This book addresses core questions about the nature and structure of contemporary capitalism and the social dynamics and countervailing forces that shape modern life. From a robust and self-consciously sociological framework, it analyzes and interrogates such issues as the nature of the social, the power of the sacred, the social nature of authority, the problem of representation, reification and alienation, utopia, and collective resistance. Marx's historical materialism and his recognition that "productive functions" were broader in substance than narrow economism remain as vital as ever. This book utilizes that as a compelling guide for continued exploration into the philosophical underpinnings that ground critical inquiry and praxis.

Social Ontology and Social Critique: A New Paradigm for Critical Theory .- Critical Theory in the Twenty-First Century. The Logic of Capital between Classical Social Theory, the Early Frankfurt School Critique of Political Economy, and the Power of Artifice Harry Dahms .- The Sacred and the Profane in the General Formula for Capital: Re-Mapping the Capitalist Mode of Production for both Skeptics and Bamboozled Realists .- Social Form and the "Purely Social": Toward better Understanding Value and the Value-Form .- The Political Economy of Debt and the Present Moment of World History .- The (In)Visibility of Capital. Reflections on Film, Lukacs, and Contemporary Critical Realism .- Demand the Impossible: Greece, the Eurozone, and the Anti-Utopian Complex .- The Constellation of Social Ontology: Walter Benjamin, Eduard Fuchs, and the Body of History .- The Body Ontology of Capitalism .- Critical Theory and the Morality of Misery.