Eric Heinze, "Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left" (MIT Press, 2025)
01:14:54 Share

Work management platforms. Ugh. Endless onboarding. IT bottlenecks. Admin requests. But what if things were different? We found love.

Monday.com is different. No lengthy onboarding. Beautiful reports in minutes. Custom workflows you can build on your own. Easy to use, prompt-free AI. Huh. Turns out you can love a work management platform. Monday.com, the first work platform you'll love to use.

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. From streaming to shopping, Prime helps you get more out of your passions. So whether you're a fan of true crime or prefer a nail-biting novel from time to time, with services like Prime Video, Amazon Music, and fast, free delivery, Prime makes it easy to get more out of whatever you're into or getting into. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to learn more.

The NBA playoffs are here, and I'm getting my bets in on FanDuel. Talk to me, Chuck GPT. What do you know? All sorts of interesting stuff. Even Charles Barkley's greatest fear. Hey, nobody needs to know that. New customers bet $5 to get 200 in bonus bets if you win. FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook.

21 plus and present in Illinois. Must be first online real money wager. $5 deposit required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable bonus pass that expires seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at fanduel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Caleb Zacharin, editor of the New Books Network. Today, I'm speaking with Eric Heinze about his new book, Coming Clean, The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left. Eric is professor of law and humanities at Queen Mary University of London.

Coming Clean is an important book because it examines the blind spots of critical theory, using many of the tools that critical theorists have employed to critique other ideologies and institutions. Eric offers a corrective to critical theory that acknowledges its value as an analytical approach, while offering ways that critical theorists can acknowledge the flaws of historical left-wing movements. Self-awareness, self-critique, self-analysis, these are values that strengthen, not weaken us. Eric, thanks for joining me today on the New Books Network.

Thank you, Caleb. It's a pleasure to be with you. Yeah, this is just a really, I feel like, important and fascinating book. And I think you, in many ways, you're stepping into the fire of

by writing on this topic. And, you know, looking at your, at your previous writing, it looks like something that you, you're used to doing, you know, you write, you, you, you, you seem to have always been attracted to controversial topics. And I'm wondering if you just tell us a little about yourself and your background and why, you know, why you are attracted to the sort of topics and ways of argumentation that you, that you end up, uh, end up approaching.

Yeah, well, I think one reason I'm attracted to controversial topics is not for provocation for its own sake. I mean, for example, I've spent a lot of time writing about the problem of hate speech.

which is acknowledged as a problem pretty much everywhere on the globe now. And questions about legal regulation are difficult and often fiercely disputed. Now, one reason I chose that topic is because controversial topics are important because there's often something much broader and complicated and sometimes remarkably unacknowledged beneath the surface of

controversy, which seems to be more, you know, which seems to be almost overdone, right? So at the surface, if you have some kind of a mass culture war going on, it seems like it's being beaten to death. And yet that's precisely often a cover, right?

for deeper problems underneath that need to be elucidated. And I think that's what draws me. It's not the controversy per se. It's the fact that there's some kind of sensitive nodal point beneath the controversy, which makes it controversial. For example, a clash of values which maybe haven't been sufficiently understood, appreciated,

or examined critically enough. In the book, what's interesting about it is that so much of the criticism of critical theory has come from people that aren't really interested in it at all. They don't want to engage in a self-critique of history at all. So they're not really...

taking it on, they're not trying to, you know, both hand it. They're not trying to look at the pros and the cons of critical theory, where I feel like you really approach it from this perspective that critical theory does have a lot of important things to offer. But let's now turn it on onto itself in a way, which feels very much like actually in line with like what critical theory is about in many ways. So I'm wondering, you know, for this particular topic, how you came

to write it, where the idea for the book came about. Yeah, and I guess it follows right on because you're right. The very concept of critical theory is about 100 years old, or I should say the term. The term, about 100 years ago, it started to slowly take root. For most of its life, it's been an academic term.

But nevertheless, an academic discipline or a whole series, really, a whole set of chaotically interweaving academic disciplines, but which never wanted to remain in the academy, which were always very clear to themselves and to others that the purpose of critical theory is to speak to problems that affect society at the most massive level.

And as you say, inherent in the notion of critical theory would seem to be self-critique. That was certainly the idea, I think, of people who were developing the notion a century ago and certainly up until World War II, give or take. And I believe, and here's the hardest part, I believe that overwhelmingly people who do critical theory today would be astonished or outraged

that anyone would claim that they do not turn critical theory upon themselves, that they're spending too much time criticizing others and not enough time criticizing their own political home. And I understand. I know those people, and they would just be dumbfounded, and they would start giving you all sorts of examples, some of which we can maybe get into later, about how they're absolutely self-reflective.

And one of the things I argue in the book is it's really not true. In other words, if you look at what critique actually looks like,

Within critical theory, or within a whole range of critical theories, as they've been developed over decades, critical theories involve all sorts of assumptions and practices that critical theorists have actually largely failed to turn upon themselves, their own discipline, and their own politics.

Before getting into this critique, and you have this really great, I think, kind of two-step framework that you use to analyze it to show like, yes, there is a critique that is going on, but that's step one. Step two isn't happening. We'll get into what that is. But before we even get there, I was just wondering, for listeners, I'm sure many listeners probably have read critical theory before or know it, but what is critical theory? Where does it come from? Can you give a little plotted history of it? Let me just pick up from what you just said.

Because you're right. I imagine most of the people listening to your podcast have sort of done it or encountered it or been taught it, often not necessarily under the name or under the umbrella critical theory. So, you know, to kind of paraphrase Moliere, many of your listeners will be critical theorists, will have done critical theory without knowing it.

And again, I think you and I certainly agree that it's not one set of ideas, one set of theories. It's many theories. People who understand themselves or their work as critical theory are often in fierce disagreement with each other. So it's not as if they all converge on any set of ideas or values or programs. Quite the contrary. So...

You know, again, one of the things I try so hard to do in the book is simply tease out certain dominant ideas that I think have shaped not only critical theory, but also a broader politics in recent decades. But while trying to avoid, you know, over overreaching.

overly gross generalizations or suggesting that, you know, all leftists or all progressives think any one thing or that it's only leftists or progressives who think some of the things that I'm discussing. Having said that, to your question, so all of these different strands of critical theory, again, the strands themselves would become a very, very long list. You mentioned critical race theory, that...

I wouldn't say that my book talks necessarily more about it than other strands of critical theory, because I was always trying to keep different perspectives in mind precisely to find common threads. But we can't doubt that critical race theory has been very, very powerful in the academy and in its effects on broader politics. Again, I think many politicians have absorbed it.

probably through their university educations, but then also more casually through various sorts of news analyses, documentaries, films, and so forth, discussions. And so I think many people, for example, understand, certainly people, progressives, people on the left today, do understand increasingly problems of racism

through some sort of understanding inherited through critical race theory. But, of course, you know, critical race theory itself, again, the term dates back to around the 1980s, but itself was an outgrowth of earlier movements, you know, the 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement, but then, you know, back to 19th century abolitionist movements and equal rights movements, right? So these, you know, these schools are always part of much longer histories of,

And again, critical race theory has had a particular influence, I think, and particularly, but not only in American critical theory, but of course, feminism has the same long history. Some might say an even longer history. I don't really want to make it a contest. And feminism also has never really been, and certainly not since.

in recent decades has not been any one set of ideas, right? So it's well known that within feminists, there can be very strong disagreements about basic assumptions, about methods, about ideals, about aims, about implementation. I kind of think this is good, actually, right? This is what, right? And, you know, divisions within these movements, you know, are precisely what help, you know, kind of keep us and them on their toes,

And then, right, related to critical race theory has also been particularly in Europe, but now these very much fuel each other has been post-colonial theory.

Postcolonial theory nowadays is drawn very much on critical race theory. Critical race theory is drawn on postcolonial theory. There's, of course, also queer theory or LGBTQ theory. And that is also, particularly with the advent of a focus on trans people, has also shown some internal points of debate, of disagreement.

And then, of course, we have to understand the concept minted, I don't know, I guess about two or three decades of intersectionality, right? Which observes that within any of these strands, there are also going to be overlaps. None of them exist.

in a box, right? Nor do our identities exist in boxes, right? There's always a kind of fluidity, you know, between one's ethnic identity, one's religious identity, one's gender or sexual identity, one's identity as extracted from a traditionally dominant or subordinated class or group or nation, right?

Right. And so, as you can tell, I could go on and on. Right. Because in a sense, you can't define critical theory. You can only describe it in a thousand ways. It's a kind of mosaic. Right. With little with little bits that sometimes reflect on each other, but then sometimes reflect outwards in their own direction.

you know, you can pick a critical theorist and, you know, for every critical theorist, there's a different type of critical theory that you could, that you could, you know, definition that you could, that you could cook up. And, and I think also like in many ways, this, yeah,

I'm just going to interrupt you there. Hold on to your thought. But also to say that, you know, I was stressing some of the more identity-based ones because they've been most prominent in the public sphere and have, I think, had the most direct influence on current politics. But there's also been, you know, all sorts of, you know, schools of post-structuralism, of deconstruction.

which also feed into all of this. In other words, right, the idea that none of this theory can anchor itself within any fixed model of humanity, of society, of the world, of history. And this is also, I think, been an influential current. But I'm sorry, sorry for interrupting you. No, no, not at all. I mean, I think in many ways, you know, the...

The point of this book or what you're what you're getting at in a way, you know, you're not going through and, you know, you're not treating these as like how some people that are that are critics of critical theory call it to call it grievance studies where they basically just completely dismiss it out of hand and say that people complaining about racism, sexism, homophobia,

They're just, you know, complaining. Like, you're not saying that at all. That's not the point of this book. Like, there's no denial that there is racism and there's sexism and homophobia. That is, you know, a real, you know, present part of reality, whether that be, you know, in the East or the West, in liberal democracies or in...

you know, in dictatorships. There's no denial of that. Really what it is, I feel like it's a very narrow focus. And in many ways, this book feels like, and correct me if I'm wrong, this book feels written to people that are already engaged in this sort of idea of critical theory. You want them, is that your idea in mind? Like that's who you're writing for? Yes. And also for open-minded conservatives. And I think you can still find some.

You know, of course, you can still find some, right? We know, in fact, they've been never more vocal than in the last few years. You know, particularly, you know, as we know, there's a certain kind of mainstream conservative who never had a problem, you know, necessarily with critical discussions of feminism, of racism, of homophobia, LGBTQ and so forth. You know, generally speaking, they kind of prefer free markets.

right? Have a certain, you know, skepticism about whether big state solutions, as we've seen in the past, are really the most pragmatic way to achieve some of these ends. You can certainly find people like this, and I think some of them might also be receptive. So, you know, I don't...

I didn't set out only wanting to talk to small groups of specialists at all, because I think the problems that are discussed really do cross through, cut through much of society today. And not, incidentally, not just America, certainly much of the Western world. And yet, how do you define Western world? Even well beyond, I would venture to say,

The land has been thrown into disorder. Are you feeling a touch lost right now? Like global institutions don't work and politicians aren't collaborating to solve the world's most pressing issues? There is this big space of disorder and we're just kind of holding up our hands and going, well, don't know what we could do. Then the Disorder Podcast is the right place for you. My name is Jason Pack.

I worked in D.C. during the first Trump administration, lived in Libya during the revolution against Gaddafi, been kidnapped twice in Syria. So it's fair to say that I've lived through just a wee bit of disorder. So I want to work on understanding how did we get to here? Why is the global enduring disorder spreading? And more importantly, how do we restore a semblance of order to our mad, mad, mad

mad world. Democracy has to be defended every single day in a proactive way. Search Disorder in your podcast app to listen right now.

Yeah, I mean, some great, you know, historians and academics that I've spoken to who have written about, you know, the terrors of slavery and have written about things that, you know, Western societies have done in a very self-conscious way are conservatives. So I completely agree with you. I don't think that it's a, you know, I think that the focus on the left is obviously critical theory. And, you know, this is definitely something I want to talk about because to a certain extent,

you're starting to see people on the right that are embracing maybe covertly in a way certain ideas in critical theory, but we'll get there. You know, what I think is really helpful about this book, because as you, as we pointed out, like, it's so difficult to really narrowly define this. But I think what's great is that you, you really focus it on Western leftist critiques of Western liberal democracy. And I, and I, and I agree that this is like a, this is a particular focus of critical theory are, you know, people that are, that are,

Western leftist critiquing Western liberal democracy. So can you give a little bit of a gist of this particular viewpoint and critique? One of the focal points of the book is to define what I call, and again loosely, because once again, we're talking about vast,

vast range of problems with many manifestations that sometimes overlap, sometimes diverge. But nevertheless, just to try to get a handle on some of it, I identify what I call the radical critique of Western liberal democracy, right? I think it's manifest.

that, again, despite their many divergences, many people who identify as critical theorists, and again, for a long time now, particularly those in the West,

have turned their attention, first and foremost, to abuses spanning several centuries of Western civilization. And then you might say roughly since the 19th century, or again, dates are always arbitrary, Western liberal democracies.

Western civilization, Western liberal democracy are not interchangeable concepts, but obviously there's an important continuity between them. And much of critical theory has been about revisiting these histories. These histories which say, I don't know, maybe 50 or 60 years ago, or maybe not even that long ago, would have been taught as the high deeds of great men.

Right. So, you know, starting roughly with Alexander the Great, then, you know, hopping over to Julius Caesar, then I don't know, maybe Chalamet. And then before you know it, it's George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. And not to mention, well, also Shakespeare.

battlefield warriors, George Washington, of course, being one of them, and so forth, right? You get the gist. You know, history, you know, these kind of very traditional histories, kind of schoolroom histories, you know, often were very much of this, you know, even bordering on the kind of glorification

of one's culture, as if the purpose of history was to teach not simply civic education, but civic pride. I think for a long time, this was seen as the very goal of history. And indeed, in much of the world, it still is and always was, right? In fact, one of the things I suggest in the book is that one of the real innovations of critical theory over the past century is to completely redefine the very notion of history.

The very notion of doing history, the very purposes of doing history, from a long tradition of history being about taking pride in or celebrating or even glorifying a certain historical record, and particularly at the level of, you might say, primary education,

Right. And and really flip flopping that. Right. It's often known as telling the untold stories of history. Right. So fine. We can still look at the high deeds of great men. You know, you can't erase those. But at the same time, we have to look at all the unspoken, all the untold architects of history. Right. The slaves, the women, the LGBTQ people, colonial peoples, workers, workers.

Right? And so forth. And this has been largely a creation of progressives, of critical theorists, is to redefine what it is to do history.

In other words, from the model of pride or even glory to the idea that the very purpose of history is collective self-scrutiny. The very purpose of doing history, of communicating and teaching history, is to develop a practice, an ongoing practice, of collective self-scrutiny. I think you don't see this anywhere on the globe anymore.

You know, at least that I've noticed right throughout human history. You know, of course, you know, you'll find moments in history where mistakes are acknowledged.

That's certainly true, right? I don't think that's a particularly Western phenomenon, right? I mean, Confucius talks about this all the time, right? But the idea that the very study of history should fundamentally become collective self-scrutiny in order to chart out, in order to pinpoint and understand patterns of injustice, of mass injustice that continue into the present,

even when mutating in their forms. This is, I think, quite unusual and very much the achievement, well, at least I call it an achievement, of progressive thinkers, of critical theorists.

And, right, as you say, it's the sheer radicalism of doing history this way, which many of us would not even see as radical anymore. For many of us, you know, how else would you do it? You know, many of us have, you know, have lost all consciousness that history was never really done this way.

In the past, right? And so you rightly have noticed that there was going to be inevitable backlashes, particularly by what we might call cultural conservatives.

Right. Again, here, no more than leftists do we want to put all conservatives into a box, but cultural conservatives, traditional values conservatives, you're right, have just lashed out against this whole notion. In a sense, want to get back to history as pride and glory. Right. And so they will indeed.

lampoon critical theory as, you know, just self-flagellation, as navel-gazing, and so forth. And they'll just kind of want to dismiss it and dismiss much of what has come out of it, like DEI

or, you know, queer theory, LGBTQ theory, and all of that, right? The history and history is always going to be a product of today's concerns. Yeah, absolutely. And I think to a certain extent, too, you know, the history of, you know, quote unquote, great men is in many ways easiest to do because oftentimes there is just, you know,

an inordinate amount of records kept of these people, you know, obviously, I'm not saying it's easy to write a biography of, you know, Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, but it's certainly easier to write a biography of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington than to do, you know, maybe, you know, labor history of the 19th century, because these are people where the records are not, you know, are not necessarily kept. So

to a certain extent, the historians that are working on these topics are doing a very difficult task. And it really is quite impressive the work that they might be doing. And, you know, your book is like, you know, as you're saying, this is a great thing in many ways. It's not a critique of doing this history, this work. In many ways, you know, there are

conservative historians who might have done this very same thing on histories of the Soviet Union where they look at the crimes of Stalinism or they look at the crimes perpetuated in the Cultural Revolution that the political objectives might seem different but actually they're doing in many ways the exact same thing that the critical theorist historian or critical theory approach might be trying to do as well. Would you say that's accurate? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, incidentally, I wouldn't say that it's only conservatives who have done, you know, say histories of Stalinism of Maoism, uh, or, you know, or other histories of mass atrocities under socialist regimes. Um, uh, certainly not, certainly not. Although, you know, this does of course lead into some of the criticisms I have of, uh, of, uh, you know, kind of the dominant schools of critical theory today, which is that, uh,

Unfortunately, these two sects of disciplines are still too far apart.

Yeah. You talk in the book about memory politics and the importance of memory politics. I feel like this is where the work of the academics, which in many ways is not necessarily overtly political, at least not pertaining to necessarily what's going on in the present. It might be about the past or it might be trying to study or answer a particular question about, you know, some very specific academic question. But what is memory politics in your view?

Well, right. As you as you noticed in the book, when when we were talking earlier, I tried to define it in two broad steps. In fact, one step one is memory and step two is politics. Right. Although I'm talking about history on pretty much every page of the book.

This book is not a history book. That would be step one, the memory, right? We need to compile a historical record. And as he said, even that step one can be very controversial, right? Doing a history of the working class of X or Y country. Because inevitably you're going to be involving judgments about what might qualify as exploitative, right?

Right. As oppressive, what we mean by class, class determinism and so forth. So even this first step of simply agreeing or agreeing as much as possible on a historical record can become very controversial. Right. Let alone if you're dealing, for example, with histories of war. Right.

or any history really that touches upon controversial issues, history of women, history of ethnic minorities and so forth, can always become controversial even at the stage of simply trying to compile some sort of record, some corpus. But the real problems come at step two, which is the step of politics, memory politics. And that's really what my book is about. In other words,

Once we assume some sort of historical record, which we usually do, regardless of whether others agree with it,

Then there is also a lot of activism which follows and which indeed for critical theorists is meant to follow. Right. And so that's the focus of my book. It's the politics of history, the politics of doing history, the politics of memory. Right. And again, whenever you're dealing with controversial histories, you're always dealing with politics. Right. Right.

And so that's one of the things I tried to come to terms with. You know, we probably can't avoid history being deployed to achieve certain political goals. And in some ways, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Different political goals may lay a different emphasis on what otherwise would seem to be the same history. But nevertheless...

The book focuses on certain problems of the politics of memory. So the radical critique that you address in the book, this notion of let's look at and critique the ills of Western liberal democracy. Let's see how a lot of the bad things in the world are attributable to Western liberal democracy. You sort of take this and you put it up against some of the biggest defenders of liberalism.

liberal democracy like Karl Popper and John Rawls. Can you just look a little bit at this debate and what you see in the people that are defenders of liberal democracy, even if they, like John Rawls, are to a certain extent kind of on the left-wing side of things compared to the views of a maybe more radical, like we need to completely redo this entire system. There's no saving it.

Again, the book does not examine in any detail these sorts of thinkers. That would just be another book, some of which have already been written, right? Thinkers within the kind of liberal or liberal democratic canon, right? So you've named, you know, right, Karl Popper, Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, Isaiah Berlin. We could certainly add many others to that list.

One of the reasons I cite them is actually to try to tease out what many critical theorists do with this kind of liberalism, right? And here again, one of the big critiques is

of people like, well, certainly John Rawls, right? He's perhaps the best example here, right? But we could find many. I mean, generally, it's a creak of liberalism and even going back into the classics like John Locke or John Stuart Mill, right? One of the critiques, right, among progressives, right, within critical theory, right, has been that they do their politics, their political theories, their modeling ahistorically, right?

So they're trying to come up with a sort of ideal model. So they're employing concepts such as individual autonomy or individual freedom, civic equality, economic opportunity. And they're not taking account. They're kind of imagining these as ideals. Right.

And they're not taking account of the actual histories of these values, of these norms. Because once you take account of the histories of these norms, many critical theorists would say, then we see that they have often been manipulated to produce precisely the opposite.

So, you know, a dyed-in-the-wool critical theorist, you know, however liberal John Rawls is trying to be, right, and redistributive and all the rest, you know, is going to be skeptical of that kind of project, which kind of takes on face value notions of individual freedom, civic equality, economic opportunity, right, and is going to insist that

right, of someone like Rawls or generally speaking, right, liberals who use these terms that, wait a minute, you know, don't tell me about freedom, equality, opportunity until you have explained, taken account of how these terms have been grievously manipulated to justify precisely opposite outcomes.

and show us how your theory is going to deal with that. And critical theorists have a point here, that many of these liberals in the classical tradition are often not good at that and don't even try to do it. They kind of want their models just to stand on their own two feet.

And critical theorists will not let them get away with that, right? So let me give an example. I guess this will be an example surely familiar to many of your listeners, right? The famous United States Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson.

Right. From from the 1890s. Right. Now, this is, you know, commonly understood. You know, many people will have read it, I don't know, years or decades ago, may not have it fresh in mind. But we know Plessy versus Ferguson stood for this insidious proposition of separate but equal. Right. Plessy versus Ferguson did not out of the blue create a regime of racial segregation. Right.

What it did, and particularly from the eyes of a critical theorist, right, right,

It needs to be nuanced a bit. What the court did was actually take these foundational constitutional ideals, above all civic equality, and show how they actually justified a regime of racial segregation, right? I think this would be typical of a critical theorist saying, wait a minute, what do you mean by equality, right? So it would go to John Rawls, right, and say, okay, you're telling us about equality, but look what equality has actually meant.

regimes that were claiming to be liberal. Now, again, I know that, you know, defenders of Rawls will have their answers, but nevertheless, these are very, very important questions, right? And critical theorists are right that these terms do not exist in a platonic

universe of ideas, a platonic heaven of ideas, these terms, going back to Hegel, whatever inherent meanings we may lend them, they also take their meanings from histories, from concrete histories, and we can only say that we have, we can only competently discuss these terms by taking account of their histories. Yeah. It's interesting to kind of...

look at that, uh, that, that tension between the kind of the liberal historical theorists and then also the, uh, the critical theorists, you know, what, one thing, one thing, obviously we've talked about sort of critical theory of the present, which is, you know, it comes in all, all different flavors. Um, but in many ways, and you look at this in the book too, it comes from Marxism, uh, and from Marxist thought. So, um, can you discuss a little bit about the, you know, the, the Marxist origins, but also just the, the,

the prevalence of Marxism. And I think also that in many ways will then explain a little bit some of the contemporary blind spots and issues about this kind of, you know, allegiance to Marx, treating Marx in many ways, you know, like this heroic individual. Obviously, he was a brilliant thinker and completely worth reading. I read him a lot in college and gained a lot from it. But obviously, Marx was an extremely flawed individual too. So, you know, can you talk a little about the Marxist origins of critical theory?

I think what's fascinating now is that you could find any number of critical theorists who in their writings or their public discussions don't even mention Marx, don't even mention the Marxist tradition, and don't necessarily need to for the points they want to get across, for the analyses they want to offer.

And yet, I would argue that pretty much all that counts as critical theory today does stem from Marx. And above all, getting back to what I referred to earlier in our conversation as the radical critique of Western liberal democracy. Now, to be clear, that particular phrase, I'm using that in order to make certain points. Marx did never use that phrase, at least not verbatim.

And yet I think much of what we could call the radical critique of Western liberal democracy, which today could be done in all sorts of ways that, you know, Marx certainly was not doing, nevertheless goes back to Marx's idea that

that we have to understand injustice as systemic, as structural. Of course, his focus is 19th century capitalism, right? And so he does every now and then mention things like European imperialism, militarism, colonialism, slavery, women's subordination. All of these problems are mentioned in Marx's

For him, nevertheless, all of these only fit under umbrella, only in a sense are manifestations of something at the root, which is...

class oppression, right, which is the class-based structure of society. Now, of course, much of what we call critical theory today was kind of a reaction against that, saying, no, you know, you know, something like racial discrimination or patriarchy or heteronormativity, yes, we might discuss those

with relation to class, to economics, but simply to reduce them to economics, you know, is deeply unsatisfactory, is too reductionist. And this is one reason why much of what counts as critical theory today doesn't necessarily even see any need to expressly reference either Marx or the Marxist tradition,

But nevertheless, this notion, again, of justice or rather of injustice, sorry, right? This notion of injustice as structural, as inbuilt, as inherent to something as dominant, as pervasive as 19th century capitalism was, I think really set the tone, right? In other words, for Marx, capitalism was not really reformable.

Right. Because if it were, then we could say that even mass injustice was not necessarily structural or systemic. Right. It could be right. It could be however we might do it, you know, gradually teased out of capitalism, which, you know, many people in the 19th and 20th centuries and today still, you know, would say is possible, preferable, even necessary, right?

It was Marx who said no, who said there are certain forms of economic organization which can never shed ingrained structures, systems, patterns of mass injustice, of mass oppression. And I think much critical theory is still about that.

Even if the methods, the assumptions have often radically changed, although let's not forget there are still people working in a remarkably classical Marxist tradition. So again, we're all over the map with critical theory.

Right. And what's interesting, too, is that, you know, a lot of the people that are very strict Marxists in that sense oftentimes are critical of people that are working in the more identity oriented critical theory strain. And they sometimes accuse them of being covert liberals who are trying to draw the attention away from economics towards other issues that are, you know, less, you know, less critical.

crucial to overturning oppression. So it is interesting. Obviously, there isn't, as you pointed out, there isn't really one string. It can depend. You talk a lot in the book about critical theorists and their relation. Obviously, they've talked about their relationship with the history, but their relationship with the history of the Soviet Union. So how do critical theorists

theorists in your view contend with histories of the Soviet Union or histories of other leftist regimes that clearly were not fulfillments of the hopes and dreams of leftists?

Yeah, and of course, yeah, this is one of the great faults that I find in critical theory. And again, as I said when we first started talking, I believe that many leftists would insist, like I know many would insist, that they and that their fellow travelers, that critical theorists generally have come to terms

with atrocities linked to leftist pasts. And in the book, I try to show that they really haven't, that this is a bit delusional, the idea that they have. Now, of course, there's a problem with this very notion of leftist regimes. One way in which many critical theorists would say they've come to terms with, say, the Soviet Union or Mao's Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot or the Kim dynasty in North Korea is, look,

Well, that was never really leftist at all. Right. A bit too simple. Not least. But nevertheless, I don't use the phrase that I guess I use it every now and then in the book just for simplicity's sake. But the concept, which I think is more germane for the analysis I want to do, is not so much leftist regimes, because, again, that's going to be its whole argument.

but rather regimes to which much of the Western left or Western progressives over a good century at the very least lent legitimacy, right? If not at times and not so infrequently, very enthusiastic support, right? Right.

And so it may be true that, you know, in retrospect, you know, one washes oneself from that past by saying, oh, well, that was never the real socialism anyway. That was never really leftism anyway. Right. So, you know, that's not us. Don't blame any of that on us. Right. And in the book, I say, you know, sorry, you know, based on the ways that critical theorists themselves have been telling us to do history again for more than a century now,

it just doesn't wash, right? In other words, it's not possible that leftists themselves can wash their hands so easily as really many of them do, right? In other words, many of them think that they've come to terms simply by not denying, by saying, oh, yes, of course, Stalin, murderous regime, terrible. You know, we wouldn't support that today. Or, you know, Maoism or, you know, the Kim dynasty in North Korea or, you know, Pol Pot in Cambodia, right?

Incidentally, with people like Castro and Chavez, I find still a lot of hesitation, but I'm happy to take them out of the equation, right? So even with these hardcore ones that virtually no one on the left today really wants to be openly identified with,

One of the things I'm saying is, look, it's just not plausible to say that slavery, patriarchy, heteronormativity, that was the real liberal democracy. And therefore, we can never wash ourselves of these mass injustices. And therefore, we need to do that critical history because it is a critique of the present taught to us by people who themselves think they can just make a clean break with the past.

Either all these paths are ongoing, involving grievous and mass injustice, or all of them allow us to make a clean break, right? You know, one could say, right, imagine a group of students who want, you know, just a little bit, a little pot of money from the university to launch, say, Women's History Month or LGBTQ History Month.

or Post-Colonial History Month, or Black History Month, right? We've seen these sorts of things. You can probably find one version or another on almost every Western university campus today. And again, I don't criticize that. Great. Keep doing it. Again, my critique is not the conservative one. I don't want to dismantle any of that. So imagine some students come along and they want to stage one of these, right? And the university administrator says,

Oh, well, you know, I don't know. Slavery? Well, but that was never the real liberal democracy. So, you know, you don't need to do that. That would not even be seen as morally outrageous. That would be seen as intellectually inept. Right. That would not even qualify you for a place in the discussion. So stupid with that sound. Right. And yet from progressives, we hear it almost as a moral high ground. Oh, but that wasn't the real socialism. Right.

Oh, but we don't support Stalin anymore. As if, you know, almost kind of with the subtext here, you idiot, don't you know this? Right? As if there's a moral high ground for me by declaring this clean break. And well, we're not responsible for that history. Right? Yet, you know, again, defenders of Western liberal democracy are told that they are still deeply responsible. And rightly so. Again, I don't attack that. Rightly so.

defenders of liberal democratic values are told that they have to take responsibility, or as one might say, ownership of that past. But if progressives don't have to do the same, and in the very same, very public, vocal ways, then they're not progressives at all. They're not doing critical theory at all. They've been telling a lie for the last century. And that's a real problem.

Or as I say in the book, fine, do the Black History Month, do the Women's History Month, do the LGBTQ History Month, do the Postcolonial History Month, do the Workers' History Month. Where's the Socialist History Month? Right? I mentioned again that, you know, germane geopolitical theory has been what's called discourse analysis, right? In other words, again, we take these concepts such as individual freedom, citizenship,

civic equality, economic opportunity, and we show how liberal democracies, how power structures, how institutions within liberal democracy have allowed those to actually be deployed to justify the very opposite, to justify hierarchies, discrimination, indeed oppression, exclusion, and so forth. Who's doing the same thing with the discourses of the left? Who's showing how liberationist discourse is?

which, again, the left was actively purveying, and many still do, just how egalitarian this course is, were also viciously manipulated to produce precisely opposite regimes, again, at least with legitimacy lent and often with the active support of the

various progressive movements spanning over a century, right? It's just not conceivable, or if it is, I'd love to see the methodology. It's not conceivable, right, that when we're talking about Western liberal democracy, we're talking about structural, systemic, and therefore ongoing injustice, whereas when we're talking about progressives themselves who are teaching us all of this,

Right. Oh, well, they don't do that kind of oppression anymore. Right. That was never the real. Right. This is what I call in my book, the purity narrative. Purity is not about saying that my belief system, whether it's political, religious, ethical, purity is not about saying that it's perfect. Very few people will believe you.

particularly if you're talking about a well-established system, which will have some baggage, some track record. Purity is about saying that your rival's belief systems

are systemically, structurally unjust and maybe even unreformable. Whereas you acknowledge the injustices on your own side, but those were never the real, the genuine, right? You peripherize them, right? And I see, and you can come up with many examples, right? Where this is literally done in a sentence. Yes, of course, you know, Stalin was terrible.

You know, yes, of course, the gulags were terrible. Yes, of course, the Cultural Revolution was horrible. And then you get 10 pages of how, you know, the faults of Western history fundamentally boil down to Western liberal democracy. Or excuse me, the faults of world history fundamentally boil down to the faults. This is nonsense. This is denial. So what I say in the book is what we're finding among progressives for decades now

is not factual denial of leftist atrocities or atrocities committed in the name of leftism, often with much Western leftist support. It's not factual denial. Most leftists today will acknowledge the crimes of Stalin, of Mao, and so forth.

Rather, they're trapped in what I call in the book ethical denial, right? Never willing to see any of these mass injustices as structural or systemic within progressive thought, but only explaining that no matter how gross they were, no matter how many millions of lives,

were either destroyed or damaged, always somehow fashioning them as, well, those were mistakes. That's not what we were really ever doing. And therefore, you know, and so what you find among too many progressives, let's just move on to the next problem, right? And I'm saying that this doesn't wash. This is, again, I'm not against progressive thought. In fact, one of the things I say in the book, I'm not against wokeism. I want more of it. Right?

Because there's a whole half of it which has never been done. And the same is true of critical theory. I'm not against critical theory. I want the other half.

which will make it genuinely critical theory. I think most people parading as progressives today were never progressive, right? As I said before, they were willing enough to tell a whole heap of untold stories, and that's good, that's necessary. But they've been doing so now for decades upon a massive heap

of bloody untold stories. Now it's time for them to tell those stories too. And that's going to be much harder to do because they can't do that from a, from an exalted ethical position. That's going to be, this was us and no longer this was you.

Yeah, you go through in the book, you know, quite a few examples of contemporary issues and where this comes about. And, you know, we definitely won't have time to talk about every single one. But one that I do find really interesting is the reactions by some to the Ukraine-Russia war, specifically people that, you know, like Noam Chomsky in many ways might be, you know, he's obviously, you know, not in his prime anymore. But in many ways, he's probably like the most

notable, famous left-wing thinker out there who has really promoted the idea that the

Ukraine-Russia war in part is mostly to blame. Western liberal democracies are mostly to blame. He doesn't say it in part. He essentially says altogether 100%, really, the more you read, the more he makes this crystal clear. Sorry to interrupt. I know you were trying to be kind of diplomatic and give him the benefit of the doubt.

At Sierra, discover great deals on top-brand workout gear, like high-quality walking shoes, which might lead to another discovery. 40,000 steps, baby! Who's on top now, Karen? You've taken the office step challenge a step too far. Don't worry, though. Sierra also has yoga gear.

it might be a good place to find your zen. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. At Capella University, you can learn at your own pace with our FlexPath learning format.

Take one or two courses at a time and complete as many as you can in a 12-week billing session. With FlexPath, you can even finish the bachelor's degree you started in 22 months for $20,000. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu. Fastest 25% of students. Cost varies by pace, transfer credits, and other factors. Fees apply. I mean, it's a very interesting, I mean, we could, you know,

It's obviously a very interesting conflict to analyze in terms of people's reactions to it because there is a right-wing perspective and a left-wing perspective that to a certain extent are on similar sides where the liberal perspective is somewhere in the middle. This has, I think, been a very interesting thing about politics in general. As you point out, it's probably...

in part because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and leaving the, you know, West American-led, you know, liberal international order as the only standing superpower. It creates in many ways some very strange, interesting bedfellows in political issues. But, you know, obviously we can't get into why is it that, you know, people on the right and people on the left seem to be aligned on this issue because to a certain extent, they're probably not. So, you know, for the purpose of this conversation, like,

We'll just focus on people like Chomsky and Lindsay German. So, you know, could you go into what you say in the book about their views on the Russia-Ukraine war? Yeah, I mean, starting with Chomsky, Lindsay German, right, as readers will learn, because she's not as famous a figure as someone like Chomsky. She's a British activist, but, you know, she's a kind of veteran activist.

of what she calls a peace movement. One could, you know, debate that because pacifism is also by no means an objective and neutral designation. But let's take a look at Chomsky actually. Yeah.

Again, I think trying to be diplomatic and give him the benefit of the doubt, you reminded us that his rather uncomfortable views about Ukraine may just be down to his hoary age. I'm not willing to take him off the hook. In fact, I think some people who have said that are quite guilty of ageism.

And I'll tell you why. Because, you know, as we know, Chomsky, you know, came to fame and rightly so by voicing some very trenchant and important questions about power, you know, above all in the United States and the West generally. But, you know, seeing the United States very much as the engine of power in the Cold War world. And, you know, he you know, he was very vocal about the Vietnam War.

but more generally about the way in which wealthy corporate interests have done a lot to subvert democratic politics. You know, so I hope, you know, I hope it's clear in my book that I'm far from simply dismissing him. In fact, I don't want to simply dismiss anybody.

But the reason why I don't think his views are simply down to his great age is because they are logical conclusions of things he's been saying for more than half a century, right? Again, which might work well if you're talking about the Vietnam War. I'm not sure they work as well when they're applied to Ukraine, right? In fact, Chomsky is quite consistent. He has a certain worldview, which, you know, in many ways hasn't changed.

And so it's precisely the fact that he keeps to this in his analysis of the Ukraine, which strongly leads me to believe that his sentences have been entirely with him, at least when he was making these statements about the Russian invasion. And also he made many of them. He's made constant interventions since February 2022, and often at great length.

often with rather sympathetic interviewers. So there's just no chance at all that, you know, there's been any teetering or let alone misrepresentation in his view. Having said all that, what's his view? Well, again, if this had just been one offhand interview, you might indeed have said, OK, you know, maybe, you know, it's a bit of old age kicking in. Right. Or, you know, he wasn't having a good day. Right. All of us say stupid things from time to time.

That's just not the case here. And again, Noam Chomsky, this great, this towering linguist, also knows the words he's using. I think we can, you know, it's safe to say. And, you know, and in, you know, one interview, but again, where he was making the same point that he was making in many interviews, you know, he said that Ukrainians, that Ukraine should wholly capitulate. You know, he wasn't even, you know, he didn't even, Chomsky doesn't even give us any kind of map.

It's that the Ukraine should wholly, you know, capitulate because indeed, you know, this entire invasion is down to things that the West has done.

Some observers of Russia and Russian history would call that absolutely ludicrous. But never mind. Again, I don't dismiss that in the book, right? I'm open. You know, I try to give some space to his arguments. And that's where I bring in Lindsay German because she does this quite concisely. So I give airtime to both of them, you know, and, you know, showing that, you know, they do make some valid points. Chomsky does do, well, what I call in the book,

A dismissive apologetic, because again, we see this all the time. I mentioned some dismissive apologetics previously. Again, that wasn't the real USSR. That wasn't the real socialism, right? And so forth. And, you know, Chomsky also gives us a version of this, right? So in one kind of one or two pat sentences, oh, yes, of course, the invasion was terrible, right? And then he goes on to 10 pages about how it was all the fault of

west of the west. Again, absolutely, we should look at missteps that have been made or might have been made by the west. No great power remains and acts like a great power without doing some pretty horrible things. If we've learned nothing from history, we can take that last. And so I don't dismiss any of this. Nevertheless, again, here's where my problem with

is with much of what has gone on in progressive thought. In fact, I don't want to really single out any enemies in this book. I'm only using them if I think that they serve as examples of something much broader, much more deeply entrenched in

in a long line of progressive thinking in past decades. And so here's the problem, right? So on one hand, you have Chomsky saying Ukrainians should take it like a hurricane. I mean, just think about the resonances of that, right? Kind of like women should take it as, okay, well, I won't pursue that. But this is his logic, right? Ukraine should take it as a hurricane, right? Essentially, they should capitulate.

On the other hand, you have other very distinguished critical thinkers, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, right, who take the opposite view, right? And they fundamentally criticize what Russia is doing. They see much more clearly, you know, this Kremlin power structure, which is really just a continuation of what the czars were and then what, you know, the...

you know, the Soviet regime was and then what Putin's regime is. So Butler and Zizek are absolutely right in that. And indeed, you might take this surface disagreement

Between Chomsky on the one hand, people like Butler and Zizek on the other, and say, no, there you go. You can't generalize about the left. Look at that, right? We're disagreeing with each other all the time. We're examining ourselves all the time. So, you know, so go away with your idea, right? With what you think is your critique of the left. Well,

One of the things I argue in this book is that, yeah, that's a disagreement. And, you know, I acknowledge it. And I'm certainly, if I have to choose one or the other, I will go, of course, with Butler and Zizek on that point. But what I argue is that at a deeper level, all three of them are doing the exact same thing, which is that like while telling all the rest of us that we can only do a history of the West out of a consciousness that

of the histories of mass injustice, the histories of systemic and structural injustice in our political home, in our political commitments. They don't do this. None of the three of them say, okay, wait a minute. In order to understand Russia and Ukraine, we on the left, we as progressives have to start from the viewpoint

that we have a hundred year history of at least lending legitimacy to, if not zealously supporting,

That very regime over there in Moscow. Where does Butler do this? Where does Zizek do this? Let alone Chomsky, who in a sense is willing to give Putin everything he wants, which ironically goes back to what you were saying about, you know, certain curious convergences, as we've noticed for a long time, between certain extremes on the left and on the right. Right.

Right. Turns out that Trump and if Trump and Chomsky disagree on this, I'd like to see how. Right. You know, Trump will also do his one line. Oh, of course, it's terrible. Right. Right. And yeah, when Chomsky does it, all of a sudden that is great weight. But Chomsky does it the same way. Right. The one again, the the one line apologetic dismissal or rather dismissive apologetic. And then all the rest is how, you know, this is just about the West.

Right. And then which leads them to the school. But at a deeper level, none of them are writing out of the kind of position, the kind of historiography that they want everyone else to do and that they teach everybody else to do. We have to start with what were our engagements?

So the rest of us can lay no claim to neutrality and objectivity, which is actually presupposed in their analyses, because they don't come out of this self-reflection. They don't say, yes, in fact, we come out of a tradition of liberationism, of egalitarianism, indeed often of socialism, which was deeply, again, supportive of or at least

tolerant of, again, lending legitimacy to this regime, which now continues into Putin, right? And which has devastated Eastern and Central Europe. Where is that in their analysis? Where, again, in their analysis, are they doing what they tell all the rest of us and indeed teach all the rest of us to do? You won't find a sentence of it. Again, even Zizek, who himself comes out of Eastern Europe,

You know, again, Zizek is great, as Chomsky is, by the way, you know, in saying everything that was bad about Stalin and Stalinism. They'll do that for pages and pages. But again, just to make a clean break, just to make clear that, you know, this has nothing to do with what they're doing.

Whereas when we're doing liberal democracy, we can't take slavery out of that. We can't take Jim Crow out of that. We can't take colonialism out of that or capitalist exploitation or patriarchy or heteronormativity. And so, again, I want someone to explain to me the methodology here, how those who are teaching all the rest of us that we can't make a clean break are basing all of their analyses on the assumption of a clean break.

What's interesting about it, because to a certain extent, and this kind of gets into what you write about in your conclusion, to a certain extent, I think that for anyone who identifies with a particular political persuasion, in many ways, it's natural. It's natural not to critique yourself and to focus on the flaws of your rivals, of your enemies. And

And I, and I also think too, that there's maybe, maybe a sense what, you know, what a person, what, what a leftist might say is, well, the right isn't doing this. So why should I be expected to do this? The right does, the right does the opposite of this. They, you know, like you said, they, they, they do, you know, hagiography of their, you know, of their heroes. And they, they, not only do they, they may not even dismiss traumas, but they'll come up with excuses for why it wasn't actually so bad. And,

And you have it at the end, which I find really interesting to think about this line where you say the longer crits fail to promote a critical memory politics of the left, the more the right will sweep it in to do it for them, far more brazenly, further eroding the credibility with which the left rightfully demands self-critical histories of the West. It is time for left to change course, not to do less critical theory, but to do more, not to become less woke, but to wager a new wokeness. The left

that does this will be a left worth joining. I mean, I think this is really interesting because it feels like the opposite of what people are advocating for. So I think this is a really interesting perspective. And I just, you know, would love to hear you elaborate on a little more. One way I think to understand it

right? Some people find it a bit exhausting to go through, you know, all of these concepts and histories. And so another way to do it, I think, is very, very simple. And I call it the tale of two lovers, right? So lover number one says to you, you always leave stacks of dirty dishes in the sink and your socks on the floor. Lover number two

You always leave stacks of dirty dishes in the sink and your socks on the floor. But I admit that I too often leave the lights on and I've probably wasted too much money. Which one is more credible? Probably the second one. And notice that the second one didn't need to give up its critique, but completely recontextualizes it.

Because so much of what's going on, and we've particularly heard this since November and then since the inauguration of Trump, right?

um is we're not speaking to people we're not reaching them i don't claim to have the complete remedy to that i don't think there is one complete remedy that's these problems of communication can be very very difficult it depends on your audience their circumstances and so forth but maybe just one point to bear in mind is how receptive are going are people going to be

to people telling them everything that's wrong with their history, everything in which they are implicated, essentially everything for which they are to blame, even if it's never quite said that way, and for which they carry centuries of historical responsibility from people who never do the same.

And so you might have also noticed in my book, one of my closing sentences is to progressives, if they want to move forward in a better direction, if they really want to become progressives, don't tell us, show us. There's a lot that we were not able to cover in this interview, but I think what is useful about it is that

it addresses these issues without engaging in whataboutism, without, you know, it really doesn't feel like you're coming at it from the point of view of like, you know, these are my enemies and I'm going to critique them. I feel like you're coming at it from a perspective of care where you actually do care about critical theory and its methods. You're not trying to say that its methods are necessarily effective.

that or that they shouldn't be used or that there aren't useful things that they've uncovered. I really do encourage people to read it to actually see what you say. So yeah, thank you so much for being a guest in the New Books Network. It was really wonderful to speak with you. Thank you very much, Caleb. It's been fascinating for me to listen to your own approach and I've enjoyed this very, very much. Thank you so much.

In Indiana, summer means more than sunshine. It's hiking miles and miles of trails to magnificent views and cruising through caves on underground river rides. It's spending the night in a floating cabin and scuba diving into your next big adventure. It's riding a horse and buggy through historic towns and camping with elephants at a wildlife park. It's anything but ordinary. Plan your trip at inindiana.com/summer.