![]() I then examine the Marxist heritage of the Institute of Social Research's influential and programmatic texts of the 1930s, beginning with Horkheimer's inaugural address of 1931. I begin by outlining the general characteristics of Western Marxism, before contrasting them with the deterministic doctrines of the Second International and Soviet Marxism. In the following, I trace Marx's influence on the development of the early Frankfurt School, making explicit the Marxist dimensions of its cultural critique, its dialectical, historical, and materialist methods, as well as the role of praxis and class in its critical social theory. The competing Marxist tendencies in the early twentieth century informed both the internal development of the Institute of Social Research and the contours of Western Marxism more generally. A few years before the Institute's founding, Georg Lukacs wrote: "Great disunity has prevailed even in the 'socialist' camp as to what constitutes the essence of Marxism," and who has "the right to the title of, Marxist'" (Lukacs 1971: 1). From the beginning, the members and financiers of the Institute explicitly understood its research program as Marxist, although there was no general agreement about what it meant to be Marxist. Marx's influence on the early Frankfurt School was profound, uneven, and largely filtered through a revived Hegelian Marxism that broke with the economistic and mechanistic doctrines of the Second International ( 1889-1916). The early Frankfurt School's theoretical tendency is best described as Western Marxism, while its institutional origin was the Institute of Social Research (Institut für SoziaIforschung), founded in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1923. The conceptualization of 'prosumerism' and modern digital capitalism ( In keeping with the general flowering of Critical Theory since the turn of the 21 st century, a diverse range of scholarship taking its cues from Marxism and Critical Theory has emerged in the humanities and social sciences beyond IR to theorize and analyse the politics of non-human objects. While this project is incipient in IR it has wider roots and contemporary resonances. It links normative critique and sociological analysis in order to realize deeper forms of democracy and equality in international politics. In contrast to other approaches to the politics of technology in International Relations, Critical IR Theory combines sustained attention to the political economy of global capitalism with a focus on the complex dynamics of cultural power that derive from enduring structural inequalities. Despite this lack of attention, Critical Theory presents a promising way to grapple with the complex global politics of technology. But, beyond a few examples, it has not really sought to outline how materiality matters or how technology is designed, developed, and disseminated globally within structures of social power and domination (Wyn Jones 1999 Peoples 2009 McCarthy 2015). It has, of course, elaborated on the material social and historical conditions that generate specific political processes under analysis, such as the conditions that enabled the rise of American hegemony after World War Two (Rupert 1995 Van der Pijl 1984). Curiously, however, for an approach with roots in Marxist historical materialism, Critical Theory in International Relations has, in general, tended not to pay sustained attention to the place of technology or the non-human in global politics. This approach has been fruitful across a range of issue areas, from security studies and international political economy to global environmental politics and the normative and ethical theorizing (Booth 2004 Morton 2007 Eckersley 2012 Linklater 1998). Historical sensitivity allows Critical Theory to draw out features of international politics that can change, and empirically identifies the resources within world politics that will allow for change in an emancipatory direction. ![]() Its empirical accounts investigate how the features of global politics, such anarchy or nationalism, came into being historically. Rather than take the world as it is and attempt to smooth its functioning, Critical Theory seeks to de-naturalize commonly held theoretical assumptions about the world and our knowledge of it in order to outline possibilities for progressive social change. As a project, Critical Theory is both sociological and normative. 1 They highlight the often problematic nature of core theoretical assumptions in IR, asking that we enquire into the constitution of the key concepts that underpin the discipline. ![]() Critical Theory approaches to International Relations (IR) are well established in the field, forming a rich strand of theoretically sophisticated and politically engaged scholarship.
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