Foundations of Critical Theory

Media, Communication and Society Volume Two

Christian Fuchs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032057866
• eBook ISBN: 9781000432909
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This second volume of Christian Fuchs' Media, Communication and Society book series outlines key concepts and contemporary debates in critical theory.

The book explores the foundations of a Marxist-Humanist critical theory of society, clarifying and updating key concepts in critical theory – such as the dialectic, critique, alienation, class, capitalism, ideology, and racial capitalism. In doing so, the book engages with and further develops elements from the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, David Harvey, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, C.L.R. James, Adolph L. Reed Jr., and Cornel West.

Written for a broad audience of students and scholars, this book is an essential guide for readers who are interested in how to think critically from perspectives such as media and communication studies, sociology, philosophy, political economy, and political science.

Chapter One

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003199182-1

1.1 Critical Theory

1.2 Critical Theorists

1.3 Overviews of the Chapters in this Book

References

1.1 Critical Theory

This book deals with elements of the foundations of critical theory. It asks and investigates the following question: what are important elements of a Marxist-Humanist critical theory of society?

The book at hand is the second volume of a series of books titled “Communication & Society”. The overall aim of Communication & Society is to outline foundations of a critical theory of communication and digital communication in society. It is a multi-volume theory social theory book series situated on the intersection of communication theory, sociology, and philosophy. The overall questions that “Communication & Society” deals with are: What is the role of communication in society? What is the role of communication in capitalism? What is the role of communication in digital capitalism?

Answers are given by engaging with some key thinkers and key topics of critical theory. The thinkers the present author engages with in this book include.

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, David Harvey, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, C.L.R. James, Adolph L. Reed Jr., and Cornel West. The topics that are addressed include elements of critical theory (Chapters 2, 4, 5, 10), the dialectic (Chapters 3, 8), class struggles (Chapter 3), alienation (Chapter 6), formal and real subsumption (Chapter 6), primitive accumulation (Chapter 6), ideology (Chapter 9), racial capitalism (Chapters 8, 9), and culture (Chapter 9).

The engagement with the mentioned thinkers and topics has contributed to the present author’s development of a Marxist-Humanist theory of communication and society (Fuchs 2020a). This book together with the other volumes in the series of volumes together titled Communication and Society allows the reader to follow aspects of how the present author has arrived at his own critical theory of society as expressed in his major works such as Communication and Capitalism. A Critical Theory (Fuchs 2020a) and Social Media: A Critical Introduction (Fuchs 2021b, 2017, 2014) through engagement with key thinkers and key topics in critical theory and further development of critical theory by dialectical sublation (Aufhebung) of other critical theory approaches.

There are a number of key elements of a Marxist-Humanist version of critical theory (Fuchs 2021a):

• The human being
  Marxist Humanism is a humanism that stresses the importance of human interests, human needs, human practices, and social production in society. It builds on Marx’s (1844) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.
• The dialectic
  Marxist Humanism builds on and uses dialectical philosophy as a means for critically understanding society. It is influenced by Hegel’s dialectical philosophy, Marx’s development of the dialectic into a critical theory of capitalism and society, and the tradition of Hegelian Marxism.
• Praxis and class struggle
  Marxist Humanism builds on Marx’s insight that humans “make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past” (Marx 1852, 103). In societies shaped by class and alienation, humans are exploited and oppressed by the ruling class. They can only achieve a better society through making their own history in the form of class struggles for a classless society. Praxis is class struggle for Democratic Socialism.
• Alienation
  Alienation is a key category in Marx’s works and Marxist-Humanist thought. Alienation means conditions under which humans do not control, which means own, shape, govern and define, the systems that shape their everyday lives. The exploitation of humans in class relations is the key to understanding alienation and the economic form of alienation. But alienation also takes on the form of domination in the political system, where one group oppresses other groups, and the form of ideology in the cultural system (Fuchs 2020a). These forms of alienation interact. Capitalism, patriarchy, and racism are three types of power relations that each combine economic alienation, political alienation, and cultural alienation (Fuchs 2021a). In contemporary society, capitalism, patriarchy, and racism interact in capitalist society (Fuchs 2021a).
• The critique of ideology
  Marxist Humanism is also a critique of ideology. Ideology is the process of ideologue’s construction and dissemination and reproduction of false knowledge that makes society appear different from what it is truly like in order to try to naturalise, justify, defend, and legitimate exploitation and alienation and to try to convince exploited and oppressed groups to accept and not question alienation and to accept the status quo. Ideology is the attempt to produce and reproduce alienated and reified consciousness (see Fuchs 2020b, Chapter 9; Fuchs 2020a, Chapters 9 and 10).
• Democratic Socialism and Socialist Democracy
  Marxist Humanism is a type of humanism. It understands humanism as the ethico-political stress on the importance of creating conditions in society that allow humans and society to realise their full potentials. For Marxist Humanism, humanism is socialism and socialism is a humanism. Socialism denotes a society of the commons where all humans benefit. Socialism is a realisation of the economic, political, and cultural commons: all humans live in wealth (economic commons), have democratic participation rights (political commons), and are respected (cultural commons). Democratic Socialism sees socialism as inherently humanist and democratic. It is anti-fascist, anti-Stalinist, and anti-capitalist. It is critical of the anti-democratic potentials and realities of these types of systems. Marxist Humanism doesn’t limit the understanding of democracy to the political system, but argues for the extension of democracy to society at large, including the economy. Marxist/Socialist Humanism stresses the democratic need for the collective self-management of the economy and society. It understands democracy as participatory democracy.

Each chapter in the book at hand contributes to the foundations of critical theory. Many of the essays compiled in this work have been previously published. It is therefore a collection of the present author’s recent contributions to the development of a critical theory of society. It engages with a particular aspect of such a theory that allows us to gain new insights into elements of a Marxist-Humanist critical theory of society. Each chapter deals with one particular question:

• Chapter 2 asks: what is critical theory? It reconstructs the history and elements of critical theory;
• Chapter 3 asks: how relevant are Friedrich Engels’s works today? It interprets Engels’ works as contributions to Socialist Humanism;
• Chapter 4 asks: what can we learn from Marx’s centenary in 1918? It reflects on the cultural forms through which Marx’s centenary was reflected in 1918, including press articles, essays, speeches, rallies, demonstrations, music, and banners;
• Chapter 5 asks: how should one should best write biographies about Marx? It engages with Seven-Eric Liedman’s Marx-biography A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx and compares it to the Marx-biographies written by Jonathan Sperber (Karl Marx: A 19th-Century Life) and Gareth Stedman-Jones (Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion);
• Chapter 6 asks: how relevant are Marx’s works for the critical analysis of society today? It gives an answer by engaging with a four-part debate between David Harvey and Michael Hardt/Antonio Negri on the relevance of Marx today on the occasion of Marx’s 200th anniversary in 2018. This debate focused on Marx’s categories of alienation, formal and real subsumption, and primitive accumulation. The chapter discusses the essence of these categories and their relations;
• Chapter 7 asks: what is the relationship of the notion of sustainability to critical theory? The chapter argues that although sustainability has a strongly ideological character, a critical theory of society should not simply discard this notion, but aim to sublate it. Some foundations of a way to integrate sustainability into a critical theory of society are presented;
• Chapter 8 asks: how relevant is C.L.R. James’s dialectical philosophy today?
• It discusses key aspects of James’s philosophy and relates them to moments of contemporary society such as Donald Trump, fascism and racism today, digital capitalism, digital ideology, and Black Lives Matter;
• Chapter 9 asks: how can Cornel West’s works inform a contemporary Marxist-Humanist theory of society? Taking West’s works as a starting point, what are key elements of a Marxist-Humanist theory of society?
• Chapter 10 asks: how did Rosa Luxemburg assess Karl Marx’s works and how relevant is her interpretation of Marx today?

1.2 Critical Theorists

Readers in this book will have different pre-knowledge. Some will be familiar with single thinkers the work presents, others with several or almost all. I want to give a brief overview of who the main thinkers you encounter in this book are and why they matter.

Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. In 1999, he won a BBC online poll that determined the millennium’s “greatest thinker” (BBC 1999). His key works include Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, The Manifesto of the Communist Party (together with Friedrich Engels), Grundrisse, and the three volumes of Capital.

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) was Marx’s closest comrade, collaborator, and friend. He co-wrote The Manifesto of the Communist Party together with Marx, funded and supported Marx’s works, edited volumes two and three of Capital, and made original contributions to critical social theory with works such as The Condition of the Working Class in England and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) was a Marxist theorist, revolutionary socialist, economist, philosopher, and anti-war activist. She was one the most important and influential thinkers and activists influenced by Marx and Engels in the 20th century. She saw the First World War as the result of and manifestation of imperialist capitalism and opposed the war as a project of competing nationalism where workers who should unite internationally to fight against capital kill each other. Luxemburg’s most important works are Social Reform or Revolution?; The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions; The Accumulation of Capital, The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis of German Social Democracy, The Russian Revolution, and Introduction to Political Economy.

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) and Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) were philosophers and sociologists who are widely credited as the founders of what is often called Frankfurt School critical theory. Their Dialectic of Enlightenment is a classical work in critical theory that grounds foundations of the critique of ideology. Horkheimer and Adorno were dialectical philosophers who developed a particular version of the dialectic known as negative dialectic, which is also the name of one of Adorno’s most widely read books. Horkheimer and Adorno contributed to the development of a critical theory of the authoritarian personality and explain...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 What is Critical Theory?
• 3 Friedrich Engels Today
• 4 Marx's Centenary (1918) in the Light of the Media and Socialist Thought
• 5 Reflections on Sven-Eric Liedman's Marx-Biography A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx
• 6 Universal Alienation, Formal and Real Subsumption of Society Under Capital, Ongoing Primitive Accumulation by Dispossession: Reflections on the Marx@200-Debate Between David Harvey and Michael Hardt/Toni Negri
• 7 Critical Social Theory and Sustainable Development: The Role of Class, Capitalism, and Domination in a Dialectical Analysis of Un/Sustainability
• 8 The Relevance of C.L.R. James's Dialectical, Marxist-Humanist Philosophy in the Age of Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter, and Digital Capitalism
• 9 Cornel West and Marxist Humanism
• 10 Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Marx
• 11 Conclusion
• Index