What is critical integral theory?

[Edward theurj Berge]

This is the name of a new article by Daniel Gustav Anderson at Integral World. Following are some excerpts reminiscent of our recent conversations at IPS on OOO. 

"You need to specify an ontology, a set of concepts that account for the stub-your-toe world of experience and limitations.

 

"I proposed to read Nagarjuna's central concept of dependent origination through the diction of Marxist and post-Marxist categories.

 

"The world is understood holistically, as a whole and by reference to the relation of the parts to the whole. The category of contradiction is of particular importance here, as it toward ways in which the totality of relations is conflicted.

"What does it mean for something to be a form (a coherence) that is 'empty'? Its arising, persisting, and decaying, and the forms these take (the particular ways in which something comes up and sticks around), are contingent on causes and conditions external to that thing. It does not emerge Providentially from World-Spirit, but instead is produced mechanically (dependent origination, the authentic meaning of 'emptiness').

 

"Any coherence at any level is a totality, which is to say it is structured in relation to the parts that compose it, that the form those relations take is itself historically contingent and thus capable of becoming transformed, and that the totality typically takes a conflictual or divided form.

 

"These amount to a preliminary attempt to think the Buddhist concept of dependent origination through Marxian or at least post-Hegelian categories: a co-constitutive dialectic of consciousness and conditions, subject and object, where 'consciousness' is itself a product of causes and conditions, and 'conditions' are as well.

 

"Integral studies has, historically, emphasized the transformation of consciousness. People change their minds, and this is said to produce or induce other changes. However, these developments are rarely specified except in terms of consciousness, in terms of spirituality. Such transformations are of first importance in my view. I am committed to such a practice. However, in my experience it is just not enough to just change your mind about something, to experience a 'paradigm shift.' Kensho and satori are interventions, they mark beginnings, but they are not ends in themselves.

 

"The second intervention is a long, long salmon-swim upstream, a commitment to a path of compassionate and conscious action, to the end, without compromises. And it is done with others because it cannot be done properly on one's own. It allows one to create situations in which the first intervention may be possible for others. This is called “teaching” or 'pedagogy.'"

[Edward theurj Berge]

The above article was shortly followed at Integral World by “What is integral critical theory” by Joe Corbett. He too recognized the foundations of critical theory in the Frankfurt School, which in turn was strongly influenced by Marx and Weber. He notes that critical theory's raison d'etre is “human emancipation from oppression,” hence why I chose this particular forum (town hall). As Anderson notes, one must take their 'enlightenment' into the world and help others. Otherwise it is so much narcissism selling product under the guise of emancipation. Moreover, Corbett indicates that a main premise of critical theory, a la Marx, is that the socio-economic sphere must be transformed first for the vast majority of people to even approximate anything vaguely resembling personal liberation. Even Kennilingam recognized as much in Excerpt A.

Here are a few excerpts:

“There is plenty in the AQAL model as Ken Wilber has articulated it to criticize as not being integral, not least of which is his systematic exclusion of the category of justice as being on equal footing with 'the big three' of truth, beauty, and goodness....don't expect Ken and the inner integral circle to address what is most needed in today's world of global crisis, as the aperspectival analysis of the integral map coming out of the corporate spiritually of Wilber Inc. these days is clearly more interested in working with power and money rather than challenging it in the name of justice and human emancipation.

“During these times of the greatest social inequality since the early days of industrialism and the Gilded Age, tax breaks are given to the rich, bailouts are given to the fat-cat Wall Street perpetrators of financial ruin, jobs are outsourced, and homes are foreclosed on while at the very same time cutbacks in the social-safety-net are proposed for those most vulnerable in society, even as military budgets remain untouched, unchallenged, and are even expanded. This is the logic of the day, a day ruled by an oligarchy of corporate-military-politicians and their neoliberal free market policies of unfettered global investment capital backed by imperialist military strength. These are the relations of production that Marx would be talking about today, and that Eisenhower talked about in his farewell speech. They are also the special moneyed interests that FDR spoke of as his opponents when he proposed the progressive New Deal legislation. They have been and remain today the undeclared enemies of freedom and democracy within a context of social equality, i.e. the American Dream.

“The structural development of capitalism into a military-police machine of corporate democracy with longstanding amoral and immoral tendencies --- a 'me first' (red), 'we're the best' (blue), and 'just the facts ma'am' (orange) complex of moral development --- must become the target of critical inquiry, and lead to a countervailing moral imperative for action against and/or reform of the current social relations of production that are currently based on a red-blue-orange foundation of development. The other option is to remain silent and watch as the conditions of development for a higher level of civilization in the future are eroded by the corporate-media and the vested interests of power and money as they attempt to hold on to their privileges amid the encroaching development (and degradation) of the forces of production.

“Ultimately, the proper use of integral critical theory is not to talk about it, but to do it, to engage in the practice of critique of the cultural and social forces of domination and oppression in both their overt (gross) and covert (subtle) forms for the purpose of liberating the bodies and minds of people who can then achieve spiritual communion by engaging in equitable and sustainable political and economic activity. Only then will we have the collective capacity to finally move beyond the corporate-state, to even greater frontiers of the human imagination, soul, and spirit.”

[James Barrow]

Amen and Hallelujah!

Thanks Ed.

P.S. I'd never even picked up on this before!:"not least of which is his systematic exclusion of the category of justice as being on equal footing with 'the big three' of truth, beauty, and goodness...."

Is this a correct or accurate reading of Wilber's work? Perhaps Ken has tried to include Justice under Goodness?

[Edward theurj Berge]

I'd take both Anderson and Corbett with a grain of salt, but I recommend that with Kennilingam or anyone's view, including my own. I do though think both Anderson and Corbett see a real lack of social activism in trademarked kennilingus. Indeed one can find innumerable references to justice or compassion as an ingredient in the Buddhist-influenced argot of AQAL, but look at what they do, at what socio-economic policies they enact in their own business and management model. Recall for example the "integral global capitalism" thread, which Anderson kicked off.

And perhaps a significant part of why this is so is the more idealistic influences of Hegel and less of the critical theories of Marx? Again we get some focus on Marx in Excerpt A, for example, but is it enacted? Granted Kennilingam was heavily influenced by Habermas, who came out of the Frankfurt School. But it is a very selective reading and leaves out a lot of the political activism necessary to enact the kind of reforms that bring us to a post-capitalist world, like say Rifkin is doing (and within a developmental frame.)

[Edward theurj Berge]

Also see the thread on Tom Murray. The first article quoted is about critical theories. Also Bhaskar's critical realism, referenced in the OOO thread and in Bonnie's most recent thread. They all tend to have similar complaints with kennilingus.

 

[Edward theurj Berge]

Another of Corbett's IW articles is "Social transformation." A few select quotes that resonate with Rifkin:

"In this article I will give a critique of the social institutions of capitalism and the injustice it generates by using all four quadrants, and then I will suggest possible transition strategies as well as future social-system scenarios that can be facilitated by and generated out of an AQAL analysis.

"An eco-tech energy macro-foundation (UR) would create more equity between humans and nature, and possibly save our collective lives in the process, because it would be more difficult to exploit human labor itself using renewable energy sources, as they must be decentralized for them to work effectively. Empowering labor with decentralized energy technologies can be a first step towards restoring balance with nature, as well as reducing alienated and exploited labor based on a highly centralized and unequal organization of tyrannical capitalist institutions that are made possible by a fossil fuel energy foundation.

"The institutions of a political-economy based on a decentralized eco-tech energy foundation would likewise need to be radically transformed from a centralized oligarchy of political, industrial, financial, and military elites to an eco-socialist set of social relations (LR), based on decentralized local communities linked to larger provincial, state, regional, national, and global institutions that keep the collective social and natural environmental interests, rather than only (or even primarily) private power/profit interests, at the center of their efforts. This in turn would provide the context for local and global cultures to be based not on a corporate-consumer model of greed and envy, but on a compassionate socialist-democratic model of humanistic solidarity and soulful community (LL) in harmony and balance with both nature and other human beings.

"As for the structure of the self, serving as a micro-foundation at the other end of the human reality matrix (UL)....with fossil fuel addiction broken and the hyper-images and hegemonic representations of corporate-media tamed by decentralized eco-socialist institutions, values, and beliefs....a contemplative creativity (genius) of voluntary self-sacrifice (altruism) could emerge from a self that is no longer alienated, exploited, oppressed, and media-manipulated, and that is culturally and socially supported by enlightened (democratic-socialist and spiritual, green and yellow) values, beliefs, and institutions.

"So how can we actually get from here to there?... We must begin with the LR quadrant, with the social relations and institutions of society and the inequities (injustices) and pathologies they generate."

[Edward theurj Berge]

Another resource, for some of the newer members not familiar to avenues we've already traversed, is eco-transitions. It too is an integral critical theory of where we've been and are going. And from an integrally informed, and previously kennilingus-approved, economist, Christian Arnsperger. I also referenced him in the progressive economics thread. A few quotes from the latter:

“Such [interior] work is an integral part of what economics is about, namely, to contribute to not only a positive description of how today’s capitalism works but also to a critical description of how tomorrow’s economy ought to work if it’s to be a support for the conscious evolution of all of us (or as many of us as possible) along all (or as many as possible) developmental lines….[a] theory or paradigm [that] respects the necessities of emancipation-fostering methodological pluralism…. This would imply an economics that’s constructively critical of material reductionism and of capitalist, growth-oriented and wage-employment-oriented, competition-driven markets.

"It might—to take a hard and sensitive issue—show us that along certain lines of moral or psychodynamic development, Soviet Russia in the 1960s, or Cuba in the 1970s, was clearly superior to the United States of the 2000s in the sense that, for instance, Soviets and Cubans had developed a more communal attitude in some sectors of social life (though by no means in all…) and also that communist principles implied that basic social provisions, lodging, health care, etc., were to be provided freely to all citizens, regardless of their ability to purchase these things on markets—something the less evolved US mentality makes unthinkable.”

[Edward theurj Berge]

From Anderson’s “Of syntheses and surprises” we again see some relations with Bryant's OOO, as well as Rifkin's laterality in the next techno-economic phase.

“If Integral theory’s reliance on synthesis as an evolutionary, cosmic force is to be reconsidered, even revised out of a critical Integral theory—what is available to do the work demanded of that vacated concept?... In place of synthesis, a (critical) Integral theory should aim for a precise kind of praxis, becoming, which arises from productive relationships and multiplicities—what Ziporyn calls transformative recontextualizations, which amount to surprises. And in place of evolution and concomitant stratification, a critical (Integral) theory calls for revolution—itself nothing short of a miracle, as Zizek observes. 

“Deleuze and Guattari give a series of negations that help explicate what becoming is not. First, it is not a ‘correspondence of relations,’ nor a ‘resemblance, an imitation, or at the limit, an identification’ (p. 237). ‘To become is not to progress or regress along a series….’Becoming is a rhizome, not a classificatory or genealogical tree.’ 

“Becoming defined in this way gives space for the transformational practices valued by Integral theorists without the counterproductive ideological baggage integration-as-synthesis carries, and is therefore a valuable tool for a critical Integral theory” (74 -6).