and other theorists, and increasingly to limit intellectual authority to those who belonged to socially sanctioned institutions. The models of rationality were arrived at via a process of logic that theorists believed to be analogous to science, and therefore equally reliable, but this was an illusion. Philosophising on paper generates answers that can seem solidly based on logic but which depend on assumptions that are often hidden. Such philosophising can easily be worse than ignorance, if we move from an agnostic attitude to the unjustified belief that we have certain knowledge.

   By the end of the nineteenth century, the reaction against Romanticism, and against Enlightenment individualism, had started to set in. As an Oxford philosophy don wrote in his introduction to the 1901 edition of J.S. Mill’s mid-Victorian book On Liberty, Mill was

advocating the rights of the individual as against Society at the very opening of an era that was rapidly coming to the conclusion that the individual had no absolute rights against Society.*

In contrast with the eighteenth-century view that the individual existed first, and society second, in the late nineteenth century the view began to gain prominence that the individual

has no rights against the social organism. Society can punish him for acts or even opinions which are anti-social in character. His virtue lies in recognising the intimate communion with his fellows. His sphere of activity is bounded by the common interest.*

Fundamental changes in perspective are usually accompanied by new theories which rationalise those changes. In the swing away from individualism, and back towards collectivism (an older model of human society, with a much longer history), the theories of Marx have proved highly instrumental.
   Marx was the most important prophet of cultural collectivism, but not the only one. Among other, lesser prophets can be counted Arts & Crafts pioneer William Morris, for example.

   Marx argued that culture is merely the ‘superstructure’ of a society, built on the foundation of the economic relations within that society. He did not mean that capitalism facilitates culture, by allowing a few creative individuals to live off capital. He meant that human consciousness, and hence the specific content of cultural products, are strongly – but unconsciously – determined by economic conditions.

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. [Marx, Critique of Political Economy]

Marxists reject individualism. But Western culture can be seen as a product of such individualism, which for many observers counts in its favour. Marxists therefore have an incentive to promote the idea that culture should be seen as a product of society, rather than of individuals. The culture-is-social perspective, transmitted via the cultural Marxism tradition, is now widely distributed within contemporary literary and cultural criticism.

   An example of cultural Marxism in relation to literature is reader-response theory. One of the key contributors to this approach is American professor Stanley Fish. According to the book Introducing Critical Theory, Fish claims it is the reader who actually produces the work of literature.

   Of course, it is not just a single reader who ‘produces’ a novel by, say, Jane Austen. That approach to thinking about literature would be far too individualistic for cultural Marxists.

Fish’s ostensibly more radical approach is tempered by the insistence that the reader is a member of an ‘interpretive community’ whose shared values inform individual readings, as well as providing a criterion for assessing their validity. [Introducing Critical Theory, p.85]

In other words, society decides what the novel really means, not the individual author:

The novel Jane Eyre does not set out to be a discourse on the power of patriarchy, but the ‘madwoman in the attic’ motif starkly reveals it nonetheless. [ibid, p.81]

Invoking the concept of ‘society’ may seem like a form of democratisation. But what ‘society’ really means, in this context, is ‘socially appointed experts’.
   The rhetoric about ‘interpretive community’ is no doubt intended to seduce readers into believing they play as important a role as authors. However, it is not ordinary readers, but humanities professors, who will decide – supposedly on behalf of society as a whole – whether Jane Eyre is primarily about patriarchy, regardless of what author Charlotte Brontë said about the matter.
   Students who openly dispute the professorial viewpoint that a particular novel contains important political messages are likely to find themselves marked down.

REFERENCES
* W.L. Courtney, in his Introduction to J.S. Mill, On Liberty, London: Walter Scott, 1901.
S. Sim and B. Van Loon, Introducing Critical Theory, Icon Books, 2009.

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next post: ‘Language’, the final instalment in this blog series

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part 1: introduction
part 2: terminology
part 3: ‘ideology’
part 4: which ideology is dominant?
part 5: ‘good’ and ‘evil’
part 6: ‘culture is a social product’ (extract from my forthcoming book)
part 7: Language (extract from my forthcoming book)

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intellectuals, priests and power - III

In the previous instalment, I suggested that humanities professors, and other institutionally authorised intellectuals, are subject to a source of bias related to the issue of power. Certain perspectives – and the humanities are all about perspective – are more likely than others to generate ideological and moral power for those who profess expertise in those perspectives.
   Let us consider two examples, one from the US, one from the UK. I could have come up with more extreme illustrations, but the following are reasonably representative of their professions.
   American philosophy professor Michael Sandel gave the BBC’s Reith Lectures in 2009. In a preliminary conversation with Sue Lawley, Professor Sandel revealed that he had considered entering academic economics, but chose philosophy instead.

[Lawley] You were thinking about, as you were becoming an academic, of studying Economics further; and then you decided, you decided it was ‘a spurious science’. [...]

[Sandel] It’s a spurious science in so far as it is used to tell us what we ought to do, because questions of what we ought to do in politics or as a society are unavoidably moral and political. Economists can inform us about possible implications of policy choices, but they can’t tell us [...] what’s right and wrong, what’s just and unjust. So I decided to veer into that line of work [academic philosophy].

The central message of Professor Sandel’s Lectures was that the world needs a politics

oriented less to the pursuit of individual self-interest and more to the pursuit of the common good

though at no point did Sandel define ‘common good’ (good for everybody? good for the majority?), other than to imply that moving towards it would mean curtailing the private economic sphere in various ways.

   As is often the case in the social sciences, a phenomenon can be looked at from two (or more) radically different viewpoints. One possible assessment of the desire to enter academic philosophy, in order to be able to tell people what is ‘right and wrong’, might be as follows:
   This person recognises that some aspects of society are unnecessarily negative, and believes he can help bring about an improvement by influencing people’s thinking.
   From a different perspective, however, one might make the following, more critical assessment:
   This person has a view about how society should be changed, to conform better with what he considers to be the ‘right’ political and moral norms. He has set about acquiring a position of state-endorsed intellectual authority, in order to help bring society into accord with the norms he prefers.
   My second example is Somerville College, Oxford. Their 2023 alumni magazine has as its theme ‘working towards a fairer world’. This is a theme which, the Principal asserts, ‘has been at the heart of Somerville’s purpose since its earliest days’. She gives as current examples:

[...] the potentially life-saving research of Professor Abigail Barton [...] the hard political choices of NATO adviser Charlotte Dixon [...] student Ellie Flyte’s year of advocacy for Young Carers [...] medic Gillian Harvey’s health initiative for Oxfordshire refugees [...] Professor Iris Jolyon’s determination to share the stories of Kenya’s ‘untitled scholars’ [and] the seventy-year quest for recognition of the extraordinary centenarian codebreaker Karen Lindsay seventy years ago.^#

She goes on to say:

Social justice and climate justice, meanwhile, intersect powerfully in the advocacy of Marion Nikita. As the OICSD’s [Indira Gandhi Centre for Sustainable Development’s] inaugural Rani Lakshmibai Scholar, she is seeking to highlight the intersectional vulnerabilities of India’s historically marginalised communities.^#

Again, let us consider two possible perspectives. Perspective 1 says:
   It is good that a prestigious Oxford college is lending its weight to the global battle for fairness, and to the promotion of such things as refugee welfare and ‘climate justice’.
   Perspective 2 says:
   As a prestigious component of the university system, being held out as a source of objective and impartial expertise, it is no business of Somerville College to promote particular political and moral visions. To do so is to abuse its position.
   Somerville College, incidentally, was reported in 2021 as having forced undergraduates to answer a questionnaire purporting to increase their awareness of bias. Students were required to choose the ‘right’ answers. If they failed to do so, they were called in for a chat with the Principal.
   Both Professor Sandel, and the Somerville dons responsible for the alumni magazine, seem to be promoting goals they believe are virtuous and necessary. Both must be aware that their viewpoint is becoming increasingly dominant among university intellectuals, and that any calls to action they make are likely to be echoed by other academics and activists across the globe.

Individuals who want to shift moral norms in a particular direction, and who are able to do so, by acting collectively.
The ability to get what you want seems as good a definition of ‘power’ as any. Whether the shifts in question are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is a matter for individual opinion.

The above discussion may give a flavour of how the humanities, and academia generally, are moving emphasis away from analysis and towards assertion of moral values. The move points to the possible transition from the classical liberal model of academia, of promoting free enquiry, towards the religious model, in which the primary aim becomes reinforcement of the dominant ideology rather than unbiased enquiry.
   The religious model of academia may seem to be an *inversion* of how we’re used to thinking about the university system. However, the religious model of academia held sway for many centuries, so a return to it is not as implausible as it may appear.

* * * * *

Somerville College is the alma mater of my colleague Dr Celia Green. The latter has spoken to me at length about her experiences at the college, to which she won the top entrance scholarship. Somerville did nothing to help her enter an academic career at the end of her degree, though she was clearly eminently suited to one. This meant she had to set up her own research organisation, a task that has been one long struggle. In spite of the respect gained from other academic psychologists for her work on lucid dreaming and hallucinatory experiences, Somerville has never tried to aid her efforts, and has never honoured her achievements.
   One of the ironies of the ‘social justice’ movement, which trumpets its supposed caring for the unfairly deprived, is that the caring often seems to be applied in a selective way. In particular, it appears to be preferentially applied to those whose misfortune can be exploited to reinforce the collectivist agenda: ‘this person’s case provides evidence that capitalism/patriarchy/etc. is harmful’.
   If you don’t tick the right boxes, you may find you are of relatively little interest. Being (say) female, or black, will not be sufficient, if you violate other key criteria, e.g. by being too individualistic, or too pro-capitalist.
   This selective approach to ‘caring’ may explain why, in a Britain that is – on the face of it – obsessed with social justice, the injustices of the Post Office scandal* escaped the notice of the ‘compassionate’ intellectual elites for well over a decade. The victims were men and women running, in effect, their own small businesses. Many of them were members of the despised pro-Brexit generation. These characteristics may help to explain why a blind spot developed about the issue.
   It is clearly easier, for some commentators, to equate ‘injustice’ with abstract themes such as ‘capitalism’ or ‘sexism’, or to identify instances of injustice in foreign countries, than to see it in relatively straightforward practical issues on their own doorstep.

* * * * *

There is an argument that, by relentlessly fomenting moral unease with regard to the boilerplate themes of gender/race/class, intellectuals have succeeded in diverting moral sentiment away from areas that don’t fit with collectivist ideology, and thus created moral apathy in relation to those less fashionable areas.
   For Marxists, such diversion of sentiment, from bourgeois to collectivist themes, has always been part of the explicit agenda. One has to wonder whether – at least on an unconscious level – the same has also become true of the majority of non-Marxist intellectuals.

* The scandal has now finally been exposed, more than twenty years after it began, and the 900+ men and women exonerated. Whether Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was right to instigate new legislation specifically to help the victims is another matter. A dramatised version of the story, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, starring Toby Jones as heroic postmaster Alan Bates, is available on ITV Player.
^# Names have been changed.

intellectuals, priests and power - II

POWER

The concept of power is one that has not been adequately explored, and is not well understood. A large Marxism-inspired literature making reference to the word ‘power’ has emerged out of the academic humanities during the last forty years. But this has obfuscated rather than clarified the issue.
   ‘Power’ should be taken to include ideological and moral power; in other words, the ability to influence and control thought, speech or morality. This is irrespective of whether such power leads to financial rewards, or involvement in government.*
   The word ‘power’ tends to conjure up images of dictators, billionaires or other powerful individuals. But most high-level power is exercised by groups or coalitions acting cooperatively, rather than by a single person acting unilaterally.
   Ideological power – the type of power exercised, for example, by an organised religion – depends on a class of intellectuals acting in concert. Such concerted action does not necessarily involve explicit cooperation, but can happen tacitly.
   I am using the word ‘intellectuals’ in the broad sense of: individuals whose primary activity is inventing and disseminating ideas. This covers the functionaries of a religious order, authors of non-fiction books, and academics. It also includes the proponents of a political ideology. It does not include those who only teach material that has been produced by others.
   Outside the intellectual sphere, acting in concert tends to require explicit agreement to prevent defection, since such action is initially costly for each individual, and only pays off if no one free-rides. However, academics are generally required to produce material of some kind at a certain rate, regardless; for them to cooperatively align such material so as to privilege certain perspectives may not be particularly costly. Such ‘collusion’ can therefore happen tacitly.

* * * * *

I propose the following:

The bias of humanities professors in favour of collectivism, and in favour of intervention generally, is best understood in terms of a desire for power.

Such desire is not necessarily conscious.

‘Desire for power’ should not be interpreted as automatically suspicious. Ideological power, like all power, can be used for good or bad – though the definitions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ may vary from person to person. Seeking power should not necessarily be condemned; however, it is still power that is being sought, whatever it is ultimately used for. The desire for power can be expected to bias intellectuals’ choice of perspectives.
   It seems reasonable to assume that ideological power, like any other form of power, is sought partly for its own sake. Such an assumption helps to explain some of the strategies undertaken by humanities professors, when considered as a class. The class’s current tendency to contribute towards the generation of echo chambers, and its lack of wholehearted support for free speech, are examples of behaviour which are easier to understand if we posit that there are power motives at work.
   An individual philosophy or politics don has little ideological power by him- or herself. Such power can only come from a large number of academics acting in concert. There needs to be sufficient consensus present, in order for laymen to accept (e.g.) the authority of sociologists in claiming that capitalism is damaging, or of social psychologists in claiming that benevolent sexism harms women.

* * * * *

In talking about academics’ collective desire for power, we are coming close to the concept of conspiracy, so beloved of some, and so loathed and despised by others. If we understand ‘conspiracy’ to mean ‘a group of people meeting up to plan something they know is dodgy’ then it seems unlikely that academics are engaging in such action on a significant scale.
   Let’s see, however, what happens if we relax the criteria a little. Rather than ‘meeting up to plan something’, consider:
- individually acting on principles that they know are agreed to by many others of their kind, dimly aware that their actions are being echoed by those others, and that they are therefore likely to be acting in concert.
In place of ‘planning something they know is dodgy’, consider:
- trying to bring about something they believe to be virtuous and necessary.
Combining these two criteria, we get a hypothetical type of behaviour that not only isn’t particularly farfetched, but is something to which many academics will eagerly confess.

* * * * *

Next week: the final instalment of this 3-parter.

* Power does not have to involve political control or financial rewards, it can simply mean being able to influence thought or speech. Much of the time the power of intellectuals takes this latter form. Nevertheless, particularly in the case of economists, academics’ power to shape narratives can lead to both political and financial rewards. A good example is the libertarian-paternalism narrative, which allowed some of its proponents to take well-paid government advisory roles.

intellectuals, priests and power - I

Having been posting about Marxism, and about ideology, I need to say something about the role of intellectuals. After all, we’re not in the position we’re in because Western populations as a whole have been spontaneously drawn to the perspectives of cultural Marxism. We’re here because Marxism, in its various forms, has always been – and continues to be – highly attractive to a significant proportion of intellectuals. Ideology does not operate autonomously in some metaphysical realm. Behind ideology are individuals who develop and sustain it, and who disseminate and defend it.
   In spite of the many failures of Marxist politics, and in spite of its rejection by many of the populations who lived under it, intellectuals have continued to find the Marxist framework appealing, particularly those living in countries that haven’t experienced communism. Economic and political failure has simply meant that attention has switched to the parts of Marxism that are not overtly about politics or economics.
   The draw of Marxism, and collectivism in general, to intellectuals seems undeniable. The phenomenon is broader than Marxism, and precedes it. It can be seen, for example, in Prussian philosophy professors Georg Hegel and Johann Fichte, in the generation before Marx. We can go all the way back to 4th century BC Athens, and observe what is probably the same effect in the totalitarian philosophy of Plato. However, the breadth and complexity of Marxist ideology was unprecedented in intellectual history, and provided a powerful focal point for collectivist preferences during the twentieth century.
   As to the motives for this attraction to collectivism, one is forced to speculate. Research into the question is unlikely ever to yield reliable answers. Much of human motivation is concealed, or unconscious; concealment, and lack of awareness, are probably adaptive, therefore likely to be hardwired. Trying to elicit people’s deep-seated motives, by way of simple enquiry, is therefore likely to be a hit-and-miss process at best, and completely misleading at worst.

* * * * *

There is however one obvious reason why we might expect intellectuals to be biased in favour of collectivism. Collectivism is at the opposite end of the spectrum from laissez-faire. Under collectivism, interactions between individuals are comprehensively regulated by a central entity acting in the name of, and ostensibly on behalf of, the population as a whole. Everything is supposedly run in everyone’s best interests. Deciding what those best interests are, however, is far from straightforward, and it is here that the services of intellectuals are called for. Intellectuals advise not only on how best to achieve what is wanted, but also on what people ought to want. This provides enormous scope for discretion.
   The ability to assert, from a position of authority, the world is not the way you think it is, it’s actually some other way, and only we understand it, and the psychological rewards of believing one is in a position of superior knowledge, are further reasons why complex social theories that imply the need for collective intervention are likely to appeal to intellectuals.
   The status of intellectuals under collectivism in practice, particularly the totalitarian kind, has been mixed – some acquire significant status, while others are marginalised, imprisoned, or live in fear. Nevertheless, we can see how the hope of having more influence can lead to a bias, possibly unconscious, in favour of greater government and other institutional control. This explanation for collectivist bias can also shed light on the intellectual class’s current fetishisation of change, and on why the Marxist term ‘reproduction’ (essentially meaning social stability) has become a fashionable boo-word among humanities professors.
   Intellectuals’ attraction to collectivism/paternalism has been around for a long time, but it was not until the state became involved in the humanities that the phenomenon began to gain traction. By World War 2, the state in most Western nations had started to become intimately involved with the dissemination of psychological and sociological perspectives to undergraduates. The organisation of intellectuals into large collectivities, and their increasing dependence on state finance, seems to have progressively heightened the bias towards collectivism.
   It is in the post-war era that the phenomenon of a state-financed class of intellectuals, with enough numerical muscle to play a significant role in shaping political and moral thinking, has really taken off. The massive expansion since the 1960s of the university sector has generated (a) a large population of intellectuals possessing state-backed authority, and (b) a high proportion of the population who, during their student days, were passive recipients of those intellectuals’ political preferences, usually rationalised as social theory.
   The combination of (a) and (b) generates a vocal and influential segment of the population, highly educated and enthusiastic for intervention, that is beginning to approach the 50 percent level in some cases. The effect can be seen most obviously in America. We get an image of a nation in which half the electorate ‘knows’ how to make things better for the other half, and then gets indignant – to the point of organised protests – when that other half refuses to take its medicine and votes for a non-approved candidate.

* * * * *

Collectivist philosophies such as Marxism also seem to appeal to a significant proportion of those working in the arts. This may be partly because many of them like the idea of their work contributing to human improvement, and because this makes them sympathetic to improvement generally. Yet there is no necessary link between improvement and collectivism. A society organised collectively is not necessarily any more likely to make things better for any given social group than a laissez-faire one – other than perhaps for the organisers.
   Any change achievable via the state can be achieved by civil means, with the advantage that the latter method is far less likely to involve coercion, or human suffering, in the name of improvement.
   It is a reflection of the control which pro-state intellectuals have gained over political narratives that simplistic equations between collectivism and altruism, and between individualism and selfishness, have been successfully sold to audiences.

In the next post I will look at the topic of power.