Skeptic's Guide to Critical Theory

[cantwealljustgetalong]

so I really despise everything I've read concerning critical theory, but I am still curious to take the authors on their own terms and try to understand their arguments. I am specifically interested in self-proclaimed Marxist critical theorists and important works/authors in the historical development of this theoretical tendency.

based on the above, do you have any reading suggestions?

[Lowtech]

i would start with the source, Das Kapital and the communist manifesto. get it from the horses mouth so to speak. then analyze our current global society for yourself.

look particularly at how capitalism processes resources, scrutinize the profit mechanism and ask yourself, do capitalist contentions validate a plutocratic society?

i suggest looking at it via the numbers. because if capitalism has no mathematical validation, social constructs of "ownership," "money," "markets," or elitism hold no weight in the debate.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

I should make myself more clear:
by "critical theory", I don't mean Marxism as a whole. I mean more along lines of Althusser and the Frankfurt School.

[Sasha]

i would start with the source, Das Kapital and the communist manifesto. get it from the horses mouth so to speak. then analyze our current global society for yourself.

look particularly at how capitalism processes resources, scrutinize the profit mechanism and ask yourself, do capitalist contentions validate a plutocratic society?

i suggest looking at it via the numbers. because if capitalism has no mathematical validation, social constructs of "ownership," "money," "markets," or elitism hold no weight in the debate.

i assume your not familiar with the term "critical theory", the OP is looking for the essential works in a very specific form of neo-marxism; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory#In_social_theory

anyways, i would suggest starting with the founders of the frankfurter school and working you way up through the development.
so i would start with max horkmeier's "traditional and critical theory" then go for Adorno (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Adorno) and Horkheimer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Horkheimer)'s Dialectic of Enlightenment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic_of_Enlightenment) (1944) and Adorno's Minima Moralia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minima_Moralia) (1951), then maybe Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Dimensional_Man) (1964) and Adorno's Negative Dialectics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_Dialectics) (1966) and finishing with Michel Foucault (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault) and Jean Baudrillard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard) and then if you got a taste for it end with the works of Tiqqun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiqqun).

i'm sure user "ravachol" a.o. could point you towards more specific essential works and help explain stuff you dont get at first (with the exclusion of maybe Adorno that shit can be dense as fuck, but very intresting non the less)

[Lowtech]

i assume your not familiar with the term "critical theory", the OP is looking for the essential works in a very specific form of neo-marxism; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory#In_social_theorythis is true. I feel like an idiot lol my bad.