Daniel Krier (Ph.D. University of Kansas) is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Iowa State University where he teaches sociological theory. He has published a book Speculative Management: Stock Market Power and Corporate Change (SUNY) and numerous articles on finance capital, political economy, critical theory and historical sociology.



Mark P. Worrell (PhD University of Kansas) is Associate Professor of sociological theory at SUNY Cortland and has authored books on war, terror, and The Frankfurt School and the revolutionary potential of the American labor force during World War Two. Worrell has published widely in critical social theory journals including Telos, Rethinking Marxism, Fast Capitalism, Logos, and is currently an Associate Editor at the journal Critical Sociology.

Acknowledgement

Notes on Contributors



Introduction

Daniel Krier and Mark P. Worrell



TOWARDS A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF CRITICAL THEORY



1. Capitalism's Future: Self Alienation, Self-Emancipation and the Remaking of Critical Theory

David Norman Smith



SECTION 1: CAPITALISM'S FUTURE AND THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY



2. Beyond Left Liberalism: A Critical Look at Proposals to Reform the Capital/Wage Labor Relation

Tony Smith



3. Left Thatcherism: Recent Critical Theory and Post-Marxism(s) in the Light of Marxian Social Ontology

Christian Lotz



4. Capital's Reach: How Capital Shapes and Subsumes

Patrick Murray



5. Easing the Encumbered Subject: Security, Speculation and Capitalist Subjectivity

Kevin Amidon and Daniel Krier



SECTION 2: CAPITALISM'S FUTURE AND THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY



6. The Idolatry of Mind: Durkheim's Critique of Idealism

Mark P. Worrell



7. Social Character in Western Pre-Modernity: Lacanian Psychosis in Wladyslaw Reymont's The Peasants

Daniel Krier and Tony Feldmann



8. Pragmatism's Status Wage and the Standpoint of the Stranger

Graham Cassano



9. Dark Spectacle: Authoritarian Performance and the Commodity Form

William J. Swart and Daniel Krier



Index