James Lindsay of New Discourses has been doing a fantastic dive into the philosophy of Neo-Marxism over the past couple of years, trudging through their many obtuse essays, and explaining what they mean by their slipper language. However it’s a project that some might overlook due to the sheer verbiage which our opponents bring to the table. Critical Theory is a den of linguistic vipers, who never say what they mean, and embed their abhorrent philosophies in mendaciously pleasant terms. And as if that’s not bad enough, when sane people do bother to pay attention to their theories and plans, the Critical Theorists are often mistaken for simply being stupid or misguided, causing many to dismiss them as irrelevant. For instance, Robert Heinlein’s off-hand critique of the “Labour Theory of Value” in Starship Troopers:

Mr. Dubois had said, “Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.

“These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value — the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives — and to illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use.”

Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

If their theory can be dismissed so readily, then why bother reading any further?

The reason to go deeper is because their philosophy is not merely some misapprehension of economics, history, or class relations; it’s a fully worked out ontological perspective, which naturally prescribes certain behaviours – very destructive and evil behaviours. It subverts the disempowered and disenfranchised, employing them as foot soldiers against the mainstream, but not for their own benefit – this is the mistake so many conservatives make – the goal is never equality, but the subversion of everything, not just of the ‘oppressor’, but of the ‘oppressed’ as well.

Neo-Marxism is a fully realized theory and practice (praxis), and by defining it we can recognize it; as well as recognizing when it’s baiting us into attacking the wrong thing. To make it comprehensible we’ll delineate into three aspects. It’s:   

• Worldview: Utopian Gnosticism
• Political Goal: Anti-incrementalist Subversion
• Methodology: Conflict and Immiseration

Each leads naturally from the other, and comes from an aberrant, but comprehensible, psychology. It would not be incorrect to describe it as a materialist religion for the mentally ill. We’ll start with their apprehension of reality itself.

Worldview: Utopian Gnosticism

Let’s look at their ontological worldview; what they consider to be the fundamental construction of reality. The first aspect of it is utopian: these people truly believe that ahead of us lies a possible future where Heaven descend onto Earth. Labour is no longer laborious. Sex is unbridled but free of jealousy. Injustice is never felt, neither at the hands of criminals nor by way of an unjust court system. The arrival of the communist utopia enables and empowers everyone to live their fullest life at every moment – imagine something akin to the Star Trek universe, only with more sex.

A reasonable man might ask how this perfect society would work. And what would the Critical Theorists say? They haven’t the faintest clue. They can’t explain this Earthly paradise any more than a Christian can explain what we’ll be doing in Heaven. It’s simply an article of faith that Capitalism (or Neoliberalism, or, or, or…) will eventually give way to it once it collapses. Stalinism wasn’t a failure, it was just evidence that there was an additional step in between Capitalism and True Communism. Even if they wanted to understand it, they couldn’t – while they might be queer radicals, who’ve thrown off the shackles of heteronormativity, patriarchy, and consumerist desire – they’re nonetheless steeped in the reactionary assumptions of the old regime. Just as no saint is ever holy enough, no radical is ever radical enough; and this leads into the second aspect of their worldview: Gnosticism.

Gnosticism is the belief that what Christians call God – the Being from which truth, beauty, and justice flows – is in fact the Demiurge. A pretender to the throne. We are beings of infinite creative spirit, created by the Source, trapped in a moralistic melodrama by a Demiurge which feeds off of our energy. For a literary example of this, consider Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus – the story of a Roman General who does everything right, sacrifices his sons in battle for the Glory of Rome, who suffers the rape of his daughter and endless indignities, all in service to the corrupt child-Emperor Saturninus who inherited the throne while Andronicus was away on campaign.

The more that Andronicus follows the rules of Roman virtue, the more his family is debased, and the stronger his enemy Saturninus becomes; until finally he sees through the deception of obedience to a false authority, and exacts his revenge.

Without a doubt, this is a story which plays out in human society all the time. We’re frequently subject to incompetent and unjust authorities (whether it be parents, bosses, or even political leaders) and much ink has been spilt discussing at what point open rebellion is correct and justified. Gnosticism takes this a step further.

What if the Demiurge itself – that which we mistake for God – intentionally manufactured truth, beauty, and justice to keep us spinning our wheels? Like an abusive parent who deems one child the good child, and another child the bad child, the Demiurge made some people beautiful and others ugly (as defined by the standard which they invented). The good child is rewarded, the bad child punished – but both are participating in a false consciousness defined by the abusive parent. The solution isn’t to try and conform even harder to the parent’s demands (which the bad child is doomed to fail, while the good child doomed to succeed), but to abandon their definition of ‘good boy/bad girl’ all together.

When moral behaviour leads to success and praise, you’re only being ensnared into blind obedience to the Demiurge. When immoral behaviour leads to guilt, you’re still adhering to their script. The correct path is to do the opposite of what the Demiurge demands, trusting in your infinite creative power which comes from the Source. And thus we see that some Gnostic cults turned to rampant hedonism, because there was no sin from which Christ couldn’t forgive, and to believe otherwise was to doubt in Him; while others embraced rabid asceticism, refusing all physical pleasures (including eating, loving, and raising children) as deceptions meant to entrap one.

While the Neo-Marxists are materialists who don’t acknowledge a supernatural reality, they nonetheless have a Demiurge in their worldview; for them, the Demiurge is Society. Every single one of us was born into this world with arbitrary standards, and impossible expectations placed upon us. “Boys do this, girls do that, be a star athlete, learn to play the piano, never lie, deny your sexual urges!” Of course, the sane person acknowledges this; that the rules taught to children are ‘training wheels’ and adults must learn to internalize virtue. In one way or another, we’re all Titus Andronicus, learning to overcome the demands placed upon us by our parents, society and teachers – to integrate the suppressed shadow self. But, being Gnostics, the Neo-Marxists cranked the dial up to eleven, where it broke off; it’s not that society can become better, and us better integrated, it’s that all of society needs to be torn down!

There’s a promised Utopia ahead of us, where everything just works without effort – but to achieve it we need to destroy all of the preconceptions and societal structures which stand in our way. Utopian Gnosticism. Understanding it like this, you can see why so many people who come from abusive homes are attracted to this ideology. Breaking away from your parents, and defining yourself on your own terms, is normal and healthy; but if you were raised by a Cluster B manipulator, a complete reset becomes necessary.

It’s from this worldview that their political methodology arises: Anti-Incrementalist Subversion.

Political Goal: Anti-Incrementalist Subversion

Imagine an abusive parent who cancels Pizza Night because the bad child failed at an impossible task, or who arbitrarily suspends with their allowance for the sake of exerting control. What’s the worst thing that could happen after the child confronts them?

The worst outcome for the child and their siblings is if the parent agreed to some reasonable rules of conduct.

With a normal (fallible) parent this would be the ideal outcome. The rules weren’t intentionally abusive, they were simply miscalibrated. But in the case of an abuser, the whole point of the rules was to find you guilty no matter what you did – you’re living in Kafka’s The Trial and a better lawyer is only going to drag out the torturous process even longer.

In such a situation incremental improvements are only going to make it worse, and if the foundation of your worldview is Utopian Gnosticism, this is the last thing that you want (that is: you’ve already assumed the malign intentions of your societal institutions, nothing they can do will convince you that they have a good intent).

Marx predicted that the working classes would rise up against the Capitalists, overthrowing the old order, and ushering in his utopia. What actually happened was that unions formed, demanded better living standards, and won them. And so the workers lost interest in fighting for a communist utopia. Their life wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty good. They were now invested in the system.

Marcuse identified the racial strife in America as the next possible source of conflict; he advocated for a radical “ghetto army” to be used to tear down the establishment. But then the Civil Rights movement happened. Concessions were made, and Blacks were finally (mostly?) treated as legal equals to Whites, and many of them began to advance professionally. Suddenly they became invested in the system as well.

Finally the Queer theorists identified the homosexual as the revolutionary wave; but then Gay Rights happened. Instead of administering electric shocks in asylums, the systems was now allowing homosexuals to marry. Now they were invested as well.

Incremental improvements erode the support for radical change, and for the Marxist this means that Utopia is that much further away. The goal was never to improve worker pay, or create a more equitable justice system, or to allow homosexuals to live unmolested – the goal was to achieve utopia and each one of these victories for people was a loss for liberation, and a victory for the Societal Demiurge. To quote Marcuse:

“If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.”

Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

The better your life gets, the more it’s a sign that you’ve been entrapped by the Demiurge. And thus finally we get to the practical policies which the Neo-Marxists espouse:

Methodology: Conflict and Immiseration

In the home of an abusive parent, all of the children are being abused; the Bad Child and the Good Child alike. It’s more obvious to the Bad Child that their parent is acting unjustly, but to receive unjust praise for adhering to arbitrary standards is equally pathological; it’s crucial for the good child to see that all of these rewards are just part of an unhealthy, abusive game, in which the only winning move is not to play.

Thus do the critical theorists wage war on all of the achievements of social progress which we have witnessed over the past century. They exacerbate racial grievances, make young people unemployable, alienate men and women from one another, and undermine every institution which works to build people up, while subverting social movements which show the promise of creating a positive change.

We saw this in the Occupy Wallstreet movement, when its anti-bank bailout stance was undermined by the infiltration of the Progressive Stack.

We saw this with the outrage over the death of George Floyd, initially a societal-wide backlash at militarized police, it became an coopted by the worst elements of the Black community, aided and abetted by White Antifa, so that it could burn down Black communities while setting back race relations by fifty years.

We see this in their hatred of the working class, and their open support of corporations which exploit slavery in the third world.

And we see this in their support of pedophiles, and the grooming programs they’re implementing throughout public educations. In particular, as noted in James Lindsay’s recent podcast on the topic, their hatred of Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” program which made a material improvement in the lives of teenage homosexuals; improving the lives of the oppressed steals soldiers from their army.

It’s not a bug it’s a feature!

They truly believe that any material improvement in the lives of the oppressed is just a trick by the Societal Demiurge to enslave more people into its system; and that only by breaking out of this system is true Liberation possible, that Utopian Star Trek future which is worth any sacrifice… any sacrifice. It is only through the ruination of everyone and everything that perfection might finally be achieved.

Conclusion: Stop Attacking the Pawns

When a matador fights a bull, the first thing he needs to do is exhaust it. On his own, he’s no match for 2000 lbs of angry auroch. But by having the bull charge time after time at his red cape, he drains its stamina until it can be safely dispatched by his rapier.

The Critical Theorists employ a similar sleight of hand through their social advocacy.

They employ ‘victim groups’ as a catspaw. Homosexuals who don’t want to be electroshocked, transsexuals who don’t want to be murdered, women who don’t want to be raped, and ethnic minorities who don’t want to be discriminated against – all quite reasonable desires. Then they promote queer theory and sex-ed for 8 year olds, Drag Queen Story Hour with sex offenders, transgendered athletes in women’s sports, and violent, supremacist anti-White Hate Groups

Red Team looks at this and believes these groups are monolithic. Blue Team turns a blind eye to the excesses, and accuses Red Team of bigotry. The media works tirelessly to inflame both sides into anger with their selective reporting. Few bother to ask which agenda their leaders are truly serving, and attempt to speak to those on the other side.

We see Critical Theory’s rotten fruits in the killing fields of the 20^th Century. How much more evil could Stalin have inflicted with facial scanning? What could Pol Pot have done with AI algorithms? What if Mao’s Red Guard had been sexually groomed, as well as radicalized? What sort of endless horror could a totalitarian riding on Marx’s coattails wreak with today’s social and information technology? Let us pray that we don’t find out. And let us labour to restore the foundations which made the West strong and free. The longer we fall for the frame of two-party polarization, the closer Pandemonium gets.