Page 12 - Critical Theory of Communication as Critical Sociology of Critique

FUCHS: CRITICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION AS CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY OF CRITIQUE IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL CAPITALISM

I am certainly not opposed to, but much favour an engagement with and reconstruction of the history of Marxist
and Marxian concepts. My next book Critical Theory of Communication: Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth
and Habermas in the Age of the Internet and Social Media (Fuchs, 2016a) focuses on specif c aspects (often
less well-known writings such as Lukács’ [1986a, 1986b] Ontology of Social Being) of some of the Frankfurt
School thinkers’ works and brings them into dialogue with concepts elaborated by other critical theorists (such
as Raymond Williams, Valentin Vološinov, or Ferruccio Rossi-Landi) in order to establish foundations for a critical
theory of communication and digital media communication that goes beyond Habermas.
Jan Løhmann Stephensen has correctly analysed that my thought is among other traditions inf uenced by
humanist Marxist theory, including Marx’s philosophical works and works by later thinkers such as Herbert
Marcuse and Raymond Williams. I do, however, not think that humanist Marxism fails at a time when the artistic
critique has been incorporated into capitalist ideology. The political importance of humanist Marxism has always
been that it questioned all forms of authoritarianism and argued for a democratic form of socialism. I f nd this
version of Marxism ontologically and epistemologically interesting, because, in contrast to many other forms of
Marxist theory, it is grounded in a profound understanding and reading of Hegel’s dialectics. And it challenges
moral relativism and cynical reason that is so typical for poststructuralist and postmodern thought. It does so
by putting the human being and human interests at the centre of critical theory. With respect to dialectical and
humanist thinking, Marcuse’s (1941) book Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory has had
a very important inf uence on my line of thought.
Postmodernism lacks a moral philosophy and therefore cannot answer important questions such as: what is
wrong about fascism? It does not have an adequate philosophical concept that allows for a distinction between
moral rights and wrongs and in a nihilistic, solipsistic and relativistic manner tends to consider all moral judg-
ments as forms of domination. In contrast, Humanist Marxist thought uses Hegel’s dialectic of the essence and
the existence of humans and society for establishing a critical moral philosophy and Hegel’s dialectic of the
essence and the appearance for establishing an ideology critique (for a more detailed discussion, see Fuchs,
2011, chapter 2).
My starting point for establishing a critical theory is not the concept of creativity, but the concept of human
sociality. Marx’s most fundamental general sociological insight is that in society, everything is a social relation.
Social relations are the key foundation in and through which society and humans exist and reproduce them-
selves. And in all societies, humans have to co-operate to a certain degree in order for humans and society to
survive. This insight allows for a grounding of a moral philosophy of co-operation. This approach runs through
all of my books as a philosophical foundation (the basic argument has been most directly expressed in Fuchs,
2008). It is certainly inspired by humanist Marxist thought.
Soldiers certainly also co-operate in order to kill their enemies, and capitalists co-operate in strategic allianc-
es in order to try to destroy their competitors. In these and related phenomena that are so constitutive of class
and dominative societies, co-operation is subordinated to instrumental logic and competition. Domination and
exploitation mean conditions of incomplete sociality of society. Only a society, in which all humans benef t and
lead a good life, is a society that corresponds to its very foundations. We can therefore also say that dominative,
exploitative and class societies are societies that are alienated from society itself. The consequential categorical
imperative resulting from these insights is a non-Kantian one, namely the Marxian categorical imperative: that
“man is the highest being for man” implies “the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is
a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being” (Marx, 1844a, p. 182).

Conclusion

I wrote Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media as a sequel to Digital Labour and Karl Marx. So one
can say that Culture and Economy… is the second part of Digital Labour and Karl Marx.
Jan Løhmann Stephensen has provided an informed reading of my book that asks important questions about

CONJUNCTIONS, VOL. 3, NO. 1, 2016, ISSN 2246-3755 | PAGE 12