Marxist Humanism and Communication Theory

Christian Fuchs is a critical theorist of communication and society. He is co-editor of the journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. He is author of many publications, including the books Social Media: A Critical Introduction (3rd edition 2021), Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory (2020), Marxism: Karl Marx’s Fifteen Key Concepts for Cultural & Communication Studies (2020), Nationalism on the Internet: Critical Theory and Ideology in the Age of Social Media and Fake News (2020), Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism (2019), Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter (2016), Digital Labour and Karl Marx (2014), Internet and Society (2008).

• 1. Introduction ; 2. Erich Fromm and the Critical Theory of Communication ; 3. Revisiting the Althusser/E. P. Thompson-Controversy: Towards a Marxist Theory of Communication ; 4. Raymond Williams’s Communicative Materialism ; 5. Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of the Production of Space and the Critical Theory of Communication ; 6. Towards A Critical Theory of Communication with Georg Lukács’s and Lucien Goldmann ; 7. Günther Anders’s Critical Theory of Technology ; 8. Jean-Paul Sartre as Critical Theorist of Communication. An Engagement with "Critique of Dialectical Reason" ; 9. M. N. Roy, Socialist Humanism, and the Critical Analysis of Communication ; 10. Capitalism, Racism, Patriarchy ; 11. Conclusion

'In this volume, Christian Fuchs collected and partly updated his recently published articles analysing some key twentieth-century critical/Marxist contributions to the media and communication theory. His work makes an unparalleled contribution to the critical literature of communication studies by analysing, from a Marxist perspective, different dimensions and diverse contexts of mass communication, such as the base-superstructure relationship, human alienation, ideology, hegemony, and its reproductive power for capitalism and its contemporary forms and manifestations, such as authoritarianism, fascism, nationalism, and digital capitalism. A must-read for every critical scholar in the field.'Slavko Splichal, University of Ljubljana