{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title":"Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781911534044","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","uuid":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title":"Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet","normalized_title":"criticaltheoryofcommunicationnewreadingsoflukácsadornomarcusehonnethandhabermasintheageoftheinternet","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781911534044","isbns":["9781911534044","9781911534051","9781911534068","9781911534075"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Critical%20Theory%20of%20Communication%20New%20Readings%20of%20Luk%C3%A1cs%2C%20Adorno%2C%20Marcuse%2C%20Honneth%20and%20Habermas%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20the%20Internet","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/search"},"page":{"printed_page":147,"pdf_page":151,"physical_index":151,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"8e6a6e8ed72bfa95235d1d482746d67ba0e2b474282ee428b1b733b6ec8c0049"},"chapter":"C H R I S T I A N F U C H S CRITICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION","content":"Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory was a dialectical theory in many respects. One of these dimensions was his focus on political praxis as dialectical struggle for democratic socialism and against capitalism. In the world of social media this means that we have not yet attained social media, but that there are potentials in the media and society today for achieving truly social media. Reading Herbert Marcuse today reminds us that truly social media and a true society are still possible and can be attained in and through social struggles.\n\nCapitalist social media is one of the latest proofs of the continuation of exploitation and fetishism. It shows how much an alternative society is urgently needed. Just like always in capitalism and especially in the situation of capitalist crisis, we must today think about how to overcome heteronomy and replace it by a true democracy. Social media and society are not-yet truly social. For doing so, they need to overcome the particularisms that limit human life.\n\nHerbert Marcuse’s theory is not just political in that it provided a politicaleconomic analysis of the repressive organisation of economy, politics and culture. It is also political because it deeply cares about political subjects and struggles and the way revolutionary subjectivity is articulated, constrained, repressed and withheld. Marcuse analysed and politically related especially to the working class movement, the student movement, feminism, the environmental movement, and the civil rights movement. At the end of his life, Marcuse summarised his assessment of political movements of his time by writing that movements ‘such as the worker opposition, citizens’ initiatives, communes, student protests, are authentic forms of rebellion determined by the particular social situation, counterblows against the centralization and totalization of the apparatus of domination’ (Marcuse 1979b, 414). Adding the ‘anti-authoritarian movement, the ecology movement, and the women’s movement’, he argued, that they are ‘the manifestation (still very unorganized and difuse) of an instinctual structure, the ground of a transformed consciousness which is shaking the domination of the performance principle and of alienated productivity’ (Marcuse 1979b, 411).\n\nThe capitalist crisis that started in 2008 conditioned new struggles and expressions of political subjectivity. These included especially far left, fascist and religious fundamentalist movements all over the world. In Europe, fascist and far right groups and parties have been growing in many countries, whereas the strengthening of the Left has had particular significance in southern Europe (e.g. Greece, Portugal, Spain) and has expressed itself in other parts of Europe in the form of anti-austerity, Occupy and student movements. A decisive political task is to weaken the far right forces and to strengthen the Left in order to fill the void that the convergence of social democracy and conservatives that is accompanied by a strengthening of the far right has created.\n\nAn often-discussed question has in this context been what role social media and the Internet play in new forms of political struggles all over the world (for overviews see Fuchs 2014a, 2014b, 2014c). The positions range from technoeuphoric celebrations that see new struggles such as the Arab Spring as revolutions 2.0 and Facebook or Twitter revolutions to outright neglect and denial of any media-dimension of contemporary protests (‘Protests take place on the streets and occupations on the square, not on the Internet’). A more nuanced dialectical position that can be backed up by empirical research (Fuchs 2014c) is that digital and social media are in contradictory dialectical ways connected to political movements: there is a contradiction between movements’ use of commercial and non-commercial social media and a dialectic of online and ofline communication, in which activists who are on the streets and in the squares use face-to-face communication and online media in mutually enhancing ways for protest information, communication and mobilisation (Fuchs 2014c). Commercial social media pose new potentials for protest mobilisation as well as new risks such as corporate and state surveillance and control of movements. The point is that we understand the contradictions these media entail and that we find institutionalised ways of support for alternative, critical, non-commercial and non-profit media with money, work, personnel, infrastructure, time and space. The task is to create critical, alternative media as counter-institutions, which requires ‘working against the established institutions, while working in them’ (Marcuse 1972, 55). This means specifically in the realm of social media that we need our own alternatives to Google, Facebook and Twitter that are controlled and run by users. Achieving this aim requires political and institutional reforms, support by left-wing parties, groups and governments, and media reforms. Radical reforms of the media system are urgently needed for this purpose (see Fuchs 2014d).\n\nHerbert Marcuse and Social Media\n\n147","previous_page":146,"next_page":148}