Introduction

This introduction explains the structure of the book in the form of three parts: Part I focuses on the foundations of communicative materialism; part II on communication in capitalist society and part III on the materialist transcendence of communicative capitalism. Whereas part I analyses the foundations of the general materialist analysis of the world and society, part II further develops these foundations in order to work out an immanent critique of communication in capitalism. Part III deals with transcendental aspects of communicative materialism, which include the society of the commons, metaphysical reflections on death and love, and social struggles for alternatives. The approach presented book stands in the tradition of Hegel, Marx and Aristotle as the latter has had a profound influence on Marx’s works and on humanist socialists such as Georg Lukács. Theoretical ideas from the author’s earlier have been updated with a focus on analysis on the level of society as totality. Three Marxist theory approaches – Humanist Marxism, Critical Theory and Critical Political Economy of Communication are contrasted with anti-Humanist theory including the negative legacy of Louis Althusser, actor network theory, posthumanism and the legacy of structuralism and post- structuralism. In the book that follows dialectical, Humanist Marxism and communication theory are brought together. Only through humanism (as a commons-based community of humanity) the author argues can we reach socialism (and vice-versa).