Critical Marxist Theory. Political Autonomy and the Radicalising Project of Modernity

Abstract

Critical Theory was conceived of as a transdisciplinary Marxist totality analysis by Horkheimer and colleagues throughout their exile. Ever since – especially with the death of Adorno in 1969 and the latest with the death of Marcuse ten years later – there happened what has been called the ‘domestication’ of the main strands of the Frankfurt School. My PhD traces this domestication in its two affirmative turns, that is, in a liberal turn in the second and in a postmodern turn in the third and fourth generations to better understand and overcome the domesticating impasse. As an alternative to both the liberal and the postmodern turn, then, it proposes to follow Habermas’ defence of a project of modernity instead, yet only by disentangling it, in Marxian fashion, from the capitalist modernisation process. That is needed because the normative ideals of the project of modernity can only be realised beyond the framework of capital: as long as they remain embedded within it, they dialectically invert themselves into their opposites. The PhD thus excavates political autonomy as the core not only of a radicalising project of modernity (pushed forward from below) but also as a possible criterion for the critiques of Critical Theory. Along this line, the thesis further updates the most important concepts of the Frankfurt School for today, namely materialised ideology, objective alienation, and liquid reification. It shows not only why political autonomy is the necessary condition for an open and pluralist Critical Marxist Theory faithful to early Horkheimer’s original conception but also in which sense political autonomy is needed to alleviate the main threats societies are facing today, namely ecological collapse and the rising alt-right.