Adorno and Marx

Werner Bonefeld is Professor of Politics at the University of York, UK. He is the author of The Strong State and PoliticalEconomy (2017), Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy (Bloomsbury, 2014) and is co-editor of The SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory (with Beverly Best and Chris O'Kane, 2018). He is also co-editor the Bloomsbury series Critical Theory and the Critique of Society (with Chris O'Kane)Chris O’Kane is Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA.

The illuminating studies gathered in this collection bring to the surface, for thought and discussion, capital’s submerged social content—concealed, as it must be, in the ‘objective illusion’ of the economy. One of capital’s deadly abstractions, the economy is neither the base of capitalist society, nor the source of its movement; it is, rather, the constellation of inverted appearances assumed by the capital-labour relation itself. Read this book because thinking Adorno and Marx together shows us how capital continues by moving on in the guise of something new—it always was the something worse yet to come.

• 1. Adorno and Marx: Negative Dialectics and the Critique of Political Economy, Werner Bonefeld and Chris O’Kane (University of York, UK and University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA)Part I : Adorno and the New Reading of Marx2. Cracking Economic Abstractions: Bringing Critical Theory Back-In, Werner Bonefeld (University of York, UK)3. Adorno and the Critique of Political Economy, Dirk Braunstein and Niko Bobka (Institute of Social Research, Frankfurt, and University of Göttingen, Germany)4. Adorno and the New reading of Marx, and Methodologies of Critique, Charlotte Baumann (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany)5. Marxian Economics and the Critique of Political Economy, Chris O’Kane and Kirstin Munro (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA)Part II : Critique of Political Economy as Negative Dialectic of Society6. Economic Objectivity and Negative Dialectics: On Class and Struggle, Werner Bonefeld (University of York, UK)7. The Liquidation of the Individual as a Critique of Political Economy, Fabian Arzuaga (College of William and Mary, USA)8. Society as Real Abstraction: Adorno’s Critique of Economic Nature, Charles Prusik (Villanova University, USA)9. Society Maintains itself despite all Catastrophes that may Eventuate: Critical Theory, Negative Totality, and Permanent Catastrophe, Chris O’Kane (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA)Part III: Subjectivity and Pseudo Practice: on Social Praxis10. Conceptuality and Social Practice, Werner Bonefeld (University of York, UK)11. Non-identity, critique of labour and pseudo-praxis: extra-marginal palinlegomena on the dialectics of doing, Marcel Stoetzler (Bangor University, UK)Appendix12. Introduction to ‘Theodor W. Adorno on Marx and the Basic Concepts of Sociological Theory. From a Seminar Transcript in the Summer Semester of 1962, Chris O’Kane (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA)13. Marx and the Basic Concepts of Sociological Theory: From a Seminar Transcript in the Summer Semester of 1962, Theodor W Adorno