By exploring the concepts of 'crisis' and 'critique', this study offers a thought-provoking re-examination of the political and social thought of Cornelius Castoriadis in light of the current world crisis and with regard to his radical critique of both the traditional Left and contemporary capitalist societies.

This book examines the 2008 global economic crisis as a complex social phenomenon or "social hieroglyphic", arguing that the crisis is not fundamentally economic, despite presenting itself as such. Instead, it is considered to be a symptom of a long-standing, multifaceted, and endemic crisis of capitalism which has effectively become permanent, leading contemporary capitalist societies into a state of social regression, manifest in new forms of barbarism. The author offers a qualitative understanding of the economic crisis as the perversion, or inversion, of the capitalistically organized social relations. The genesis of the current crisis is traced back to the unresolved world crisis surrounding the Great Depression in order to map the course and different "inverted forms" of the continuous global crisis of capitalism, and to reveal their inner connections as derivative of the same social constitution. From a historical and interdisciplinary perspective, the book expounds critical social theory, elaborating on the intersection between the early critical theory of the Frankfurt School - mainly Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse - and the "social form" analysis of the Open Marxism school. Global Economic Crisis as Social Hieroglyphic critically addresses the permanent character of the 1920s-1930s crisis and the "crisis theory" debates; the political crisis in Eastern Europe (1953-1968); the crisis of Keynesianism; the crisis of subversive reason; the crisis, negative anthropology and transformations of the bourgeois individual; the state of social regression and the destructive tendencies after the rise of neoliberalism; and finally, the 2008 financial crisis and its ongoing aftermath.

This book examines the 2008 global economic crisis as a complex social phenomenon or "social hieroglyphic", arguing that the crisis is not fundamentally economic, despite presenting itself as such. Instead, it is considered to be a symptom of a long-standing, multifaceted, and endemic crisis of capitalism which has effectively become permanent, leading contemporary capitalist societies into a state of social regression, manifest in new forms of barbarism. The author offers a qualitative understanding of the economic crisis as the perversion, or inversion, of the capitalistically organized social relations. The genesis of the current crisis is traced back to the unresolved world crisis surrounding the Great Depression in order to map the course and different "inverted forms" of the continuous global crisis of capitalism, and to reveal their inner connections as derivative of the same social constitution. From a historical and interdisciplinary perspective, the book expounds critical social theory, elaborating on the intersection between the early critical theory of the Frankfurt School - mainly Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse - and the "social form" analysis of the Open Marxism school. Global Economic Crisis as Social Hieroglyphic critically addresses the permanent character of the 1920s-1930s crisis and the "crisis theory" debates; the political crisis in Eastern Europe (1953-1968); the crisis of Keynesianism; the crisis of subversive reason; the crisis, negative anthropology and transformations of the bourgeois individual; the state of social regression and the destructive tendencies after the rise of neoliberalism; and finally, the 2008 financial crisis and its ongoing aftermath.

What is Open Marxism? Against a background of social regression and the ongoing, multifaceted crisis of capitalism, this book examines the Open Marxist tradition and how it develops the work of the early Frankfurt School in ways which significantly advance critical social theory as negative critique of capitalist society. The study situates Open Marxism as the latest critique of mechanistic interpretations of Marx and Marxism, evolutionism and positivism, and ‘’naturalized’’ historical and societal processes. It charts the development of the different strands of Open Marxism: from Axelos in the 1950s, and Agnoli in the 1980s, to the work of Clarke, Bonefeld, Gunn and Holloway since the 1990s. The book describes the distinctive features of Open Marxist thought with a focus on its use and understanding of critique as negative and destructive. Negative critical theory is argued to be the only path still open to the possibility of human emancipation, and this volume describes how Open Marxism can be put to use in the work of building radical social praxis, with reference made in particular to the critique of class, political economy and the capitalist state. Explaining how Open Marxism’s subversive negation of capitalist social relations and radical critique of capitalism’s various perverted social forms this book is a vital contribution to a body of Marxist thought concerned with the contemporary struggle for human emancipation.