Critical Marxist Theory

Lukas Meisner is fellow at the Berlin Institute of Critical Theory (InkriT) and the Institute for International Political Economy Berlin (IPE). Since 2025, he is editor-in-chief of Das Argument. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften. He is the author of Fluch(t). Die Sintflut heißt Westen (2025), Wrackmente. Novelle (2024), Medienkritik ist links. Warum wir eine medienkritische Linke brauchen (2023) and coauthor of Capitalist Nihilism and the Murder of Art (2020, with Eef Veldkamp).

• Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: (De-)Domesticating Critical Theory: From Modernist Defeatism and the Liberal and Postmodern Turns to the Radicalising Project of Modernity.- Chapter 2: What is Critical (Marxist) Theory? Ideology-Critical Totality Analysis towards Emancipatory Praxis.- Chapter 3: Domesticating Critical Theory: Two Affirmative Turns after one Defeatist Dead End.- Chapter 4: The Liberal Turn of the Frankfurt School as its first Affirmative Turn.- Chapter 5: The Postmodern Turn in the Frankfurt School as its second Affirmative Turn.- Chapter 6: Beyond Modernist Defeatism, Liberalist Apology, and Postmodern Farewells: The Radicalising Project of Modernity.- Part II: Critical Marxist Theory and Political Autonomy. From the Need to May to the Revolution for Living.- Chapter 7: Which Criterion for which Critique? Towards the Prenormative Meta-Criterion of Political Autonomy as the Precondition of the Good Life.- Chapter 8: Mapping the Background of Political Autonomy: The Dialectics of Self (Voicing), Subject (Listening), and Human (Caring).- Chapter 9: Critical Marxist Theory of Political Autonomy: Social Freedom, Substantial Democratisation, the End of Prehistory, and the Revolution for Living.- Chapter 10: Conclusion: Critical Marxist Theory of Political Autonomy. Towards a Radical Politics of Maying and its Revolution for Living.