ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the critical theory that is deeply entrenched in modernist emancipatory international relations (MEIR) and explicitly aims for human emancipation. In Marx's version of Hegel's dialectic, the phenomenological subject becomes the Subject class and the dialectic of consciousness becomes a dialectic of class consciousness. The concept of alienation constitutes a third formative element in Marx's development of the concept of historical materialism. The analysis of Linklater's work has applied the XYZ+Q formula to demonstrate the main features and weaknesses of his approach to emancipatory international relations. Like most EIR thinkers, he has no difficulty in identifying a reasonable case: for him it is a world plagued by distorted human communication caused by systematic exclusion, the obstacle to emancipation. Logically, then, the goal of emancipation consists of a 'universal communication community'. With this account of Linklater's version of critical theory we have completed our account of modernist emancipatory international relations theories.
