Robert Kurz

Robert Kurz was born on 24 December 1943 in Nuremberg to a German working-class family. During his military service he was involved in pacifist propaganda and participated in the "Ostermärschen," protest marches against atomic weapons in the 1960s. Kurz studied philosophy, history and paedagogy at the university of Erlangen without taking a degree. He participated in the "student revolt" in 1968 and took part in the intense discussions within the New Left. He was a member of the Communist Workers Union of Germany, which was later named the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany) during the 1970s, but then quit because of his critique of the leadership. He then multiplied the meetings in view of a renewal of the critical theory, which became concrete in the 1980s with the first attempts of the current of which he was to be the principal founder and theorist, the "critique of value" (Wertkritik). Kurz was a co-founder of the magazine Marxistische Kritik (Marxist Critique) in 1986 and participated in the creation of the Krisis group, around which Wertkritik concept was developed. Robert Kurz distinguished himself through a radical critique of the "labor and class struggle fetish" of traditional (labor movement) Marxism. The weekly newspaper Die Zeit published two controversial reviews, one of which called the Schwarzbuch "the most important publication of the last 10 years." A regular contributor to important newspapers, notably in Brazil, and a renowned lecturer, Robert Kurz chose to stay out of universities and other institutions of knowledge, and chose to live a marginal life by working as a proletarian - notably as a cab driver for seven years and above all as a night worker in a print shop for the packaging of the local newspaper. This was assigned to the economics department. The other authors involved were Harry Nick, Christa Luft and Rudolf Hickel. He also published regularly in the weekly newspaper Freitag and the Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo. He was a member of the PEN Center Germany. He died in Nuremberg from the consequences of an operational failure. ==Selected bibliography==

Author • The Collapse of Modernization: From the collapse of barracks socialism to the crisis of the world economy (1991) • ''Honecker's Revenge: On the political economy of the reunified Germany'' (1991) • ''Potemkin's Return: Dummy capitalism and distribution war in Germany'' (1993) • The Last One Turns Off the Light: On the crisis of democracy and market economy (1993) • The World as Will and Design: Postmodernism, lifestyle Left and the aestheticization of the crisis (1999) • The Black Book of Capitalism: A Farewell to the Market Economy (1999) • Read Marx: The most important texts of Karl Marx for the 21st Century (2000) • World Order War: The End of Sovereignty and the changes of imperialism in the era of globalization (2003) • The Anti-German Ideology (2003) • Bloody Reason: Essays for emancipatory critique of capitalist modernity and its Western values (2004) • The World Capital: Globalization and internal barriers of modern commodity-producing system (2005) • Money Without Value: Plans to transform the critique of political economy (2012) • The Substance of Capital (2004-2005), (English ed. Chronos publications ) (French ed.) (Spanish ed. ) ==See also==