Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity

by Douglas Kellner

Kellner explores the effects of historical crises of capitalism and Marxism on critical theory and reflects on the continued relevance or obsolescence of Marxism and critical theory. Kellner writes, "As we move into the 1990s critical theory might help produce theoretical and political perspectives which could be part of a Left Turn that could reanimate the political hopes of the 1960s, while helping overcome and reverse the losses and regression of the 1980s."

Genres: Philosophy

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Douglas Kellner is a "third generation" critical theorist in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School. Kellner was an early theorist of the field of critical media literacy and has been a leading theorist of media culture generally.[citation needed] In his recent work, he has increasingly argued that media culture has become dominated by the forms of spectacle and mega-spectacle. He also has contributed important studies of alter-globalization processes, and has always been concerned with counter-hegemonic movements and alternative cultural expressions in the name of a more radically democratic society.

Kellner has written with a number of authors, including (with Steven Best) an award-winning trilogy of books on postmodern turns in philosophy, the arts, and in science and technology. More recently, he is known for his work exploring the politically oppositional potentials of new media and attempted to delineate what they term "multiple technoliteracies" as a movement away from the present attempt to standardize a corporatist form of computer literacy. Previously, Kellner served as the literary executor of the famed documentary film maker Emile de Antonio and is presently overseeing the publication of six volumes of the collected papers of the critical theorist Herbert Marcuse. At present, Kellner is the George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Mitchell Pfeiffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Swell book

[John Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine, well written, but nothing new or groundbreaking at all. :-)

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just some notes before I return this to the library:

"The scholar and his science are incorporated into the apparatus of society; his achievements are a factor in the conservation and continuous renewal of the existing state of affairs, no matter what fine names he gives to what he does." Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory, p.196/Kellner p.45

In a synchronic sense Critical Theory uses "totalizing concepts" to accurately represent the "totalizing capitalist society" which imposes certain ways of thinking and behaving in every realm of human experience. In a diachronic sense, it must account for the historical stages through which capitalism has passed and will pass through from which socialism might emerge. (p.47-8)

"[T]he theory never aims simply at an increase in knowledge as such. Its goal is man's emancipation from slavery." Horkheimer, Critical Theory, p.245/Kellner p.49

"Lukács suggests that natural science 'distills "pure" facts and places them in the relevent context by means of observation, abstraction, and experiment', and that it is precisely the 'social structure of capitalism which encourages such views'. In producing commodities for the sake of their exchange value and in the exchange relationships which permeate bourgeious society, there is abstraction from qualitative needs, values and uses.... [Capitalism] thus constitutes science as a tool of its interests." Kellner p.94 (Nested quotes from Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, pp.95-6)

"Humans pay for the increase of their power with alienation from that over which they exercise their power. Enlightenment behaves toward things as a dictator toward men. He knows them in so far as he can manipulate them." Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p.9/Kellner p.95

As opposed to objective reason, for Horkheimer, subjective reason "is essentially concerned with means and ends, with the adequacy of procedures for purposes more or less taken for granted and supposedly self-explanatory. It attaches little importance to the question whether the purposes as such are reasonable. If it concers itself at all with ends, it takes for granted that they too are reasonable in the subjective sense, i.e. that they serve the subject's interest in relation to self-preservation." Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, pp.3-4/Kellner p.101-2

"Adorno believes that there is a rudimentary 'dialectic of women' in Veblen's analysis, which presents women both as relatively independent of the economic system, and thus free from the 'predatory spirit', and as potentially conservative by virtue of exclusion from the production process and the public sphere." Kellner p.149 (on Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class)

"Advertising is a waste of resources, talent and time, and a rational society would limit advertising to providing consumer information." Kellner p.165

According to Habermas's theory of legitimation crisis, crises of late capitalism will come from a failure of the "cultural sphere" to instill sufficient motivation in individuals to carry out the tasks the system requires (work, for instance). (p.199) Habermas thinks these "social crises" are the new vulnerability, distinguishing them from the "system crises" of the now-surpassed liberal capitalism. (p.197) More pressing crises than these to me, however, are the inevitable limits to growth imposed on any economy by the finite resources on the planet--the consequences of which are not considered in Marx's original scheme or Habermas's updated version.

[Luke Echo · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok summary of critical theory.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent survey of the field.