1975 - John Keane - On Tools and Language

On Tools and Language: Habermas on Work and Interaction
Author(s): John Keane

Source: New German Critique, No. 6 (Autumn, 1975), pp. 82-100
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/487655
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On Tools and Language:
Habermas on Work and Interaction *
by John Keane
The very title of Habermas' most recent work in English "Toward a

Reconstruction of Historical Materialism," should not be surprising. For the
reconstitution and revitalization of Marxist theory in the context of altered
socio-historical conditions is predicated by the very core of that theory itself.
With its dialectic of subject and object, Marxism is subject to alterations in
the form and content of both its theory and practice. Theory attempts to
understand not only its object, but also its own role as a moment in the
dialectical movement and transcendence of that object. This was Marx's own
self-understanding in remarking that the communists "do not anticipate the
world dogmatically," but rather wish to find the new world through criticism
of the old."' At the same time, Marxism is no mere theory of historical
relativism. Understanding itself as grounded within a particular socio-
historical formation, it attempts to indicate the real possibility of practically
transcending the "bad" present and the social forces which might carry out
that transcendence towards human liberation: "Historical materialism aims
at achieving an explanation of social evolution which is so comprehensive that
it embraces the interrelationships of the theory's own origins and application.
The theory specifies the conditions under which reflection on the history of
our species by members of this species themselves has become objectively
possible; and at the same time it names those to whom this theory is
addressed, who then with its aid can gain enlightenment about their emanci-
patory role in the process of history."2 Unlike what Horkheimer had broadly
labelled "traditional theory,"3 Marxism is neither contemplative of its object
*An earlier version of this article appeared in Arena 38 (1975), under the title "Work and
Interaction in Habermas," as a foreword to Habermas' article, which was published there under
the title "Historical Materialism Reconsidered." Subsequent references to Habermas' article are
taken from the version published in Theory and Society, 2:3 (Fall 1975), pp. 287-300, under the
title "Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism."
1. "Letter to A. Ruge, September 1843," Easton and Guddat (eds.), Writings of the Young
Marx on Philosophy and Society (New York, 1967), p. 212; Cf. "Manifesto," Selected Works, I, p.
120.
2. J. Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston, 1973), pp. If.

3. Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory (New York, 1972), pp. 188-252.
ON TOOLS AND LANGUAGE 83
(i.e., objectivist or "interest-free" as Habermas would expr

concerned with an ahistorical, ontological order (as Habermas ill
his attack on Husserl).4 Traditional theory, as it is conceived in
positivist social sciences or even in the form of orthodox Stalini
reintroduces the ideological separation of knowledge from social rel
posits a mechanical dualism between description and prescription, th
practice.
On Late Capitalism
The object which Marxism must now seek to comprehend and transcend is
what Habermas calls late capitalism (Spatkapitalismus). Descriptively, this
indicates not the transcendence of capitalist property and social relations, but
rather the ways in which their characteristics have altered since the time in
which Marx wrote:s
1. The relatively competitive market structure of the 19th-century capitalist
economy has undergone alteration such that a three-sector model is now
descriptively more accurate, at least in the United States. This includes the
interpenetration of (a) an internationalized and oligopolized sector which is
the arena of the giant, highly productive transnational corporations; (b) the
state sector, and (c) a relatively competitive, lower productivity sector in
which labor is poorly organized. This development renders problematical
Marx's discussion of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Tendencies are
to the contrary.6 Despite underutilization of productive capacity, there are
enormous increases in productive output and consumption. The crisis of
realization on the market, about which Marx spoke, is not so nagging to late
capitalism. Class conflict tends to become more latent. This is because, firstly,
the state is progressively interwiven with the accumulation process -no longer
are they as superstructure to base--taking on the now familiar Keynesian
tasks of "global planning," cycle-smoothing and attempted wage-setting, etc.
The latter function, in which labor power in the oligopolized and state sectors
receives a "political price," leads to income inequality within the ranks of the
4. Knowledge and Human Interests (London, 1972), Appendix.

5. The following has been gleaned mainly from Legitimationsprobleme im Spaitkapitalismus
(Frankfurt am Main, 1973: English translation by Thomas McCarthy, Legitimation Crisis
[Boston: Beacon Press, 1975]); Strukturwandel der Oeffentlichkeit (Neuwied, 1962), a brief
summary of which appears in "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964)," New
German Critique, 1:3 (Fall 1974); Toward a Rational Society (London, 1971); and "Ueber
einige Bedingungen der Revolutionierung spatkapitalistischer Gesellschaftssysteme," Kultur und
Kritik (Frankfurt am Main, 1973), pp. 69-86.
6. I have sketched this point in more detail in "On Belaboring the Theory of Economic
Crisis," New German Critique, 2:4 (Winter 1975), 125-130.
84 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE
proletariat and tendencies toward both permanent inflation and fiscal crises
of the state. Coinciding with all this, secondly, the realm of consumption is
colonized by distorted needs. Patterned, structured and manipulated by the
consciousness industry, needs not "one's own" must be satisfied. Freedom
becomes a Honda.
2. Since the last quarter of the 19th century there has been a
"scientization" of the capitalist accumulation process, financed parti
via state-funded R&D projects for the military sector. Science and techn
developed and implemented through the labor of "reflective work
(engineers, industrial scientists, teachers, etc.), become the
productive force. They render direct labor more productive, cheap
fixed components of capital, and raise the rate of surplus value.
3. The "scientization" or disenchantment of social relations proceeds
of that in the accumulation process. Late capitalism tends to deve
"sensate mentality" about which Sorokin wrote--technical, fact h
materialistic. Within academia this scientization process envelops ph
and the socio-historical sciences. This, for Habermas, is an outright reg
development which underpins his provocative thesis that since Kant
has not been seriously comprehended by philosophy. "Scientism has sub
philosophy, without realizing it."7 Within the social sciences the triump
neo-positivism (which Habermas has traced from Hegel to Nietzsche)8 u
in the quest for "rigor," predictive certainty and "scientism," or scienc
questioning belief in itself. Critical reflection is thus disavowed by the
vist disciplines in that they make little or no attempt to distinguish be
evaluation of truth and the grounds of that evaluation. Renouncing
into the knowing subject's constitution of its object, positivism is a
reason. Thus the social sciences lay the foundations for large-scal
engineering and more of the present technical rationality.
4. In late capitalism the political process tends to become disgu
technocratic. Its objects are immersed in a culture of public silen
private orientation towards career, leisure and consumption. This i
since priorities formed according to economic imperatives cannot be
up to widespread public discussion. Politics must become administ
Conceptions of democracy are thus redefined to coincide with
administrative imperatives (Schumpeter),9 and thus an important herit
7. "Die Rolle der Philosophie im Marxismus," Praxis, 1-2 (1974), 50; cf. KHI, an
More Philosophy?" Social Research, 38:4 (Winter 1971); and "Rationalism Divided in
Reply to Albert," in Anthony Giddens (ed.), Positivism and Sociology (London, 19
8. KHI, chs. 1-12.
9. "Ueber den Begriff der politischen Beteiligung," in Habermas, et al., Student und P
2nd ed. (Neuwied, 1967); TRS ch. 5; TP ch. 1.
early liberal bourgeois society--the "public sphere"--is dumped

capitalism itself. Rooted originally in the distinction between p
private in ancient Greece, this public sphere notion was resurrec
European bourgeoisie in its assault upon feudal structures. In
overseer of the state aparatus it coincided with such claims as th
representation, freedom of speech and assembly, and opinion pu
late capitalism, to be sure, the form of this public sphere is maintain
state takes on the task of ideology planning (Luhmann). "Specta
acclamation" (Petrov affairs, men on the moon, peace with honor
"energy crises," etc.) frequent the public realm together with an
display of openness" (demonstrative Publizitat). But the actual cri
tent of the public sphere is removed-it is "refeudalized." Am
privatism, public life withers.
5. These trends suggest the spectre of "the polar night of icy da
hardness" (Weber), a "comfortable, smooth, reasonable, dem
unfreedom" (Marcuse), or a society of planned alienation. Perhap
its vision of a cybernetic, self-regulated organization of society is a
possibility. Habermas' pessimism is more restrained, but the dr
towards a conservative-authoritarian welfare state (which is fo
privatized forms of experience) or a neo-fascist authoritarian st
holds its population by the bit, by attempting to permanently mobil
real enough. Yet this drift, according to Habermas, is counterp
tendency towards cultural crisis, a haunting expression of the d
domination and liberation in late capitalism. It is a development
critical social theory must participate by comprehending and cultiva
concrete possibilities of liberation.10 Ironically, one dimension
tendency results from state apparatus attempts to stave off economi
politics becomes administration, public attachment to that
dependent upon successful governmental action which, howe
O'Connor has suggested) plagued by permanent fiscal crisis. In
failure, the penalty is withdrawal of legitimation and litt
administrative production of meaning. Secondly, as areas of everyday
progressively "statized," the bourgeois ideology of civil priv
possessive individualism is eroded. Together with the outstripping of
fatalism by the rise of mass atheism, this contributes towards
10. Habermas' argument is certainly much more analytical and complex t
indicated and cannot be summarized adequately here; see the second part of
Legitimationsprobleme where four possible kinds of interrelated crisis (economic, rationality,
legitimation, motivation) are discussed in the context of late capitalism. Trent Schroyer's "The
Re-politicization of the Relations of Production: An Interpretation of Jilrgen Habermnas'
Analytic Theory of Late Capitalist Development," NGC, 5 (Spring 1975), 107-128 is also useful.
motivational crises. To be sure, expressions of this cultural crisis are inchoate,

manifold and often anomic--from students and women in revolt, to Jesus
Freakism, occultism, the protest of art, militant worker economism, talk of
deschooling and the "ecological balance." But Habermas' preference for the
expression late capitalism illustrates his important argument that, in the
reproduction of this capitalist society, resources of legitimation and
motivation are now the most crucial. Habermas' conclusion: "...a
legitimation crisis can be avoided in the long run only if the
structures of late capitalism are transformed or if the pressure for l
under which the administrative system stands can be removed.
liberation is an option before us. But it is no more than a cha
Work and Interaction

Habermas' critical theory seeks to revolutionize this late capitalist society by
anticipating the chances of its own intervention. The relationship between
theory and practice is understood at the epistemological level by proceeding
from the meta-assumptions that "the achievements of the transcendental
[i.e., self-reflective] subject have their basis in the natural history of the
human species"12 and that such self-conscious activity is human in that it is
transcendent of mere adaptation: "Knowledge equally serves as an instru-
ment and transcends mere self-preservation."13 Knowledge through
reflection can become aware of its own constitutive conditions, but cannot eli-
minate or obliterate those grounds, which Habermas calls "interests."14
These both indicate our links with external nature and the manner in which
humans qua humans have historically raised themselves beyond this nature
through social organization. Thus Habermas' conception of the
transcendental activity of human subjects differs from the pure Kantian
form, in which transcendentals are mere a priori forms of consciousness.
Interests are to be understood neither psychologistically nor naturalistically,
but as deep-seated spheres of human activity. They are, in fact, a refinement
of the Marxian notion of social labor. That is, they are "invariant" in that all
self-reproducing social organization is conditional upon their fulfillment. As
"generalized motives for systems of action"15s they are the ineradicable, dy-
namic well-springs of all human knowledge. They are thus not impediments
to the objectivity of knowledge (as positivists would have it in their illusory
belief in 'pure theory') but the very condition of objective knowledge. They
11. Ibid., p. 130.
12. KHI, p. 312.
13. Ibid., p. 313.
14. Ibid., Appendix; TP, pp. 7ff.
15. TP, p. 21.
represent a "system of primitive terms (or the 'transcendental f

within which we organize our experience a priori and prior to all sc
do so in such a manner that... the formation of the scientific object
is also prejudiced by this."16 As categories of both cognition an
follows that epistemology is only possible in the form of social
It is via the two "basic" interests of work (Arbeit) and symbolic in
or communication that human subjects consciously objectify the
the double sense that it is simultaneously constituted and disclos
(Habermas, it is true, also speaks of a third, emancipatory interest
I will later indicate, largely rooted in these two more basic interest
work and interaction history is an evolutionary process throu
external nature is humanized, and human nature transformed. The
distinction, so crucial, is clarified as follows: "In the functional sphere of
instrumental action we encounter objects of the type of moving bodies; here
we experience things, events, and conditions which are, in principle, capable
of being manipulated. In interactions (or at the level of possible inter-
subjective communication) we encounter objects of the type of speaking and
acting subjects; here we experience persons, utterances, and conditions which
in principle are structured and to be understood symbolically."17 Habermas
stresses that this distinction is analytical only, and that the two interests are
always empirically interwoven.18 Whether Habermas understands them as
dialectically interwoven is a problem considered in the final section. At least
Habermas does not intend to make this distinction objectivistically (i.e., ac-
cording to a contemplative consideration of the character of the object to
which theory refers); work and interaction are analytically separate arenas in
which self-conscious human subjects act, thereby transforming themselves
and their world.
Work,- or purposive-rational action, is that moment of human activity
characterized by its orientation towards external nature. It seeks to expand
and extend the productive forces and the power of technical control over na-
ture. In itself, as we see from "Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materi-
alism," it is not a distinctively human activity (cf. Marx) but it is an essential
moment of the ontogenetic process by which first the hominoids and then,
later, humans both transform nature and themselves. To the extent that the
telos of this activity (conquering nature) is an a priori imperative, it is,
according to Habermas, a technical, instrumental process. Guided by
empirically-derived technical and strategic rules and information (i.e., pure
16. Ibid., pp. 7-8.

17. Ibid., p. 8.
18. Boris Frankel, "Habermas Talking: An Interview," Theory and Society, 1:1 (1974), 43.
88 NE W GERMAN CRITIQUE
and applied science), it is the means by which, to use Kant's own expression,
we "compel nature to respond to our questions." Habermas therefore refers to
the technical cognitive interest.
Interaction or communicative action, the other moment of conscious
human activity, includes that sphere of social institutions (such as the family,
mass media, etc.) mediated by language and governed by social rules. It is the
socio-cultural life-world. Work is the development of both technical skills and
productive forces and therefore a precondition for human emancipation from
material wants. But symbolic interaction, as Habermas shows in his following
discussion of Piaget, equips human beings with internalized norms or
personality structures and, therefore, the potential for the establishment of
mutual consensus within unconstrained social harmony. Habermas refers to
the moral-practical cognitive interest. It is logically irreducible to the
technical cognitive interest, for the truth of social rules depends not on
testable laboratory processes, but on the promotion of mutual understanding
of obligations and expectations. Therefore inquiry in this realm must be
concerned not with behavior and its manipulation (cf. positivist social
science), but with the meaning and interpretation of that behavior and the
question: How can the social world be rendered intelligible and meaningful
to its interacting constituents? Certainly, in the context of late capitalism, it
cannot be assumed that such consensus has already been established. The
potential for its actualization, according to Habermas, is to be outlined
theoretically on two fronts. Firstly, via the understanding provided by the
historical-cultural sciences, which must seek to demonstrate the historical
continuity and contingency of the present.19 Secondly, through its insights
and emancipating potential, critical social theory seeks to demonstrate the
potential for liberating human understandings and actions from dependence
upon seemingly natural, anaesthetizing structures of power and domination
in the realms of work and interaction.20
Here, then, is a new theory of the relationship between theory and practice
in the form of a theory of the bonds between cognition and their human in-
terests. And just as Marx remarked that "Human anatomy contains a key to
the anatomy of the ape,"21 "Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materi-
alism" is an attempt to ground these categories by reinterpreting a decisive
step in the human evolutionary process--the transition to statist and class-
dominated forms of social organization -from the standpoint of the present.
19. See the discussion of Dilthey and hermeneutics in KHI, chs. 7-8; and for an excellent
introduction to Habermas' links with the Verstehen tradition see William Outhwaite,
Understanding Social Life (London, 1975).
20. Ibid., chs. 10-12; "Die Rolle der Philosophie im Marxismus," op. cit.
21. Grundrisse (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 105.
It is true that these categories have a long intellectual history

familiar enough in the form of the old anthropological dualis
faber and homo pictor which has its roots in both the Aristotelian
of techne and praxis and the Kantian distinction between the
interest of pure reason and the moral interest of practical reason. T
be found in Marcuse's distinction between the realms of ne
freedom which, indeed, has its roots in the recurring German s
civilization and culture; 22 and in the important work of Apel.2
himself acknowledges Hegel's early usage of these categories i
lectures.24 Hegel there reject's Kant's abstract "I" and understan
cally, to be sure) the dialectically related categories of family, l
tools as the media of the self-formative process of Spirit. Paraphra
Critique of Hegel's Dialectic and Philosophy in General Haberma
calizes Hegel's subject-object mediation: "... it is not the spirit in the
movement of reflecting on itself which manifests itself in, among o
language, labor, and moral relationships, but rather, it is the
interconnections between linguistic symbolization, labor, and
which determine the concept of spirit."25 I submit that Haberm
fresh twist to this old distinction in order to grapple with ce
theoretical and practical problems in the context of late capitalism.
these areas are outlined below.
Science and Technology as Ideology

In one sense, as Saint-Simon, Comte and Nietzsche all indicated,
post-Renaissance science was a progressive force in accelerating the process of
disenchantment of the feudal and bourgeois worlds. Contrary to (e.g.)
Galileo's expectation that science would bring humans closer to God by
"reading off" mathematical Nature--God's "Second Book"--the progress of
science and its heralding of the mathematization and domination of nature
abolishes metaphysics, archaic worldviews and religion. But Habermas claims
that science has become ideological in a double sense. The first concerns
Bacon's view that science, by "hounding," "subduing" and "vexing" nature,
22. See especially his "Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture," in Gerald Holton (ed.),
Science and Culture (Cambridge, 1965).
23. In English see K.O. Apel, Analytic Philosophy of Language and the Geisteswissen-
schaften, Foundations of Language, Suppl. Series, vol. 5 (Dordrecht, 1967), and
"Communication and the foundations of the humanities," Acta Sociologica, 5 (1972), 7-26. For a
general discussion of Apel's work see G. Radnitzky, Contemporary Schools of Metascience
(Chicago, 1973).
24. TP, ch. 4.
25. Ibid., p. 143.
would be an integral moment in the overcoming of "the inconveniences of

man's estate." In the form of Galbraith's Technostructure or Bell's
Post-Industrial Society this argument about the social benefits to be gained b
"shaping nature as on an anvil" through science and technology persist
unabated to the present.26 By distinguishing the technical cognitive interest
from that of the moral-practical Habermas shows that science per se cann
achieve this dream. The mastery of external nature is a social task. That
the development and application of science and technology in the realm
work is always a project embedded within, and not abstracted from, t
realm of interaction and relations of power.27 In the period of late capitalism
the scientization of the accumulation process merely serves to perpetuate the
irrational exploitation of external nature and the domination of the many by
the few. Nowadays the domination of internal, human nature coincides with
the domination of external nature. This is one component of the growin
recognition of a crisis in the natural sciences brought about by the
"industrialization."28
Science is ideological in a second sense. Against the Enlightenment view of
the immanent connection of scientific knowledge qua knowledge with
morality and happiness (e.g., Voltaire), Habermas insists that modem science
has no necessary moral-practical meaning. This is because, as Nietzsche and
Scheler had shown, modern (post-Aristotelian) science is a priori suited to its
technical utilization by virtue of its internal conceptual structure. The actual
thinking of this science operates according to a selection principle guided by
the aim of establishing ascendency over the external environment. 29
Therefore, the spread of natural scientific modes of thought into the realm of
interaction, and their self-(mis)understanding as a type of universalized
knowledge which is non plus ultra, unsurpassable, tends to imbue those social
relations with a technical ethos. The mathematization of social relations
(scientific management, IQ testing, the scientization of the medical industry,
26. William Leiss, The Domination of Nature (New York, 1972).

27. TRS, ch. 6. This is but a rejection of the common distinction between "pure" and
"applied" science, and a reiteration of Marx's view that "Technology discloses man's mode of
dealing with Nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays
bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from
them." (Capital I [New York, 1967], p. 372, note 2).
28. The recent work of Ravetz and Commoner is pertinent here. See Jerome R. Ravetz,
Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (New York, 1971), and "Ideological Crisis in
Science," New Scientist and Science Journal, July 1, 1971, 35-36; and Barry Commoner, The
Closing Circle (New York, 1972).
29. Cf. W. Heisenberg, "The Great Tradition," Encounter, March 1975, 54: "The scientist
needs confirmation from an impartial judge, from Nature herself, that he has understood her
structure. And he wants to see the effect of his effort."
etc.) thus heralds the arrival of Nietzsche's chilling image of

ignorance and the madman, lantern in hand, running throug
streets and shrieking to those unbelievers gathered in the marke
is deadl... We have killed himl Is there still an above and below?... Has it not
become colder?... With what water could we cleanse ourselves?"30 In
separating interaction from work, Habermas' tack is therefore similar to
of the Heidelberg neo-Kantians Rickert and Windelband, who used
Kantian distinction between pure and practical reason to establi
autonomy of the cultural sciences and the realm of social life to whic
referred. Habermas demonstrates the relevance of this tradition and the need
for a critical Marxist science which can dethrone the positivist tradition:
"The substance of domination is not dissolved by the power of technical
control. To the contrary, the former can simply hide behind the latter." 31
The Ambiguity of Marx

With Lukkcs, Korsch, Gramsci and the later Frankfurt thinkers Habermas
shares a concern about the objectivism of 20th century Marxism. For the
former the assault on Second International Marxism involved a
reexamination of the Hegelian moment of Marxism. Habermas' twist is
somewhat unique, for it consists in pinpointing an ambiguity immanen
within Marx's own concept of social labor. In his empirical analyses (e.g., The
Eighteenth Brumaire) Marx understands the importance of the theoretic
critique and revolutionary transcendence of ideology. But Marx elsewher
breaks this dialectic of material activity and reflective consciousness by
understanding the latter within the more restrictive category of social labor
work.32 Despite hints to the contrary (e.g., in the 1844 Manuscripts where it
argued that "Religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only
particular forms of production and fall under its general law")33 this is t
ambiguity, for example, in the famous 1859 Preface and, more glaringly,
the epilogue to the second German edition of Capital I. Thus t
revolutionizing of capitalist society proceeds via the dialectic of the level of t
30. F. Nietzsche, "The Joyful Wisdom," in Collected Works, O. Levy trans. (Edinburgh,
1915), vol. 10, bk. 3, aph. 125.
31. TRS, p. 61.
32. KHI, chs. 2-3; cf. TRS, p. 58 and H. Arendt, who insists on the absence of any
conception of truly cultural-political activities in Marx's theory of praxis (The Human Condition
[New York, 1959]).
33. Easton and Guddat, op.cit., pp. 304-305; cf. "The German Ideology," ibid., p. 414:
"the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness is directly interwoven with the material
activity and the material relationships of men; it is the language of actual life... Consciousness
can never be anything else except conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual
life-process."
development of the forces of material production and the restrictive social

relations in which that productive process is embedded. Critical reflection on
structures of dependence is a mere feedback of this dialectic. Even though
Marx is aware of the propensity of the ruling class to legitimate its own
dominance, the question of the raising of proletarian consciousness is
therefore not posed adequately.34 At times Marx is tantalizingly vague ("The
existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular epoch presupposes the
existence of a revolutionary class").35 Most often he is adamant that practical
action (both electoral and trade union) by workers in their revolutionary
movement would itself necessarily reshape, remould and cleanse the
traditional "muck" of their thoughts and habits. To be somewhat polemical:
proletarian consciousness seems to unfold in a manner similar to the Hegelian
Idea, thus begging the question of the mediation of such consciousness.
Herein, then, lies one immanent source of Second International and Soviet
Marxism, which has understood its chief post-revolutionary task as that of the
development of the productive forces and, hence, their harmonization with
the altered relations of production. The reduction of the category of
communicative reflection to that of social labor--only too consistent with the
spread of positivism in the 20th century-has also reappeared in the
"economism" of large sections of the modem socialist movement. Habermas'
reinstatement of the category of communicative interaction (through which
reflection on distorted communication proceeds) is thus an attempt to go
beyond Marx's ambiguity and the Marxists' orthodoxy. The realms of work
(which replaces the notion of the substructure of society) and communication
are thus complementary ways of transcending the present via orientation to
the past and future.
Politics and Communication in Late Capitalism

In reinstating the category of interaction Habermas foreshadows the major
political priority for Marxists in the context of the distorted communication
of late capitalism: that of a cultural offensive leading towards widespread
involvement in the simultaneous process of demystification and the building
of popular hegemony. This is not a voluntaristically-conceived program for
cultural politics. Analogous to the way Marx's theory of the possibility of
proletarian action within the crisis tendency in 19th-century market relations
34. Bertell Ollman, "Toward Class Consciousness Next Time: Marx and the Working
Class," Politics and Society (Fall 1972), passim.
35. "The German Ideology," in Easton and Guddat, op.cit., p. 439; cf. "The Manifesto,"
Selected Works I, p. 125: ".. . the dissolution of... old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution
of the old conditions of existence."
contains a subtle blend of deterministic and volitional elements, Habermas

shows that cultural political action is possible in the context of a tendency
towards cultural crisis, itself an expression of the partial puncturing of late
capitalist ideology by contradictory processes inherent within that society. Let
us consider Habermas' focus on the problem of distorted communication in
more detail.
(a) Firstly, as "Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism" argues

the dialectic of the forces and relations of production has in some cases (e.g.,
the ancient civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia) expressed itself in way
contrary to that outlined in the 1859 Preface. This is true also of our times.
Nowadays, the antagonism between the enormous potential of the productive
forces and their more limited social deployment has no necessary propensity
of forcing a system crisis, as it did during the 19th century. To be sure, in late
capitalism capital accumulation isfor capital rather than vice versa, and co
tinuing booms and recessions express the irrationality of private relations of
production. Yet, as Amin and Sunkel have shown, the crisis of realization
the market has been shifted from the metropolises to the peripher
underdeveloped world, where there are crises of accumulation.36 If anything,
the relations of production in late capitalism are irrational in their continuin
ability to develop the productive forces and generate the requisite patterns of
mass consumption. If I may be bolder than Habermas: working class politi
must now be defined broadly to include not only the old industrial and ne
white collar workers, but also those reflective workers now so crucial to the
functioning of late capitalism. And the theme of such politics must be
reconstituted from the present stress on (militant) economism, suc
that "Arise ye prisoners of starvation" becomes, in the context of late
capitalism, "Liberation not domination!" For, "Liberation from hunger an
misery does not necessarily converge with liberation from servitude an
degradation."37
(b) Secondly, Habermas' stress on the importance of communication
illuminates a major disagreement with Marcuse on the concept of liberatio
and his use of Freud in deriving that concept. From Eros and Civilizati
Marcuse developed a quantitative model of repression, whereby the aesthet
morality of Eros and "instinctual revolt" were to transcend the repressiv
desublimation and surplus repression of late capitalist society. Here there is a
definite theoretical dilemma. On the one hand, there is no method of
36. S. Amin, Accumulation on a World Scale (New York, 1974), and (for a brief summary)
"Accumulation and Development: a Theoretical Model," Review of African Political Economy, I
(1974), 9-26; Osvaldo Sunkel, "Transnational Capitalism and National Disintegration in Latin
America," Social and Economic Studies, 22:1 (March 1973), 132-172.
37. TP, p. 169.
quantifying repression or its inverse, freedom from repression.38 Nor, on the

other hand, are individuals' "feelings" of being repressed or liberated
necessarily objective-such feelings may well be manifestations of false
consciousness. Failing to deal with this theoretical dilemma, Marcuse thus
leaves his theory open to appropriation either by self-appointed vanguards or
even by the neurotic, who claim to be acting out their fantasies in a truly
liberated manner (which happened at times during the student revolt--hence
Habermas' scepticism about that movement). In short, Marcuse theoretically
circumvents or shortcircuits the problem of generating widespread reflection
upon patterns of distorted communication. This is not to say that, in rejecting
Marcuse's stress on the instinctual, sensuous moment of human activity, the
mind-body dualism is here reopened by conceptually emasculating sensuous
human activity. Habermas merely wants to stress that the liberation of the
senses can only be conceptualized via verbal communication. Language
always expresses conditions of social life.
Habermas thus understands the real importance of Freud's psychoanalytic
model as being its stress (e.g., in the wolf dream) on interpersonal dialogue
and methodological reflection upon sources of structured repression
("unrecognized dependencies"). This self-reflection or "working through" is
the very dimension blocked by positivist methodology. The Leninist and
Lukicsian model of party organization is therefore also rejected as being only
too congruent with the technocratic, unreflective character of late
capitalism.39 Simply expressed: Lukics' statement that "The organization is
the form of the mediation between theory and praxis" means that theory is
geared only to organizational questions; and, as the Trotskyist charge of
"substitutionism" indicated, theory is also withdrawn from confirmation by
those in whose interests the theory is allegedly deployed. In recommending
the psychoanalytic model at the social level Habermas is thus concerned with
the theory of ordinary language communication and that which he terms "the
paradoxical achievement of ideologies"; viz., that "impediments to
communication which make a fiction of the reciprocal imputation of
accountability simultaneously support the belief in legitimacy which sustains
the fiction and prevents its being exposed."40
(c) Finally, the category of communicative action is crucial because it is
within this very realm in late capitalism that the truth content of critical
theory is heralded. It is true Habermas speaks of a third interest-that of
38. "Habermas Talking," 52-53.
39. TP, pp. 32-37.
40. "Vorbereitende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie der kommunikativen Kompetenz," in
JOrgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie
(Frankfurt am Main, 1971), p. 120.
emancipation from conditions of domination or distorted com

-but it is difficult to separate this from that of the moral-prac
interest, except as a kind of specification of the dialectic of d
liberation in that latter realm. Here the later Wittgenstein's
"language games" and Chomsky's notion of language co
surpassed. Habermas argues that the very structure and conte
and dialogue contains the telos of an "ideal speech situa
organization of social relations according to the principle that th
every norm of political consequence be made dependent on
arrived at in communication free from domination."42 Dial
capitalist society is based upon such (unactualized, coun
assumptions as: the authenticity and the appropriateness of t
truth of the content of that which he or she is attempting to c
such dialogue can be easily comprehended by others. Thus,
structure, autonomy and responsibility [Miindigkeit] are posi
first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of
unconstrained consensus."43 Cohabiting the very structure
symbolic interaction in late capitalism (e.g., the extractiveness of
labor relationship in the productive process, mass-media m
public consciousness, masculine hegemony imposed upon wom
very promise of liberation from that distorted communication v
dialogue, practice and critical reflection upon universal tru
"facts." This unveiling of intentionality structures via dial
understood as a process of anamnesis, whereby individu
self-consciousness. Dialogue becomes enlightenment. Expres
paradoxically: the universality of truth takes on an a priori form
also dependent upon individual subjects' struggle for recogn
constitution and actualization in praxis. Communication str
the distinction between essential and apparent reality. Ema
posited for us by the contradiction between ideological domin
potential for communicative practice and reflection.
41. KHI, p. 313.

42. Ibid., p. 284; cf. "Summation and Response," Continuum, 8:1 (Spring-Summer 1970),
131: "We name a speaking-situation ideal where the communication is not only not hindered by
external, contingent influences, but also not hindered by forces which result from the structure of
the communication itself. Only then does the peculiarly unforced compulsion of a better
argument dominate..."
43. KHI, p. 314. Translated literally, Mund means mouth, and implies "the coming of age"
or the process of "speaking for one's self' in the development of the autonomy and responsibility
of the individual via social processes of dialogue and practice.
Beyond Habermas?
To these notes, finally, must be added several observations critical of
Habermas' conceptualization of the realms of work and interaction. These
are intended to stimulate further critical discussion and can only be sketched
here. In the first place, it must be asked whether the equation of work with
instrumental activity is not a problematical departure from Marx? Following
Marcuse,44 and the Aristotelian view that workers qua workers can never
liberate themselves, Habermas' understanding of work as instrumentalism,
problem-solving and the learning of skills leads to a surprisingly uncritical
deference to the alienated organization of the work process in late capitalism.
To be polemical: work places are to be non-aesthetic houses of "efficiency,"
filled with punch clocks and ruled by Taylorist principles and "technical
imperatives" -just as Lenin had argued.45 What is disputed here is not the
analytical separation of work from interaction, but the failure at this point to
understand them as dialectically interwoven. To equate work with technical
activity is either to ontologize that activity, or as Bubner points out,46 to give
that category an a priori character. Historical processes can then never
qualitatively alter that interest--they can merely alter the "combination" of
the two interests by a "diminution" of work and an "expansion" of
communication. There is, as Habermas' present formulation stands, a
compromise between, rather than a dialectical synthesis of, the two interests.
Habermas has therefore eternalized late capitalism's alienated work process
which Marx understood so well: "By degrading free spontaneous activity to
the level of a means, alienated labor makes the species-life of man a means of
his physical existence."47 Work is not inherently unfree or non-aesthetic. It is
not an ontological millstone, nor Jehovah's curse (Genesis), nor a "sacrifice"
(Adam Smith). While without some form of it human activity is unthinkable,
it also transcends the mere necessity of blind Nature. Embedded within the
realm of interaction it can become a moment of human life itself. A society
freed from distorted communication implies radical improvements in the
44. "Self-determination in the production and distribution of vital goods and services would
be wasteful. The job is a technical one, and as a truly technical job, it makes for the reduction of
physical and mental toil. In this realm centralized control is rational if it establishes the
preconditions for meaningful self-determination." One Dimensional Man (London, 1968), p.
197. This view of work as a technical activity represents a radical departure from both his early
writings and his more recent works. See "The Concept of Essence," Negations (Harmondsworth,
1968), pp. 72-73 and "The End of Utopia," Five Lectures (Boston, 1970).
45. See " 'Left-Wing' Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality," Selected Works, vol.
2, esp. p. 702; and "The Taylor System--Man's Enslavement by the Machine," On Workers'
Control and the Nationalization of Industry (Moscow, 1970), pp. 15-17.
46. R. Bubner, "Was ist kritische Theorie?," Philosophische Rundschau, 16 (1969), 213-249.
47. "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)," in Easton and Guddat, op.cit., p. 295;
cf. Capital 3, p. 820.
conditions under which humans produce--for example, the shorteni

working day via automation and the abolition of unnecessary
production; the development of qualitatively new productive tec
late capitalism's interaction patterns have entered the very stru
productive forces, as Gorz and Marglin have shown);48 the
ownership of the means of production and "self-governme
producers." Work, like interaction, is that social activity in wh
can consciously create and individuate themselves. Workers' control
rightly become an integral moment in the struggle for human
A second, and not unrelated, problem concerns Habermas' criti
scientization process in late capitalism. Natural science and techn
be recalled, become ideological when (a) their emancipatory po
considered in abstraction from the patterns of social interaction in
are embedded; and (b) attempts are made to employ them univ
outside the realm of the technical interest. Modem science is purely
in its conceptual structure and, therefore, a priori suitable fo
utilization in the domination of nature via the realm of work. Now, this is
certainly an accurate description of the anti-Aristotelian thrust of the New
Science of Galileo, Descartes, Bacon and Newton. This emphasized: the
preeminence of the notion of quantity compared with that of quality; the
primacy of relation over that of contingent, accidental substance; the
replacement of (Aristotelian) local motion by the category of inertial motion,
itself guided by geometrical principles and the cultivation of analytical
geometry; and, thereafter, the steady triumph of the view of nature as an
external and alien object, mere stuff of manipulation.49 On the whole
Habermas is very uncritical of these conceptions, again because of his failure
to understand work and interaction as dialectically interwoven at both the
categorial and historical levels. He argues the need to inject the concept of
reflection into these broad tenets of natural science by pointing to the
relevance of C.S. Peirce's model of a reflexive, instrumental logic of
discovery.s0 Claiming to reject both the objectivism of positivist science and
rationalist attempts to uncover nature's ultimate foundations (Ursprungs-
denken), Habermas understands scientific reasoning as a reflexive system of
purposive-rational action. This system operates as a guiding principle for the
48. AndrE Gorz, "Technical Intelligence and the Capitalist Division of Labor," Telos, 12
(Summer 1972), 27-41, and Stephen Marglin, "What Do Bosses Do? Part I," The Review of
Radical Political Economics (Summer 1974) and "Part II," ibid. (Spring 1975); and David
Dickson, Alternative Technology and the Politics of Technical Change (Glasgow, 1974).
49. Leiss, op.cit.
50. KHI, chs. 5-6.
accumulation of fresh information (cf. Kuhn's notion of breaks in this

accumulation process), itself to be revised when failures in anticipated results
occur. The central meaning, then, of any scientific statement is that it is a
conditional prediction which is dependent upon, and foreshadows, successful
human manipulation of natural objects.
Here Habermas has reintroduced a new form of objectivism by postulating
an active human subject which manipulates and controls its passive object
(external nature). In view of the very serious ecological problematic which is
associated with late capitalism's enormous consumption of resources and the
disruption of external nature (processes unthinkable without the
participation of this Habermasian conception of the technical domination of
external nature through feedback-controlled action), it must be asked
whether this very conception of science is not itself ideological in a third sense.
Does not the end of this ecological destruction presuppose the idea of a
natural science which, in its very conceptual structure, seeks a non-repressive
mastery of external nature? Certainly Habermas believes that the sciences
must communicate with an enlightened public.51 And his schema certainly
admits of other non-scientific (e.g., aesthetic) modes of human interaction
with external nature outside the realm of work. But to understand science
as inevitably technical in its conceptual structure (and hence in its practical
consequences) is to hypostatize it, to see it (unrealistically) as virginal, pure
and isolated from the vicissitudes of socio-historical life. This technical,
instrumental science is ideological in that it simultaneously conceals and
reveals the technical, monologic character of late capitalist society's
understanding of external nature as a thing, a bitch to be cajoled, raped and
whipped.52
The beginnings of this new conception of natural science have their
descriptive roots, I believe, in Nietzsche's (and Goethe's) view of "raw" nature
as a stammerer whose apparently random utterances are to be fully
articulated by human subjects. They are to be found also in Marcuse and
Adorno's view that (as the latter has put it) nature's eyes must be opened to
encourage it "on this poor earth to become what perhaps it would like to
be";5 ~ in recent developments in relativity theory and quantum mechanics
51. TRS, chs. 4-5.

52. See Herbert Marcuse's work, especially Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston, 1972
ch. 2; also, Brian Easlea, Liberation and the Aims of Science (London, 1974), and "Who Nee
the Liberation of Nature?," Science Studies, 4 (1974), 77-92; Vincent Di Norcia, "From Criti
Theory to Critical Ecology," Telos, 22 (Winter 1974-75), 85-95. For a Habermasian response
William Leiss, "Ideology and Science," Social Studies of Science, 5:2 (May 1975), 193-20
53. T.W. Adorno, Aesthetische Theorie (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), p. 107, quoted i
Counterrevolution and Revolt, op.cit., p. 66.
(especially in the synthesizing work of Dirac, as Easlea sug

ecological science and in Ravetz and Commoner's call for a "c
Such a science would incorporate two interrelated claims. Firstly
standing that as human, social subjects we are also natural b
scribed by our participation in the natural world. As a social cat
is, indeed, our inorganic body.54 To ravage external nature is th
press and to jeopardize internal human nature. Commoner
ecology - "Everything is connected with everything else," "
best," "Everything must go somewhere" and "There is no such t
lunch"--fruitfully express the dialectic of nature and the realm
interaction. Which implies that Habermas' uncritical evaluation
tic character of modem science must be countered via the devel
least one holistically-conceived science (ecology) which can grasp
cal operation of this humanized ecosystem.55 Secondly, our i
nature through the realm of work implies the telos of a n
preserving, fostering and releasing of external nature's "pot
human benefit. Nature must be conceptualized as a subject
passive object. Nature has its purposes (Zwecke), but it is nei
purposeful (zweckmassig) nor teleological in the strict sense. As
we are thus to promote the "completion" of nature by improvi
scientific, technological and aesthetic interaction with that
realm of work. This does not imply an abandonment of the
technological enterprise, nor a return to primitivism, me
alteration in the internal conceptual structure of natural
implies a heightened awareness of the destructive impact of
human technique and, conversely, the need for cooperation
and nature. Thereby the liberation of nature would begin to co
liberation of human beings.
Finally, what is certain is that Habermas' understanding of th
distorted and non-distorted communication is tantalizingly
poorly grounded. This dialectic seems to hover over its pot
offering few insights into questions of practical struggle an
priorities. In part this is a function of the absence of a st
revolutionary movement in late capitalist societies. The legitim
given rise to a motley array of dissident groups such a
economism of some sectors of the old and new working c
54. Marx, "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)," op.cit., p

55. As Commoner has put it (op.cit., p. 23), to analyze the integral, or the
of only one thing at a time is a chief reason why we have failed to understan
and have blundered into destroying it."
teachers, etc.), the criticism of environmental groups and the protest against
sexism and racism. At this stage, such protest is less than fully self-conscious
and badly coordinated. But more serious is the problem raised by Geigel:
Habermas underestimates the measures taken by the wealthy and powerful in
late capitalist societies to block, hinder, co-opt and (often) violently repress
dialogue.56 At best, Geigel stresses that in case of the increased polarization of
these societies we could speak of a dialogue within classes. Habermas'
response is to distinguish between communication and dialogue which
remains directly subject to the constraints of action, and discourse which
transcends such constraints.57 In splitting the moment of theoretical
discourse and argumentation from that of the organization and
implementation of that enlightenment process, Habermas' theory seems to
lapse into semi-prostration before its potential adherents. This is so even
despite his favoring of the strategy of radical reformism in the context of
Germany.58 Thus the notion of an "ideal speech situation" is vague and
ungrounded, and devoid of suggestions as to which institutional forms might
actualize that undistorted communication. Habernias' prescriptions tend to
be truistic--"The Enlightenment, which effectuates a radical Verstehen, is
always political;0"s9 or, "in a process of enlightenment there can only be
participants."60 Or they are evasive--"these are empirical questions which
must not be prejudged."61
Until a theory of organization is built into the dialectic of distorted and
unrepressed interaction, Habermas' critical theory will suffer the ironic fate
of all preceding critical theory. It will be left without either the rationale or
the means of revolutionizing late capitalist society.
56. H.J. Geigel, "Reflexion und Emanzipation," in Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik

(Frankfurt, 1971), pp. 244ff.
57. TP, pp. 28ff.
58. "Habermas Talking," 55ff.
59. "Der Universalitatsanspruch der Hermeneutik," Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik, p.
158.
60. TP, p. 40.
61. Ibid., p. 32.

1975 - John Keane - On Tools and Language

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On Tools and Language: Habermas on Work and Interaction

Author(s): John Keane

The very title of Habermas' most recent work in English "Toward a

2. J. Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston, 1973), pp. If.

(i.e., objectivist or "interest-free" as Habermas would expr

4. Knowledge and Human Interests (London, 1972), Appendix.

early liberal bourgeois society--the "public sphere"--is dumped

motivational crises. To be sure, expressions of this cultural crisis are inchoate,

Work and Interaction

represent a "system of primitive terms (or the 'transcendental f

16. Ibid., pp. 7-8.

It is true that these categories have a long intellectual history

Science and Technology as Ideology

would be an integral moment in the overcoming of "the inconveniences of

26. William Leiss, The Domination of Nature (New York, 1972).

etc.) thus heralds the arrival of Nietzsche's chilling image of

The Ambiguity of Marx

development of the forces of material production and the restrictive social

Politics and Communication in Late Capitalism

contains a subtle blend of deterministic and volitional elements, Habermas

(a) Firstly, as "Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism" argues

quantifying repression or its inverse, freedom from repression.38 Nor, on the

emancipation from conditions of domination or distorted com

41. KHI, p. 313.

conditions under which humans produce--for example, the shorteni

accumulation of fresh information (cf. Kuhn's notion of breaks in this

51. TRS, chs. 4-5.

(especially in the synthesizing work of Dirac, as Easlea sug

54. Marx, "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)," op.cit., p

56. H.J. Geigel, "Reflexion und Emanzipation," in Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik

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