Dr Neal Harris

Capitalism and its Critics offers an accessible account of major theories of capitalism from the industrial revolution to the present day. The book provides a comprehensive account of the economic and social thought of key theorists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to David Harvey and Thomas Piketty.

Capitalism has long been the subject of passionate debate, and today such contestations are perhaps more timely than ever. For its advocates, capitalism brings democracy and freedom and is the cornerstone of modernity and of progress. For its critics, capitalism is based on the exploitation of labour and is responsible for the destruction of the environment as well as colonialism. Whether capitalism survives the century, or whether an alternative social system emerges, may very well determine the fate of humanity. Capitalism and its Critics gives a comprehensive critical analysis of the most important theorists ofn capitalism, including Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Polanyi, F.A. Hayek, J.M. Keynes, David Harvey, and Thomas Piketty. The book discusses some of the main debates about capitalism and considers alternatives in the twentieth and twenty-first century. The twelve chapters are loosely chronologically organised around the main approaches and historical phases in the history of capitalism. Central themes of the book are the ideas of capitalist crisis and of tensions between democracy and capitalism in the making of modernity.

A highly readable, informative and engaging text, Capitalism and its Critics is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding capitalism and its alternatives.

The social-theoretical foundations of critical theory have crumbled. This is a result of the unchecked embrace of an aggressive variant of 'recognition theory'. While first-generation critical theorists grasped the potency of structural power as a force that reified thought, denatured the imagination and recoded desires, recognition theory views power as a post-hoc effect that exists only after intersubjective relations have been established. This is a troubling state of affairs and has led to the debilitation of the Frankfurt School's research programme. New and secure social-theoretical foundations are urgently needed. In this regard, the work of first-generation critical theorists such as Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse remains as powerful today as ever.

This book brings together leading academics and activists to address the possibilities for qualitative social change beyond neoliberalism, providing introductory essays on alternative societies, transition, and resistance. Bringing together discussions on Universal Basic Income, Actually Existing Communism, Parecon, Circular Economies, Workers Co-operatives, ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’, Trade Unionism, and Party Politics, the volume provides one of the first scholarly engagement to systematically evaluate possibilities for transition and resistance across theoretical, political, and disciplinary traditions.

The diagnosis of social pathologies has long been a central concern for social researchers working within, and on the peripheries of, Critical Theory. As this volume will elaborate, the pathology diagnosing imagination enables a “thicker” form of social critique, fostering research that pushes beyond the parameters of liberal social and political thought. Faced with impending climatic catastrophe, the accelerating inequities of neoliberalism, the ascent of authoritarian movements globally, and one-dimensional computational modes of thought, a viable form of normative social critique is now more important than ever. The central aim of this volume is thus to champion the pathology diagnosing imagination as a vehicle for conducting such timely social criticism.    

In this chapter we argue that Frankfurt School Critical Theory is in crisis and we offer three potential remedies, drawn from the work of Erich Fromm (1900-1980).

In this short introductory chapter we reflect on Rousseau’s importance to the arts and humanities before introducing the contributions that follow. We present Rousseau’s work as providing a living heritage, of offering a critical perspective which we take into our present approach to social research. As an example of what this means, we briefly comment on the importance of reflexive autonomy within Rousseau’s corpus. We briefly contend that a leitmotif throughout Rousseau’s oeuvre is a concern with the social subject capable of determining their own idea of the good life, a self-legislating moral actor. As is returned to through the contributions in the volume, this richer understanding of the volitional reflexive subject, who is sovereign over their own choice of desires, provides the foundations for a richer understanding of liberty and a more sophisticated conception of citizenship.

In the summer of 2013, protests against the neoliberal authoritarian regime of Erdoğan blossomed into a truly remarkable movement. The heavy-handed response of the government attested to the fear of even the modest semblance of popular self-rule. Amid the streets, parks and squares covered in tear gas, a graffiti marking on a wall read 'Nothing will ever be the same, wipe away your tears!'. As we head towards a new chapter of resistance and rebellion, we would like to conclude our volume with this call to seize the melancholic heritage of past struggles, and act on a redemptive drive to secure the victories of the future. A new world is ours to win.

This volume embodies hope for a post-capitalist world, pointing beyond today’s neoliberal horrors. We argue that the range of possible alternatives is so promising, that the needless suffering in the present so extreme, and the opportunities for resistance so tangible, that ‘think beyond neoliberalism’ is a valid injunction to demand of scholars and activists. While mindful of the progressive inflection Bloch (2015 [1954]) holds in the term ‘utopia’, we are aware that the pejorative connotations of ‘unrealistic’, ‘impracticable’, and ‘outlandish’ remain dominant in attempts to see past the present. However, we contend that today’s outlandish ‘utopians’ are the neoliberal sympathisers, those who believe in the perpetuation of free-market economics to further enrich the opulent, at the cost of inconceivable human misery and environmental degradation, when humane and equitable alternatives exist. In this regard thinking beyond neoliberalism, and disclosing its needless horrors, serves to comfort the afflicted (showing that a better world is possible), and to afflict the comfortable (disclosing the needless suffering produced by neoliberal institutions).

This introductory chapter serves to locate the volume’s contributions within both the current historical moment and the rapidly evolving Critical Theoretical literature. The chapter is divided into three sections. First, the significance of pathology diagnosing social research is articulated. Second, three potentially existential contemporary challenges to such a research framework are elaborated. Third, each chapter is summarised and its contribution is located relative to the wider critical scholarship. Social pathology diagnosing research is presented as central to Critical Theory and held to enable a form of potent social critique commensurate to the challenges of the day.

This concluding chapter sees the co-authors identify complimentary themes, insights and methodologies, which serve to foster and nourish pathology diagnosing social research. To this end, they comment on (i) the methodological significance of immanent-transcendent critique, (ii) the shared political imperative of combating reified consciousness, and (iii) the left-Hegelian notion of the historically contingent social subject.

Neal Harris (Adorno, Social Pathology, and the Limits of Contemporary Critical Theory, S. 109–121) verteidigt Adornos totalisierenden Blick auf die Gesellschaft und betont die innere Verbindung von Tauschprinzip, instrumenteller Rationalität und Identitätszwang. Zentral sei der Begriff der sozialen Vernunft­. Demgegenüber habe die intersubjektive Wendung Der Frankfurter Schule nach Adornos Tod die Fähigkeiten kritischer Theorie restringiert (S. 110). Die Marx’sche Einsicht, dass das gesellschaftliche Sein das Bewusstsein bestimmt, nicht umgekehrt, werde ignoriert (S. 115). „If Frankfurt School Critical Theory is to remain a distinctive and potent vehicle for social critique, it must return to the sophisticated interdisciplinarity of the Adornian imagination” (S. 119)."

This chapter sets out the case for the idea of critical cosmopolitanism as a distinctive kind of cosmopolitanism. The notion of critical cosmopolitanism suggests a particular approach to cosmopolitanism that highlights its primarily critical characteristics. The chapter discusses some of the key defining features of critique, focusing on the conception of critique associated with the Hegelian-Marxist and critical theory heritage as the most relevant tradition. Critical theory thus gave expression to a moral vision of the future possibilities of society as deriving from a process of social transformation driven forward by its internal dynamics. Cosmopolitanism refers to a specific kind of reality and is not merely a normative or interpretative approach that can be conducted without reference to social reality. The contemporary relevance of cosmopolitanism consists of its critical significance as both an analysis of social and political problems and as an account of the social world in terms of immanent possibilities for transcendence.

In light of the much-discussed 'Domestication of Critical Theory', Alfred Sohn-Rethel's work offers exciting foundations from which to rebuild the Frankfurt School project. While Honneth and Forst stray increasingly towards 'neo-Idealist' philosophies, Sohn-Rethel's 'philosophy of real abstraction' offers an exciting framework through which to connect the distortions of consciousness induced by capitalist exchange processes to the subject's impeded epistemic capacities. The relationship between 'real' and 'theoretical' abstraction is thus a core theme of this edited volume; a topic which offers a potential great harvest for future Critical Theorists.