A Smart Catholic Critique of the Liberal Progressive Project

James Kalb’s The Decomposition of Man is a fine book, one particularly helpful for the increasing number of ordinary people trying to make sense of the current cultural milieu of the United States, the West, and beyond. Kalb’s work aptly explains the origins and workings of what we may call the “progressive liberal project,” widely disseminated in the past twenty-five years or so and which proposes the celebration of diversity and the promotion of inclusiveness as key ideas around which the social order should be organized. In this sense, Kalb’s book can be added to similar works by Douglas Murray, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose, with the difference that unlike the classical liberal position adopted by these authors, Kalb writes from a Catholic standpoint, one that resembles what Tracey Rowland calls a theology mediated by “strict observance Thomism.”[1]

Kalb’s bold claim in the first part of the book is that, despite its liberating claims, the challenge to traditionally basic identity markers—sex, family, community, national culture, and religion, for example—as oppressive social constructs is really a manipulative maneuver. Under the guise of liberation from social structures, such a strategy becomes a way to detach human persons from elements basic to their wellbeing and turn them into isolated and atomized individuals. This move is supported by state bureaucracies and transnational corporations so they can use people for their own purposes, the ultimate aim of which is increasing the power they already have. Kalb’s view here resembles Max Weber’s understanding of modern society as destructive of community links, one that becomes a bureaucratized and rationalized impersonal body. He thinks the disintegration of traditional identities that, with their strengths and weaknesses, have allowed human beings to understand themselves and their place in society is regrettable. Dissolving identities will worsen the problems that disempowered groups in society may already face, rather than solving them.

Kalb makes the claim that what lies behind the progressive liberal attack on human identity is an ideal that affirms that everything should be made equal, efficient, and rational. This, in turn, gives birth to a technocratic ideal which insists that “rational action consists precisely in the efficient, orderly and technically rational use of available resources for whatever goals happen to be chosen.” At the root of this ideal, Kalb finds intellectual and material causes such as credentialism, scientism, subjectivism, an “industrial” view of society, the mechanization of work, and the de facto rule of economic and political elites. However, Kalb’s understanding of one root of this contemporary malaise is especially important: the change in our understanding of knowledge from the contemplation of ultimate realities from which one receives guidance for prudent action, to a model of knowledge as a device whose purpose is to control the world around us through science and its technological applications. This notion coincides to a degree with what Pope Francis has denounced as a “technocratic paradigm” and “modern anthropocentrism,” although from a different perspective.

The liberal progressive project is a quasi-religion, and its god is a jealous one.

In the above situation, traditional identities rooted in such things as sex distinctions, defined family forms, inherited cultural communities, and religion are rendered as having no public relevance and are redefined as mere alternative options of personal preference. They are thus surreptitiously replaced by identities that serve the purposes of bureaucracies and corporations: identities found in career, bureaucratic position, wealth, and lifestyle choices. All this is effectively enforced by liberal progressives, paradoxically, under the guise of tolerance and inclusiveness through the disciplining of language (political correctness). Anyone who may not want to accept it is considered dangerous and hateful.

In the second part of the book, Kalb insightfully explores the consequences of the progressive liberal project in our day-to-day social and personal lives. Of particular interest is his discussion of the kind of social and cultural orders this project creates. Here again his analysis is broad and insightful, but I would highlight only a few ideas. One is that the liberal progressive project is a quasi-religion, and its god is a jealous one. This is particularly important for explaining the virulence with which liberal progressives tend to react against any challenge to their arguments and for giving an account of the strong ethical condemnation of those who do not share their views. The second idea is Kalb’s answer as to why this is so attractive. He believes this is because the principles of the progressive liberal project, whatever their inconsistencies, are clear, simple, and forcible, and that they “align with the active, enterprising, domineering and anti-contemplative […] spirit guiding modern life.” The third idea concerns the weakness of the progressive liberal project, with Kalb arguing that careerism, consumerism, and devotion to equality and inclusiveness do not lead to the creation of durable identities. In the end, the project is unable to provide what it promises.

The third part of the book is about what can be done to change the course of Western history. “The obvious way forward is restoration of the Western Christian tradition. If what was imagined to be reform did not work, why not revert to what worked?” This entails changing the way people think about institutions, which will require time. “A stable system of traditions and identities is necessary for a rational and coherent way of living.” Although he mentions several elements of this new understanding of human beings, society, the world and God, Kalb insists on the fact that the issue is to propose an alternative to classical liberal and liberal progressive views of them.

In Kalb’s mind, three elements are necessary for such an alternative to develop: natural law, tradition, and religion. Natural law is a system that guides human life in accordance with our nature and good as knowable by experience and reason. In this light, family becomes a basic reality that roots the sexual and political orders, followed by concentric community forms all the way to national identity. However, natural law principles, in order not to remain abstract, need traditions that tell us how to put them into practice. Based on accumulated experience, they take concrete forms in symbols, practices, and beliefs that put patterns of a good life into a usable form. Finally, religion is to offer an authoritative voice so differences in interpretation do not generate unending conflicts. Kalb sees the Catholic Church as the only organization capable of assuming that role.

Despite its many strong points, the argument in the third part of the book presents some problems. First, intellectually overcoming the classical liberal and liberal progressive projects will require assimilating any kernel of truth they may contain and giving compelling answers to the questions they raise. Hence, issues of the tyranny of a few or of the fate of minorities within a democratic society should be considered, explained, and provided with a solution. Second, the proposal of retrieving the principles of the Western Christian tradition for the needs of the present needs to be supplemented with some reflection on how their limitations were manifested in history. Finally, it seems to me that Kalb’s response lacks breadth and depth in its philosophical and theological considerations. It misses the positive elements present in the modern project that have been appropriated in several ways into the Catholic tradition by, for example, the ressourcement school. The reaching out towards personalism, phenomenology and hermeneutic philosophy, or Henri de Lubac’s interpretation of Aquinas’s understanding of the relationship between the natural and supernatural would be some examples of this.

Kalb’s book is an essay, and a good one at that. His prose is agile, the structure of the argument is clear, and many examples illustrate his points. His analysis of liberal progressivism, its roots and dynamics is insightful. His proposal about how to respond to it has some shortcomings, as mentioned, but the book makes for great reading for a general audience.

[1] Tracey Rowland, Doing Catholic Theology (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017).