Ben Agger argues that a critical theory must have (to some degree) the following features:

aIt opposes positivism because knowledge is an active construction by scientists and theorists who necessarily make assumptions about the worlds they study and thus are not strictly value-free.
aIt attempts to raise consciousness about present domination, exploitation, and oppression and to demonstrate the possibility of a future society free from these phenomena.
aIt argues that oppression is structural—that people’s everyday lives are affected by politics, economics, culture, discourse, gender, race, and so on.
aIt also argues that structures of oppression are reproduced through the internalization of dominant-subordinant relationships and it attempts to cut through this internalization of oppression by emphasizing the power of agency, both personal and collective, to transform society.
aIt avoids determinism and endorses voluntarism by arguing that social change begins in people’s everyday lives—in their family roles, workplace, consumer patterns, and so on.
aIt rejects economic determinism by conceptualizing a dialectical relationship between structure and agency—structure conditions everyday life, but knowledge of structure can help people change social conditions.
aIt holds people responsible for their own liberation and warns against any revolutionary expediency of oppressing others in the name of some future liberation.

Agger, B. (1989). Socio(ontology): A disciplinary reading. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.