The view that the Faculty at most Universities and Colleges lean “left” has become something of a truism, and given how one defines “left”, also true. Multiple surveys have documented that University and College Faculty, especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences, identify as Democrats of Liberals, and do so disproportionately and overwhelmingly in comparison to the general population. Though many allege the ubiquity of Marxism and Radicalism, with some exceptions, it would be more accurate in my view to define this zeitgeist not necessarily as “left” or “radical”, but as mostly confused and somewhat misguided social liberalism. Yet coupled with the spread of DEI programs at elite private Universities and State Flagship Universities and extensive protests against Israeli actions in Gaza on many campuses, this has helped to fuel a generalized conservative backlash against what is alleged to be “woke progressive” indoctrination of college education. Conservatives, and even some centrist liberals, however are divided as to how to best counter what they view as the woke progressive orthodoxy between those who emphasize the need for government policies to clean house and those arguing simply for greater academic freedom. In a recent conference sponsored by the Buckingham University Center for Heterodox Social Science, Political Scientist Eric Kaufman held a conference to promote what he labels as “Heterodox Social Science” coupled with a manifesto for a Post Progressive Social Science, with the goal of uniting both factions around a common goal. Kaufman also suggests in passing that Old Leftists might be willing to join his coalition. As I have noted before in previous posts, I am indeed critical of much of the discourse that has passed for leftism or radicalism as well as efforts to suppress unpopular speech. Yet as an Old Leftist, whose intellectual influences range from World Systems Analysts to Original Institutional Economics, I see little use for Kaufman’s “Post Progressivism” which strikes me as an equally confused garble of a wide range of right wing canards rather than any attempt at actual heterodox thinking. While Kaufman has written a number of academic books and articles, a detailed analysis and refutation is beyond this post. Consequently, I will confine myself primarily, with one exception as noted below to what is wrong with Kaufman’s Manifesto.
The terms “woke” and “progressive” for the most part have no concrete meaning. The origin of the word woke itself is generally attributed to discourse amongst African Americans who had come to see through the guise of racism in society. More recently, it began to be used to describe one who had experience a political awakening and come to realize and understand the nature of the deep structural inequalities inherent in late Capitalism, or in other words, a kind of shaking off of Hegelian false consciousness. Unfortunately, much of this came to be identified with extremes of identity politics and moral censoriousness towards perceived semantic infractions and thus woke became the new political correctness. If anything, the term progressive is even more difficult to define in any rigorous fashion. The original Progressive movement in American politics in the early 20th century, far from being a coherent political ideology, often encompassed ideas and tendencies that had little in common. Progressivism in the early 20th century had its dark side but its better side can be identified with anti-monopoly legislation, direct elections of Senators, food and drug safety, early support for civil rights. In the Social Sciences, the progressive ideal is best represented by theorists such as Thorstein Veblen, Lester Frank Ward and John Dewey and in politics, by the candidacy of Robert La Folette. Yet today “woke progressive” has become a generalized term of abuse by the right deployed to lump together a wide range of ideas and positions that don’t always fit together under a vague umbrella of what is allegedly “Cultural Marxism”, which with more space I believe I could show is at best an oxymoron.
To Kaufman’s partial credit, he does seem to demonstrate at least some awareness of the complexity and contradictions of America’s Progressive era and its connection to the later New Deal Liberalism of Roosevelt. Kaufman’s main thesis, as expressed in his book, The Third Awokening, is that Social Liberalism, not Marxism, is responsible for today’s Progressive bias in the Social Sciences. In a somewhat interesting, but also to my way of thinking somewhat confused blog post of material that did not make it into his book, Kaufman explores this theme. Yet while I am sympathetic to the argument that it is in actuality Social Liberalism, not Marxism or Radicalism that is responsible for many of the extremes of identity politics today, I find his treatment of the issue to be unsatisfactory. On a somewhat minor point, he correctly identifies the Anthropologist Franz Boas as one of the main advocates of strong cultural determinism, he misidentifies John Dewey and William James as advocates of this view, whereas Dewey and James were actually early advocates of habit-instinct psychology who exerted very strong influences on Veblen’s Darwinian economics. Similarly, he does not address the very real distinction between the old Social Liberalism of the New Deal and early Civil Rights movement,and the rejection of the old Civil Rights New Deal Liberalism and of Social Democracy by many of the later Critical Race Theorists. Predictably, his discussion of the history of the Old Socialists Party USA is incomplete and ignores the role that anti-racists played in the Socialist Party.
My argument herein, is more than simple picking of nits as it points to the generally sloppy way in which many conservatives, Kaufman included, conflate and misunderstand complex and often contradictory ideas and in so doing, present an inaccurate picture of the history of social theory and of contemporary ideas as well. One of the strongest areas of confusion is in the way that the potential conflict between “equality of opportunity” and “equality of outcomes” is presented. To the old advocates of the early Civil Rights Movement, the creation of equal opportunity in the form of prohibitions against discrimination would lead quickly to rough equality in outcomes between social groups in the US. It was the failure of this kind of equality to actually emerge, not any desire for a gini coefficient of zero or a utopian compensation schemed of from “each according to their ability to each according to their needs” that gave rise to Critical Race Theory’s rejection of the narrower focus of the Civil Rights era. Similarly, the awareness that in the job market that a black male might have an advantage over a black female was central to arguments about intersectionality. One can certainly criticize the diagnosis or prescription of the Critical Race Theorists and others, but one should do so by first engaging seriously with their actual arguments. While Critical Race Theorists may have been influenced by Marxists, their prescriptions in the end primarily aim at opening presence amongst elites to equal representation by historically excluded groups. And in that sense it is ultimately an argument for a kind of social liberalism, and not for any kind of actual Socialism. Notably, Kaufman himself sometimes suggests awareness of this as he sometimes describes his opponents as “Cultural Socialists” ( a term that is near meaningless) and “Cultural Liberals” (a term that at least has some connection to actual positions).
I have spent some time in an effort to at least partially unravel the confusing mish mash of contradictory ideas that Conservative like Kaufman attack, because this same confusion is present in the Manifesto itself. Similarly, the call for a Post Progressive Social Science in The Manifesto itself, rather than simply critiquing the excesses of identity politics and campus censorship, proposes a more general research program that suggests an ideologically blinded approach to the issues at hand.
The Manifesto begins with an uncharacteristically commendable acknowledgement of the historically exclusionary nature of academic institutions and the role played by “the left wing movement that came to be known as progressivism” played in opening the University up to participation by historically marginalized groups. The Manifesto goes on to allege, with some justification I might add, that the historical concern with opening Universities up too often degenerated into its own form of orthodoxy that has often been advanced dogmatically. How much of a problem this actually has been however can be debated. My own discipline of Economics may be unique in that dogmatic defenses of free markets have historically been, and continue to be, significant features of mainstream Economics often to the exclusion of structural and social explanations, while admittedly, the other Social Sciences less so. The Manifesto goes on to assert that only explanations rooted in oppression, rather than culture, demography or history are admitted as means of explaining divergent experiences between differing social groups. Meanwhile it alleges that explanations rooted in biology are excluded.
This latter point is difficult to entangle. To the extent that explanations centered on “oppression” of out groups by in groups have any explanatory power, it is precisely because they incorporate the historical evolution of social structures into explaining the continued presence of social inequalities. There is a vast literature on whether or how culture as a variable can explain differing outcomes. But if “culture of poverty” or other similar explanations have largely been rejected by the Social Sciences in favor of historical structural explanations, it was at least initially because the culture of poverty did a poor job empirically of explaining outcomes. To the extent that culture as a variable is used of course, one first needs to define what one means by culture (by my count there are at least five or six different definitions commonly used in the Social Sciences) and explain how culture actually differs amongst different groups. For the most part, and let us hope even among the post progressives, explanations rooted in biological differences between groups have been rightly rejected. I will credit Steven Pinker, a signatory of this document, with understanding at least that much. It is odd however that the same document first calls for a cultural, historical explanation and then switches tracks to insisting on openness to biological explanations for human nature, with no further comment. I am perhaps overly optimistic, but I operate on the premise that for the most part, we are actually all gene culture interactionists now, while differing on how far the cultural kite can depart from the genetic kite holder. I would argue quite far, as would in actuality any Social Scientist who explains divergent economic performance amongst nations in terms of institutional differences.
The next part of The Manifesto predictably runs together a wide range of issues, asserting that “wokeness” has come to dominate the Social Sciences. In applying the principle of Charity, I don’t necessarily expect a short Manifesto to provide in depth explanations or justifications. Though I am unsure exactly what wokeness is, at it is presented, I think I know it when I see it and I would tend to be agin’ it, yet I have yet to be persuaded that it has quite the omnipresent power of the panopticon that the Manifesto implies. That noted, the call for an exploration of how this particular viewpoint has spread in the Social Sciences is warranted, but such analysis needs to begin with concrete references to actual phenomena that give us reasonable descriptions of what we are actually trying to understand.
The Manifesto concludes with a general call for increased openness in the Social Sciences. On the surface, such a call is unobjectionable. Social Scientists should always reject dogmatic, simplistic explanations, regardless of their roots or good intentions. I agree that Conservatives have a necessary place in the Social Sciences. My own intellectual development, though clearly in opposition to Conservative ideas, has benefited from sharpening my own views against Austrian Economics, Rational Expectations Theory and Milton Friedman’s earlier Monetarism. Indeed, let us have genuine pluralism in the Social Sciences and let it begin with Economists making room for its own dissident traditions.
If one were to take The Manifesto in isolation as simply a plea for Radicals and Liberals to show greater openness to Conservatives and Conservative thought in academia, and as a call to an end to any kind of enforced orthodoxy, I would enthusiastically sign such a document. As matters stand however, such calls ring hollow. In actuality these calls often come accompanied, as in my own State with efforts to simply impose another orthodoxy on the curriculum. Hence, as matters stand, I doubt that many “classical leftists” will sign on to this campaign and speaking for myself, I for one will certainly not.
Citizen Rat 