Early Critical Theory Working Group (Summer-Fall 2023)
Schedule: August through September (Updated 8/23/23)
Marxist Working Week Geraberg 1923. Group photo, standing from left to right: Hede Massing, Friedrich Pollock, Eduard Ludwig Alexander, Konstantin Zetkin, Georg Lukács, Julian Gumperz, Richard Sorge, Karl Alexander (child), Felix Weil, unknown; sitting: Karl August Wittfogel, Rose Wittfogel, unknown, Christiane Sorge, Karl Korsch, Hedda Korsch, Käthe Weil, Margarete Lissauer, Bela Fogarasi, Gertrud Alexander
Critics and Theorists,
This page will be a temporary website home for the critical theory working group.
UPDATE - the CTWG has a dedicated site/domain now, check there for future updates: https://crittheoryworkgroup.blog/
Motive for the Group
Without my conversations - those we have and haven’t yet had - with you and others online, I’d never have begun or kept reading critical theory. Despite its reputation, serious study of ‘early’ critical theory (~1910s-1940s) by the Frankfurt School, their predecessors, and their fellow travelers is vanishingly rare in higher ed. It has been outlived by - and, when included in syllabi and seminars, distorted by - the philosophies and theoretical tendencies it proudly called enemies: fundamental ontology, (transcendental) phenomenology, existentialism, ‘left-populist’ reaction, social-democratic progressivism, liberal ideal theory, normative foundationalism, the reduction of Marxism to a sociological paradigm, the credulous presentism of pragmatism and positivism, and all the false promises of escape (through intuition, theology, event, aesthetic experience, etc.) from historically self-reflexive theoretical activity.
Almost invariably, what’s lost in the reception of early critical theory is its stubborn insistence on Marxian social criticism against alternative ‘critical theories’ of modern society (whether enlightened or romantic, progressive or regressive, liberal or illiberal). Early critical theorists composed their works in intensive suspension between the fractured actuality of capitalist self-reproduction and the fragile potentials of communist self-construction. So far as their critical theory comprehends the problematic of capitalism, it is only right in a wrong world. So far as their critical theory facilitates the project of communism, it is only proven by making itself superfluous. For this reason, early critical theory can only be recovered without compromise if it is recovered without nostalgia. The failure to sufficiently mark the difference between the self-conception of early critical theory and its reception is, to my mind, one of the greatest failings of ‘critical theory’ today. Consequently, any adequate reconstruction of critical theory past is inseparable from the polemic to rectify ‘critical theory’ present.
Unless higher ed is restructured from the ground up by the unionization of staff, students, and faculty, the self-cannibalization of the corporate university will continue apace with the theoretical humanities first on the chopping block whenever ‘hard decisions’ about big cuts and workforce reductions are made. In the near future, that is, Marxian critical social theory will increasingly lose even the opportunity to be misunderstood by academics. This is another motive for this group: we cannot count on the university system to ensure the transmission and extension of critical theory. As Horkheimer explains, because of the uniquely precarious position of critical theory in capitalist social life and scientific culture, we never could:
The idea of a transformed society, however, does not have the advantage of widespread acceptance, as long as the idea has not yet had its real possibility tested. To strive for a state of affairs in which there will be no exploitation or oppression, in which an all-embracing subject, namely self-aware mankind, exists, and in which it is possible to speak of a unified theoretical creation and a thinking that transcends individuals—to strive for all this is not yet to bring it to pass. The transmission of the critical theory in its strictest possible form is, of course, a condition of its historical success. But the transmission will not take place via solidly established practice and fixed ways of acting but via concern for social transformation. Such a concern will necessarily be aroused ever anew by prevailing injustice, but it must be shaped and guided by the theory itself and in turn react upon the theory. The circle of transmitters of this tradition is neither limited nor renewed by organic or sociological laws. It is constituted and maintained not by biological or testamentary inheritance, but by a knowledge which brings its own obligations with it. And even this knowledge guarantees only a contemporary, not a future community of transmitters. The theory may be stamped with the approval of every logical criterion, but to the end of the age it will lack the seal of approval which victory brings. Until then, too, the struggle will continue to grasp it aright and to apply it. - “Traditional and Critical Theory” (1937) (p. 241)
As self-critical, critical theory requires not only ongoing interdisciplinary projects in social research, but also - much more importantly - constant collaboration with those outside of academic institutions who share the singular characteristic that drives its activity: concern for the real and total abolition of social injustice and the collective creation of an emancipated society.
There are no general criteria for judging the critical theory as a whole, for it is always based on the recurrence of events and thus on a self-reproducing totality. Nor is there a social class by whose acceptance of the theory one could be guided It is possible for the consciousness of every social stratum today to be limited and corrupted by ideology, however much, for its circumstances, it may be bent on truth. For all its insight into the individual steps in social change and for all the agreement of its elements with the most advanced traditional theories, the critical theory has no specific influence on its side, except concern for the abolition of social injustice. (Ibid., pp. 241-242)
For this reason, the critical theory working group is open to anyone sympathetic to the critical attitude.
In Horkheimer’s typology of forms of judgment, this attitude opposes the resignation of the classificatory form - “this is the way it is, and we can do nothing about it” - and the false humility of the hypothetical form - “under certain circumstances this effect can take place; it is either thus or so” - to the bellicose clarity of the critical one - “it need not be so; [we] can change reality, and the necessary conditions for such change already exist.” (Ibid. 227) The search for these conditions, as real possibilities for an emancipated life in common, is successful only by participation in their creation. Or: the task of critical theory is not only to reflect on the conditions for such a transformation, but to become one among them.
Present talk of inadequate conditions is a cover for the tolerance of oppression. For the revolutionary, conditions have always been ripe. What in retrospect appears as a preliminary stage or a premature situation was once for a revolutionary a last chance for change. (…) A revolutionary is with the desperate people for whom everything is on the line, not with those who have time. (…) If truth is perceived as property, it becomes its opposite and hence subject to relativism which draws its critical elements from the same ideal of certainty as absolute philosophy. Critical theory is of a different kind. It rejects the kind of knowledge that one can bank on. It confronts history with that possibility which is always concretely visible within it. - “The Authoritarian State” (1942)
Previous Groups (Spring and Summer 2023)
This year, we’ve had two reading groups:
Method and Science (1919-1931): Spring 2023. Focusing on Lukacs’ “What is Orthodox Marxism?” (1919), Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy (1923), and Horkheimer’s “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research” (1931). Our focus was on the theoretical practice of early, Marxian critical theory - the problem of Marxist ‘method’ after the critique of methodological formalism (Lukacs), the problem of ‘vulgar’ Marxism that pretends to the status of non-partisan social science (Korsch), and the interpenetration of social philosophy and empirical social science required by any critical theory of capitalist society (Horkheimer).
Horkheimer’s Early (pre-40s) Historical Criticism: Summer 2023 (July). Focusing on Horkheimer’s work in the 1930’s: “The Present Situation” (1931), “Traditional and Critical Theory” (1937) and its “Postscript” (1937) (collected here, in Critical Theory), Marcuse’s reply “Philosophy and Critical Theory” (1937) (collected here, in Negations), and Horkheimer’s later reflection “The Social Function of Philosophy” (1939) (also collected in Critical Theory, link above). Our focus was on defining the concept of critical theory that Horkheimer develops in his writings in the 30’s - namely, Horkheimer’s argument that critical theory must be an extension of Marx’s critique of political economy into a comprehensive social theory. Rather than providing just another scientific paradigm for the explanation of social history, critical theory begins as a theory of the failure of modern social theories (whether speculative-metaphysical or empirical-scientific) to provide such a comprehensive social theory. (This is only Horkheimer’s point of departure. The core of his 30’s concept of critical theory is a careful combination of historical criticism and materialist logic.)
Next Reading Group (August-September 2023)
Readings: Selections from the following,
History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Georg Lukacs, translated by R. Livingstone. MIT Press. 1971. Link.
Tactics and Ethics 1919-1929. Georg Lukacs, Introduction by R. Livingstone. Verso Press. 2014. Link.
Marxism and Philosophy. Karl Korsch. Translated and Introduced by F. Halliday. MR Press. 2009. Link.
The Spirit of Utopia. Ernst Bloch. Translated by A.A. Nassar. Stanford University Press. 2000. Link.
“Author as Producer” (1934) and “Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian” (1937) by Walter Benjamin
Schedule For Group 3: Starting Saturday, August 19th, 1-2:30PM EST, we’ll be returning to Lukacs and Korsch for three weeks, focusing on how each argues in their own way that Marxism is self-critical or it is nothing. Finally, we’ll conclude with a three-week introduction to the heterodox historical materialisms of Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin.
Meeting 1 (8/19): [CANCELLED DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES AND COVID]
Meeting 2 (8/26): Korsch on Uncritical and Critical Marxism(s)
Texts (Marxism and Philosophy collection): “Marxism and Philosophy” (1923), “Introduction to the Critique of the Gotha Program” (1922), “The Marxism of the First International” (1924).
Meeting 3 (9/2): Lukacs on Self-Reflexive Historical Criticism
Texts (History and Class Consciousness collection): “What is Orthodox Marxism?” (1919), “The Changing Function of Historical Materialism” (1919)
Texts (Tactics and Ethics collection): “Moses Hess and the Problems of Idealist Dialectics” (1926) [Optional supplement: “The New Edition of Lassalle’s Letters” (1925)]
Meeting 4 (9/9): Ernst Bloch’s Revolutionary Romanticism
Texts: Selections from The Spirit of Utopia (1920), in particular “Karl Marx, Death, and the Apocalypse” (pp. 233-278).
Meeting 5 (9/16): Benjamin on Historical Materialism vs Historicism
Texts: “Author as Producer” (1934) and “Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian” (1937)
Sign-Up
For anyone who wants to sign up for the upcoming reading group in November 2023 (TOPIC TBD) - or even just catch up on the recordings, transcripts, and notes from the previous reading group(s) and check out the material from the next one as it’s posted - click here for the sign-up sheet.
Support
If you like the work and want to see more of it, you can shoot me a few bucks! It would help me cover the costs of the group so far and give me the means to expand the group in the near future. As long as I’m able to keep running the critical theory working group, it’ll be free and open to anyone interested regardless of background in critical theory.
Ko-fi link: Ko-fi.com/jamescrane.
Contact
Email: crittheoryworkgroup@proton.me
Twitter (‘X’ lol): @crit_theory_grp
Thanks as always for your patience and provocations!
James/Crane
Once you see how our income-based laborforce really works (the fact that high profits depend on low wages), then you’ll finally understand why a digital (moneyless) system matching people to jobs, resources to communities, and daily production, consumption, and waste management operations to personal and professional demands is actually more sustainable and ethical than today’s global political economy, mainly because, compared to scientific-capitalism, scientific-socialism is a lot more democratic; it values and views our very basic, very intuitive belief “universal protections for all” as both a human need and an environmental right.