Negativity and Democracy Marxism and the Critical Theory Tradition [Hardcover]

The current political climate of uncompromising neoliberalism means that the need to study the logic of our culturethat is, the logic of the capitalist systemis compelling. Providing a rich philosophical analysis of democracy from a negative, non-identity, dialectical perspective, Vasilis Grollios encourages the reader not to think of democracy as a call for a more effective domination of the people or as a demand for the replacement of the elite that currently holds power. In doing so, he aspires to fill in a gap in the literature by offering an out-of-the-mainstream overview of the key concepts of totality, negativity, fetishization, contradiction, identity thinking, dialectics and corporeal materialism as they have been employed by the major thinkers of the critical theory tradition: Marx, Engels, Horkheimer, Lukacs, Adorno, Marcuse, Bloch and Holloway.

Their thinking had the following common keywords: contradiction, fetishism as a process and the notion of spell and all its implications. The author makes an innovative attempt to bring these concepts to light in terms of their practical relevance for contemporary democratic theory.

Contents

Werner Bonefeld

Introduction

Chapter 1: Marx and Engelss Critique of Democracy:

The Materialist Character of their Concept of Autonomy

Chapter 2: Dialectics and the Transition to Socialism in Late F. Engelss Philosophy of

History: Freeing Marx from the Withering Away of the State theory

Chapter 3: Max Horkheimers Dialectics Rehabilitated: How Horkheimers Open

Marxism Cracks Capitalism

Chapter 4: Dialectics and Democracy in Georg Lukacs Marxism