scholarly journals Towards a critical theory of communication as renewal and update of Marxist humanism in the age of digital capitalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-356
Author(s):  
Christian Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Digital Capitalism ◽  
Marxist Humanism

scholarly journals Erich Fromm and the Critical Theory of Communication

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-325
Author(s):  
Christian Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Erich Fromm ◽  
Digital Capitalism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Communicative Capitalism

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) was a Marxist psychoanalyst, philosopher, and socialist humanist. This article asks: How can Fromm’s critical theory of communication be used and updated to provide a critical perspective in the age of digital and communicative capitalism? In order to provide an answer, this article discusses elements from Fromm’s work that allow us to better understand the human communication process. The focus is on communication (the second section), ideology (the third section), and technology (the fourth section). Fromm’s approach can inform a critical theory of communication in multiple respects: His notion of the social character allows to underpin such a theory with foundations from critical psychology. Fromm’s distinction between the authoritarian and the humanistic character can be used for discerning among authoritarian and humanistic communication. Fromm’s work can also inform ideology critique: the ideology of having shapes life, thought, language, and social action in capitalism. In capitalism, technology (including computing) is fetishized and the logic of quantification shapes social relations. Fromm’s quest for humanist technology and participatory computing can inform contemporary debates about digital capitalism and its alternatives.

scholarly journals Critical theory of communication as critical sociology of critique in the age of digital capitalism: A response to Jan Løhmann Stephensen's review essay on Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Christian Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Critical Sociology ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
Digital Capitalism ◽  
Media Research

This essay is a reflection on Jan Løhmann Stephensen’s review essay on my book Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media (Conjunctions, Vol. 2, No. 2). It contrasts creativity and social production in Marx’s theory, clarifies my relationship to Boltanski and Chiapello’s approach, reflects on the influence of humanist Marxism on my thought, and argues for grounding media/communication studies and digital media research in critical theory, understood as a critical sociology of critique that combines social theory, empirical social research and ethics.

Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie im 21. Jahrhundert.

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 453-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Peter Büttner
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
New World ◽  
Neoclassical Economics ◽  
Price Theory ◽  
Transformation Problem ◽  
Iron Cage ◽  
Analytical Tools

While the majority of the scientific community holds Marxian Value and Price Theory to be internally inconsistent because of the so-called “transformation problem”, these claims can be sufficiently refuted. The key to the solution of the “transformation problem” is quite simple, so this contribution, because it requires the rejection of simultanism and physicalism, which represent the genuine method of neoclassical economics, a method that is completely incompatible with Marxian Critique of Political Economy. Outside of the iron cage of neoclassical equilibrium economics, Marxian ‘Capital’ can be reconstructed without neoclassical “pathologies” and offers us a whole new world of analytical tools for a critical theory of capitalist societies and its dynamics.

Critical theory, the left and media policy: The Latin American progressive governments case study

2015 ◽  
Vol 0 (24) ◽  
pp. 95-126
Author(s):  
Ángel Badillo ◽  
◽  
Guillermo Mastrini ◽  
Patricia Marenghi ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Media Policy

Veiled Theory: The Transmutation of Anthropology in T. S. Eliot's Critical Method

Paragraph ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 77-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Trexler
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Human History ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Historical Moment

While literary criticism is often seen as an unself-reflective forerunner to literary theory, this article argues that T.S. Eliot's theory of critical practice was a philosophically informed methodology of reading designed to create a disciplinary and institutional framework. To reconstruct this theory, it enriches theoretical methodology with intellectual and institutional history. Specifically, the article argues that Eliot's early critical theory depended on the paradigms of anthropology and occultism, developed during his philosophical investigation of anthropology and Leibniz. From this investigation, Eliot created an occult project that used spiritual monads as facts to progress toward the Absolute. The article goes on to argue that Eliot's methodology of reading was shaped by anthropology's and occultism's paradigms of non-academic, non-specialist reading societies that sought a super-historic position in human history through individual progress. The reconstruction of Eliot's intellectual and institutional framework for reading reveals a historical moment with sharp differences and surprising similarities to the present.

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