TripleC special issue-Call: “Engels@200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism”

Cancelled Stamp From The Soviet Union Featuring Friedrich Engels Who Is Most Famous For Writing The Communist Manifesto With Karl Marx.

Call for Abstracts/Papers:
tripleC special issue: “Engels@200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism”
Edited by Christian Fuchs
Deadline for abstract submission: August 7, 2020
Download Call

November 28, 2020, marks the 200^th birthday of Friedrich Engels. The journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critque (http://www.triple-c.at) celebrates Engels’ birthday with a special issue, in which critical theorists reflect on the relevance of Engels’ works for the analysis of digital and communicative capitalism.

The special issue’s contributions shall provide perspectives that address the question: How do Friedrich Engels’ works matter for the critical analysis of digital and communicative capitalism?

Contributions focus on single or several of Friedrich Engels’ works such as The Condition of the Working Class in England; Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy; The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State; Letters from Wuppertal; Anti-Schelling (Schelling and Revelation); The Condition of England; Speeches in Elberfeld; Principles of Communism; The Housing Question; Anti-Dühring; Socialism: Utopian and Scientific; Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy; Dialectics of Nature; The Holy Family (together with Marx); German Ideology (together with Marx); Manifesto of the Communist Party (together with Marx).

Example questions that can, based on Engels, be treated in contributions include but are not limited to:

• How do the digital conditions of the working class look like today?
• What are digital working class struggles and how do they operate?
• What is the role of reproductive labour, including digital housework and digital housewifisation, in digital capitalism?
• What are Engels’ contributions to a Marxist-humanist critique of digital capitalism?
• What is digital scientific socialism? What are the roles of theory, empirical research, and the critique of positivism in digital scientific socialism?
• What is digital dialectics? How does digital dialectics matter for critical digital social research? How does digital dialectics differ from the dialectics of nature?
• How do Engels’ critiques of Schelling and/or Feuerbach and/or Bruno Bauer matter for the analysis of digital capitalism?
• What principles of digital communism are there and how do they matter today?
• How can we make sense of digital utopias today?

The contributions in this special issue will shed light on the relevance of Engels today for the critique of the political economy of communication and digital media, critical digital research, and critical media and communication studies.

Schedule:

Deadline for abstract submission: August 7, 2020
250 words, per e-mail to christian.fuchs@triple-c.at, please include a submission/article title, your name and contact, a 100-word short bio, and an abstract of 250 words and send the submission in a Word- or text-file.

Acceptance decisions: until August 31, 2020

Submission of full reflection articles (maximum of 8,000 words, including all references, footnotes and tables): October 12, 2020

Online publication of the special issue: November 28, 2020 (= Friedrich Engels’ 200th birthday).

Recommended Readings:

Engels’ original works plus:
Paul Blackledge. 2019. Friedrich Engels and Modern Social and Political Theory. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Gustav Mayer. 1935. Friedrich Engels. A Biography. London: Chapman & Hall.
Janet Sayers, Mary Evans and Nanneke Redclift, eds. 1987. Engels Revisited. New Feminist Essays, eds. 37-56. London: Tavistock.
Christopher J. Arthur, ed. 1996. Engels Today. A Centenary Appreciation. Basingstoke: Macmillan.