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

Today we need readings of Marx that rethink the relationship of work and communication, labour and ideology, productive forces and language, class and identity, the economy and culture (Fuchs 2015a). I suggest that a way forward is to bring Frankfurt School’s critical theory into a dialogue with Raymond Williams’ approach of Cultural Materialism. Dialectical Cultural Materialism can thereby be used for grounding foundations of a dialectical critical theory of communication. In response to the overestimation of culture, traditional Marxism has often simply neglected engaging with information, communication and signification although cultural labour and the means of communication have at the same time become more important in contemporary capitalism. A critical theory of communication allows us to think about these topics in a dialectical, non-reductionist manner.

1.2.9. The Law of Value in the Computer Age

The rise of computer technology, science and knowledge in production has further deepened the antagonism between value and labour time. Marx has described this contradiction in the Grundrisse:

What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the mass by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time; since value directly its purpose, not use value. It is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing’ minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour. If it succeeds too well at the first, then it sufers from surplus production, and then necessary labour is interrupted, because no surplus labour can be realized by capital (Marx 1857/1858, 708).

It is a mistake to assume that the rise of digital capitalism brings about the end of the law of value and the labour theory of value. Negri (1991, 172) argues that in the Grundrisse the ‘Law of Value dies’. Virno (2004, 100) says that the law of value is ‘shattered and refuted by capitalist development itself’. Hardt and Negri (2004, 145) argue that the ‘temporal unity of labor as the basic measure of value today makes no sense’. Vercellone (2010, 90) writes that ‘cognitive capitalism’ has resulted in the ‘crisis of the law of value’ and ‘a crisis of measurement that destabilizes the very sense of the fundamental categories of the political economy; labor, capital and obviously, value’ (90). Value’s contradictions have been deepened in digital capitalism, but as long as capitalism exists, value is the foundation of the economy and there is capital’s exploitation of surplus-value generating labour that is expended over time. Postone (2008, 126) stresses, in this respect, that the crisis of value in capitalism is ‘not simply superseded by a new form of wealth’, but rather value ‘remains the necessary structural precondition of capitalist society’. ‘Capitalism does give rise to the possibility of its own negation, but it does not automatically evolve into something else’ (Postone 2008, 127). One of the theoretical tasks today for a critical theory is to think about the changes of value in the digital age (see Fisher and Fuchs 2015).

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1.2.10. Work and Labour

A contemporary critical theory should both avoid labour fetishism and cultural fetishism. This does however not mean that we have to read all of Marx’s categories as being limited to the historical specificity of capitalism. Marx elaborated a critique of capitalism simultaneously with a critical theory of society. The dialectic of his categories points out the specificity of capitalism and at the same time more general features of realities that point beyond capitalism. I have in this respect suggested a reading of Marx that distinguishes between work and labour (Fuchs 2014a, 2015a, 2016): work is a general feature of all societies. It is human social production that creates goods that satisfy human needs. In capitalism, work is value-generating abstract labour that abstracts from human needs and organises the economy based on the structural needs of capital as self-valorising value through the exploitation of labour. Capitalism’s value and commodity form entails an abstraction from human needs, concrete social relations and individuals, the social act of production, use-values, and from the immediate experience of violence (violence takes on the structural form immanent in the dull compulsion of exchange, although also direct forms of violence, such as slavery, continue to exist in capitalism) so that ‘society is governed by the movement of real economic abstractions’ (Bonefeld 2014, 24).

Whereas the etymological root of terms such as work and Werktätigkeit (German) is creating, acting, doing, the etymological root of words such as labour and Arbeit is toil, slavery and hardship (Fuchs 2015a, chapter 2). Arendt (1958, 80–81) confirms the etymological distinction between on the one hand ergazesthai (Greek)/facere and fabricari (Latin)/work (English)/werken (German)/ouvrer (French) and on the other hand ponein (Greek)/laborare (Latin)/ labour (English)/arbeiten (German)/travailler (French).

The point is that technological development allows us to demand the abolition of labour, value and class (i.e. of both capital and the proletariat) as the potential for the transformation of the entire economy and society. This does, however, not imply the abolition, but rather the transformation of the world of work towards a self-determined, self-managed, self-instituting, well-rounded and democratic economy free of toil and free to provide a good, pleasurable and fulfilling life for all. ‘Labor in capitalism, then, is both labor, as we transhistorically and commonsensically understand it, according to Marx, and a historically specific socially mediating activity’ (Postone 2015, 12). As it is confusing to use the term labour for both dimensions, the distinction between labour and work is more feasible.

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1.2.11. Werner Bonefeld’s Critical Theory

Werner Bonefeld is a professor of politics at York University. He has been influenced by Adorno and the Frankfurt School and has together with people such as John Holloway, Richard Gunn and Kosmas Psychopedis established the open Marxism approach. He is one of the thinkers, who have made an interesting contribution to the development of contemporary critical theory. In his book Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy, Bonefeld (2014) provides for example a criticism of the logic that the enemy of one’s enemy is one’s friend, an analysis of the diference between racism and anti-Semitism, and argues that primitive accumulation is a continuous feature of capital because workers separation from the products and the surplus-value they create is inherent in capital accumulation itself. He also makes the point that ‘class is the critical category of the entire system of capitalist wealth’ (102) so that labour and capital appear ‘on the labour market as equal subjects’, which ‘masks their fundamental inequality’ (106). ‘Violence hides in the civilized form of the equivalence exchange relations as economic compulsion’ (95).

Bonefeld stresses that abstract labour is a category specific for capitalism and cannot be a transhistorical category, because then the double character of labour as abstract and concrete labour could not be a defining feature of capitalist commodity production. The demand for praxis that is based on the insight that the ‘whole has to go’ (223) is for Bonefeld one of critical theory’s inherent features. ‘Critical theory demands a praxis that fights barbarism and argues that in hell everything is hellish’ (222). Engaging with Bonefeld’s writing is an inspiring endeavour for anyone interested in critical theory.

Critical theory is for Bonefeld anti-reifying thinking that deconstructs fetishisms. ‘The critique of political economy is thus subversive of the reified economic categories’ (38). Bourgeois economics would present contemporary economic life as natural economic laws and would thereby disregard that such laws’ ‘validity is fundamentally social, and they are valid in and through society and society is always concrete society’ (26).

For the critique of political economy the critical issue is thus not the discovery of general economic laws of history. Rather, its object of critique is the existent society, in which definite social relations subsist in the form of abstract economic forces, things endowed with an invisible will that “asserts itself as a regulative law of nature” (27).

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Bonefeld based on these insights criticises certain Marxist approaches (such as Althusser and Balibar’s theory) that assume that capitalism is an expression of some general trans-historical economic laws. ‘In sum, instead of thinking out of society, worldview Marxism analyses capitalist society to discover the general economic laws and then conceives of capitalist society as a manifestation of those same general economic laws that its analysis of capitalism established (35). In contrast to worldview Marxism, Marx would characterise ‘his “materialist method” as a critique of existent social relations, not from the standpoint of some abstractly conceived materiality of labour, but from within their own conceptuality’ (36).

1.2.12. Abstract and Concrete Categories in Critical Theory

Such a critique certainly is important in respect to orthodox forms of Marxism that celebrate toil and wage-labour under socialist conditions and imitate Protestant labour ethics. Bonefeld leaves open the question whether there are any categories in Marx that are not just specific for capitalism, but also for other types of society or society in general. One gets the impression that Bonefeld tends to see any such assumption as automatically reified thought that denies the sociality of the critique of the political economy’s categories. Bonefeld (2014, 4) argues that especially the so-called ‘new reading of Marx’ approach that goes back to the works of Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt, ‘renounced the classical argument about trans-historically valid economic laws of development and in its stead, conceptualized the economic appearance of society as the necessary manifestation of definite social relations’.

Marx’s (1857/1858, 471–479) thoughts on the ‘Forms which precede capitalist production’ in the Grundrisse show that surplus-labour, alienation and the appropriation of the surplus product are also features of pre-capitalist societies. Value is in contrast specific for capitalism: ‘The aim of this work is not the creation of value – although they may do surplus labour in order to obtain alien, i.e. surplus products in exchange – rather, its aim is sustenance of the individual proprietor and of his family, as well as of the total community’ (Marx 1857/1858, 471–472). Some categories in Marx’s works are characteristic for all class-based societies.

Marx also uses categories such as the Gattungswesen (species-being), by which he characterises features of all societies. This does not mean that he thereby assumes the existence of natural laws in society that take place outside of human’s social relations and are transhistorical. Fundamental social features of society are those social relations that humans have to enter, in order for the human being and social systems to exist. They do not exist outside of history, but are concrete, recurrent social relations in and through which history is made. Such necessary social relations include for example social production, communication, social relations of production, reproduction, a certain degree of co-operation, consumption, the social use of means of production, etc. It is in contrast a reification of capitalism to assume that value, abstract labour, capital, money, exchange, the commodity, the division of labour or class are fundamental social features of society. Communication is necessary for all societies. One cannot not communicate in a social situation. Even if you do not say anything in a specific situation, then your silence also communicates something to others. Social relations are organised in and through communication. In classbased societies, communication takes on specific forms and has a necessary organising role of social relations that are class relations. In capitalism, communication in class relations is then oriented on the capital-labour relation.

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The notion of the human as the social species-being is not something that is limited to Marx’s early writings, but can also be found in his later works. In the Grundrisse, Marx (1857/1858, 496) for example argues: ‘But human beings become individuals only through the process of history. He appears originally as a species-being’. In Capital, Marx continues his early idea that co-operation is a human species activity, but makes clear that it is not a static metaphysical category, but that the human species-being capacities (such as co-operation) develop historically and take in specific forms under particular societal circumstances: ‘When the worker co-operates in a planned way with others, he strips of the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species’ (Marx 1867, 447). Marx’s theory certainly does not contain trans-historical reified categories that describe phenomena assert themselves as natural laws in society, but there is a range of general social categories that do not exist outside, but in and through history.

For Marx, all categories of analysis are social categories. There are, however, some categories that describe phenomena that are necessary for society in general. And there are others that describe phenomena that are necessary for particular societal formations. Marx’s critique of the political economy of capitalism is by being a critical theory of capitalism at the same time a critical theory of class-based society and a critical theory of society. A critical theory of society needs to distinguish between the levels of society, class-based societies, capitalist society, contemporary capitalist society, and the dialectical mediation of these levels. Such a theory needs to take into account the dialectical of the universal, the particular and the individual at the level of its categories.

An example is the category of co-operation: Humans in all societies need to co-operate to a certain degree in order for society to exist. In class-based societies, co-operation takes on the form of a division of labour. In capitalism, cooperation takes on the form of a division of labour that is highly technified so that machine systems emerge, in which workers become appendages of capital and technology. Co-operation has a universal, a particular and an individual dimension. It exists in society, in class-based societies and capitalist society and takes on a particular form in a specific societal formation.

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Already Marx elaborated upon the dialectical relationship of general and specific categories as a fundamental epistemological principle of critical theory. This principle is most systematically expressed in the Grundrisse’s introduction.

1.2.13. Marx’s Introduction to the Grundrisse: The Method of Ascending from the Abstract to the Concrete

In the introduction to the Grundrisse, Marx (1857/1858, 101) characterises his own method as ‘rising from the abstract to the concrete’. One would have to analyse e.g. diferent levels of organisation of society, such as a) the population, b) classes, c) wage labour and capital (Marx 1857/1858, 100). Traditional theory would simply start with abstract categories and then move analytically towards ever more concrete ones (100). Marx sees such a method as limited and argues that critical theory starts with concrete categories that contain the abstract ones in them, and then develops along with a concrete critical theory the more abstract categories.

The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception (101).

Marx mentions as example that the analysis of exchange-value presupposes the existence of classes and of a population:

For example, the simplest economic category, say e.g. exchange value, presupposes population, moreover a population producing in specific relations; as well as a certain kind of family, or commune, or state, etc. It can never exist other than as an abstract, one-sided relation within an already given, concrete, living whole (101).

Marx’s epistemological method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete allows us to understand that capitalism contains within itself sublations of all previously existing societal formations. It therefore becomes possible to analyse older societies and society in general when we conduct an analysis of capitalism.

Bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historic organization of production. The categories which express its relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allows insights into the structure and the relations of production of all the vanished social formations out of whose ruins and elements it built itself up, whose partly still unconquered remnants are carried along within it, whose mere nuances have developed explicit significance within it, etc. Human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape. The intimations of higher development among the subordinate animal species, however, can be understood only after the higher development is already known. The bourgeois economy thus supplies the key to the ancient, etc. (105).

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1.3. The Frankfurt School

1.3.1. Three Generations of the Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt Institute for Social Research at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt was founded in 1923. Its first directors1 were Carl Grünberg (1923–1930), Max Horkheimer (1930–1953), and Theodor W. Adorno (1959–1969). After Adorno’s death, a committee of directors, including Gerhard Brandt, Rudolf Gunzert, Ludwig von Friedeburg, Wilhelm Schumm and Helmut Dubiel, led the Institute. Von Friedeburg was its director in the years 1997–2001. Axel Honneth has held the directorship since 2001. The Institute has been a space for the development of critical theories of society.

Rolf Wiggershaus (1995, 1) diferentiates in his book The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance between the Frankfurt School’s first and second generation. He wants to ‘distinguish the older Frankfurt School from what has developed from it since the 1970s’. Martin Jay (1996, xv, 356– 364) in his book The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923–1950 discerns between the Frankfurt School’s first generation (e.g. Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, Walter Benjamin, Leo Löwenthal, Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer), second generation (e.g. Jürgen Habermas, Alfred Schmidt, Albrecht Wellmer), and third generation (e.g. Axel Honneth, Oskar Negt, Helmut Dubiel, Claus Ofe, Hauke Brunkhorst, Detlev Claussen). Also a fourth generation of thinkers in the tradition of the Frankfurt School has emerged. They tend to have a background in critical humanities or critical social sciences. It for example includes works by the social philosopher Rahel Jaeggi, the sociologists Hartmut Rosa and Thomas Lemke, etc.

1.3.2. Georg Lukács and the Frankfurt School

This book applies specific thoughts from selected key thinkers from three generations of the Frankfurt School to the realms of communication as well as digital and social media. Lukács, Adorno and Marcuse represent the Frankfurt School’s first generation, Habermas the second one, and Honneth the third one. Lukács is a foundational thinker of the Frankfurt School and of cultural Marxism in general. His notion of reification that is grounded in Marx’s concept of fetishism influenced Horkheimer and Adorno’s distinction between instrumental and critical reason (Horkheimer 1947, Horkheimer and Adorno 2002), Horkheimer’s (2002) diferentiation between traditional and critical theory, and Marcuse’s (1941b, 1964) concept of technological rationality. It is therefore a logical step to start this book with a chapter dedicated to Lukács’ thought (chapter 2). Adorno and Marcuse, to whom chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated, built their thought, among others, on Lukács. I focus on Honneth, a representative of the third generation, in chapter 5, and then on Habermas, a representative of the second generation, in chapter 6. I have chosen this sequence because Honneth, more than Habermas, grounds his thoughts in Lukács, which is more closely related to Adorno and Marcuse, and because Habermas is the key Frankfurt School thinker who thought about communication. For focusing on a critical theory of communication, he is therefore the central point of engagement. Dedicating the final and concluding chapter to Habermas with the aim of elaborating some foundations and prolegomena to a dialectical-critical theory of communication allows me to conclude with a focus on the most foundational questions.

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There are other important thinkers that stand in the Frankfurt School tradition or are close to it, such as Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, Leo Löwenthal, Franz Neumann, Siegfried Kracauer, Alfred Schmidt, Claus Ofe, and Oskar Negt. A book only has limited space, however. So the exclusion of these and other authors does not imply that their work is unimportant in the age of the Internet. Updates of these and other critical approaches in cultural Marxism in the context of digital media are much needed today. The book series Critical Digital & Social Media Studies is a space for such engagements.

David Held (1980, 22–23) in his study of Critical Theory (Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas) stresses the important influence of Lukács’ thought on this School’s thinkers:

[C]ritial theorists retained many of Lukács’s concerns: the interplay between history and theory, the importance of theory as a “promotive factor in the development of the masses”, the relation of production and culture, the efects of reification and the way each aspect of society contains within itself “the possibility of unravelling the social whole or totality”. […] the impetus Lukács gave to the interrogation of orthodox Marxism and to the reworking of Marx’s ideas was built upon by each of the critical theorists.

Martin Jay (1996, 175) argues that the Frankfurt theorists and Lukács ‘spoke to similar questions from within a common tradition’.

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1.3.3. Lukács’ Ontology of Social Being

Lukács’ Ontology of Social Being is an extensive book comprising of 1,460 pages in total, separated into two volumes in the German edition. Some chapters of the Ontology have been translated into English and published in three parts in a total of 436 pages, which shows that large parts have remained thus far untranslated. We do not know why exactly there has thus far not been an interest to translate the whole book into English and why the excerpts that have been published in English as three short volumes have hardly been read, cited and discussed. History and Class Consciousness is extremely dominant in Lukács’ reception. In March 2016, History and Class Consciousness had around 5,400 citations on Google Scholar, the Ontology’s English excerpts’ first volume eight citations, the second four, and the third volume five. The German version of History and Class Consciousness had 1,372 citations, whereas the complete German version of the Ontology published in Lukács’ Collected Works only had four.2

My point is that also Lukács’ final work has key relevance for Marxist cultural theory. One can say that the Ontology is Lukács’ ultimate critical social theory. In it, he, in contrast to most of his previous works, also reflects on the relationship of the economy and culture, the relationship of labour and ideology, and the relationship work and communication. In the Ontology, Lukács introduces the concept of teleological positing for describing human activity and for arguing that the economy and culture are identical and non-identical at the same time. In the aforementioned essays, Adorno conceives Hegel’s dialectical thought as the dialectic of identity and non-identity. Applying this idea to the relationship of the economy and culture allows him to therefore also stress that these two realms are at the same time identical and non-identical. These and other works come quite close to Raymond Williams’ understanding of dialectical Cultural Materialism. It is therefore time to no longer think about Williams and the Frankfurt School in terms of non-equivalence, but rather as a dialectic of identity and non-identity that recognises diferent backgrounds and context, but also stresses their commonalities.

1.3.4. Negative Critique?

I want to pre-empt the criticism that this book is just a form of negative critique that is not constructive, does not analyse social movements, does not make suggestions how to change things, is therefore pessimist, etc. Critical theory critically interprets the world and has the potential to clarify what is wrong in it and why. We all have to politically change the world. Theory is an intervention into politics, but is not an autonomous political world in itself. Critical theory has first and foremost to be a negative dialectical theory in order to be critical. The demand that one has to be constructive, optimistic and looking for social change tends to limit critique and to draw attention away from what is wrong with the totality. Too much research that sympathises with and studies progressive societal change, i.e. research on progressive social movements, is a celebration of the radical and novel potentials of political groups, how they use various media in protest and mobilisation communication, etc. What is often forgotten is how dificult activism often and necessarily is in the global capitalist world because it automatically has to act from a position of resource inequality, where those in power control much more economic, political and cultural resources than civil society.

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Positivist social theory and research that stresses that critique has to be constructive, has to have a vision for a future society, foregrounds positive visions, etc., harbours the promise and threat of a deterministic concept of history that sees history as an unfolding of reason. In contrast, critical theory:

is entirely negative, that is, what is “negative” in revolution/critique does not harbour in it the notion of a teleological or progressivist “positive resolution”. […] History does not lead anywhere, has no telos, no objectives, no purpose and it does not take sides. […] There is no reality beyond the existent social relations (Bonefeld 2014, 221, 223, 225).

1.3.5. Habermas and the Critical Theory of Communication

One cannot talk about communication theory without talking about Habermas. One can also not talk about critical theory without talking about Habermas. When bringing up the notion of a critical theory of communication, most readers will inevitably first and foremost think of Habermas. Habermas’ profound engagement with social theory, political theory and communication theory was one of the most influential theories of the twentieth century in the social sciences and humanities. Updating critical theory and communication theory therefore requires a substantial engagement with Habermas’ works. There are many virtues of Habermas, not least that he is a true public intellectual who has intervened in everyday political debates.

Habermas is not just known for the Theory of Communicative Action, but also for his earlier work, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Both works have become key readings in media and communication studies. In a sense, Habermas’ later work retains the notion of the public sphere, but connects it to the notion of communication, which has resulted in the concept of the lifeworld. In media and communication studies, both Habermas and Raymond Williams are key thinkers – Habermas in respect to the concept of communication, Williams in respect to the notion of culture. There has, however, been hardly any direct connection between the two authors’ works.

But the critical theory of communication does not end with Habermas. Today, we need to go beyond Habermas in an open manner. Habermas has not theorised digital communication, i.e. communication via computer networks such as the Internet, social media platforms, mobile media, etc. This is not to say that the rise of the computer and the Internet has changed everything and that we have entered a new society. Rather, we live in a capitalist society that has been significantly transformed in order to stay the same system of exploitation and domination. The Internet, social and mobile media can certainly not be ignored. Critical theory must be updated to the realities of the twenty-first century. New communications technologies are one of many realities that today need to be critically theorised (see Fuchs 2008, 2011, 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2016). The Internet’s power structures are not profoundly diferent from those of traditional mass media, yet it has new potentials and limits that interact with structures of accumulation in the economy, the political system and the cultural system.

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