Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet

Schweppenhäuser and Haug define critical theory as

emancipatory social philosophy. It tries to unite in one movement of thought the analysis and critique of forms of practice as well as types of reason and rationality of bourgeois-capitalist societies since the middle of the 19th century until today. Its starting point is Marx’s theory of the law of value as the foundation of commodity-producing societies that is derived from the analysis of the value-form. This theory is at the same time a critique of the political economy, i.e. demonstration of the capability and limit of this science for the explanation of the value-form with its social and ideological consequences (Schweppenhäuser and Haug 2012, 197).

The two authors stress the status of Critical Theory as critical philosophy and critical economics. They understand it as a broad approach that is grounded in Marx’s thought and works. They, however, also acknowledge that the Frankfurt School introduced the term and therefore draw a distinction between critical theory as the more general approach and Critical Theory as the Frankfurt School-approach.

1.1.3. Dimensions of Critical Theory

An approach that neither lists approaches nor identifies critical theory only with persons associated with the Frankfurt School is to identify dimensions of critical theory at the content level. In scholarly writings, critical theory in general is often designated in lower-case letters, whereas the Frankfurt School is labelled as ‘Critical Theory’. I do not make such a strict separation because I think the overall approach of the Frankfurt School is quite generalised.

We can identify five dimensions of a critical theory of society:

1. Critical ethics.

1. Critique of domination, exploitation and alienation.

1. Dialectical reason.

1. Ideology critique.

1. Struggles and political praxis.

Both Marx and Frankfurt School authors stress all of these dimensions. The Frankfurt School should, in my view, not be read as a particularistic approach, but as a formulation of general foundations of Marxist philosophy and Marxist cultural theory.

For grounding an understanding of critical theory that specifies dimensions of the critique of society, some foundational texts of the Frankfurt School are helpful. Marcuse’s (1988/1968, 134–158) essay Philosophy and Critical Theory,

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Horkheimer’s (2002, 188–252) essay Traditional and Critical Theory, Marcuse’s (1988/1968, 43–87) article The Concept of Essence and the section The Foundations of the Dialectical Theory of Society in Marcuse’s (1941a, 258–322) book Reason and Revolution. These foundational texts make clear that the project of the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory is not a narrow one focused on particular authors or approaches, but that Critical Theory should rather be understood as Marx-inspired and -influenced enquiries into the realities of power, exploitation and domination.

1.1.4. Critical Ethics

Critical theory has a ‘concern with human happiness’ (Marcuse 1988/1968, 135) and uses the Hegelian method of comparing essence and existence because in capitalism ‘what exists is not immediately and already rational’ (136). This essence can be found in man’s positive capacities (such as striving for freedom, sociality, co-operation) and it has the ethical implication that universal conditions should be created that allow all humans to realize these capacities:

That man is a rational being, that this being requires freedom, and that happiness is his highest good are universal propositions whose progressive impetus derives precisely from their universality. Universality gives them an almost revolutionary character, for they claim that all, and not merely this or that particular person, should be rational, free, and happy (Marcuse 1988/1968, 152).

1.1.5. Critique of Domination, Exploitation and Alienation

Critical theory holds that ‘man can be more than a manipulable subject in the production process of class society’ (Marcuse 1988/1968, 153). The goal of critical theory is the transformation of society as a whole (Horkheimer 2002, 219) so that a ‘society without injustice’ (221) emerges that is shaped by ‘reasonableness, and striving for peace, freedom, and happiness’ (222), ‘in which man’s actions no longer flow from a mechanism but from his own decision’ (229), and that is ‘a state of afairs in which there will be no exploitation or oppression’ (241).

Marx treated Kant’s fundamental philosophical questions about man and his knowledge, activities and hopes (What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? What is the human?) in a specific way. He established a critical philosophy/theory and critical political economy that ‘demonstrate the concrete forces and tendencies that prevented and those that promoted’ the goal of a society that benefits all and the historical possibilities of such a society (Marcuse 1941a, 321). So Marx’s reformulation of Kant’s questions was his categorical imperative – the critique of domination and exploitation.

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1.1.6. Dialectical Reason

In Marx’s works, concepts that describe the existence of capitalism (profit, surplus value, worker, capital, commodity, etc.) are dialectical because they ‘transcend the given social reality in the direction of another historical structure which is present as a tendency in the given reality’ and represent the essence of man (Marcuse 1988/1968, 86).

If, for instance, it is said that concepts such as wages, the value of labor, and entrepreneurial profit are only categories of manifestations behind which are hidden the ‘essential relations’ of the second set of concepts, it is also true that these essential relations represent the truth of the manifestations only insofar as the concepts which comprehend them already contain their own negation and transcendence – the image of a social organization without surplus value. All materialist concepts contain an accusation and an imperative (Marcuse 1988/1968, 86).

Marx’s categories ‘are negative and at the same time positive’ (Marcuse 1941a, 295).

The concepts of contradiction (negation) and negation of the negation are crucial for critical theory: in capitalism, every fact is ‘a negation and restriction of real possibilities’ (282). ‘Private property is a fact, but at the same time it is a negation of man’s collective appropriation of nature’ (Marcuse 1941a, 282). ‘The historical character of the Marxian dialectic embraces the prevailing negativity as well as its negation. […] the negation of the negation […] does not steadily and automatically grow out of the earlier state; it can be set free only by an autonomous act on the part of men’ (Marcuse 1941a, 315). The dialectic of capitalism has a structural-objective part; capital accumulation’s contradictions result in crisis. These contradictions can only be overcome by the subjective force of the dialectic: political struggle (Marcuse 1941a, 316–319).

1.1.7. Ideology Critique

‘Basic to the present form of social organization, the antagonisms of the capitalist production process, is the fact that the central phenomena connected with this process do not immediately appear to men as what they are “in reality”, but in masked, ‘perverted’ form’ (Marcuse 1988/1968, 70).

1.1.8. Struggles and Political Praxis

For the Frankfurt School, critical theory aims at and supports social struggles for a better world: ‘The materialist protest and materialist critique originated in the struggle of oppressed groups for better living conditions and remain permanently associated with the actual process of this struggle’ (Marcuse 1988/1968, 141). ‘The philosophical ideal of a better world and of true Being are incorporated into the practical aim of struggling mankind, where they take on a human form’ (Marcuse 1988/1968, 142).

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1.2. Critical Theory and Karl Marx

The six dimensions of a critical theory of society can also be found in Karl Marx’s works, which shows the importance of his thought for any critical theory.

1.2.1. Critical Theory has a Normative Dimension

Criticism ‘measures individual existence against essence’ (Marx 1997, 61–62). This means that critical theory is normative and realistic. It argues that it is possible to logically provide reasonably grounded arguments about what a good society is, how the good society relates to conditions that all humans require to survive (the essence of humans and society), and how we can judge existing societies according to which extent they provide humane conditions or not. Marx found it important to not just analyse capitalism academically, but also to politically communicate this analysis. This explains his own practice as a journalist and political actor.

1.2.2. Critical Theory is a Critique of Domination and Exploitation

Critical theory questions all thought and practices that justify or uphold domination and exploitation. Marx formulated the categorical imperative of critical theory: it is the ‘categoric imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a degraded, enslaved, neglected, contemptible being’ (Marx 1997, 257–258). Critical theory wants to show that a good life is possible for all and that domination and exploitation alienate humans from achieving such a society. For Marx, the ‘task of philosophy […] is to unmask human self-alienation’ (Marx 1997, 251). In deconstructing alienation, domination and exploitation, critical theory also makes demands for a self-determined, participatory and just democracy. Such a society is not only a grassroots political democracy, but also an economic democracy, in which the producers control the production process and the means and outcomes of production. Critical theory wants to make the world conscious of its own possibilities. The ‘world has long dreamed of something of which it only has to become conscious in order to possess it in actuality’ (Marx 1997, 214).

One can interpret Marxist approaches and critical theory as a form of political communication: they communicate fundamental deformations of society and humanity and potentials for political change and struggles by which humans can overcome these deformations.

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Critical theory analyses how capital accumulation, surplus value exploitation and the transformation of aspects of society into commodities (commodification) work and what the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production are: ‘In the critique of political economy, therefore, we shall examine the basic categories, uncover the contradiction introduced by the free-trade system, and bring out the consequences of both sides of the contradiction’ (Engels 1843/1844, 175).

Critical theory stresses the notions of technological rationality and instrumental reasons. In capitalism, there is a tendency for freedom of action to be replaced by instrumental decision-making on the part of capital and the state so that the individual is expected to only react and not to act. The two concepts are grounded in the notion of reification, which is a reformulation of Marx’s (1867) concept of fetishism. The media in capitalism are modes of reification in a manifold way: first, they reduce humans to the status of consumers of advertisements. Second, culture is in capitalism to a large degree connected to the commodity form, in the form of cultural commodities that are bought by consumers and in the form of audience and user commodities that media consumers/Internet prosumers become themselves. Third, in order to reproduce its existence, capitalism has to present itself as the best possible (or only possible) system and makes use of the media in order to try to keep this message (in all its diferentiated forms) hegemonic. The first and the second dimension constitute the economic dimension of instrumental reason, the third dimension the ideological form of instrumental reason. Capitalist media are necessarily means of advertising and commodification and spaces of ideology. Advertisement and cultural commodification make humans an instrument for economic profit accumulation. Ideology aims at instilling the belief in the system of capital and commodities into human’s subjectivity. The goal is that human thoughts and actions do not go beyond capitalism, do not question and revolt against this system and thereby play the role of instruments for the perpetuation of capitalism. It is of course an important question to which extent ideology is always successful and to which degree it is questioned and resisted, but the crucial aspect about ideology is that it encompasses strategies and attempts to make human subjects instrumental in the reproduction of domination and exploitation.

1.2.3. Critical Theory uses Dialectical Reasoning as Method of Analysis

The dialectical method identifies contradictions. Contradictions are ‘the source of all dialectics’ (Marx 1867, 744). Dialectics tries to show that and how contemporary society and its moments are shaped by contradictions. Contradictions result in the circumstance that society is dynamic and that capitalism assures the continuity of domination and exploitation by changing the way these phenomena are organised. Dialectics ‘regards every historically developed form as being in a fluid state, in motion, and therefore grasps its transient aspects as well’ (Marx 1867, 103). The ‘movement of capitalist society is full of contradictions’ (Marx 1867, 103). In a contradiction, one pole of the dialectic can only exist by the way of the opposed pole. They require and exclude each other at the same time. In a dominative society (such as capitalism), contradictions cause problems and are to a certain extent also the seeds for overcoming these problems. They have positive potentials and negative realities at the same time.

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Marx analysed (see Fuchs 2016) capitalism’s contradictions between:

non-owners/owners
the poor/the rich
misery/wealth
workers/capitalists
use value/exchange value
concrete labour/abstract labour
the simple form of value/the relative and expanded form of value
social relations of humans/relations of things
the fetish of commodities and money/fetishist thinking
the circulation of commodities/the circulation of money
commodities/money
labour power/wages
subject/object
labour process/valorisation process
subject of labour (labour power worker)/the means of production (object) variable capital/constant capital
surplus labour/surplus product
necessary labour time/surplus labour time
single worker/co-operation
single company/industry sector
single capital/competing capitals
production/consumption
productive forces/relations of production.

The tension between opposing poles can be resolved in a process that Hegel and Marx called ‘Aufhebung’ (sublation) and ‘negation of the negation’: a new/third quality or a new system emerges from the contradiction between two poles. Sublation can take place at diferent levels of society, either relatively frequently in order to enable a dynamic of domination or infrequently in situations of revolution when domination is questioned. So in capitalism, contradictions are frequently sublated in order to enable capital accumulation:

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But there are also contradictions in capitalism that are persistent and not frequently sublated. They are at the heart of human misery in capitalism. Their sublation can only be achieved by political struggle and means the end of capitalism. These are especially the antagonisms between productive forces/relations of production, owners/non-owners, the poor/the rich, misery/wealth, workers/capitalists.

The contradiction between productive forces and relations of production is partly sublated in crisis situations, but reconstitutes itself during the course of the crisis. Its true sublation can only be achieved by the overthrow of capitalism. If in capitalism an important contradiction is the one between the owning and the non-owning class, then the goal of critical theory is the representation of the interest of oppressed and exploited groups and the overcoming of classbased society. ‘It can only represent a class whose historical task is the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and the final abolition of all classes – the proletariat’ (Marx 1867, 98).

In formulating a critique of domination and exploitation, critical theory develops ‘new principles for the world out of the principles of the world (Marx 1997, 214). Dialectical thinking argues that the foundations of a classless society develop already within capitalism, that capitalism on the one hand produces new forms of co-operation that are on the other hand – within class relations – forms of domination. The forces of production are in capitalism at the same time destructive forces.

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Hegel and Marx’s concept of dialectics can help scholars to understand the fundamentally contradictory character of communication in modern society: communication doesn’t just communicate interests, but communicates such interests due to the antagonistic structure of modern society in opposition to somebody. Critical scholarship analyses communication by identifying political contradictions and the ways in which these contradictions are communicated in public or ideologically masked and distorted.

1.2.4. Ideology Critique: Critical Theory is a Critique of Ideology

Ideologies are practices and modes of thought that present aspects of human existence that are historical and changeable as eternal and unchangeable. Ideology critique wants to remind us that everything that exists in society is created by humans in social relationships and that social relationships can be changed. It wants to bring ‘problems into the self-conscious human form’ (Marx 1997, 214), which means that it wants to make humans conscious of the problems they are facing in society and the causes of these problems. Arguments like ‘there is no alternative to capitalism, neoliberalism, competition, egoism, racism, etc. because man is egoistic, competitive, etc.’ forget about the social character of society. They create the impression that the results of social activity are unchangeable things. Critical theory provides an ‘analysis of the mystical consciousness that is unclear about itself’ (Marx 1997, 214).

In modern society, communication regularly takes on ideological forms. Such ideologies try to advance specific interests by communicating in ways that present certain groups positively, opponents and enemies negatively, play down or conceal negative realities about specific groups and overstate or invent negative dimensions of opponents and enemies.

1.2.5. Critical Theory is Connected to Struggles for a Just and Fair Society. It is an Intellectual Dimension of Struggles

Critical theory provides a ‘self-understanding […] of the age concerning its struggle and wishes’ (Marx 1997, 315), it can ‘show the world why it actually struggles’ and is ‘taking sides […] with actual struggles’ (Marx 1997, 214). This means that critical theory can help to explain the causes, conditions, potentials and limits of struggles. Critical theory rejects the argument that academia and science should and can be value-free. It rather argues that all thought and theories are shaped by political worldviews. The reasons why a person is interested in a certain topic, aligns himself/herself with a certain school of thought, develops a particular theory and not another one, refers to certain authors and not others, are deeply political because modern society is shaped by conflicts of interests and therefore for surviving and asserting themselves, scholars have to make choices, enter strategic alliances and defend their positions against others.

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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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1.2.7. Beyond Labour Fetishism and Cultural Fetishism

Traditional Marxism has been grounded in labour fetishism that glorifies toil and wage-labour as long as it is toil and wage-labour in a socialist framework under which the means of production are owned collectively. It has advanced a Protestant celebration of hard labour. Postmodernism has in contrast been based on cultural fetishism: it has dissolved the economy and class into the realm of symbols, culture and signification. I discuss this culturalist tendency with the example of Jean Baudrillard’s works in this book’s section 6.3 (chapter 6).

Orthodox Marxism’s labour fetishism is for example evident in article 12 of the 1936 Soviet Constitution introduced under Stalin:

In the U.S.S.R., labour is a duty and a matter of honour for every ablebodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat”. The principle applied in the U.S.S.R. is that of socialism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his labour”.

Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters (1996) wrote a book called The Death of Class, in which they argue that their analysis brings ‘the good news that class has collapsed and is decomposing. […] [Contemporary society] is based on subscription to lifestyles that form around consumption patterns, information flows, cognitive agreements, aesthetic preferences and value commitments. Material and power phenomena are reducible to these symbolically manifested lifestyle and value phenomena’ (Pakulski and Waters 1996, 7, 155). The death of class has proved to be an illusion in the very realm of culture: there is a high level of precarious freelance labour in the media, cultural and digital industries (Fuchs 2015a). New capital accumulation strategies in the culture industry involve the crowdsourcing of labour to unpaid users on the Internet (Fuchs 2014a). The culture economy is just like other parts of capitalism a realm that is shaped by class and exploitation.

1.2.8. Postmodernism = Stalinism

These are just prototypical expressions of labourism and culturalism. On the one hand, postmodernism and Stalinism seem to be quite opposed. On the other hand, they have a quite similar logic: they are both reductionist and onedimensional. Whereas labourism reduces life to labour and toil, culturalism reduces the economy and society to culture. One fetishises labour, the other symbols. Both do not have a satisfactory answer to the question of how the economy and culture are related. The imperialism and fetishism of labour has resulted in political totalitarianism and a lack of understanding of the good life. The imperialism and fetishism of culture has completely neglected that there is an economy shaped by class and has resulted in a theoretical cynicism that is preoccupied with postmodern language games, in which the postmodern text is a symbolic fetishism. It is devoid of radical politics or a compelling vision of a good society. Stalinism and postmodernism converge in the logic of reductionism.

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