Jurgen Habermass Meta-critique of Marxian

Praxis
by Joseph Belbruno
Habermas's "Erkenntnis und Interesse' can be found here:
http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?
sourceid=S10023103
or here in translation as "Knowledge and Human Interests":
http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-
bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S10023352
It would not be too unkind to say of Jurgen Habermas, the talented epigone of
the Frankfurt School of Philosophy, that he devoted his lifetime to bridging the
gap between theory and practice. in theory alone! And it is not too unkind to say
this when one considers that Habermas fundamentally misconstrued the entire
Marxian notion of praxis intended in the Gramscian sense of an intellectual
activity that in its very theorization of capitalist society contains its critique in a
manner that challenges directly and practically the operation of the society of capital
and that by that very fact is the very frst and necessary step toward its
overthrow.
The task of critique is invariably that of challenging the self-understanding of
capitalist society so as to evince the elements of antagonism that lie at its very
core, that indeed form its essence, and that occasion its crisis. And crisis is
not a thing, but rather a moment, a point in time a co-incidence on the
occurrence of which we need to be pre-pared, organized to trans-form the present
order of things. The task of critique is therefore to outline the fault-lines in the
antagonistic asset of capitalist society and government so as to prepare the
organization for its eventual democratic overthrow.
Anyone who reviews Habermass theoretical oeuvre will be immediately and
starkly aware of how far he was from this aspect of critique: at no stage did his
enormous theoretical output tackle the all-important question of exactly how his
intellectual eforts could be applied to the overthrow of capitalist society. For this
is a task that must be most prominent and at the forefront of all our intellectual
eforts devoted to the examination of the manner in which capitalism reproduces
itself and tries to do so on an expanded scale.
It may well be that the political problem of the hypostatization of revolutionary
practical analysis into abstract and harmless theory begins really with Marx
himself and his notion of historical materialism that tries to convey at once two
antithetical subjecta or subject-matters in its interpretation of human afairs: history
on the one hand as the sphere of human political action, and nature on the other
as the objective ground of all ontological reality. The difculty emerges from as
early as the Theses on Feuerbach where the Eleventh Thesis reads: Philosophers
have hitherto only interpreted the world; the point now is to change it. Here Marx
seems to imply that it is possible to interpret the world surely the task of
theory without actually changing it. Here is precisely that separation, that
Trennung, of intellectual and manual labor, of direction or order and
execution, of theory and practice, of Politics and Economics, of Freedom
and Necessity.
Indeed, here is precisely that separation of Subject and Object that Kant will
sanction with the very frst Critique that of Pure Reason that will seek to
delimit the theoretical limits of human knowledge from a purely theoretical
viewpoint or intuition (An-schauung) whereby it is Reason that provides the
guide, the direction to the human senses (Sinne) so that the mind or
spirit (Geist) ultimately controls the body as in the Cartesian dualism of res
cogitans (the thinking and acting [co-agitare] thing) and res extensa (the inert,
supine thing) the perfect synecdoche for Capital as command over living
labor and the Worker as labor power to be commanded, directed. Recall
Kants neat and telling summation of his epistemology: Intuition without
concepts is blind [no direction, like manual labor] and concepts without
intuition are empty [ideas cannot be put into practice, as with purely intellectual
labor]. It is thus that the separation of living labor from the means of
production, which enables its reduction to abstract labor under the command of
capital, turns into a corresponding division of social labor, between intellectual
labor that commands so-called manual labor.
Or so at least the capitalist would have us believe. Thinkers as diverse as Weber
and Arendt certainly fell into this prejudicial trap as the following quotations
illustrate. Which is not to say that there are no technical reasons why social
labor should not be divided: but no amount of technical rationality can
impede the democratic supervision of the most technical tasks of social labor!
Returning to Marx, we have seen how he too believed that it was possible to
separate refection or consciousness that is, theory and interpretation as
an entity distinct from reality or the world, such that philosophers hitherto
have only interpreted the world. Marx evidently neglects the fact that
interpretations and theories are themselves methods or modalities of human
activity. Indeed, Marx himself observed that what distinguishes human beings
from other animals is just this ability to theorise or pro-ject conceptually
beforehand the activities that they intend to undertake. But this dichotomy and
antithesis between thought as deliberation and action as execution is exactly
what lies at the source of the division of social labor and its separation from
the means of production in the society of capital.
This separation (Trennung) and division (Krisis) needs to be understood and
examined with a view to its overthrow and supersession. The problem with the
philosophical approaches of Kant frst for he was the one who frst
conceptualized this Krisis and then Hegel and Marx, who were more concerned
with the Trennung that is, with the separation or alienation of living labor
and its abstraction into labor power is that they pre-suppose the existence of a
reality, of an objective substratum or world, that can be observed, theorized,
and known scientifcally. Diferently put, all these theories presuppose the
epistemological schism between knowing Subject and known Object a schism
that can be bridged either irrationally or schematically or else dialectically,
but in any case only trans-scendentally, that is to say, only by leaving intact the
epistemological separation or break (coupure) between concept and reality. And this
has occurred because in the past we have oriented human action in a fashion
polarized between consciousness, the for-itself or action, and reality, the
in-itself that is acted upon.
Had Marx been aware of Nietzsches own critique of Western, and most
specifcally of Kantian and Hegelian, metaphysics, he would doubtless have
transliterated his Eleventh Thesis as follows: Philosophers and scientists have
hitherto claimed that they were only inter-preting the world, whereas in fact they
were elaborating strategies either to change or to conserve it! If we turn Marxs
dictum on its head like this, we soon realize that in fact theory and practice were
never separate and that therefore philosophy and science are not ideologies
in the sense intended by Marcuse or Heidegger that they contain a pre-conceived
project or design of human action. The notion of ideology implies that there are
theoretical practices that are non-ideological. Instead, they should be viewed as
strategies that have specifc fnalities or goals with which we may agree or
disagree but that in any case are never purely speculative or contemplative because
they remain ineluctably forms of human activity.
The problem revolves around the human temptation to separate conceptually the
cosmos into subject and object, as if the mere fact that there are thoughts proved
incontrovertibly that there are thinkers and, behind thinkers, subjects
provided with a consciousness capable of com-prehending life and the world
autonomously from these last, that is to say, freely and objectively, from an
Archimedian point. The sooner we free our-selves from this pre-judice, the better.
Quite rightly, Marx chastises Hegel for making precisely this error that of mis-
taking human objectifcation, the necessary human immanent inter-action with life
and the world, with alien-ation, the false consciousness arising from the
extrinsication of the Idea in time and in space to the apotheosis of ab-solute
knowledge, the ultimate stage of the Spirit or self-consciousness to the point where
it en-compasses all its predicates and attributes whereby it is ab-solved from
further clarifcation. Hegel therefore mistakes life and the world, immanence,
with the dialectical un-folding of the Idea: in short, Hegel mistakes Being with
Logic.
Yet the opposite is not the case for Marx! If we consider Marxs work in its entirety,
despite an undeniable scientistic streak in Capital, there is no question of his
having reduced logic to being for the simple reason that this dichotomy does
not occur in his oeuvre and certainly not in the most mature exposition of his
philosophical theorization of capitalist society in the Grundrisse. Such a
theorization is essential, of course, because the overthrow of capitalism has to be
able to understand the needs that lead to it, has to be able to justify itself. But this
self-understanding must occur in a historical perspective that is aimed not at a
generic philosophical totality, at an all-encompassing ontology. Rather, its
principal aim and scope must be that of erecting a novel political orientation of
human social relations of production, a re-orientation of social labor, to correct its
ever-growing distortion on the part of capitalist social relations of production.
Here is how Habermas characterizes (one could be vicious and say caricatures)
Marxs Entwurf in the light of our formulation of this problematic thus far:
Thus in Marx's works a peculiar disproportion arises between the practice of
inquiry [Forschungspraxis and the li!ited philosophical self"understanding of
this inquiry [Forschung# $n his e!pirical analyses Marx co!prehends the history
of the species under categories of !aterial acti%ity and the critical abolition of
ideologies& of instru!ental action and re%olutionary practice& of labor and
re'ection at once# But Marx interprets what he does in the !ore restricted
conception of the species' self"re'ection through labor [Arbeit] alone# The
!aterialist concept of synthesis is not concei%ed broadly enough in order to
explicate the way in which Marx contributes to reali(ing the intention of a really
radicali(ed critique of knowledge# $n fact& it e%en pre%ented Marx fro!
understanding his own !ode of procedure fro! this point of %iew# )*+,$& p#-.#/
Obvious here is the intention on the part of Habermas to distinguish the practice
of inquiry from the philosophical self-understanding of inquiry. Marx called his
theoretical activity critique precisely for the reason that it was never intended
as mere analysis or dia-gnosis of the workings and status of capitalism but rather
as a practical project, a dia-noia, whose very content, even the most theoretical
and ana-lytical, had to be designed to put into political practice the overthrow of
capitalist social relations of production, namely, the command by dead labor over
living labor. Though it is possible, and we would argue even correct, to contend
that Marxs own account of the social synthesis was defective, it certainly does
not help matters if we start splitting hairs in the manner Habermas suggests, by
engaging in renewed analyses not just of the practice of inquiry which may
be politically justifed because there is an immediate link with praxis but also of
the philosophical self-understanding of this inquiry because at that stage we
already indulging in what threatens to become an endless chain of meta-
critiques of knowledge that rapidly spiral into complete irrelevance to
anything practical in a Marxian sense!
What troubles Habermas is the alleged fact that Marx interprets what he does in
the more restricted conception of the species' self-refection through labor
[Arbeit] alone, whereas in his empirical analyses Marx had more properly
comprehend[ed] the history of the species under categories of material activity
and the critical abolition of ideologies, of instrumental action and revolutionary
practice, of labor and refection at once. In other words, the disproportion
[Missverhaltniss] between the practice of inquiry and its philosophical self-
understanding occurs in Marx because he interprets the history of being human
through labor alone. And Habermas understands by labor exactly what he
wishes to understand, that is, instrumental action without revolutionary practice,
material activity bereft of refection. Already, therefore, Habermass entire
meta-critique of Marx is on shaky ground because he has excogitated for himself
an obstacle, a problem or disproportion in Marxs praxis that Habermas (texts
in hand) is about to overcome on his own meta-critical terms that is,
philosophisch! That is why we protest, despite our humble admiration for him, that
Habermas spent his lifetime bridging theory and practice in theory alone!
For what purpose can it serve to draw a distinction as subtle as it is casuistic
between the Marxian notion of labor and refection? As we saw with the
Eleventh Thesis, it is true that Marx leaned too heavily on the dichotomy between
the [real, natural] world and its ideological, fetishistic interpretations,
and thence invited those hideous Hegelian-Marxist (mostly Lukacsian)
disquisitions on authenticity and false consciousness. But it is or should be
wholly evident that when Marx spoke of labor he never intended by that term
to mechanical pro-duction that the bourgeoisie intends by it in opposition to some
other mystical artistic notion of labor such as that contained in the classical
distinction between poiesis and techne. For Marx to have done so would have
amounted to succumbing to the most risible nostalgia of late-romantic dreamers
hankering (like Lukacs and Heidegger and many after them) for the utopia of
totality, of artistic and aesthetic fulfllment and wholeness for Art.
Habermas has set up a straw man, and then proceeds to punch him out of shape!
Exactly in the manner in which the philosophia perennis since Plato and Aristotle
has sought to present the cosmos as an Other to be subjugated and dominated
by the Subject, Man understood not immanently but rather trans-scendentally,
that is to say, by reference to an ideal world or a world of Ideas of which this
world, this life are only im-perfect copies mere appearances (blosse Er-
scheinungen), phenomena or mere representations (blosse Vor-stellungen). If
we defne labor in terms of its mechanical a-spect and of its ideal or creative a-
spect, then it is obvious that the two are and will remain utterly anti-nomic and ir-
reconcilable. It is obvious that we shall forever sway between crude
materialism and refned idealism. The unbridgeable hiatus this perennial
conundrum of the philosophic mind between con-cept and the re-ality that
it is supposed to grasp or com-prehend (as a totality) belongs to the
bourgeois fables that Nietzsche laughed of so comprehensively in Zarathustra
and that indeed he hammered to smithereens in the Twilight (a book whose
subtitle is how to philosophise with a hammer). (Simply bathetic is that
highbrow bourgeois interpretation, invented by Heidegger, of Nietzsches
hammer referring to sounding philosophical thoughts!)
To be sure, it was Heidegger himself who, on the tracks of Lukacss trenchant
critique of The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought (in the Geschichte), sought
valiantly in his Kantbuch (which he intended as volume two of Being and Time) to
correct Kants misapprehensions regarding the nature of human intuition into
which Kant fell in the second edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Heidegger
genially by-passes Lukacss entire Hegelian problematic of the dialectic of self-
consciousness which the Hungarian philosopher had re-worked along
Simmelian lines that led straight into the formal Weberian notion of
rationalization as reifcation, - which in turn he adapted from Marxs
original discussion of the fetishism of commodities in Capital. This dualism of
the Arbeit (labor) as the totality of human objectifcation that is parcelised and
commodifed by the capitalist so that its qualitative character as use value is then
reduced to its quantitative monetary form as exchange value until a surplus value
is produced over and above the socially necessary labor time needed for the
reproduction of society all this is a colossal fction for which Marx himself
was principally responsible, but one that Lukacs ably worked up into an even
greater mythology, on the tracks of Lenins fanciful Bolshevist vanguard or
dictatorship (avant-garde?) of the proletariat as being the Hegelian carrier
(Trager) of the dialectical self-dissolution of capital (the working class dressed up
as the Kapital-Geist), fnally unveiled as the individual subject-object of history
(a concept Lukacs took from Schopenhauers critique of Kants formal distinction
between noumenon and phenomenon).
All along this line of reasoning or analysis, we fnd a laughable string of puerile
distinctions between a real world and an apparent world which serves to
obfuscate our immediate practical aim the overthrow of the society of capital
(subjective genitive the society created by and for capital) and its fnal
institutional form, the Keynesian State-Form now on its last desperate death-
throes.
Habermass proton pseudon (principal [frst and foremost] mistake) he himself
articulates in only his second paragraph (!) from the start of his meta-critique
of Marx. Having quoted from a passage of the Paris Manuscripts in which Marx
decries Hegels confusion of human objectifcation with alienation, Habermas
sums up:
This seal placed on absolute knowledge by the philosophy of identity is broken if
the
externality of nature& both ob0ecti%e en%iron!ental and sub0ecti%e bodily nature&
not only
see!s external to a consciousness that 1nds itself within nature but refers
instead to the
i!!ediacy of a substratu! on which the !ind contingently depends# ,ere the
!ind
presupposes nature& but in the sense of a natural process that& fro! within itself&
gi%es rise
likewise to the natural being !an and the nature that surrounds hi! ""and not in
the
idealist sense of a !ind that& as $dea existing for itself& posits a natural world as
its own
self"created presupposition#-
There are therefore, argues Habermas, both Kantian and non-Kantian
components to Marxs philosophical framework. The Kantian elements are
already made explicit in the terminology adopted which, unlike Hegels
absolute idealism, still posits the external character of nature to mind:
Here the mind presupposes nature. But Habermass adoption of terms
signifers, symbols as charged and redolent with the problematic of the
prima philosophia, such as mind and nature means that he has already
saddled Marxs Entwurf with all the worthless paralyzing, mortifying ballast and
baggage carried by Western meta-physics what Nietzsche so valiantly de-
structed, or demolished critically and then threw overboard! Just listen to these
pearls from the supreme academic brain of the Teutonic establishment something
to make you bristle with rage:
Marx is assuming something like a nature in itself. $t is prior to the world of
!ankind# $t
is at the root of laboring sub0ects as natural beings and also enters into their
labor
processes# But as the sub0ecti%e nature of !an and the ob0ecti%e nature of their
en%iron!ent& it is already part of a syste! of social labor that is di%ided up into
two
aspects of the sa!e 2process of !aterial exchange#2 3hile episte!ologically we
!ust
presuppose nature as existing in itself& we oursel%es ha%e access to nature only
within the
historical di!ension disclosed by labor processes# ,ere nature in hu!an for!
!ediates
itself with ob0ecti%e nature& the ground and en%iron!ent of the hu!an world#
24ature in
itself2 is therefore an abstraction& which is a requisite of our thought5 but we
always
encounter nature within the hori(on of the world"historical self"for!ati%e process
of
!ankind# Kant's "thing-in-itself" reaears un!er the name of a nature
re"e!ing human
histor#. )ch#.& p#6-/
This is patent and despicable nonsense! Had Marx had the misfortune of catching
a glimpse of this kind of utter bastardry from academic poltroons such as
Habermas no-one could vouchsafe for the physical integrity of the Frankfurt
professor! Nothing but nothing could be further from Marxs entire worldview,
perspective, philosophy call it what you like! than the garbage about Dinge
an sich (things in themselves, that velame oscuro or obscure veil one could
call it letame oscuro, obscure flth!) that Kant unloads by the cart-load in the First
Kritik! The plain and overwhelming fact of the matter is that Marx was
attempting by all means available to him to overcome (Nietzsches Uberwindung)
precisely the kind of meta-physical conundrums in which precious bourgeois
minds such as Kants took such obvious delight. That Marx was unable to
achieve such a feat we will have to wait until Nietzsche for a far more
sophisticated and penetrating efort does not mean that he shared the trans-
scendental idealist claptrap of Kant and his German Idealist epigones!
Quite obviously, having set up a phantasmagoric Kantian anti-thesis in Marxs
revolutionary practice between mind and nature, and therefore between
labor and refection or interaction, it is evident that Habermas then
needs a syn-thesis (!) an equally phantomatic efort by Marx to bridge this
Fichtean hiatus irrationalis from within the Kantian philosophical, speculative
strait-jacket in which Habermas has entangled Marxs praxis. Once more,
Habermas sees a distortion arising between Marxs practice of inquiry and
his philosophical self-understanding of this inquiry but this distortion
exists only because Habermas has fundamentally pre-distorted Marxs praxis by
re-defning its central revolutionary problematic! Here is how Habermas
summarises his conclusions:
The !aterialist concept of synthesis thus retains fro! *ant the 1xed fra!ework
within
which the sub0ect for!s a substance that it encounters# This fra!ework is
established
once and for all through the equip!ent of transcendental consciousness or of the
hu!an
species as a species of tool"!aking ani!als# 7n the other hand& in distinction
fro! *ant&
Marx assu!es e!pirically !ediated rules of synthesis that are ob0ecti1ed as
producti%e
forces and historically transfor! the sub0ects' relation to their natural
en%iron!ent#.8
3hat is *antian about Marx's conception of knowledge is the in%ariant relation of
the species to its natural en%iron!ent& which is established by the beha%ioral
syste! of instru!ental action "" for labor processes are the 2perpetual natural
necessity of hu!an life#2
It is quite mesmerizing to witness the efusive impetus with which Habermas
with nonchalant hermeneutic fury completely misrepresents Marxs most express
theoretical intentions. Doubtless, Marx believed in a subject as well as in
nature. But why and how are these necessarily retained from Kants fxed
framework? And where oh where is that transcendental consciousness that
Habermas claims to detect in Marx? Nothing is transcendental in Marx! Marx is
inveterate, stubborn immanence! Nor can the human species for Marx be
described barrenly as a species of tool-making animals because, as
Habermas remarks in the very next sentence,
9in distinction fro! *ant& Marx assu!es e!pirically !ediated rules of synthesis
that are ob0ecti1ed as producti%e forces and histori"all# transform the
sub0ects' relation to their natural en%iron!ent:#
But again, why, in light of this historical trans-formation surely a meta-
morphosis, a Goethian trans-crescence, and if not, why not? -, why does this
entitle Habermas to conclude in the same breath that [w]hat is Kantian about
Marx's conception of knowledge is the invariant relation of the species to its
natural environment?How on earth can this relation be invariant when
Habermas has just acknowledged that it is liable to historical transformation?
And how can this invariance be established by the behavioral system of
instrumental action -- for labor processes are the perpetual natural necessity of
human life? Why does the Marxian perpetual natural necessity of human life
the evident ec-sistence of being human as living activity, hence even as Arbeit
suddenly become a behavioral system of instrumental action?
The conditions of instru!ental action arose contingently in the natural e%olution
of the hu!an species# ;t the sa!e ti!e& howe%er& with transcendental necessity&
they bind our
knowledge of nature to the interest of possible technical control o%er natural
processes#
The ob0ecti%ity of the possible ob0ects of experience is constituted within a
conceptual perceptual sche!e rooted in deep"seated structures of hu!an action<
this sche!e is equally binding on all sub0ects that keep ali%e through labor#
At this point one would have to state bluntly, at the risk of sounding vulgar, that
Habermas is making things up on the run such is the obtuseness of his
fantastic variations on Marxs theme! Where in Gods name does
transcendental necessity come into Marxs immanent naturalism something
worthy of Nietzsches genealogy of morals?
The ob0ecti%ity of the
"" 6= ""
possible ob0ects of experience is thus grounded in the identity of a natural
substratu!&
na!ely that of the bodily organi(ation of !an& which is oriented toward action&
and not in
an original unity of apperception& which& according to *ant& guarantees with
transcendental necessity the identity of an a"historical consciousness in general#
The
identity of societal sub0ects& in contrast& alters with the scope of their power of
technical
control# This point of %iew is funda!entally un"*antian# The knowledge generated
within the fra!ework of instru!ental action takes on external existence as a
producti%e
force# >onsequently both nature& which has been reshaped and ci%ili(ed in labor
processes& and the laboring sub0ects the!sel%es alter in relation to the
de%elop!ent of the
producti%e forces#
Finally! Finally Habermas snaps out of his neo-Kantian trance! But remember,
this is only partly so only to the extent, that is, that this un-Kantian point of
view merely counterbalances the other Kantian elements of Marxs theory
that Habermas seemingly detects. But Habermas remains locked within his own
formulation of the Marxian problematic which, far from falling back on Kantian
formalism, was always (remember!?) implanted on Hegels dialectic for a start!
Now, if we accept Habermass one-sided Kantian formulation of Marxs
problematic, then we necessarily end up with his disproportion because, from the
quotation just above, if
[the knowledge generated within the fra!ework of instru!ental action takes on
external existence as a producti%e force&
then it follows necessarily that for such a framework of instrumental action to be
trans-muted into an external existence as a productive force involves a
reshaping and civilizing of nature as well as an alteration of both nature and
the laboring subjects themselves that is quite inevitably anti-thetical that is, it
gives rise to Habermass lamented distortion in Marx for the simple reason
that nature understood as the antithesis of the subject can never be
transformed or civilized or altered by.instrumental action! Thus,
Habermas in-vents (in the double sense of conjures up and in-venire, runs up
against) the disproportion in Marxs praxis that he laments! First, Habermas
invents in the sense that he makes the problem up all by himself, pulls it out
of a hat; and then, he in-vents this problem in the sense that he claims to have
run up against it as a disproportion in Marx!
The !aterialist concept of synthesis through social labor !arks the syste!atic
position occupied by Marx's conception of [-. the history of !ankind in the
intellectual current that begins with *ant# $n a turn of thought peculiarly
deter!ined by Fichte& Marx adopts the intention of ,egel's ob0ection to the
*antian approach to the critique of knowledge# $n so doing he is i!per%ious to
the philosophy of identity& which precludes episte!ology as such#
4otwithstanding& the philosophical foundation of this !aterialis! pro%es itself
insu?cient to establish an unconditional pheno!enological self"re'ection of
knowledge and thus pre%ent the positi%ist atrophy of episte!ology# >onsidered
i!!anently& $ see the reason for this in the reduction of the self" generati%e act
of the hu!an species to labor# )p#-./
So herein lies the problem with Habermass wholly unwarranted interpretation
of Marxs epistemology: in the fact, that is, that Habermas entirely overlooks
Marxs adoption of Hegels critique of Kant from positions that will be shared
in part even by the negatives Denken from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche and
Heidegger, and that indeed had germinated as early as Schelling (see Lowith,
Vom Hegel zu Nietzsche) and this not merely in terms of method, given Marxs
self-avowed indebtedness (cf. Preface to Capital) to Hegelian dialectic, but also and
above all in the fact that the Hegelian dialectic constitutes a critique of Kantian
transcendental idealism both as epistemology and above all as ontology! Kant is
almost exclusively concerned (despite the helpful objections Heidegger raises in
the Kantbuch) with epistemology, whereas Hegel is concerned essentially with
ontology with the nature of Being despite the fact (and here is the pretext for
Marxs critique of Hegel, and then of Political Economy, of Ricardo) that he
assimilates ontology to logic, and thence to epistemology. Nevertheless, the
Hegelian dialectic of self-consciousness is much more than a critique of Kantian
epistemology! It is above all else an attempt to move beyond Kants epistemological
formalism which inevitably shatters against the rock of its ontological antinomies!
It is absurd, in light of all this and we need not even consider Hegel here, for
one could as well invoke Schopenhauers own critique of Kant (!) to insist that
Marxs own critique of Hegel would after all was said and done revert to
Kantian positions that Marx himself would have considered well and truly dead
and buried after Hegels philosophical advances! The weakness, the weak link, if
you please (as Marx would say), in Habermass review of Marxian praxis ( of
inquiry as political and theoretical practice) lies perhaps most centrally and
essentially in his misconception of the Marxian notion of labor, of the Arbeit,
which Habermas understands as instrumental action, as mere operari precisely
because he theorises the entire complex ontology of the Arbeit from a pre-Nietzschean
viewpoint! Marx, on the contrary, whilst he lacked the philosophical lexicon
developed later by Nietzsche, and more intensely by Heidegger, had already
moved to a philosophical dimension that Kant did not even imagine and here the
pun is intended because, as Heidegger showed, it is exactly the defective Kantian
notion of the imagination as the syn-thesis between human intuition
(Sinn) and the understanding (Verstand) that made his critical idealism
vulnerable to the Nietzschean assault.
Here then is how Habermas recapitulates his animadversion on Marx in the
second part of his critical review of Marxian praxis, but note that already he has
turned this praxis into the critique of epistemology:
Marx re!u"es the ro"ess of re$e"tion to the le%el of instrumental
a"tion. By reducing the self"positing of the absolute ego to the !ore tangible
producti%e acti%ity of the species& he eli!inates re'ection as such as a !oti%e
force of history& e%en though he retains the fra!ework of the philosophy of
re'ection# ,is re"interpretation of ,egel's @heno!enology betrays the
paradoxical consequences of taking Fichte's philosophy of the ego and
under!ining it with !aterialis!# ,ere the appropriating sub0ect confronts in the
non"ego not 0ust a product of the ego but rather so!e portion of the contingency
of nature# $n this case the act of appropriation is no longer identical with the
re'ecti%e reintegration of so!e pre%iously externali(ed part of the sub0ect itself#
Marx preser%es the relation of the sub0ect's prior positing acti%ity )which was not
transparent to itself/& that is of hypostati(ation& to the process of beco!ing
conscious of what has been ob0ecti1ed& that is of re'ection# But& on the pre!ises
of a philosophy of labor& this relation turns into the relation of production and
appropriation& of externali(ation and the appropriation of externali(ed essential
powers# Marx "on"ei%es of re$e"tion a""or!ing to the mo!el of
ro!u"tion. &e"ause he ta"itl# starts 'ith this remise( it is not
in"onsistent that he !oes not !istinguish bet'een the logi"al status of
the natural s"ien"es an! of "riti)ue. *.++,
Now, as we showed in the frst part of this review, it is emphatically not Marx
who reduces the process of refection to the level of instrumental action in the
frst place because Marx never properly understood human living activity or
living labor in terms of this dichotomy that Habermas wishes to impose on it
between the instrumental side of human activity and its conscious or
refective side! There was unquestionably a scientistic and reductive side to
Marxs work that takes us down to that most vulgar of his claims that of having
uncovered the laws of motion of human history or at any rate the economic laws
of motion of modern society on which Habermas predictably lays much
emphasis. Yet, as even Habermas himself concedes, there is much in Marxs
practical application of his critique to specifc historical events, and most notably
his insistence on the historical uniqueness of capitalist social relations of
production (in contrast to Political Economy), that directly confutes Habermass
claim of the Marxian reduction of refection to instrumental action and
disproportion between his practice of inquiry and his philosophical self-
understanding of it.
Rather than carp on the all-too-easily confutable scientism of Marxs analysis,
Habermas ought to have asked himself why and how it is indeed possible for Marx
to be able simultaneously to engage in the vulgar conception of the laws of
motion of human history and indeed even to indulge the claim that human
history could be subsumed eventually under natural history (the infamous
unifcation of science)! whilst still being able to conceive of the critique of
political economy as a form of revolutionary practice! The reason why Habermas is
unable to pose himself the question is the converse of the reason why Marx was
able to contradict his praxis: and the reason is that Habermas is illegitimately
dissecting human living activity (the Arbeit or labor) into an instrumental or
mechanical or, if you like techno-scientifc aspect, and into a refective or
conscious or contemplative aspect: in short, he is accepting without hint of a
doubt unrefexively indeed! the division of human labor into intellectual and
manual labor. (Intellectual and Manual Labor is the title of the major theoretical
work by Alfred Sohn-Rethel in which he introduces also the notion of social
synthesis. This is a gallant efort from a genuinely devoted Marxist
revolutionary thinker whom we hold in high esteem. It is intriguing, to say the
least, that Habermas though most probably aware of Sohn-Rethels theses
fails to acknowledge or even to mention them in his work! Our own divergence
from the theses of this work will be the subject of a separate review, but we are
happy to adopt them provisionally here.)
To say it again, when Habermas claims that Marx conceives of refection
according to the model of production, he is illicitly concluding that
production is somehow un-refexive and mechanical that, in other
words, it is possible to distinguish between a sphere of necessity, of technical and
scientifc instrumental action (including that of economic science?) and, in
opposition to this, of a refexive sphere of freedom or ideation that responds to
symbolic interaction. In efect, Habermas is reproducing uncritically the Cartesian
schema of res cogitans (mind, soul, spirit) and res extensa (body, matter).
Indeed, so pervicaciously ingrained is this philosophical Cartesian-Kantian
prejudice in Habermass entire worldview, that he even has the efrontery to
accuse Marx of confusing the logical status of the natural sciences and of
critique (!) when it ought to be amply evident to him by now if indeed he had
read Marx with an open mind that no such distinction can be drawn between
the logical status of the natural sciences and of critique!
Because he [Marx tacitly starts with this pre!ise& it is not inconsistent that he
does not distinguish between the logical status of the natural sciences and of
critique#
The cardinal sin committed by Habermas here is frst to have articulated a
purely fctitious and wholly phantomatic distinction between the logic of the
natural sciences and the logic of critique when he should know that there
is no logic to either the natural sciences or indeed to critique (!); and then,
Habermas compounds his temerary insolence by accusing Marx of not
distinguishing between these two utterly phantomatic entities!
Here Habermas doubtless has in mind Marxs famous statement in Capital about
human beings as species-conscious beings the Gattungswesen. And again we
would have to concede that in this regard as well Marx displays all the scientistic
prejudices, even bigotry, of the age of Darwin, to whom he intended to dedicate
Capital. Nevertheless, this does not entitle Habermas to saddle Marx with a
framework of philosophical analysis that the bearded thinker time and again
challenges and even contra-dicts most notably in the Grundrisse. This is not the place
to go into the merits of Marxs explicit and implicit outline of his philosophical
framework, in the Grundrisse and elsewhere; nor have we time and space to trace
the historical correspondence between the division of social labor into its directive
intellectual and its commanded manual aspects. But we must take time to
delineate two facets of an implicit Marxian critique of epistemology based on a
reading of Marxs work that draws upon the Nietzschean critique of Western
values (scientifc and ethico-political) which, again, we attribute to the political
division of human living activity into intellectual labor on one side and manual
labor on the other.
Here is a splendid example of Habermass inability to see that science and
technology and human history can be at one and the same time subsumed
under social relations of production and therefore (!) still be subsumed within a
phylogenetic understanding of human being as species-conscious being. If indeed, unlike
Habermas, we are able to understand science and technology as products of
human social relations of production rather than as autonomous, objective
entities with a neutral logical status, then there is no reason why the
development of these social relations of production in accordance with
phylogenetically defned human interests may clash and come into contra-
diction with their actual asset under capitalism! This is not a logical
contradiction but what Marx would have called a dialectical one one that
does not require a transcendental understanding or theory of knowledge
that is separate from (that transcends) the actual social relations of production
(the satisfaction of human needs and goals) - which is precisely the reason why
Habermas champions Kant against Hegel! -, but rather an immanent one that
subsumes science and technology to those social relations of production.
$f we take as our basis the !aterialist concept of synthesis through social labor&
then both the technically exploitable knowledge of the natural sciences& the
knowledge of natural laws& as 'ell as the theory of society& the knowledge of
laws of human natural history& belong to the sa!e ob0ecti%e context of the self"
constitution of the species#
Simply breath-taking is the mulish obstinacy with which Habermas harps on this
opposition that exists only in his mind and in his neo-Kantian mind alone (!) between
natural laws and laws of human natural history (whatever that means!). And
immediately following this sentence, just take a look at this pearl (!):
From the level of pragmatic, everyday knowledge to modern natural science, the
knowledge of nature derives from man's primary coming to grips with
nature; at the same time it reacts back upon the system of social labor
and stimulates its development.
The knowledge of society can be %iewed analogously# Axtending fro! the le%el of
the prag!atic self"understanding of social groups to actual social theory& it
de1nes the self"consciousness of societal sub0ects# Their identity is refor!ed at
each stage of de%elop!ent of the producti%e forces and is in turn a condition for
steering the process of productionB#
Thus, out of his own creative imagination, Habermas has conjured up a
division, an opposition, a contrast between the knowledge of nature and
the knowledge of society which leads us back to the old confabulations about
Subject and Object, Mind and Body, Spirit and Nature, and fnally but
here is the real immanent political contrast that matters to us: - capitalist and worker,
dead objectifed labor commanding living labor. In vain, Habermas invokes the
Marx of the Grundrisse to enlist him in this neo-Kantian folly:
The development of fixed capital indicates the extent to which general social knowledge has become
an immediate force of production, and therefore [!] the conditions of the social life process itself have
come under the control of the general intellect.
7
Co far as production establishes the only fra!ework in which the genesis and
function of knowledge can be interpreted& the science of !an also appears under
categories of knowledge for control )DerfEgungswissen/# ;t the le%el of the self"
consciousness of social sub0ects& knowledge that !akes possible the control of
natural processes turns into knowledge that !akes possible the control of the
social life process# $n the di!ension of labor as a process of production and
appropriation& re'ecti%e knowledge )Fe'exionswissen/ changes into producti%e
knowledge )@roduktionswissen/# 4atural knowledge congealed in technologies
i!pels the social sub0ect to an e%er !ore thorough knowledge of its 2process of
!aterial exchange2 with nature# $n the end this knowledge is transfor!ed into
the steering of social processes in a !anner not unlike that in which natural
science beco!es the power of technical control# )p#-G/
Marx himself, in the quotation Habermas adopts above, commits the very vulgar
error one that Habermas, entirely innocent of economic knowledge, fails to
detect of confusing what he will later (in Capital) call constant capital with
fxed capital (plant and equipment roughly put, technology). But this does
not entitle Habermas to conclude that by fxed capital Marx means mere
instrumental technology or knowledge for control (my God! Where does he get
these notions from?) or Verfugungswissen which can then be combined with
refective knowledge to yield fnally in a transmutation worthy of the
maddest mediaeval alchemist a magical productive knowledge or
Produktionswissen (I give up!) that, according to Habermas, Marx does not
self-understand philosophically!
At this stage of arcane nonsense we would be quite entitled to throw the whole
physical weight of the book Knowledge and Human Interests at Habermas himself
were it not for the fact that we owe him the stimulus of his comprehensive obtuse
asininity - and, let us admit it, a great deal of intellect in the mix, for which we
thank him! Again and again, Habermas goes on (as if repetition could somehow
dispel his confusion) to cavil at this dualism of labor (Arbeit) as mere
instrumental action (manual labor?) and labor as refection or interaction
(intellectual labor?):
,ere it is fro! the !ethodological perspecti%e that we are interested in this
conception of the transfor!ation of the labor process into a scienti1c process
that would bring !an's 2!aterial exchange2 with nature under the control of a
hu!an species totally e!ancipated fro! necessary labor# ; science of !an
de%eloped fro! this point of %iew would ha%e to construct the history of the
species as a synthesis through social labor"" an! onl# through labor# $t would
!ake true the fction of the early Marx that natural s"ien"e subsumes the
s"ien"e of man -ust as mu"h as the latter subsumes the former. For& on
the one hand& the scienti(ation of production is seen as the !o%e!ent that
brings about the identity of a sub0ect that knows the social life process and then
also steers it# $n this sense the science of !an would be subsu!ed under natural
science# 7n the other hand& the natural sciences are co!prehended in %irtue of
their function in the self" generati%e process of the species as the exoteric
disclosure of !an's essential powers# $n this sense& natural science would be
subsu!ed under the science of !an# The latter contains principles fro! which a
!ethodology of the natural sciences rese!bling a transcendental"logically
deter!ined prag!atis! could be deri%ed# But this science does not question its
own episte!ological foundations# $t understands itself in analogy to the natural
sciences as producti%e knowledge# $t thus conceals the di!ension of self"
re'ection in which it !ust !o%e regardless#
4ow the argu!ent which we ha%e taken up was not pursued beyond the stage of
the 2rough sketch2 )2Fohentwurf2/ of >apital# $t is typical only of the philosophical
foundation of
"" HI ""
Marx's critique of ,egel& that is production as the 2acti%ity2 of a self"constituting
species# $t is not typical of the actual social theory in which Marx !aterialistically
appropriates ,egel on a broad scale# .%en in the /run!risse 'e 0n! alrea!#
the o1"ial %ie' that the transformation of s"ien"e into ma"hiner# !oes
not b# an# means lea! of itself to the liberation of a self-"ons"ious
general sub-e"t that masters the ro"ess of ro!u"tion. A""or!ing to
this other %ersion the self-"onstitution of the se"ies takes la"e not
onl# in the "ontext of men's instrumental action upon nature but
simultaneousl# in the !imension of power relations that regulate men's
interaction among themselves.
This is complete and utter nonsense because nowhere in the Grundrisse (the
Roh-entwurf) will we fnd Marx indulging in the kind of academic hair-
splitting exercises on which Habermas built his academic career between labor
as instrumental action upon nature and labor as interaction between human
beings least of all would Marx have countenanced the simultaneous
occurrence of these two fctions of Habermass own making. And that is
because Marx knew all too well that acquiescing in such a dualism or dichotomy
between instrumental action on one side and interaction on the other would
have landed him straight into the Comtean positivism indeed the nihilism, as
Nietzsche so ably unmasked it in Gaya Scienza and in the Genealogie for the very
simple reason that once we admit that human living activity is subject to the
laws of nature, then it follows just as scientifcally that the interaction
between human beings also is subject to these laws of nature (or
technology) which is exactly what every Positivism from Comte onwards
has tried to establish!
So this turns into complete and utter nonsense Habermass absurd claim that
Marx was somehow responsible for the intellectual emergence of Comtean
positivism (yes, I know, it is hard to believe, but this is exactly what Habermas
does!) as Habermas almost insanely, but assuredly inanely, suggests!
Marx !i! not !e%elo this i!ea of the s"ien"e of man. &# e)uating
"riti)ue 'ith natural s"ien"e( he !isa%o'e! it. Materialist scientis! only
recon1r!s what absolute idealis! had already acco!plished5 the eli!ination of
episte!ology in fa%or of unchained uni%ersal 2scienti1c knowledge2""but this ti!e
of scienti1c !aterialis! instead of absolute knowledge#
3ith his positi%ist de!and for a natural science of the social& >o!te !erely
needed to take Marx& or at least the intention that Marx belie%ed hi!self to be
pursuing& at his word# @ositi%is! turned its back to the theory of knowledge&
whose philosophical self"liquidation had been carried on by ,egel and Marx& who
were of one !ind in this regard# $n so doing& positi%is! regressed behind the
le%el of re'ection once attained by *ant# $n continuity with pre"critical traditions&
howe%er& it successfully set about the task& which episte!ology had abandoned
and fro! which ,egel and Marx belie%ed the!sel%es exe!pted& of elaborating a
!ethodology of the sciences#
Wrong! It is Habermass attempt to rescue natural science from the practical
critique of Marxian theory that delivers Habermas straight into the paws and
maws and jaws of Positivism which he himself confrms when he foolishly and
absurdly concedes with the last words of his essay that positivism
successfully set about the task& which episte!ology had abandoned and fro!
which ,egel and Marx belie%ed the!sel%es exe!pted& of elaborating a
!ethodology of the sciences# )p#=6/
Successfully? Really? Yet to the degree that positivist methodology is
successful, it is so not because it is scientifc but rather because its strategy of
domination on behalf of capital against living labor is efectual! Habermas again
confuses what is with what succeeds, which is the very opposite of what the
task of critique and refection is supposed to do! Perhaps the singular source
of Habermass confusion is the fact that he wishes to outline, if not even to spell
out, a positive science that, as the English title to this chapter suggests, will
serve both as theory of knowledge and as social theory. So distant is
Habermas from comprehending the most basic outline of the Marxian critique of
political economy that he confuses Marxs identifcation of the social antagonism
intrinsic to the technological means and mode of production adopted by capitalists to
subjugate living labor and reduce it to abstract labor with a simple squabble between
social classes over the distribution of the surplus product created by labor.
By labor! So vulgar is Habermass reading of Marx that he cannot even
distinguish between living labor and labor power, so that the entire problem
with capitalism boils down for him to one about the distribution of surplus
product over and above what Marx unhappily called necessary labor another
fable attributable to his pervasive scientism!
$f production attains the le%el of producing goods o%er an! abo%e ele!entary
needs& the proble! arises of distributing the surplus product created by labor#
This proble! is sol%ed by the for!ation of social classes& which participate to
%arying degrees in the burdens of production and in social rewards# 3ith the
clea%age of the social syste! into classes that are !ade per!anent by the
institutional fra!ework& the social sub0ect loses its unity5 2To regard society as
one single sub0ect is& !oreo%er& to regard it falsely""speculati%ely#2
IH
;s long as we regard the self"constitution of the species through labor only with
respect to the power of control o%er natural processes that accu!ulates in the
forces of production& it is !eaningful to speak of the social syste! in general and
to speak of the social sub0ect in the singular# For the le%el of de%elop!ent of the
forces of production deter!ines the syste! of social labor as a whole# $n principle
the !e!bers of a society all li%e at the sa!e le%el of !astery of nature& which in
each case is gi%en with the a%ailable technical knowledge# Co far as the identity
of a society takes for! %ia this le%el of scienti1c"technical progress& it is the self"
consciousness of 2the2 social sub0ect# But as we now see& the self"for!ati%e
process of the species does not coincide with the genesis of this sub0ect of
scienti1c"technical progress# Father& this 2self"generati%e act&2 which Marx
co!prehended as a !aterialistic acti%ity& is acco!panied by a self"for!ati%e
process !ediated by the interaction of class sub0ects either under co!pulsory
integration or in open ri%alry# )p#H-/
Habermass difculty is that he conceives of the process of production as a
scientifcally and technically neutral process one that responds to natural
laws. As a result, Habermas then needs to add to this process as an adjunct or
appendage a social theory that can explain why and how, given that the process of
production is scientifcally and technologically neutral (!), there can ever arise any
social divisions in society over the distribution of the product between
social classes! What Habermas neglects entirely is that science and
technology are never neutral but rather are tools, instruments and strategies of
capitalist domination over living labor. The aim of our revolutionary movement can
never be that of developing a neutral science. Rather, it is that of creating a
democratic society!
******
Marxs inability to determine value and prices independently of the market
mechanism induced him to seek the objectifcation of value in the fetishism
of commodities which served the same purpose as Webers rationalization
that of measuring the social synthesis, which is what Lukacs translated into the
concept of reifcation. Just as with Webers rationalization, the Marxian
concept of commodity fetishism or the Lukacsian equivalent of reifcation
simply cannot account for the social synthesis. Marx and Lukacs understand
that if this social synthesis is objectively valid if, in other words, it is possible
to measure value independently of political institutions, of violence -, then
capitalism would be made scientifcally legitimate and the only objection to
it would rest with its efciency as a mode of production of social wealth. If, on
the contrary, this social synthesis is achieved through a necessary illusion
(fetishism of commodities, reifcation, formalism), then we have a contradiction
because no illusion, let alone a necessary fction, which is an oxymoron! -
can keep a social system in reproduction! (We dealt before with Lukacss
description of reifcation as necessary illusion which is an oxymoron because
illusions cannot be necessary and necessity cannot be illusory.)
Lukacs perceives this problem when he asserts, albeit still from the viewpoint of
the opposition of fragmented alienated labor against the (lost!) totality of
artisanal labor, that the limit to reifcation is its formalism (in HCC, p.101).
Habermas understands Lukacss statement to mean that workers are aware that
the reifcation of labor time is an illusion, however necessary it may be
objectively and that therefore the bourgeoisie cannot be the individual
subject-object of history. As if history required anything like individual
subject-objects for exploitation to occur! (Nietzsche would have a ft if he ever
read Lukacs!) Quite obviously, Lukacss analysis does not deal with the problem
because, as Habermas rightly notes, this formalism can be overcome only
philosophically through class consciousness, which entails opposing one
illusion with another, because it is hard to see how the necessary illusion of
reifcation could ever become un-necessary! (The old Frankfurt School realized
this, only to preserve the idolatry of [Instrumental] Reason). [See Habermas,
Theory of Communicative Action, Vol.1.]
The only way to lend validity to Lukacss position is to refect that the
formalism of reifcation, of the mythical law of value, will defeat capitalism for
the precise reason that what makes it possible is a reality of antagonism, of
capitalist command over living labor that ensures the abstraction of living
labor. In other words, there is no real or necessary illusion behind reifcation
but the naked blunt violence of the capitalist the regular discipline of the
factory. This is why formalism is the limit of capitalism: - because
rationalization is not an objective (Weber) or merely ideological (Marx-
Lukacs, then Heidegger-Marcuse) phenomenon, but rather (with Nietzsches
invariance, the unreality of values) an arbitrary one that responds to a
strategy of command and exploitation.
Lukacs does in fact, at the page reference cited by Habermas, seem to indicate
formalism as the internal limit of the wage relation in terms of the fact that
the market mechanism metamorphoses living labor into a thing but only
formally, only abstractly not in reality or necessarily and must
therefore succumb to the reality of class antagonism! It is true that both Marx
and Lukacs ultimately fall into this vicious circle of market competition leading
to abstract labor and then to value as a necessary illusion an operation
that is impossible because competition cannot automatically turn living
experience into a thing. Habermas, however, completely fails to see that this is
the real political problem and engages instead in a critique of Lukacs on the ground
that the reality of reifcation (which Lukacs has rendered identical with
Weberian rationalization because of his erroneous acceptance of market
competition) cannot be dispelled by a mythical class consciousness! By so
doing, Habermas demonstrates how little he has understood where the actual
problem with the wage relation and with Lukacss concept of reifcation (and
Marxs fetishism) really lies: - that is to say, in the impossibility of reifcation
or fetishism as a necessary illusion! Certainly not in Lukacss residual
Hegelian idealistic objectivism!
The oxymoron of necessary illusion to describe the fetishism of the
commodity and reifcation is the mirror-image of the Marxian notion of
historical materialism: on one side the phenomenon of value is an illusion,
that is, it is a subjective product of human history, whilst on the other side it is
necessary because it exemplifes the objective and material economic laws of
motion of society. Because Habermas accepts the scientifc basis of historial
materialism based on the mistaken distinction he draws between instrumental
action and interaction or refection, he can then accept this oxymoron as
indicating the historical necessity of the commodity form at a given stage of
the natural history of society! Here is the proof in his own words:
Marx did not adopt an episte!ological perspecti%e in de%eloping his conception
of the history of the species as so!ething that has to be co!prehended
!aterialistically# 4e%ertheless& if social practice does not only accu!ulate the
successes of instru!ental action but also& through class antagonis!& produces
and re'ects on ob-e"ti%e illusion& then& as part of this process& the analysis of
history is possible only in a pheno!enologically !ediated )gebrochen/ !ode of
thought# The science of !an itself is critique and !ust re!ain so# )*+,$& ch#6&
p#=./
What this reveals, of course, is the ingrained transcendental objectivism
derived mainly from Neo-Kantian sources, chiefy Simmels social forms that
aficts Habermass own analytical framework! Here is Habermas again:
To the degree that the "ommo!it# form be"omes the form of ob-e"ti%it#
and rules the relations of indi%iduals to one another as well as their dealings with
external nature and with internal sub0ecti%e nature& the lifeworld has to beco!e
rei1ed and indi%iduals degraded as 9syste!s theory: foresees into an
9en%iron!ent: for a society that has beco!e external to the!& that has
consolidated for the! into an opaque syste!& that has been abstracted fro!
the! and beco!e independent of the!# Jukacs shares this perspecti%e with
3eber as with ,orkhei!er< but he is con%inced that this de%elop!ent not only
can be stopped practically& but& for reasons that can be theoretically
de!onstrated& has to run up against internal li!its5 9This rationali(ation of the
world appears to be co!plete& it see!s to penetrate to the %ery depths of !anKs
physical and psychic nature< but it 1nds its li!it in the for!al character of its own
rationality:# [,>>& p#ILI
The burden of proof that Marx wanted to discharge in politico"econo!ic ter!s&
with a theory of crisis& now falls upon a de!onstration of the i!!anent li!its to
rationali(ation& a de!onstration that has to be carried out in philosophical
ter!s&: ),aber!as& T>;& DolI& p#6=I/#
Again, Habermas is wrong because the context in which Lukacs discusses this
limit to rationalization is precisely that of Marxs theory of capitalist crisis
induced both by antagonism in the labor process and by inter-capitalist
competition in the market! As a matter of fact, on p.102, very shortly after the
passage cited by Habermas, Lukacs goes on to cite Marx on this very point!
Mi%ision of labor within the workshop i!plies the undisputed authority of the
capitalist over men& who are but parts of a !echanis! that belongs to hi!# The
di%ision of labor within society brings into contact independent co!!odity
producers who acknowledge no other authority than that of competition& of the
coercion exerted by the pressure of their mutual interests&: )Marx& >apital $$$&
quoted in Jukacs& ,>>& p#IL.#/
Of course, neither Marx nor Lukacs will ever succeed in showing how the
market mechanism can function, how competition between capitalists can
ever provide the social synthesis for the reproduction of capitalist society in any
form whatsoever, least of all that of value! For this reason, they rely on the
notions of fetishism and reifcation, respectively, to provide the foundation
for that comprehensive irrationality constituted by the capitalist wage relation
which is why Lukacs can then fall prey to and swallow wholesale the formal
rationality of a Weber, albeit to denounce its formal limits! It is much simpler
for us, instead, to attribute the social synthesis of the society of capital to the
sheer violence of the wage relation, imposed through a network of capitalist
political and social institutions all of which answer ultimately to the stability of
money-wages and the price and monetary system. But this does not mean that
Habermas has identifed this real apory in Marxs and Lukacss theories the
aporetic notion of labor value as the foundation of the social synthesis of
capitalist reproduction through market competition! And this failure, we argue,
is a direct result of Habermass persistent wrong focus on the philosophical,
idealistic and Neo-Kantian theorization of the whole quaestio of reason and
rationalization as a discrepancy (Missverhaltnis) between laws of nature or
epistemology and laws of society or social theory, rather than on the political
antagonism of the wage relation!
Habermas is entirely right to chide Lukacss idealistic reconciliation of theory
and practice in the class consciousness of the individual subject-object of
history, namely the proletariat (p.364). But he completely misses the point that the
contra-diction in capitalist social relations is not predominantly one that
concerns communicative action or competence! Instead, it is one that is
intrinsic to the politics of the wage relation itself! Perhaps the worst that can be
said of Habermass meta-critique of Marx and Lukacs is that his own notion of
communicative action remains trapped in the voluntarism of consciousness,
of morality and aestheticism:
$t is characteristic of the pattern of rationali(ation in capitalist societies that the
co!plex of cogniti%e"instru!ental rationality establishes itself at the cost of
practical rationality< co!!unicati%e relations are rei1ed# Thus it !akes sense to
ask whether the critique of the inco!plete character of the rationali(ation that
appears as rei1cation does not suggest taking a co!ple!entary relation between
cogniti%e"instru!ental rationality& on the one hand& and !oral"practical and
aesthetic"practical rationality& on the other& as a standard that is inherent in the
unabridged concept of practice& that is to say in co!!unicati%e [p#6=- action
itself&: )T>;& Dol#I& pp#6=6"-/#
8888
For Marx& the pheno!enological exposition of consciousness in its
!anifestations& which ser%ed ,egel only as an introduction to scienti1c
knowledge& beco!es the fra!e of reference in which the analysis of the history
of the species stays con1ned# Marx did not adopt an episte!ological perspecti%e
in de%eloping his conception of the history of the species as so!ething that has
to be co!prehended !aterialistically# 4e%ertheless& if social practice does not
only accu!ulate the successes of instru!ental action but also& through class
antagonis!& produces and re'ects on ob-e"ti%e illusion& then& as part of this
process& the analysis of history is possible only in a pheno!enologically !ediated
)gebrochen/ !ode of thought# The science of !an itself is critique and !ust
re!ain so# For after arri%ing at the concept of synthesis through a reconstruction
of the course of consciousness in its !anifestations& there is only one condition
under which critical consciousness could adopt a perspecti%e that allowed
disengaging social theory fro! the episte!ological !ediation of
pheno!enological self"re'ection5 that is if critical consciousness could apprehend
and understand itself as absolute synthesis# ;s it is& howe%er& social theory
re!ains e!bedded in the fra!ework of pheno!enology& while the latter& under
!aterialist presuppositions& assu!es the for! of the critique of ideology#
$f Marx had re'ected on the !ethodological presuppositions of social theory as
he sketched it out and not o%erlaid it with a philosophical self"understanding
restricted to the categorial fra!ework of production& the diNerence between
rigorous e!pirical science and critique would not ha%e been concealed# $f Marx
had not thrown together interaction and work under the label of social practice
)@raxis/& and had he instead related the !aterialist concept of synthesis likewise
to the acco!plish!ents of instru!ental action and the nexuses of
co!!unicati%e action& then the idea of a science of !an would not ha%e been
obscured by identi1cation with natural science# Father& this idea would ha%e
taken up ,egel's critique of the sub0ecti%is! of *ant's episte!ology and
surpassed it !aterialistically# $t would ha%e !ade clear that ulti!ately a radical
critique of knowledge can be carried out only in the for! of a reconstruction of
the history of the
"" =6 ""
species& and that con%ersely social theory& fro! the %iewpoint of the self"
constitution of the species in the !ediu! of social labor and class struggle& is
possible only as the self"re'ection of the knowing sub0ect#