5月23日马哲论坛：Transition through social critique and critical theory
来源：会议讲座
作者：
时间：2014-05-20
第40次“马哲论坛”通知
主题：Transition through social critique and critical theory
主讲人：Tom Rockmore（北京大学哲学系人文讲席教授）
时 间：2014年5月23日（星期五）下午14:00—17:00
地 点：人文学苑2号楼B114会议室
请马哲教研室教师、进修教师、硕士和博士研究生准时参加，欢迎对论题感兴趣的校内外师生参与。
北大哲学系马哲教研室
2014年5月
20140520100829_Tom Rockmore：Beida presentation.doc
Transition through social critique and critical theory
A second possibility for the transition from capitalism to communism is critique, or more precisely social critique, with or without the proletariat. There are different kinds of social critique identified with the Young Hegelians with Marx, and more recently with critical social theory, especially with Habermas during his interaction with historical materialism. This section will concentrate on the links between critical social theory and Habermas against the background of post-revolutionary neo-Marxism.
With the exception of Eduard Gans, who was a member of the law faculty, the Young Hegelians, including Marx, functioned outside the academy. Critical theory, which signals the qualified return of a form of radicalism in the form of critique challenging contemporary society from a vantage point situated no longer outside but within the academy, is a later avatar of nineteenth century young Hegelianism. It is influenced by a number of factors, including Marx, Hegelian Marxism, as well as Friedrich Pollock’s reaction to contemporary political events.
Hegel, Marx and critical theory
In part, the critical approach is anticipated in Marx’s early essay on Hegel; in part it is developed by neo-Hegelian Marxism, and in part it belongs to critical theory aka critical social theory. Since human beings respond to ideas, the so-called material force that in theory becomes available through awakening the proletariat can arise elsewhere as well. To avoid confusion, it is important to note that “critical” for Marx means both socially critical but also concrete as opposed to abstract. The frequent reference to the term “critique” in the titles of his writings is intended to point to the role of ideas in realizing themselves. Hegel, who is often mistakenly regarded as merely accepting the status quo without seeking to change the world, as well, holds a similar view. According to Hegel, concepts, for instance the idea of freedom tend to realize themselves. The general point is famously reformulated by Victor Hugo as the suggestion that “one withstands the invasion of armies [but] one does not withstand the invasion of ideas.” Everyone knows that the idea of freedom is a motivating force in many revolutionary movements in the twentieth century.
Hegel’s conception of the relation of philosophy to experience can serve as a corrective to those who, like Plato, Fichte, Lukács, Heidegger and others, believe the philosopher can replace the politician in guiding the state. We are familiar with the difficulties in which the philosopher becomes entangled in leaving the sanctuary of the library to go into the streets. According to Hegel the role of the philosopher consists in reflecting on what has already occurred. He famously states that “When philosophy paints its grey in grey, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.” This passage is sometimes read as indicating a culture understands itself only when it has passed its peak and begun to decline. If that were the case philosophy would be able to comprehend but not to influence what occurs. Another, more interesting point is suggested by Hegel’s conviction that, as he said in his lecture course of 1819-1820, “The age has at present nothing to do except to cognize what is at hand, and thus to make it accord with thought. This is the path of philosophy.” If this is Hegel’s view, then he intends philosophy to change the world in taking the measure of the difference between what has happened and what could happen, between the idea and the ideal.
Hegel is clearly concerned about existential difficulties of capitalism as well as aware of modern political economy. Unlike Kant, for instance, who does not take into consideration the status of finite human being in the modern social context in his theory of morality, Hegel is aware that ethical claims must arise out of and rely on the market economy of modern industrial society. Yet he though he has a theory of the modern world, he does not possess a theory of the transformation of modern industrial society. Unlike Hegelian philosophy, Marx’s critique is, of course, accompanied by a detailed analysis of modern industrial society, which reaches its peak in Capital, and which, we assume, is relevant to his concern to change the world through critique. Hence there is continuity between the intention to address specific problems of modern industrial society and the analysis of that society. Critical theory, which turns away from such an analysis, raises questions about what problem or problems it intends to address and how it intends to do it. This problem affects all the critical theorists, including first generation thinkers like Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse, then in the next generation Habermas, and most recently Honneth, none of whom apparently has a response to this set of difficulties.
Critical theory aka critical social theory
Marx’s view of philosophy depends on a distinction between (orthodox) philosophy, which preserves the status quo instead of changing the world, and which is either harmful, or at best socially irrelevant, and a form of philosophy in the service of human beings, which can in principle be realized in changing the world, and, which, as a result, is, hence, abolished. This view of self-realizing philosophy is later developed in so-called critical social theory as an alternative to traditional philosophy, which preserves the status quo, in Hegel's (supposedly “official”) theory of the state.
Marx rejects approaches he links to the leftwing Young Hegelians and the rightwing Hegelians. According to Marx, the former want to abolish philosophy without realizing it. Conversely, the so-called theoretical party, or right-wing Hegelians, are suppose philosophy can be realized without abolishing it, presumably in criticizing Hegel while philosophical problems, above real human social freedom, remain outstanding for two reasons: a false grasp of the real role of private property, as well as the incapacity of mere philosophical criticism to change the world.
Marx is impatient with academic philosophy, which is unable to end the debate. His suggestion philosophy cannot be abolished without realizing it, and it cannot be realized without abolishing it points to a novel conception of philosophy confronted with a finite, resolvable task, on whose completion it would, as it were, cease to exist. He has a romantic idea of the definitive solution of the problem of human self-alienation as brought about, or at least set in motion, through the critique of philosophy. This suggests Marx intends to resolve the problems of philosophy not, say, through revolution, but rather through a different form of philosophy.
Critical theory develops the Marxian impulse toward a theory, which not only interprets but also changes the world, in this case in simply dropping the concern with revolution in favor of social criticism. Though they were influenced by revolutionary Marxists, including Lukács and Korsch, the Frankfurt School critical theorists are not revolutionaries but conventional thinkers. It seems clear this change was a necessary condition to finding an appropriate place within the German academy when the Institute for Social Research was founded at the University of Frankfurt in 1923 early in the Weimar Republic. In that sense, the critical theorists can be said to follow however distantly the reformist approach pioneered by Eduard Bernstein and others.
Marx’s conception of the relationship of theory to practice corrects Kant’s conception of philosophy as such as intrinsically important for the good life. From the Marxian perspective, a theory that, like the critical philosophy, supposedly leaves everything in place, hence fails to change the world, can only be part of the problem, not part of the solution. Critical theory, which arises in the wake of the invention of Hegelian Marxism by Lukács and Korsch, Lukács more than Korsch, is intended to change the world through the medium of social criticism.
In Marxism and Philosophy, Korsch calls attention to the relation of Marx and Marxism to the classical German idealist tradition, especially Hegel, in taking a critical attitude towards what he calls the vulgar Marxism of the Second International, which he examines in relation to its historical period. Korsch writes that “we must try to understand every change, development and revision of Marxist theory, since its original emergence - from the philosophy of German Idealism, as a necessary product of its epoch (Hegel). More precisely, we should seek to understand their determination by the totality of the historico-social process of which they are a general expression (Marx).”
Korsch’s critique of the relation of ideas to their surroundings suggests the need to reformulate Marxism. He was ultimately concerned with the degeneration of classical Marxism into different sub-forms in the post-Marxian evolution of Marxism, for instance so-called vulgar Marxism, which fostered interest in economic determinism during the Second Internationale in the writings of Franz Mehring, Karl Kautsky and others. The founders of critical theory, who do not distinguish clearly between Marx and Marxism, were more interested in preserving the Marxist impulse while acknowledging the inability on this basis to explain the contemporary rise of Marxist and Nazi totalitarianism. One way to put the point is the Korsch was concerned with the deviation of Marxist theory from an ideal norm, but critical theory was concerned with the deviation of social reality from its Marxist description.
In founding critical theory the first generation Frankfurt School theorists rejected Marxist orthodoxy but maintained the thrust of Hegelian Marxism as well as political independence. The critical theorists were further concerned to evaluate Marxist theory in respect to then emerging National Socialism as well as Heideggerian radical conservatism. Habermas puts the point well in suggesting that "Critical Theory was initially developed in Horkheimer’s circle to think through political disappointments at the absence of revolution in the West, the development of Stalinism in Soviet Russia, and the victory of fascism in Germany. It was supposed to explain mistaken Marxist prognoses, but without breaking Marxist intentions."
In a seminal article, which functioned as the intellectual basis of critical theory, Horkheimer drew attention to a basic distinction between what he called traditional and critical theory. According to Horkheimer, traditional theory, which respects traditional criteria of theoretical rigor, is not socially critical, hence does not, except incidentally, lead to social change. Critical theory, which may or may not respect traditional criteria of theoretical rigor, in principle leads to social change. Understood in this way, Horkheimer’s distinction between traditional and critical theory offers a reading of Marx’s distinction between theories that interpret and do not change and theories that interpret as well as change the world.
Horkheimer’s original formulation of the distinction between traditional and critical theory was unclear and has never been satisfactorily clarified. His overall concern is rooted in the young Hegelian reaction to Hegel. Speaking generally, traditional theory is intended to solve or resolve certain problems while remaining within the boundaries of the debate. A critical theory, or better a critical social theory, aims to relieve social problems at the cost of changing the debate. The difficulty lies in showing that critical theory is critical in more than name only, more precisely that it in fact goes beyond interpretation to meet Marx’s criterion in changing the world.
Pollock and critical theory
Critical theory was crucially influenced at the beginning by Friedrich Pollock. Pollock was a founding member and former director of the Frankfurt School as well as a lifelong friend of Horkheimer. Marx consistently argues for the primacy of the economic over the political, which Pollock simply reverses in his theory of state capitalism, in which he argues for the primacy of the political over the economic. Pollock’s thesis grew out of a debate within the Frankfurt School about the significance of National Socialism. “State capitalism” refers to a situation in which the state organizes the means of production in view of a profit. In Marxism, this term refers to the combination of capitalism with ownership or control by the state. In his debate with Franz Neumann, Pollock accords the main role to politics over economics in the transformation of a free market economy into a planned, state-controlled form of capitalism, best illustrated at the time through Nazi Germany. Neumann, on the contrary, through his studies of National Socialism formulated a theory of so-called “monopolistic economy” to explain the shift toward totalitarian monopoly capitalism under fascism.
From its inception critical theory was caught in a contradiction, which was never later resolved, between the desire to develop a Marxian (or, if there is a difference at least a Marxist) approach to social theory while accepting Pollock’s inversion of Marx’s thesis of the primacy of the economic over the political. Marx’s optimistic view of the long-term dominance of the economic over the political is inverted in Pollock’s basic pessimism. According to Pollock, if not in theory certainly in practice the nature of the social context seems to deny the possibility of basic social change. Marxian long-term optimism is based on the conception of capitalism as a transitory social state. Pollock, on the contrary, thinks capitalism is not about to founder since what is happening now is not the end of capitalism but only the end of its liberal phase. It is difficult now after the great recession of 2008 to deny the interest of Pollock’s view.
Writing in the 1930s and early 1940s, Pollock was less interested in a revolution on Marxian principles than in retaining the values of Western civilization. He was concerned by the economic evolution resulting in a situation in which the market was wholly or at least partially replaced by the state. Pollock, was specifically concerned about whether the tendency toward state capitalism could be brought under democratic control. Through the seminal base/superstructure distinction Marx contends that in the final analysis the base always influences the superstructure. His thesis of the economic instability of modern industrial society depends on the dominance, however understood, of economics over politics.
Pollock’s view of state capitalism suggests the basic dialectical contradiction at the epicenter of Marx’s position either never existed or no longer pertains. This result is doubly important in indicating that capitalism has not, is not about to, and perhaps may never founder of its own weight. The transformation of capitalism, if indeed if has been transformed, further explains events Marx’s position supposedly cannot explain, including the successful rise of National Socialism in the transformation of Germany into a fascist state, the transformation of the Russian Revolution into a communist dictatorship with no visible relation to the dictatorship of the proletariat and, at least when Pollock was writing, no indication, none at all that it would later wither away or otherwise be replaced by capitalism.
This is not the place to undertake an analysis of state capitalism. Suffice it to say that this thesis is supported in different ways. Pollock was thinking primarily of National Socialism, which has since disappeared. Yet the thesis of the state control of a capitalist form of economy is supported by many examples, perhaps most strikingly by the transformation of the People’s Republic of China under the control of Deng Xiaopeng into the single most important and certainly most successful instance of an at least partially planned economy the world has ever known.
In following Pollock rather than Marxism, which never hesitates, classical critical theory seems to hesitate about this crucial point. It falters on the myth of the realization of the Enlightenment in Marxian political economy as leading to a rational society, which is finally revealed as what it really is: no more than a myth. In Dialectic of the Enlightenment, which was written during the Second World War, Horkheimer and Adorno clearly acknowledge that historical necessity, which is allegedly intrinsic to the evolution of political economy of modern industrial society, is simply fictitious in writing that “The mythological lies about "mission and "fate'" which they use instead do nor even express a complete untruth: it is no longer the objective laws of the market which govern the actions of industrialists and drive humanity toward catastrophe. Rather, the conscious decisions of the company chairmen" execute capitalism's old law of value, and thus its fate, as resultants no less compulsive than the blindest price mechanisms. The rulers themselves do not believe in objective necessity, even if they sometimes call their machinations by that name. They posture as engineers of world history.”
Habermas on social critique
From a position outside the academy Marx stresses revolution in assigning a special role to the revolutionary proletariat. Academic Marxism, from a position inside the academy turns away from Marx’s revolutionary theory of the proletariat and from revolution in general. This leads to a basic unclarity about its social role, which has never been clarified. Pollock’s view pessimism about the Marxian view of basic social change on economic grounds is acknowledged by Horkheimer and Adorno, the main architects of critical social theory. This acknowledgment calls into question the seminal distinction between traditional and critical theory on which the latter stands or falls. There is, hence, and despite the reference to political economy, which apparently functions only nostalgically in critical theory, if not an outright contradiction at least a tension in their effort to draw attention to a basic difference between two kinds of theory. Since the very young Marx denies that just more or even better interpretation is sufficient to bring about basic social change, and since Horkheimer and Adorno, following Pollock, deny we can rely on the self-development of modern industrial society, there is finally not much difference between critical theory and Heidegger’s conception of Gelassenheit, which clearly reflects his concern to hide or at least disguise his Nazi turning
Habermas, like Horkheimer and Adorno, apparently accepts Pollock’s thesis about the latest stage of modern industrial society. In a passage about reification in the authoritarian state, he reports that “Pollock and Horkheimer,” whose views he significantly does not distinguish, “were inclined to the view that the Nazi regime was like the Soviet regime, in that a state-capitalist order had been established in which private ownership of the means of production retained only a formal character, while the steering of general economic processes passed from the market to planning bureaucracies; in the process the management of large concerns seemed to merge with party and administrative elites. In this view, corresponding to the authoritarian state we have a totally administered society. The form of societal integration is determined by a purposive rational-at least in intention- exercise of centrally steered, administrative domination.”
To the best of my knowledge, Habermas never examines Pollock’s thesis in detail. The closest he comes is a series of remarks on economic crisis, where he considers different models of social integration under the heading of the legitimation crisis, including an East German model of state-monopolistic capitalism. He notes that on empirical grounds one can neither verify central economic strategy nor the idea that the state effectively represents capitalist interests. Yet neither objection gets at the deeper problem of the emancipatory role, if any, of the economic organization of society in today’s world.
Habermas, who apparently accepts Pollock’s thesis, at least in revised form, perhaps for this reason simply turns away from political economy in sketching a model of society in which, in virtue of his distinction between work and interaction, economics no longer has a central role. He avoids the tension intrinsic to classical critical theory at the evident price of giving up its emancipatory potential. Habermas’ own theory emerges through a typically complex, four-fold interaction with Marx and Marxism.
Habermas’ critique of historical materialism
Habermas’ critique of historical materialism, which does not distinguish between Marx and Engels, depends on an economically reductionist approach to the relation of superstructure to base, or again of thought to political economy. The strong economic reductionism Habermas attributes to historical materialism is featured by vulgar Marxism. But it is not defended by either Marx or Engels, and is further denied by Habermas on classical anti-subjectivist modern philosophical grounds. His critique of historical materialism eventually leads to his theory of communicative action, which he intends as a replacement theory, including his discourse theory of truth.
The first two general characteristics of Habermas’ reading of historical materialism are his insistence on the seamless continuity between Marx and Marxism and his critical attitude toward Marx. The third characteristic is his stress on the slippery distinction between materialism and idealism. This distinction is central to Engels’ and succeeding versions of Marxism, but apparently not to Marx’s position. The fourth characteristic is his suggestion that in restoring the quasi-Kantian idea of the wholly free subject, his theory of communicative rationality effectively replaces historical materialism.
We can reconstruct Habermas’ reasoning as follows. Habermas is apparently attracted to the modern view of the subject as wholly unconstrained. In order to avoid the difficulty Husserl later describes as psychologism, that is an anthropological (or psychological) contamination of any kind, which in turn undermines truth claims, Kant proposes the transcendental unity of apperception as a wholly abstract conception of the cognitive subject. Habermas, who seems to accept this view, takes a neo-Kantian approach to the subject. His objection to historical materialism is that it is self-referentially inconsistent in that a subject constrained in any way whatsoever cannot make claims to truth.
Habermas regards historical materialism as a theory of history with practical intent. In his reading, the term ?practical intent? indicates a concern with the relation of theory and practice, to which Marx alludes in many places, and which Habermas, during the period when he was interested in historical materialism, often referred to as an interest in human emancipation. In the initial, interpretative phase of his discussion, Habermas is critical of traditional philosophy, from which he distinguishes historical materialism. He is not, however, critical of historical materialism as such. He immediately widens his critical attitude to englobe the views of Marx and Marxism as well in the next, or critical, stage of the discussion. Here he elaborates an epistemological critique of Marx, which is later extended in subsequent writings, and which provides the basis of his theory of communicative action.
The next, or critical phase, in which he raises objections against historical materialism, features an attempt to locate this position between philosophy and science. Here Habermas, tacitly following Korsch, maintains historical materialism is a falsifiable theory of history with practical intent. The difficulty, of course, consists in classifying historical materialism as either philosophy, in which case it would not be falsifiable, since philosophical theories can be refuted but not falsified, or as science or social science, in which it would possibly be a falsifiable science, depending on what “science” and “falsifiable” mean in this context, though it might not be a theory in the Marxian sense. Habermas, who does not pursue this theme, at this point introduces an epistemological criticism of the theory, which he continually modifies and restates in later writings. According to Habermas, who seems to conflate Marx with Kant, the former fails to examine the general possibility of his philosophy of history with practical intent. In a later formulation of this point, Habermas suggests Marx adopts a goal-oriented model of work or labor, hence is unable to separate work and interaction. In other words, Marx’s very approach obliges him to assimilate the reflective dimension to physical labor, or in another formulation, to reduce the entire cultural sphere to the underlying economic dimension.
This objection raises significant questions. In Engels’ wake Marxists often refuse usual or what they call bourgeois philosophical standards in favor of exaggerated claims for historical materialism. Korsch, Lukács and many other Marxists either simply decline or at least question usual philosophical standards through special pleading. If this is allowed, then clearly “philosophy” is not independent of, but rather based on, political considerations. Korsch, for instance, decries the so-called bourgeois philosophical concern with presuppositionless theory; and Lukács insists that at present there are no problems, which do not lead back to the riddle of commodity-structure. Both claims are questionable. The concern with presuppositionslessness voiced, for instance, by Descartes and his followers relates to philosophical rigor in independence of any political considerations. It further seems incredible that one could otherwise than in jest suggest that all difficulties whatsoever might yield to Marxian theory.
At this stage, Habermas’ critique of historical materialism can be summarized as a two-step argument: Marx’s position lacks a reflective dimension since it assimilates interaction, or communication, to work; further Marx’s position cannot have a reflective dimension since it does not permit the necessary distinction in kind of work and interaction. In effect, this is a negative argument concerning the impossibility of a satisfactory epistemological analysis from the Marxian angle of vision. In terms more closely related to the critical philosophy, we can describe this as a transcendental analysis of the unavoidable epistemological deficit of historical materialism. The problem, then, if we are not merely to reject the theory as self-referentially inconsistent, hence as hopelessly inadequate, is how to correct this epistemological deficiency.
Habermas turns to this problem in the third, or reconstructive, phase of his reading of historical materialism. This brief moment includes two parts: a meta-theoretical reflection on the idea of theory reconstruction in general, and an effort to reconstruct historical materialism. The meta-theoretical reflection, which covers no more than a single paragraph in the Introduction to a volume entitled On the Reconstruction of Historical Materialism, is intended to ground the possibility in question. Habermas, who very briefly differentiates between “renaissance,” “restauration” and “reconstruction,” understands the latter term to mean that in some unspecified way one takes a particular theory apart, for instance historical materialism, and puts it back together in order better to reach its intrinsic goal. He maintains that this is the normal procedure to follow for a theory which requires revision, but whose potential is not exhausted.
His view of theory reconstruction is problematic. On the hand, there is the supposition, obviously related to Kant’s famous claim to know Plato’s theory better than its author, that the intrinsic goal of a theory is identifiable. On the other hand, there is the Hegelian view, which underlies his interpretation of the history of philosophy as a series of successive analyses of the relation of thought and being, that it is possible to improve on the original version of a theory. Neither assumption is obviously true; but both must be plausible in order to grant the interest of his effort to reconstruct historical materialism.
Habermas undertakes to reformulate Marx’s position in a long paper appropriately called “Towards a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism.” At this point he regards historical materialism as a theory of the evolution of society whose limitation lies in a so-called over investment in the economic perspective. Not surprisingly, since he objects to Marx’s alleged reduction of communication to work, he is primarily concerned to reconstruct what he will later describe as a trivial superstructure/base distinction.
The proposed reconstruction is controversial. It is not obvious why we must accept the characterization of historical materialism as a theory of social evolution in place of Marx’s declared intention to lay bare the anatomy of capitalism. Habermas’ effort to provide an acceptable theory of social evolution is an interesting attempt whose relation to Marx’s project remains unclear. Now it is plausible to suggest that a reconstructed theory should do everything the original theory does as well as at least one thing it ought but fails to do. Since Habermas does not show that his own reconstruction of what he calls the superstructure theorem succeeds better than Marx at Marx’s task, it fails as a better version of Marx’s position.
In the fourth and final stage of his reading of historical materialism Habermas abandons his effort to reconstruct it. He now maintains historical materialism is itself flawed, but incapable of further development to overcome its deficiencies. It is unclear if this should be taken to mean that the theory cannot be further developed or, on the contrary, that he is unable to do so. Be that as it may, this phase, which represents the outer reaches of his effort to come to grips with historical materialism, is mainly devoted to a critique intended to show that historical materialism must be abandoned in favor of his own position. The latter which he expounds in a gigantic treatise of more than 1100 hundred pages entitled Theory of Communicative Action, is supposedly meant to succeed in the socially relevant task of human emancipation where Marx and Marxism have putatively failed.
Obviously what one thinks theory is intended to do bears on how to criticize it. The difficulty about how to classify historical materialism if one denies it is philosophy, or at least basically philosophical, has been noted above. When he began to engage with historical materialism, Habermas understood it as empirically falsifiable. Habermas, who changed his mind, later regarded historical materialism as an economic theory. His attack here centers on the Marxian theory of surplus value, or Marxian value theory. Habermas, who never analyzes Marx’s theory of value in the course of criticizing the overall position, appears to approach historical materialism from the vantage point of his own emerging rival position, hence from an angle of vision simply external to either Marx or Marxism.
In the Theory of Communicative Action, he offers three criticisms of Marxian value theory. First, Marx, who is indebted to Hegel’s Logik, fails to presuppose the separation of system and life-world, or work and interaction. The positive aspect of this criticism is the acknowledgment, which correctly contradicts classical Marxist claims that Marx simply leaves Hegel behind, that Marx is indebted in many ways to Hegel, for instance through concepts borrowed from the Science of Logic. The negative aspect of this criticism is that it is utterly unclear why Marx’s interest in Hegelian logic prevents or at least impedes him from drawing the distinction that interests Habermas, or again why it would have been relevant to do so within historical materialism.
Second, Habermas objects that Marx lacks criteria to differentiate the destruction of traditional forms of life from the objectification (Verdinglichung) of post-traditional forms of life. This criticism appears to conflate two different Marxian themes: the evolution of social relations, above all, the existing property relations under the pressure of the development of the material forces of production, which in turn leads to basic social changes, even social revolution, as well as objectification and alienation routinely occur in the process of production. These two elements are very different and should not be conflated. According to Marx objectification takes place within the normal functioning of modern industrial capitalism. The so-called destruction of traditional forms of life is reserved for the transition for economic reasons to a different social framework.
Third, Habermas objects Marx mistakenly generalizes a special case of the subsumption of the life-world under so-called system imperatives. Here again Habermas presupposes his own rival theory in an external objection to historical materialism. In the important essay on “Work and Interaction,” Habermas contends interaction must be free or unconstrained. He later develops the system/lifeworld distinction, where the former relates to the “realm of necessity” and the latter to the “realm of freedom.” Habermas presumably thinks that in the modern world so-called communicative rationality is freed from cultural or ideological fetters in undistorted communication. This view is consistent with Habermas’ interest in the Enlightenment project of rationality, which in turn presupposes complete self-transparency. Yet the very idea that ideology has in the meantime somehow disappeared, that in the contemporary world economic imperatives have no effect on what we think and do, none at all, is difficult to take seriously.
Habermas implicitly concedes that his objections are of unequal value. Only the first among them even directly concerns the theory of surplus value. Now this Marxian view is obviously controversial. At this late date it is perhaps not plausible to calculate exchange-value as a function of work-time. But it does not follow that the value theory is less useful as an indication of how the market economy affects the individual worker. The more general problem is why Habermas thinks historical materialism depends on the validity of the labor theory of value.
Habermas’ critique of historical materialism as well as his distinction between system and lifeworld both presuppose a conception of truth unaffected any constraint. We can distinguish two different concepts of truth in his writings: the consensus theory of truth, which emerged in a paper (1973) long ago and has never been translated into English, and the discourse theory of truth, which Habermas has more recently adopted. In the consensus theory of truth, Habermas suggested that truth claims could be justified through an unconstrained, rational consensus. This view began to appear in Habermas’ writings very early. In “Knowledge and Human Interests,” he remarks that at least in principle in an emancipated society autonomy would be realized that would in turn allow for true statements, whose truth “is based on anticipating the realization of the good life.” Habermas is aware it is not the case that the conditions of Socratic dialogue are always possible. Though he warns against the illusion of pure theory, he apparently succumbs to this temptation. In fact the suggestion that the conditions of dialogue do not always exist agrees with Socrates’ view, as depicted by Plato. It is accordingly controversial to assert that from the beginning philosophy has always assumed that the conditions for mature discussion are actual, and not virtual. But Habermas clearly surpasses Socrates’ hypothesis of the utility of dialogue in his even more controversial claim that the under the proper conditions discussion does produce truth.
Both the idea of consensus and its link to truth require comment. Nicholas Rescher notes that, from the angle of vision of democratic pluralism, consensus is at best one factor in determining how to act. Certainly the idea of political consensus at any cost opens the door to forced consensus, even totalitarianism, and appears to deny the very possibility of legitimate consent.
The alternative is consensus freely obtained, hence as much as possible unconstrained. Yet it may be illusory to hope consensus can in practice be obtained other than in very limited circumstances. To see this point we need look no further than the intellectual tradition. Intellectual inquiry occurs in a process of debate that, reputedly like psychoanalytic treatment, is interminable. There is no reason other than the simple optimism of the current spate of dreams of a final theory about contemporary physics to hold that intellectual debate will lead either soon or ever to a final conclusion acceptable to all parties. It is not irrational but rational, not an illustration of bad faith but an illustration of good faith to continue to disagree even on the basis of Socratic dialogical practice. Socrates’ view remains ambiguous. It is unclear if he simply presupposes that through unconstrained discussion the discussants can and do arrive at truth, or if he thinks the best we can do is to arrive at agreement through discussion whose results remain indexed to it.
The claim that through unfettered discussion we in fact arrive, or must arrive at truth is suggested by Habermas’ criticism of historical materialism and is the conceptual basis of his theory of communicative action. This claim is obviously problematic. There is clearly no substitute for free and fair discussion. But while we may choose, indeed perhaps must choose, to take discussion as the framework for arriving at truth, it is a significant error to equate agreement or consensus, forced or unforced, with truth. In the history of philosophy there have been times when a large consensus temporarily formed about the claims of a particular theory only later to dissolve. At one time there was a large consensus about the American intervention in Vietnam as there was later about the American intervention in Iraq. The familiar phenomenon of the emergence and then later disappearance of a consensus should alert us to the peril of conflating certainty arising from agreement among some or all parties to the discussion with truth. Since there can be a consensus without truth and truth without consensus, consensus and truth are unrelated. Indeed Habermas seems now to have arrived at a similar conclusion. In the Preface to Truth and Justification, he appears to abandon the consensus theory of truth, the positive thesis underlying his rejection of historical materialism for allegedly reducing interaction to work in now adopting a discourse approach to truth. Though he now takes the position that we cannot isolate truth from justification, he no longer holds that consensus provides justification.
20140520101046_Tom Rockmore：Beida presentation.doc
主题：Transition through social critique and critical theory
主讲人：Tom Rockmore（北京大学哲学系人文讲席教授）
时 间：2014年5月23日（星期五）下午14:00—17:00
地 点：人文学苑2号楼B114会议室
请马哲教研室教师、进修教师、硕士和博士研究生准时参加，欢迎对论题感兴趣的校内外师生参与。
北大哲学系马哲教研室
2014年5月
20140520100829_Tom Rockmore：Beida presentation.doc Transition through social critique and critical theory
A second possibility for the transition from capitalism to communism is critique, or more precisely social critique, with or without the proletariat. There are different kinds of social critique identified with the Young Hegelians with Marx, and more recently with critical social theory, especially with Habermas during his interaction with historical materialism. This section will concentrate on the links between critical social theory and Habermas against the background of post-revolutionary neo-Marxism.
With the exception of Eduard Gans, who was a member of the law faculty, the Young Hegelians, including Marx, functioned outside the academy. Critical theory, which signals the qualified return of a form of radicalism in the form of critique challenging contemporary society from a vantage point situated no longer outside but within the academy, is a later avatar of nineteenth century young Hegelianism. It is influenced by a number of factors, including Marx, Hegelian Marxism, as well as Friedrich Pollock’s reaction to contemporary political events.
Hegel, Marx and critical theory
In part, the critical approach is anticipated in Marx’s early essay on Hegel; in part it is developed by neo-Hegelian Marxism, and in part it belongs to critical theory aka critical social theory. Since human beings respond to ideas, the so-called material force that in theory becomes available through awakening the proletariat can arise elsewhere as well. To avoid confusion, it is important to note that “critical” for Marx means both socially critical but also concrete as opposed to abstract. The frequent reference to the term “critique” in the titles of his writings is intended to point to the role of ideas in realizing themselves. Hegel, who is often mistakenly regarded as merely accepting the status quo without seeking to change the world, as well, holds a similar view. According to Hegel, concepts, for instance the idea of freedom tend to realize themselves. The general point is famously reformulated by Victor Hugo as the suggestion that “one withstands the invasion of armies [but] one does not withstand the invasion of ideas.” Everyone knows that the idea of freedom is a motivating force in many revolutionary movements in the twentieth century.
Hegel’s conception of the relation of philosophy to experience can serve as a corrective to those who, like Plato, Fichte, Lukács, Heidegger and others, believe the philosopher can replace the politician in guiding the state. We are familiar with the difficulties in which the philosopher becomes entangled in leaving the sanctuary of the library to go into the streets. According to Hegel the role of the philosopher consists in reflecting on what has already occurred. He famously states that “When philosophy paints its grey in grey, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.” This passage is sometimes read as indicating a culture understands itself only when it has passed its peak and begun to decline. If that were the case philosophy would be able to comprehend but not to influence what occurs. Another, more interesting point is suggested by Hegel’s conviction that, as he said in his lecture course of 1819-1820, “The age has at present nothing to do except to cognize what is at hand, and thus to make it accord with thought. This is the path of philosophy.” If this is Hegel’s view, then he intends philosophy to change the world in taking the measure of the difference between what has happened and what could happen, between the idea and the ideal.
Hegel is clearly concerned about existential difficulties of capitalism as well as aware of modern political economy. Unlike Kant, for instance, who does not take into consideration the status of finite human being in the modern social context in his theory of morality, Hegel is aware that ethical claims must arise out of and rely on the market economy of modern industrial society. Yet he though he has a theory of the modern world, he does not possess a theory of the transformation of modern industrial society. Unlike Hegelian philosophy, Marx’s critique is, of course, accompanied by a detailed analysis of modern industrial society, which reaches its peak in Capital, and which, we assume, is relevant to his concern to change the world through critique. Hence there is continuity between the intention to address specific problems of modern industrial society and the analysis of that society. Critical theory, which turns away from such an analysis, raises questions about what problem or problems it intends to address and how it intends to do it. This problem affects all the critical theorists, including first generation thinkers like Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse, then in the next generation Habermas, and most recently Honneth, none of whom apparently has a response to this set of difficulties.
Critical theory aka critical social theory
Marx’s view of philosophy depends on a distinction between (orthodox) philosophy, which preserves the status quo instead of changing the world, and which is either harmful, or at best socially irrelevant, and a form of philosophy in the service of human beings, which can in principle be realized in changing the world, and, which, as a result, is, hence, abolished. This view of self-realizing philosophy is later developed in so-called critical social theory as an alternative to traditional philosophy, which preserves the status quo, in Hegel's (supposedly “official”) theory of the state.
Marx rejects approaches he links to the leftwing Young Hegelians and the rightwing Hegelians. According to Marx, the former want to abolish philosophy without realizing it. Conversely, the so-called theoretical party, or right-wing Hegelians, are suppose philosophy can be realized without abolishing it, presumably in criticizing Hegel while philosophical problems, above real human social freedom, remain outstanding for two reasons: a false grasp of the real role of private property, as well as the incapacity of mere philosophical criticism to change the world.
Marx is impatient with academic philosophy, which is unable to end the debate. His suggestion philosophy cannot be abolished without realizing it, and it cannot be realized without abolishing it points to a novel conception of philosophy confronted with a finite, resolvable task, on whose completion it would, as it were, cease to exist. He has a romantic idea of the definitive solution of the problem of human self-alienation as brought about, or at least set in motion, through the critique of philosophy. This suggests Marx intends to resolve the problems of philosophy not, say, through revolution, but rather through a different form of philosophy.
Critical theory develops the Marxian impulse toward a theory, which not only interprets but also changes the world, in this case in simply dropping the concern with revolution in favor of social criticism. Though they were influenced by revolutionary Marxists, including Lukács and Korsch, the Frankfurt School critical theorists are not revolutionaries but conventional thinkers. It seems clear this change was a necessary condition to finding an appropriate place within the German academy when the Institute for Social Research was founded at the University of Frankfurt in 1923 early in the Weimar Republic. In that sense, the critical theorists can be said to follow however distantly the reformist approach pioneered by Eduard Bernstein and others.
Marx’s conception of the relationship of theory to practice corrects Kant’s conception of philosophy as such as intrinsically important for the good life. From the Marxian perspective, a theory that, like the critical philosophy, supposedly leaves everything in place, hence fails to change the world, can only be part of the problem, not part of the solution. Critical theory, which arises in the wake of the invention of Hegelian Marxism by Lukács and Korsch, Lukács more than Korsch, is intended to change the world through the medium of social criticism.
In Marxism and Philosophy, Korsch calls attention to the relation of Marx and Marxism to the classical German idealist tradition, especially Hegel, in taking a critical attitude towards what he calls the vulgar Marxism of the Second International, which he examines in relation to its historical period. Korsch writes that “we must try to understand every change, development and revision of Marxist theory, since its original emergence - from the philosophy of German Idealism, as a necessary product of its epoch (Hegel). More precisely, we should seek to understand their determination by the totality of the historico-social process of which they are a general expression (Marx).”
Korsch’s critique of the relation of ideas to their surroundings suggests the need to reformulate Marxism. He was ultimately concerned with the degeneration of classical Marxism into different sub-forms in the post-Marxian evolution of Marxism, for instance so-called vulgar Marxism, which fostered interest in economic determinism during the Second Internationale in the writings of Franz Mehring, Karl Kautsky and others. The founders of critical theory, who do not distinguish clearly between Marx and Marxism, were more interested in preserving the Marxist impulse while acknowledging the inability on this basis to explain the contemporary rise of Marxist and Nazi totalitarianism. One way to put the point is the Korsch was concerned with the deviation of Marxist theory from an ideal norm, but critical theory was concerned with the deviation of social reality from its Marxist description.
In founding critical theory the first generation Frankfurt School theorists rejected Marxist orthodoxy but maintained the thrust of Hegelian Marxism as well as political independence. The critical theorists were further concerned to evaluate Marxist theory in respect to then emerging National Socialism as well as Heideggerian radical conservatism. Habermas puts the point well in suggesting that "Critical Theory was initially developed in Horkheimer’s circle to think through political disappointments at the absence of revolution in the West, the development of Stalinism in Soviet Russia, and the victory of fascism in Germany. It was supposed to explain mistaken Marxist prognoses, but without breaking Marxist intentions."
In a seminal article, which functioned as the intellectual basis of critical theory, Horkheimer drew attention to a basic distinction between what he called traditional and critical theory. According to Horkheimer, traditional theory, which respects traditional criteria of theoretical rigor, is not socially critical, hence does not, except incidentally, lead to social change. Critical theory, which may or may not respect traditional criteria of theoretical rigor, in principle leads to social change. Understood in this way, Horkheimer’s distinction between traditional and critical theory offers a reading of Marx’s distinction between theories that interpret and do not change and theories that interpret as well as change the world.
Horkheimer’s original formulation of the distinction between traditional and critical theory was unclear and has never been satisfactorily clarified. His overall concern is rooted in the young Hegelian reaction to Hegel. Speaking generally, traditional theory is intended to solve or resolve certain problems while remaining within the boundaries of the debate. A critical theory, or better a critical social theory, aims to relieve social problems at the cost of changing the debate. The difficulty lies in showing that critical theory is critical in more than name only, more precisely that it in fact goes beyond interpretation to meet Marx’s criterion in changing the world.
Pollock and critical theory
Critical theory was crucially influenced at the beginning by Friedrich Pollock. Pollock was a founding member and former director of the Frankfurt School as well as a lifelong friend of Horkheimer. Marx consistently argues for the primacy of the economic over the political, which Pollock simply reverses in his theory of state capitalism, in which he argues for the primacy of the political over the economic. Pollock’s thesis grew out of a debate within the Frankfurt School about the significance of National Socialism. “State capitalism” refers to a situation in which the state organizes the means of production in view of a profit. In Marxism, this term refers to the combination of capitalism with ownership or control by the state. In his debate with Franz Neumann, Pollock accords the main role to politics over economics in the transformation of a free market economy into a planned, state-controlled form of capitalism, best illustrated at the time through Nazi Germany. Neumann, on the contrary, through his studies of National Socialism formulated a theory of so-called “monopolistic economy” to explain the shift toward totalitarian monopoly capitalism under fascism.
From its inception critical theory was caught in a contradiction, which was never later resolved, between the desire to develop a Marxian (or, if there is a difference at least a Marxist) approach to social theory while accepting Pollock’s inversion of Marx’s thesis of the primacy of the economic over the political. Marx’s optimistic view of the long-term dominance of the economic over the political is inverted in Pollock’s basic pessimism. According to Pollock, if not in theory certainly in practice the nature of the social context seems to deny the possibility of basic social change. Marxian long-term optimism is based on the conception of capitalism as a transitory social state. Pollock, on the contrary, thinks capitalism is not about to founder since what is happening now is not the end of capitalism but only the end of its liberal phase. It is difficult now after the great recession of 2008 to deny the interest of Pollock’s view.
Writing in the 1930s and early 1940s, Pollock was less interested in a revolution on Marxian principles than in retaining the values of Western civilization. He was concerned by the economic evolution resulting in a situation in which the market was wholly or at least partially replaced by the state. Pollock, was specifically concerned about whether the tendency toward state capitalism could be brought under democratic control. Through the seminal base/superstructure distinction Marx contends that in the final analysis the base always influences the superstructure. His thesis of the economic instability of modern industrial society depends on the dominance, however understood, of economics over politics.
Pollock’s view of state capitalism suggests the basic dialectical contradiction at the epicenter of Marx’s position either never existed or no longer pertains. This result is doubly important in indicating that capitalism has not, is not about to, and perhaps may never founder of its own weight. The transformation of capitalism, if indeed if has been transformed, further explains events Marx’s position supposedly cannot explain, including the successful rise of National Socialism in the transformation of Germany into a fascist state, the transformation of the Russian Revolution into a communist dictatorship with no visible relation to the dictatorship of the proletariat and, at least when Pollock was writing, no indication, none at all that it would later wither away or otherwise be replaced by capitalism.
This is not the place to undertake an analysis of state capitalism. Suffice it to say that this thesis is supported in different ways. Pollock was thinking primarily of National Socialism, which has since disappeared. Yet the thesis of the state control of a capitalist form of economy is supported by many examples, perhaps most strikingly by the transformation of the People’s Republic of China under the control of Deng Xiaopeng into the single most important and certainly most successful instance of an at least partially planned economy the world has ever known.
In following Pollock rather than Marxism, which never hesitates, classical critical theory seems to hesitate about this crucial point. It falters on the myth of the realization of the Enlightenment in Marxian political economy as leading to a rational society, which is finally revealed as what it really is: no more than a myth. In Dialectic of the Enlightenment, which was written during the Second World War, Horkheimer and Adorno clearly acknowledge that historical necessity, which is allegedly intrinsic to the evolution of political economy of modern industrial society, is simply fictitious in writing that “The mythological lies about "mission and "fate'" which they use instead do nor even express a complete untruth: it is no longer the objective laws of the market which govern the actions of industrialists and drive humanity toward catastrophe. Rather, the conscious decisions of the company chairmen" execute capitalism's old law of value, and thus its fate, as resultants no less compulsive than the blindest price mechanisms. The rulers themselves do not believe in objective necessity, even if they sometimes call their machinations by that name. They posture as engineers of world history.”
Habermas on social critique
From a position outside the academy Marx stresses revolution in assigning a special role to the revolutionary proletariat. Academic Marxism, from a position inside the academy turns away from Marx’s revolutionary theory of the proletariat and from revolution in general. This leads to a basic unclarity about its social role, which has never been clarified. Pollock’s view pessimism about the Marxian view of basic social change on economic grounds is acknowledged by Horkheimer and Adorno, the main architects of critical social theory. This acknowledgment calls into question the seminal distinction between traditional and critical theory on which the latter stands or falls. There is, hence, and despite the reference to political economy, which apparently functions only nostalgically in critical theory, if not an outright contradiction at least a tension in their effort to draw attention to a basic difference between two kinds of theory. Since the very young Marx denies that just more or even better interpretation is sufficient to bring about basic social change, and since Horkheimer and Adorno, following Pollock, deny we can rely on the self-development of modern industrial society, there is finally not much difference between critical theory and Heidegger’s conception of Gelassenheit, which clearly reflects his concern to hide or at least disguise his Nazi turning
Habermas, like Horkheimer and Adorno, apparently accepts Pollock’s thesis about the latest stage of modern industrial society. In a passage about reification in the authoritarian state, he reports that “Pollock and Horkheimer,” whose views he significantly does not distinguish, “were inclined to the view that the Nazi regime was like the Soviet regime, in that a state-capitalist order had been established in which private ownership of the means of production retained only a formal character, while the steering of general economic processes passed from the market to planning bureaucracies; in the process the management of large concerns seemed to merge with party and administrative elites. In this view, corresponding to the authoritarian state we have a totally administered society. The form of societal integration is determined by a purposive rational-at least in intention- exercise of centrally steered, administrative domination.”
To the best of my knowledge, Habermas never examines Pollock’s thesis in detail. The closest he comes is a series of remarks on economic crisis, where he considers different models of social integration under the heading of the legitimation crisis, including an East German model of state-monopolistic capitalism. He notes that on empirical grounds one can neither verify central economic strategy nor the idea that the state effectively represents capitalist interests. Yet neither objection gets at the deeper problem of the emancipatory role, if any, of the economic organization of society in today’s world.
Habermas, who apparently accepts Pollock’s thesis, at least in revised form, perhaps for this reason simply turns away from political economy in sketching a model of society in which, in virtue of his distinction between work and interaction, economics no longer has a central role. He avoids the tension intrinsic to classical critical theory at the evident price of giving up its emancipatory potential. Habermas’ own theory emerges through a typically complex, four-fold interaction with Marx and Marxism.
Habermas’ critique of historical materialism
Habermas’ critique of historical materialism, which does not distinguish between Marx and Engels, depends on an economically reductionist approach to the relation of superstructure to base, or again of thought to political economy. The strong economic reductionism Habermas attributes to historical materialism is featured by vulgar Marxism. But it is not defended by either Marx or Engels, and is further denied by Habermas on classical anti-subjectivist modern philosophical grounds. His critique of historical materialism eventually leads to his theory of communicative action, which he intends as a replacement theory, including his discourse theory of truth.
The first two general characteristics of Habermas’ reading of historical materialism are his insistence on the seamless continuity between Marx and Marxism and his critical attitude toward Marx. The third characteristic is his stress on the slippery distinction between materialism and idealism. This distinction is central to Engels’ and succeeding versions of Marxism, but apparently not to Marx’s position. The fourth characteristic is his suggestion that in restoring the quasi-Kantian idea of the wholly free subject, his theory of communicative rationality effectively replaces historical materialism.
We can reconstruct Habermas’ reasoning as follows. Habermas is apparently attracted to the modern view of the subject as wholly unconstrained. In order to avoid the difficulty Husserl later describes as psychologism, that is an anthropological (or psychological) contamination of any kind, which in turn undermines truth claims, Kant proposes the transcendental unity of apperception as a wholly abstract conception of the cognitive subject. Habermas, who seems to accept this view, takes a neo-Kantian approach to the subject. His objection to historical materialism is that it is self-referentially inconsistent in that a subject constrained in any way whatsoever cannot make claims to truth.
Habermas regards historical materialism as a theory of history with practical intent. In his reading, the term ?practical intent? indicates a concern with the relation of theory and practice, to which Marx alludes in many places, and which Habermas, during the period when he was interested in historical materialism, often referred to as an interest in human emancipation. In the initial, interpretative phase of his discussion, Habermas is critical of traditional philosophy, from which he distinguishes historical materialism. He is not, however, critical of historical materialism as such. He immediately widens his critical attitude to englobe the views of Marx and Marxism as well in the next, or critical, stage of the discussion. Here he elaborates an epistemological critique of Marx, which is later extended in subsequent writings, and which provides the basis of his theory of communicative action.
The next, or critical phase, in which he raises objections against historical materialism, features an attempt to locate this position between philosophy and science. Here Habermas, tacitly following Korsch, maintains historical materialism is a falsifiable theory of history with practical intent. The difficulty, of course, consists in classifying historical materialism as either philosophy, in which case it would not be falsifiable, since philosophical theories can be refuted but not falsified, or as science or social science, in which it would possibly be a falsifiable science, depending on what “science” and “falsifiable” mean in this context, though it might not be a theory in the Marxian sense. Habermas, who does not pursue this theme, at this point introduces an epistemological criticism of the theory, which he continually modifies and restates in later writings. According to Habermas, who seems to conflate Marx with Kant, the former fails to examine the general possibility of his philosophy of history with practical intent. In a later formulation of this point, Habermas suggests Marx adopts a goal-oriented model of work or labor, hence is unable to separate work and interaction. In other words, Marx’s very approach obliges him to assimilate the reflective dimension to physical labor, or in another formulation, to reduce the entire cultural sphere to the underlying economic dimension.
This objection raises significant questions. In Engels’ wake Marxists often refuse usual or what they call bourgeois philosophical standards in favor of exaggerated claims for historical materialism. Korsch, Lukács and many other Marxists either simply decline or at least question usual philosophical standards through special pleading. If this is allowed, then clearly “philosophy” is not independent of, but rather based on, political considerations. Korsch, for instance, decries the so-called bourgeois philosophical concern with presuppositionless theory; and Lukács insists that at present there are no problems, which do not lead back to the riddle of commodity-structure. Both claims are questionable. The concern with presuppositionslessness voiced, for instance, by Descartes and his followers relates to philosophical rigor in independence of any political considerations. It further seems incredible that one could otherwise than in jest suggest that all difficulties whatsoever might yield to Marxian theory.
At this stage, Habermas’ critique of historical materialism can be summarized as a two-step argument: Marx’s position lacks a reflective dimension since it assimilates interaction, or communication, to work; further Marx’s position cannot have a reflective dimension since it does not permit the necessary distinction in kind of work and interaction. In effect, this is a negative argument concerning the impossibility of a satisfactory epistemological analysis from the Marxian angle of vision. In terms more closely related to the critical philosophy, we can describe this as a transcendental analysis of the unavoidable epistemological deficit of historical materialism. The problem, then, if we are not merely to reject the theory as self-referentially inconsistent, hence as hopelessly inadequate, is how to correct this epistemological deficiency.
Habermas turns to this problem in the third, or reconstructive, phase of his reading of historical materialism. This brief moment includes two parts: a meta-theoretical reflection on the idea of theory reconstruction in general, and an effort to reconstruct historical materialism. The meta-theoretical reflection, which covers no more than a single paragraph in the Introduction to a volume entitled On the Reconstruction of Historical Materialism, is intended to ground the possibility in question. Habermas, who very briefly differentiates between “renaissance,” “restauration” and “reconstruction,” understands the latter term to mean that in some unspecified way one takes a particular theory apart, for instance historical materialism, and puts it back together in order better to reach its intrinsic goal. He maintains that this is the normal procedure to follow for a theory which requires revision, but whose potential is not exhausted.
His view of theory reconstruction is problematic. On the hand, there is the supposition, obviously related to Kant’s famous claim to know Plato’s theory better than its author, that the intrinsic goal of a theory is identifiable. On the other hand, there is the Hegelian view, which underlies his interpretation of the history of philosophy as a series of successive analyses of the relation of thought and being, that it is possible to improve on the original version of a theory. Neither assumption is obviously true; but both must be plausible in order to grant the interest of his effort to reconstruct historical materialism.
Habermas undertakes to reformulate Marx’s position in a long paper appropriately called “Towards a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism.” At this point he regards historical materialism as a theory of the evolution of society whose limitation lies in a so-called over investment in the economic perspective. Not surprisingly, since he objects to Marx’s alleged reduction of communication to work, he is primarily concerned to reconstruct what he will later describe as a trivial superstructure/base distinction.
The proposed reconstruction is controversial. It is not obvious why we must accept the characterization of historical materialism as a theory of social evolution in place of Marx’s declared intention to lay bare the anatomy of capitalism. Habermas’ effort to provide an acceptable theory of social evolution is an interesting attempt whose relation to Marx’s project remains unclear. Now it is plausible to suggest that a reconstructed theory should do everything the original theory does as well as at least one thing it ought but fails to do. Since Habermas does not show that his own reconstruction of what he calls the superstructure theorem succeeds better than Marx at Marx’s task, it fails as a better version of Marx’s position.
In the fourth and final stage of his reading of historical materialism Habermas abandons his effort to reconstruct it. He now maintains historical materialism is itself flawed, but incapable of further development to overcome its deficiencies. It is unclear if this should be taken to mean that the theory cannot be further developed or, on the contrary, that he is unable to do so. Be that as it may, this phase, which represents the outer reaches of his effort to come to grips with historical materialism, is mainly devoted to a critique intended to show that historical materialism must be abandoned in favor of his own position. The latter which he expounds in a gigantic treatise of more than 1100 hundred pages entitled Theory of Communicative Action, is supposedly meant to succeed in the socially relevant task of human emancipation where Marx and Marxism have putatively failed.
Obviously what one thinks theory is intended to do bears on how to criticize it. The difficulty about how to classify historical materialism if one denies it is philosophy, or at least basically philosophical, has been noted above. When he began to engage with historical materialism, Habermas understood it as empirically falsifiable. Habermas, who changed his mind, later regarded historical materialism as an economic theory. His attack here centers on the Marxian theory of surplus value, or Marxian value theory. Habermas, who never analyzes Marx’s theory of value in the course of criticizing the overall position, appears to approach historical materialism from the vantage point of his own emerging rival position, hence from an angle of vision simply external to either Marx or Marxism.
In the Theory of Communicative Action, he offers three criticisms of Marxian value theory. First, Marx, who is indebted to Hegel’s Logik, fails to presuppose the separation of system and life-world, or work and interaction. The positive aspect of this criticism is the acknowledgment, which correctly contradicts classical Marxist claims that Marx simply leaves Hegel behind, that Marx is indebted in many ways to Hegel, for instance through concepts borrowed from the Science of Logic. The negative aspect of this criticism is that it is utterly unclear why Marx’s interest in Hegelian logic prevents or at least impedes him from drawing the distinction that interests Habermas, or again why it would have been relevant to do so within historical materialism.
Second, Habermas objects that Marx lacks criteria to differentiate the destruction of traditional forms of life from the objectification (Verdinglichung) of post-traditional forms of life. This criticism appears to conflate two different Marxian themes: the evolution of social relations, above all, the existing property relations under the pressure of the development of the material forces of production, which in turn leads to basic social changes, even social revolution, as well as objectification and alienation routinely occur in the process of production. These two elements are very different and should not be conflated. According to Marx objectification takes place within the normal functioning of modern industrial capitalism. The so-called destruction of traditional forms of life is reserved for the transition for economic reasons to a different social framework.
Third, Habermas objects Marx mistakenly generalizes a special case of the subsumption of the life-world under so-called system imperatives. Here again Habermas presupposes his own rival theory in an external objection to historical materialism. In the important essay on “Work and Interaction,” Habermas contends interaction must be free or unconstrained. He later develops the system/lifeworld distinction, where the former relates to the “realm of necessity” and the latter to the “realm of freedom.” Habermas presumably thinks that in the modern world so-called communicative rationality is freed from cultural or ideological fetters in undistorted communication. This view is consistent with Habermas’ interest in the Enlightenment project of rationality, which in turn presupposes complete self-transparency. Yet the very idea that ideology has in the meantime somehow disappeared, that in the contemporary world economic imperatives have no effect on what we think and do, none at all, is difficult to take seriously.
Habermas implicitly concedes that his objections are of unequal value. Only the first among them even directly concerns the theory of surplus value. Now this Marxian view is obviously controversial. At this late date it is perhaps not plausible to calculate exchange-value as a function of work-time. But it does not follow that the value theory is less useful as an indication of how the market economy affects the individual worker. The more general problem is why Habermas thinks historical materialism depends on the validity of the labor theory of value.
Habermas’ critique of historical materialism as well as his distinction between system and lifeworld both presuppose a conception of truth unaffected any constraint. We can distinguish two different concepts of truth in his writings: the consensus theory of truth, which emerged in a paper (1973) long ago and has never been translated into English, and the discourse theory of truth, which Habermas has more recently adopted. In the consensus theory of truth, Habermas suggested that truth claims could be justified through an unconstrained, rational consensus. This view began to appear in Habermas’ writings very early. In “Knowledge and Human Interests,” he remarks that at least in principle in an emancipated society autonomy would be realized that would in turn allow for true statements, whose truth “is based on anticipating the realization of the good life.” Habermas is aware it is not the case that the conditions of Socratic dialogue are always possible. Though he warns against the illusion of pure theory, he apparently succumbs to this temptation. In fact the suggestion that the conditions of dialogue do not always exist agrees with Socrates’ view, as depicted by Plato. It is accordingly controversial to assert that from the beginning philosophy has always assumed that the conditions for mature discussion are actual, and not virtual. But Habermas clearly surpasses Socrates’ hypothesis of the utility of dialogue in his even more controversial claim that the under the proper conditions discussion does produce truth.
Both the idea of consensus and its link to truth require comment. Nicholas Rescher notes that, from the angle of vision of democratic pluralism, consensus is at best one factor in determining how to act. Certainly the idea of political consensus at any cost opens the door to forced consensus, even totalitarianism, and appears to deny the very possibility of legitimate consent.
The alternative is consensus freely obtained, hence as much as possible unconstrained. Yet it may be illusory to hope consensus can in practice be obtained other than in very limited circumstances. To see this point we need look no further than the intellectual tradition. Intellectual inquiry occurs in a process of debate that, reputedly like psychoanalytic treatment, is interminable. There is no reason other than the simple optimism of the current spate of dreams of a final theory about contemporary physics to hold that intellectual debate will lead either soon or ever to a final conclusion acceptable to all parties. It is not irrational but rational, not an illustration of bad faith but an illustration of good faith to continue to disagree even on the basis of Socratic dialogical practice. Socrates’ view remains ambiguous. It is unclear if he simply presupposes that through unconstrained discussion the discussants can and do arrive at truth, or if he thinks the best we can do is to arrive at agreement through discussion whose results remain indexed to it.
The claim that through unfettered discussion we in fact arrive, or must arrive at truth is suggested by Habermas’ criticism of historical materialism and is the conceptual basis of his theory of communicative action. This claim is obviously problematic. There is clearly no substitute for free and fair discussion. But while we may choose, indeed perhaps must choose, to take discussion as the framework for arriving at truth, it is a significant error to equate agreement or consensus, forced or unforced, with truth. In the history of philosophy there have been times when a large consensus temporarily formed about the claims of a particular theory only later to dissolve. At one time there was a large consensus about the American intervention in Vietnam as there was later about the American intervention in Iraq. The familiar phenomenon of the emergence and then later disappearance of a consensus should alert us to the peril of conflating certainty arising from agreement among some or all parties to the discussion with truth. Since there can be a consensus without truth and truth without consensus, consensus and truth are unrelated. Indeed Habermas seems now to have arrived at a similar conclusion. In the Preface to Truth and Justification, he appears to abandon the consensus theory of truth, the positive thesis underlying his rejection of historical materialism for allegedly reducing interaction to work in now adopting a discourse approach to truth. Though he now takes the position that we cannot isolate truth from justification, he no longer holds that consensus provides justification.
20140520101046_Tom Rockmore：Beida presentation.doc