ABSTRACT
The task of this essay is to contextualize historically contemporary critical social theory as a revitalized tradition which can be adequately understood and criticized only in terms of its continuous selftransformation in response to critics, emergent (and often opposing) theoretical movements, and societal change in advanced capitalism. In the process, it will be argued that critical theory broadly understood represents the consistently most productive strategy for learning from the crisis of Marxism, struggling against the co-optation of the human sciences by the welfare state, and coming to terms with the changing context of historical events. As Poster has put it: ‘…critical theory contains the best of what remains in the shambles of the Marxist and neoMarxist theoretical positions, the best of what is left of the Left’ 1989:3).
