From its start, Critical Theorists have been clear that helping the individual thrive is not the theory’s goal. The aims of Critical Theory—and Critical Race Theory—are much higher: they seek to eliminate the structures and “rules of conduct” of society.
Critical Theory’s purpose, Horkheimer says, “is not, either, in its conscious intention or in its objective significance, the better functioning of any element in the [social] structure. On the contrary, it is suspicious of the very categories of better, useful, appropriate, productive and valuable, as these are understood in the present order.”
The freedom to trade inherent in capitalism and democracy, Horkheimer understood, was very good at lifting people out of poverty. Marx’s error, Horkheimer told a documentary maker in 1969, was that he
believed that capitalist society would necessarily be overcome by the solidarity of the workers due to their increasing impoverishment. This idea is false. The society in which we live doesn’t impoverish workers, but helps them toward a better life. And moreover, Marx didn’t see at all that freedom and justice are dialectical concepts: The more freedom, the less justice, and the more justice, the less freedom.
Today, Critical Race Theorists also oppose an economy based on the free exchange of goods because it ineluctably leads to capitalism, and capitalism in their view ineluctably leads to exploitation, the “heightening of social tensions,” unbearable inequality, constant crises, wars, etc. The bourgeoisie, which is based on this type of economy and on the “patriarchal family,” is self-interested and “is not governed by any plan; it is not consciously directed to a general goal” of the common good, as Horkheimer put it.
CRT theorists see capitalism’s disparities as a function of race, not class. Capitalism, all the leading CRT proponents believe, is therefore “racist.” CRT merely adds an R to the name; it reimagines class warfare as race warfare.