Acknowledgements
This book is based on my PhD Thesis, Fetishism, and Social Domination in Marx, Lukács, Adorno, and Lefebvre, which was composed between 2008â13 at the University of Sussex under the supervision of Gordon Finlayson and Darrow Schecter. I first encountered the ideas and figures the PhD was concerned with in postgraduate classes in the MA in Social and Political Thought at Sussex with Andrew Chitty, Paul Betts, Daniel Steuer, and Darrow Schecter. My PhD thesis was indelibly influenced by the sadly eclipsed constellation of the movement of the squares, the UK student movement, Communisation milieu, Endnotes, SPT, the Marx and Philosophy Society, Historical Materialism conferences, Rome critical theory conferences, Born Bad, and Up Against It.
The book based on that thesis is long overdue, was almost jettisoned, and was completed in 2022â23 during the rise of fascism and the beginning of the destruction of American higher education. Even with Sebastian Budgenâs persistent encouragement it would not have been completed without the support of Werner Bonefeld and more particularly Kirstin Munro, to whom the book is dedicated.
Of course, this would also not be the acknowledgments sections of a first book without also thanking the Historical Materialism Book Series, my supervisors, former faculty, colleagues, family, and friends for their support over the 15 years I worked on this topic. I will, however, refrain from thanking everyone I have ever met. Ink and paper cost too much these days.
In spite of its faults, I decided to return to and revise my thesis for two reasons. The first reason is that I still think it is important to distinguish fetishistic social domination from false consciousness, alienation, and Lukácsian reification. More importantly, I still contend that a critical theory of social constitution and fetishistic social domination is necessary to illuminate the compulsive hell of our society. It is to the collective overcoming of this hellish society that I hope the following makes a slight contribution.