Critical Theory and Society: A Reader
Collection of writings from people associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or the Frankfurt School
The 10 Most Popular Dogmas of Critical Theory - Marxistische Gruppe
The following text is a translation of a section from the book "Arguments against Critical Theory", published in German in 1986 by the Marxistische Gruppe. It examines what the analyses of critical theory are worth: Whether the findings should be adopted because they are correct or not. The question of what makes critical theory so attractive for intellectuals - apart from the language that flirts with maximum incomprehensibility - will also be answered along the way.
Time, labor, and social domination: a reinterpretation of Marx's critical theory - Moishe Postone
A significant text of modern value-form theory. Moishe Postone undertakes a fundamental reinterpretation of Karl Marx's mature critical theory. He calls into question many of the presuppositions of traditional Marxist analyses and offers new interpretations of Marx's central arguments.
Transición - Jacques Camatte & Gianni Collu [1969]
En este artículo Gianni Collu y Jacques Camatte retoman los conceptos de dominación (o subsunción) formal y dominación real del capital, tratados originalmente por Marx en el capítulo Vi inédito del tomo I de El Capital. referida a la reconfiguración de la actividad productiva sobre los designios del valor en proceso. Publicado en Invariance, año 2, serie I, nº 8, 1969. Traducción de Comunización Ediciones
Against non-life
Today the desire to cast off our current way of life is taken as common sense. Whether it’s the life of others we desire to take on or a completely different way of life; striking a commodified humanity is the passive acceptance of the existent which clashes with generalized dissatisfaction.
Grey is the golden tree of life, green is theory - Robert Kurz
In this 2007 essay, Robert Kurz examines the question of theory and practice from the perspective of the “categorical” “critique of value-dissociation”, with extensive discussions of Marx, Engels, Bloch, Adorno, Horkheimer, Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault, Debord, Negri, and Holloway, and concludes, in the face of the prevalent urge for immediate “action” and the equally widespread denigration of theory, that “critical theory must consciously maintain a distance from all existing praxis”.
The culture industry in the 21st century - Robert Kurz
In this revised and expanded version of a 2010 talk, Robert Kurz examines the continuing relevance, and the limitations, of the concept formulated by Adorno and Horkheimer in 1944—the “Culture Industry”—with discussions of “cultural pessimism”, the postmodern “cult of superficiality”, the role of technology in cultural change, the “abstract individual”, advertising, the Internet, “virtualization”, “interactive” media, exhibitionism and narcissistic self-promotion, the pseudo-“gift economy” of the Net, the impact of the current economic crisis on the culture industry, the “depletion of cultural reserves”, “estheticization”, and the impossibility of a separate “cultural revolution”.
Escape from freedom - Erich Fromm
The pursuit of freedom has indelibly marked Western culture since Renaissance humanism and Protestantism began the fight for individualism and self-determination.
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