> They share with conservatives a belief in Enlightenment liberalism
> with its attendant notions of the individual and her relationship to
> society (individualism), about freedom (autonomy), knowledge
> (rationality and empiricism), justice (equality of opportunity), etc.
[...]
> he does the same with a Welfare Liberal version of liberalism with its
> attendant theory, science, practice, and social policy. both of which
> are contrast with critical theory.
I don't think I disagree with this.
But I don't see the usefulness of tracing current political problems to Enlightenment liberalism notions of the individual, freedom and knowledge. Is it possible to point to some Western mass political movement of the past 150 years that didn't embrace these notions? If not, then whatever current political problem we're trying to diagnose has obtained always and everywhere. (Which is fine! It just means we're talking about very different types of problems.)
Mass Marxist movements (in the West) almost completely ignored in practice whatever alternative conceptions of the individual/freedom/knowledge are to be found in Marx's writings. They adopted pretty conventional bourgeois categories for talking about this stuff, I think. Yet they didn't suffer from the "Ideology Problem" that's described in the piece. And of course, there haven't been any mass movements (conventionally defined) based on "critical theory," as far as I know.
SA