In conflict-based and antagonistic societies, academic writing and speaking, scholarship and science are always forms of political communication: they are not just discovery, knowledge construction or invention, but besides knowledge creation also a production and communication of knowledge about knowledge – the political standpoints of the scholars themselves. Critical theory holds not only that theory is always political, but also that it should develop analyses of society and concepts that assist struggles against interests and ideas that justify domination and exploitation.
1.2.6. Beyond Traditional Marxism and Post-Marxism
Moishe Postone (2015, 4) suggests ‘the importance of a renewed encounter with Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism’. Such an encounter would have to avoid the mistakes of traditional Marxism and post-Marxism. The new crisis of capitalism would have questioned the ‘one-sidedness of what have been termed the cultural and linguistic turns’ (5) of postmodernist approaches. One should, however, avoid a return to traditional Marxism, an interpretative framework of capitalism that foregrounds class, exploitation and that ‘socialism entails the historical coming-to-itself of labor’ (7).
Problems that the traditional framework has encountered would include:
the non-emancipatory character of “actually existing socialism”, and the historical trajectory of its rise and decline which parallels that of state-interventionist capitalism (suggesting they were similarly situated historically); the growing importance of scientific knowledge and advanced technology in production (which seemed to call into question the labor theory of value); growing criticisms of technological progress and growth (which opposed the productivism of much traditional Marxism), and the increased importance of non-class-based social identities (Postone 2015, 8).
A contemporary critical theory needs to be a critical theory of capitalism, but requires along with the critique of capitalism also a critical theory of the state, labour, knowledge, technology, the environment, and the relationship of class and identities (including ethnicity and gender identities).
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Critical Theory of Communication