Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory: Marx, Habermas and Beyond

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Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory Marx, Habermas and Beyond

Bob Cannon

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Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

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Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory Marx, Habermas and Beyond Bob Cannon Senior Lecturer in Sociology University of East London

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© Bob Cannon 2001 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–91809–6 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cannon, Bob, 1952– Rethinking the normative content of critical theory : Marx, Habermas, and beyond / Bob Cannon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–91809–6 1. Marx, Karl, 1818–1883. 2. Marxian economics. 3. Habermas, Jürgen. 4. Honneth, Axel, 1949– 5. Critical theory. 6. Intersubjectivity. I. Title. HX39.5 .C265 2000 335.4—dc21 00–049154 10 10

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

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In memory of my father, Frederick George Cannon 1920–1998

Contents Preface Introduction

xi 1

Part I 1

From Self-Constitution to Self-Objectiﬁcation The Kantian subject Overcoming Kantian antinomies Hegel’s moral philosophy Marx and self-objectifying labour Marx’s critique of Hegel’s idealism Epistemology and social critique

11 12 14 16 18 22 24

2

Marx’s Critique of Political Economy versus his Critique of Capitalism Production in general The dual structure of the commodity Self-objectifying labour and self-valorizing value The fetish character of commodities and their secret Does abstract labour work? Objectiﬁcation and fetishization

27 30 32 35 37 41 44

The Capitalization of Sociality and the Sociality of Exchange (i) The sociality of labour (ii) The sociality of use-values (iii) George Simmel and the sociality of exchange

49 49 55 58

Marx, Morality and Exploitation Natural versus social property rights Exploitation and exchange Capitalism and justice Self-objectiﬁcation and consent

67 67 72 74 77

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vii

viii Contents

Restoring the ethical content of self-constitution Towards a normative account of exploitation

80 83

Part II 5

Communicative Action From Marx to Lukács From Lukács to Habermas The uncoupling of system and lifeworld The emergence of communicative reason Discourse ethics and modernity The ‘universal’ status of discourse ethics Reiﬁcation and judgement

91 91 95 98 100 103 109 113

6

Labour and Morality A redemptive critique of Marx? Towards a comprehensive account of communicative reason System and lifeworld interdependencies The limits of discourse ethics The promise of discourse ethics

117 117 120 124 127 131

7

Struggles for Moral Redemption The moral content of labour Struggles for recognition Three steps to heaven? Money, markets and morality Beyond Hegel? Pathology and social critique

135 136 139 142 147 151 153

8

Struggles for Social Welfare Rethinking the normative ground of critical theory Rethinking intersubjectivity Labour movement struggles Welfare economics and the re-normatization of value Rethinking the welfare state The New Right and the de-normatization of value

157 159 162 164 168 173 177

Contents

ix

Concluding Remarks

181

Notes

187

Bibliography

197

Index

207

Preface On the one hand, critical theory refers to a particular tradition that runs from the German idealist tradition of Kant, Fichte and Hegel through Marx and Lukács to the Frankfurt School of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas and Honneth. On the other hand, critical theory refers to the tendency of modernity to subject its own grounding assumptions to an ongoing evaluation. (To this extent, postmodernism comprises a branch of critical theory in so far as it problematizes modernity’s founding presuppositions.) Nevertheless, these two forms of critical theory are dirempted from one another. Thus while the former retains an allegiance to ‘transcendental’ formulations, the latter articulates the ‘empirical’ standpoint of participants. One of the main aims of this book is to develop further their reconciliation through an historically grounded version of critical theory. In Marx this diremption manifests itself in the tendency to ground the critique of capitalism, not in the historically emergent struggles of the labour movement, but in the essential properties of value-producing labour. To this end, Marx sets out to discover the transhistorical conditions for the possibility of production in general. The latter provides the ground for his critique of the corrupted form social production takes under capitalism. Although Marx attempts to historicize value-producing labour, he cannot do so without dissolving labour into capital. As the historical form taken by labour under capitalism, capital sets labour to work as one of its own components. Consequently, value is the ‘product’ of capital – self-valorizing value. In order to circumvent this outcome, Marx falls back upon a transhistorical conception of labour grounded in production in general. This, however, renders Marx’s critique of capitalism vulnerable to his own critique of political economy in so far as his transhistorical conception of labour mimics the historical form taken by economic relations under capitalism. To this extent, Marx’s drive to locate the source of capital in labour results in a transhistorical conception of labour that mirrors the subject–object diremption of capitalist sociality. xi

xii Preface

At the heart of Marx’s critical strategy lies the proposition that purposive labour comprises the source, substance and subject of (capitalist) sociality. To this extent, the self-constituting properties of the latter are merely alienated expression of the self-constituting powers of the former. However, in making this claim Marx robs workers of their capacity to criticize capitalism in a normative fashion. Marx does this by substituting his own notion of ‘undamaged subjectivity’ (self-objectifying labour) for the normative principles that workers bring to bear upon capitalism. Thus rather than grounding his critique of capitalism in the moral principles of participants, Marx regards labour as the secret source of value. Thus, despite placing the modern ethos of self-constitution at the centre of his analysis, Marx attaches this ethos to labour and not the labour movement. Self-constitution is regarded as a ‘transcendental’ property of labour per se rather than an ‘empirical’ consequence of participants’ attempts to make the system accountable to them. Thus in order to do justice to the struggles of participants to expand the terrain of self-constitution in opposition to the system’s autopoietic imperatives, an alternative social ontology is called for, one whose normative content is synonymous with the historical context from which it emerges. Herein lies the importance of Habermas’s intersubjective reworking of Marx’s subject-centred account of self-constitution. Habermas’s work comprises an attempt to renew critical theory by reconnecting the conditions for its possibility with the normative principles that emerge from modernity. Thus, in order to escape his Frankfurt School predecessors’ ‘onedimensional’ portrait of modernity (Marcuse 1972), Habermas develops a more nuanced account of modernity’s ‘normative content’. To this end, he reworks Kant’s subject-centred notion of self-constitution in terms of the argumentative redemption of validity claims. As the repository of self-constitution, ‘communicative action’ is designed to ensure that a legitimate social order corresponds to the intersubjectively agreed goals of participants. This has the advantage not only of placing self-constitution on a normative foundation, but also of placing critical theory on an historical one. Unfortunately, Habermas is also reliant on a ‘transcendental’ notion of ‘damaged intersubjectivity’ to the detriment of an ‘empirically’ grounded notion of violated social norms. As a consequence, Habermas fails to bridge the gulf between an ‘other-worldly’ and a

Preface xiii

‘this-worldly’ version of critical theory. Thus, rather than grounding critical theory in the normative content of modernity, Habermas retains a transcendental notion of ethics inherent within ‘communicative action’. In this respect, modernity merely realizes the transhistorical form of ‘ethical life’ inherent within language oriented to mutual understanding. To this extent, Habermas shares Marx’s attempt to ground critical theory in a ‘philosophical anthropology’ that imputes aims and interests to humanity in abstraction from historically located aims and interests of participants. This, however, not only serves to absolutize Western sociality (as history’s ﬁrst form of ‘post-conventional’ sociality), but also Habermas’s account of ‘communicative action’ as the essence of ‘ethical life’. In order to bring Habermas’s essentialist account of ‘communicative action’ into proximity with its immanent institutional context, Axel Honneth emphasizes the role of social struggle in expanding the normative content of modernity. To this extent, Honneth argues that workers are motivated by moral concerns to struggle against their reduction to the status of objects. In this way, Honneth breaks from the linguistic conﬁnes of Habermas’s communicative paradigm in order to locate workers’ struggles within the normative horizon of modernity. Nevertheless, Honneth shares with Habermas a tendency to equate the normative content of modernity with an underlying ‘philosophical anthropology’ deﬁnitive of ‘ethical life’ per se. To this end, Honneth seeks to uncover a form of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ from which to identify and condemn the ‘pathologies’ of modernity. Thus, rather than grounding critical theory in the ‘moral maps’ of participants, Honneth views the latter as mere guides to a deeper sense of ‘ethical life’ inscribed within the moral grammar of intersubjectivity. Honneth then criticizes modernity on the basis of a social ontology that not only precedes modernity, but also triumphs over the intersubjectively formulated ends of its participants. Consequently, Honneth, like Marx and Habermas before him, grounds critical theory in a set of moral principles that are at odds with the modern ethos of self-constitution. The tendency of critical theory to reduce the normative content of modernity to a set of transcendental characteristics inherent within humanity from the outset needs both explaining and cor-

xiv Preface

recting. By way of explanation I venture that the tendency of critical theory to adopt the standpoint of an objective observer arises from the capacity of the economic system to reify the intersubjective lifeworld. It is therefore no coincidence that Marx, Habermas and Honneth all treat the ‘objectivity’ of the economic system as a natural by-product of the ‘material’ labour process. Thus, rather than criticizing the objectiﬁcation (qua reiﬁcation) of sociality, they adopt its standpoint in order to overrule the ethical insights of participants. It follows that it is only in so far as critical theory grounds its ethical insights in the standpoint of participants that it can challenge the system’s reiﬁcation of intersubjectivity and vice versa. This means grounding the norm of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ in the standpoint of those damaged by modernity’s failure to redeem its own normative content. Nevertheless, without the endeavour of Habermas, Honneth and others to reformulate critical theory along intersubjective lines, my attempt to rethink the normative content of critical theory could not have been written. For so long the poor cousin of philosophy – in comparison with the mighty endeavours of epistemology – ethics is only now beginning to assume its rightful place at the heart of social science. By the same token, I owe an enormous intellectual debt to the writings of Seyla Benhabib, Jay Bernstein, Nancy Fraser, Thomas McCarthy and Iris Marion Young for their attempts to generate a substantive account of ‘ethical life’, grounded in the struggles of social movements to redeem the normative content of modernity. Thanks of a more personal nature are due to my PhD supervisor Peter Osborne, whose perspicacious comments on my developing ideas helped give form to their inchoate content. The fact that they have acquired a published form is in no small part due to the support he provided during and after the writing of my thesis. I would also like to thank Alan White, my friend and colleague, for his support and generosity of spirit over the years. Thanks also go to my parents for their unceasing encouragement, only one of whom is here to see where it led. Lastly, my thanks go to Joy Wilson for her love, support and forbearance. Without her none of this would have been worthwhile.

Introduction

The theme of this book is self-constitution in the writings of (inter alia) Kant, Hegel, Marx, Simmel, Weber, Lukács, Habermas and Honneth and, in particular, the relationship between selfconstitution and labour in their work. My aim in this is to correct an assumption embedded in critical theory from the outset – namely, the assumption that human labour is an ‘instrumental’ activity devoid of normative content. To this extent, critical theory tends to abstract labour from the intersubjective relationships that constitute it, in favour of a purely subject–object relationship whereby human ‘subjects’ purposively transform natural ‘objects’ in the production process. Labour is thus regarded as a transhistorical activity through which human beings directly commune with their natural environment. Contrary to this proposition, I argue that labour acquires its instrumental character from the way it is socially organized and applied under capitalism. Thus, rather than viewing labour in an essentialist fashion – common to and independent of all modes of production – I view it as a product of a speciﬁc social formation, one in which labour is abstracted from the complex network of social, cultural, political, aesthetic and, above all, ethical relationships that it once occupied. Having sundered ‘workers’ from their wider social context, their activities are then reduced to a narrow range of utilitarian practices governed by the criteria of efﬁciency. To this extent, critical theory regards this historically speciﬁc form of ‘abstract labour’ as the primordial form of labour per se. Modernity is credited with revealing the true essence of labour, formerly lost beneath a morass of extraneous social relations, thereby conferring 1

2 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

upon modernity a transhistorical status in keeping with its capacity to disclose the true essence of human labour. My task is to rescue labour from the uncritical assumptions of critical theory, whether in the form of Marx’s self-objectifying subjectivity, Habermas’s instrumental action or Honneth’s utilitarian interests. In each case it is assumed that the social form taken by labour under capitalism comprises the material content of labour per se. As a consequence, critical theory naturalizes capitalism by reducing its historically emergent form of production to the transhistorical content of production in general. Above all, this serves to naturalize the objectivity of capitalism in the fashion of Weber’s ‘iron cage’ diagnosis of modernity. However, if we reverse this diagnosis, it is possible to argue that the tendency of capitalism to objectify sociality is responsible for transforming labour into an instrument of production. This in turn calls for an alternative account of objectivity, grounded not in the subject–object character of labour per se, but in the system’s capacity to regulate itself in an autopoietic fashion. In this case, the economic system’s capacity to transcend the ends of participants is a function of its self-regulating character. In Part I I seek to locate labour within the historically emergent structures of capitalism with a view to undermining Marx’s claim that capital (self-valorizing value) is really an alienated expression of labour (self-objectifying subjectivity). In Part II I seek to substitute a normative account of labour grounded in the struggles of workers to liberate themselves from the objective imperatives of the system. I shall now give a chapter by chapter account of the argument. In chapter 1 I locate the philosophical origins of Marx’s labour theory of value in his idealist predecessors’ notion of self-constituting subjectivity. At the heart of German idealism lies the attempt to reconcile the ‘autonomy’ of the subjective world with the ‘heteronomy’ of the objective world. To this end Kant regards the latter as an expression of the former, while maintaining that the two worlds in question are separate and different from one another. To overcome this separation, Hegel provides the subject of self-constitution with a substantive content drawn from human history. To this end, he furnishes the diremption of subjectivity and objectivity with a developmental character whereby subject (Spirit) ‘externalizes’ itself in the world, before ‘re-internalizing’ its alien self at a higher level of consciousness. Marx applies this trope to labour (on the grounds

Introduction 3

that it comprises the rational core of Hegelian philosophy), in order to distinguish between (a) the natural process of self-objectiﬁcation grounded in the purposive transformation of nature by labour, and (b) the historical process of self-alienation that arises from capital’s usurpation of labour. Unfortunately, in the act of ‘materializing’ Hegel, Marx equates the former’s attempt to ‘re-internalize’ selfobjectiﬁcation with the reduction of humanity to pure consciousness. In other words, because Marx fails to acknowledge the intersubjective character of Hegel’s insights into the character of ‘ethical life’, he naturalizes capitalism’s objectiﬁcation of sociality (and by extension the subjectivity of its world-disclosing agents). Rather than grounding his critique of capitalism in the struggles of the labour movement to redeem the modern ethos of self-constitution, Marx grounds it in an essentialist conception of purposive labour. In chapter 2 I explore the tensions that arise from Marx’s attempt to ground his critical strategy in a transhistorical notion of self-objectifying labour in so far as it renders him vulnerable to his own historical critique of political economy. This manifests itself in the tension between self-objectifying subjectivity – grounded in production in general – and self-valorizing value – grounded in the ‘capitalization’ of labour. In order to avoid the dissolution of labour within capital, Marx provides labour with a transhistorical content designed to immunize it against the historically grounded claims of capital. As a consequence, Marx’s Capital vacillates between a transhistorical and an historical account of labour which Marx is unable to resolve without falling foul of one of his own critical strategies. Chapter 3 is divided into three sections. Section (i) examines the tension between Marx’s historically grounded account of the formation of labour by capital and his transhistorically grounded account of the formation of capital by labour. In supporting the former account against the latter, I argue that labour possesses an independent social identity only in so far as workers struggle to generate it themselves. It follows that labour cannot be the secret source of value in exchange. In which case, an alternative account of exchange is called for that can do justice to its intersubjective character. Section (ii) examines Marx’s attempt to reduce use-value to the material content of the commodity. From a close reading of Marx’s account of exchange I argue that Marx is forced to acknowledge that use-value is a social rather than a natural property of com-

4 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

modities. To this extent, the ascription of use-value status to goods and services is a social process that occurs in and through exchange. In section (iii) I turn to Simmel’s ‘intersubjective’ interpretation of money in order to provide a sociological account of the role played by exchange in the evaluation, valuation and social validation of goods and services. Chapter 4 concludes my examination of Marx’s writings with an account of his theory of exploitation. The tension between Marx’s historical critique of political economy and his transhistorical critique of capitalism manifests itself in the dispute over the justness of the wage contract. Thus, while workers receive a wage commensurate with the value of their ‘labour-power’, the wage is not equal to the value produced by labour during the time of its employment. The notion that capital exploits labour rests on the claim that capital (self-valorizing value) is merely an alienated expression of (self-objectifying) labour. However, in making this claim Marx robs workers of their capacity to criticize capitalism. In place of a normative critique of capitalism grounded in the struggles of the labour movement to subject the former to social regulation, Marx substitutes an ‘ontological’ critique grounded in the natural properties of purposive labour. Hence, the need to liberate the modern ethos of self-constitution from Marx’s naturalistic account of self-objectifying subjectivity. This brings us to the end of Part I in which I have sought to ‘deconstruct’ Marx’s attempt to criticize capitalism from the transhistorical standpoint of labour per se. In Part II I turn to Habermas’s attempt to place the ethos of self-constitution on an intersubjective foundation with a view to ‘reconstructing’ the historical standpoint of the labour movement. I begin in chapter 5 with an account of the development of critical theory from Marx to Habermas with particular reference to Weber’s claim that the objectivity of modern sociality is a direct consequence of the instrumental character of human labour. In this way, Weber transforms Marx’s naturalistic account of labour into a pessimistic account of modernity’s ‘objective’ character. In response to Weber’s fatalistic diagnosis, Lukács argues that self-objectiﬁcation comprises an historically grounded species of self-reiﬁcation. In the process of overcoming its own objectiﬁcation under capitalism, the proletariat is able to overcome the reiﬁcation of modernity. However, because Lukács shares with Marx a subject-

Introduction 5

centred conception of labour, he is unable to ‘re-internalize’ the reiﬁed sociality of capitalism without falling back into the ‘idealism’ of Marx’s philosophical predecessors. Lukács then abandons his historically informed notion of ‘objectivity’ in favour of a transhistorical one which only serves to conﬁrm Weber’s pessimistic account of modernity. This account reaches its apotheosis in Adorno and Horkheimer’s claim that the reiﬁcation of modernity is grounded in labour’s inherently self-objectifying character. In order to break out of this impasse Habermas locates an alternative conception of self-constitution grounded in ‘communicative action’. To this end, he advances a dualistic account of modernity in which two complementary but contradictory forms of self-constitution develop in parallel. On the one hand, self-constitution takes a material route via the purposive transformation of nature. On the other, it takes a symbolic route via the argumentative redemption of validity claims. While the former is governed by the objective criteria of ‘instrumental reason’, the latter is governed by the intersubjective criteria of ‘practical reason’. These two forms of self-constitution ﬁnd institutional expression in the ‘non-normative’ economic system and the normatively regulated lifeworld respectively. As long as each form of self-constitution keeps to its allotted social sphere modernity is untroubled by ‘pathologies’. Unfortunately, though, each displays a tendency to migrate into the legitimate space of the other, thereby ‘damaging’ modernity. The task of critical theory, according to Habermas, is to police the boundary between these two opposed forms of self-constitution in order to ensure that the criteria governing one do not dominate the other. This means defending the system from the normative procedures of the lifeworld as much as it means defending the lifeworld from the ‘nonnormative’ steering mechanisms of the system. Habermas’s reputation as a critical theorist is built on his defence of the lifeworld from the ‘colonizing’ tendencies of the system. To this extent, he argues, ‘communicative action’ comprises the repository of ‘ethical life’. However, this not only serves to limit ‘ethical life’ to language oriented towards mutual understanding, but also to render it an essential component of intersubjectivity. However, in so far as the redemption of normative validity claims via ‘discourse ethics’ requires the participation of all agents in decision-making procedures Habermas cannot exclude labour without

6 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

violating the principles of ‘discourse ethics’. In chapter 6 I argue that it follows that the ‘non-normative’ status of the system violates the normative content of modernity, even in its etiolated, Habermasian form. To this extent, Habermas’s allied attempt to legitimate the system on the basis of ‘instrumental’ and/or ‘functional reason’ serves only to exempt his validity claims from rational debate. In this case, we require a more comprehensive notion of intersubjectivity capable of placing a normative ﬂoor under the system’s capacity to reify ‘ethical life’. In chapter 7 I explore Axel Honneth’s attempts to reconnect the struggles of workers with the normative content of modernity through Hegel’s intersubjective account of recognition. The importance of Honneth’s writings lies in his attempt to extend Habermas’s account of normative self-constitution to labour via the morally motivated struggles of workers to correct the modern maldistribution of social worth. To this extent, the expansion of ‘ethical life’ is predicated on the struggles of excluded participants to gain inclusion within the normative content of modernity. From this perspective Habermas’s attempt to legitimate the exclusion of labour (by the system) from the normative content of modernity appears unjust and unjustiﬁed. Unfortunately, Honneth shares with Habermas a tendency to locate the economic system beyond the (culturally deﬁned) limits of ‘ethical life’. He thereby fails to acknowledge the extent to which workers play a major role in ‘re-moralizing’ the former via the dereiﬁcation of the latter. In chapter 8 I argue that once the notion of intersubjectivity is extended beyond the ‘symbolic’ and into the ‘material’ sphere the system’s ‘non-normative’ status appears reiﬁcatory. To this extent, the degree to which the system ‘colonizes’ the lifeworld is a matter of social judgement rather than ontological difference. In other words, in the absence of an ontological distinction between material and symbolic forms of self-constitution the charge of reiﬁcation can also be applied to the system’s ‘technicization of the lifeworld’, where reiﬁcation refers to the system’s diremption of intersubjectivity into its ‘objective’ autopoietic and ‘subjective’ utility-maximizing components. The labour movement then plays a key role in reconciling the economy’s dirempted components by forging new intersubjectively coordinated institutions designed to render the system accountable to participants. By reunifying atomized agents in trade

Introduction 7

unions, the labour movement places normative constraints on the system’s use of labour. To this extent, the labour movement – together with the welfare state – helps ‘re-internalize’ the external operations of the economy by rendering its ‘non-normative’ steering mechanisms susceptible to the normatively informed ends of participants. It is thus possible to rethink the social and economic policies of the New Right as attempts to restore the ‘non-normative’ hegemony of the system. To this extent, the opposition between system and lifeworld, ‘functional’ and ‘practical reason’, capital and labour is predicated, not on two ontologically distinct forms of self-constitution, but on two historically opposed versions of intersubjectivity. In the former, self-constitution is dirempted into its autopoietic and utilitymaximizing forms; in the latter, self-constitution takes a normatively charged form. In this case, it is not possible to do justice to the normative content of modernity without retrieving the ethos of self-constitution from beneath the system’s ‘non-normative’ steering mechanisms.

Part I

1 From Self-Constitution to Self-Objectiﬁcation

According to Charles Taylor (1989), the opposition between humanity’s self-determining capacities and nature’s deterministic laws characterizes modernity from the outset. An early and seminal formulation of this opposition can be found in René Descartes’ differentiation of res cogitans (thinking substance) from res extensia (extended substance). Having thus divided the world into ‘immaterial thoughts’ and ‘unthinking matter’ Descartes is concerned to account for how the former can obtain ‘objective’ knowledge of the latter. However, while Descartes’ cogito ergo sum provides the template for subsequent attempts to achieve self-certain knowledge, he is unable to bridge the gap between ‘thought’ and ‘being’ except by recourse to a benign divinity (Descartes 1968, p. 158). To resolve this problem Kant argues that if ‘subjects’ can only acquire certain knowledge of themselves then ‘objectively’ valid knowledge is possible only if subjects constitute the objectively knowable world. Kant refers to this as his ‘Copernican revolution’, although he actually restores humanity to the centre of the knowable universe. Thus, while agreeing with David Hume that the universal and necessary structure of causality is ‘something that exists in the mind, not in objects’ (Hume 1978, p. 165), Kant rejects Hume’s contention that the structure of the mind is formed by ‘custom’ (ibid., p. 170). On the contrary, argues Kant, the human mind is the repository of rational categories which comprise the transcendental conditions for the possibility of objectively valid knowledge. Kant then seeks – by means of a ‘transcendental deduction’ – to uncover the role played by rational subjects in the constitution of the world. 11

12 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

The Kantian subject Having accepted Descartes’ original diremption of the world into subjects and objects, Kant argues that, as transcendental subjects, we act on the noumenal world of ‘things in themselves’ to produce the phenomenal world we experience as empirical subjects. To this extent, it is the self-identical ‘subject’ – in its role as the ‘transcendental unity of apperception’ – that uniﬁes the manifold of sensibilities, which ﬂow from ‘things in themselves’, although the activity of synthesis which ultimately uniﬁes the noumenal world belongs to the ‘transcendental faculty of the imagination’ (Einbildungkraft).1 To this extent, argues Kant, ‘the principle of the necessary unity of pure (productive) synthesis of imagination, prior to apperception, is the ground of the possibility of all knowledge, especially of experience’ (ibid., p. 143). In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant places great emphasis on the productive capacity of the self-synthesizing subject. ‘This synthesis is an action [Wirkung] of the understanding on the sensibility; and is its ﬁrst application – and thereby the ground of all its other applications – to the objects of our possible intuition’ (ibid., p. 165). It follows that the objective world – as ruled by Newtonian laws – emerges from the ‘self-activity’ of the subject’s ‘productive imagination’ (ibid., p. 152). Thus, although it may sound exaggerated and absurd ‘to say that the understanding is itself the source of the laws of nature, and so of its formal unity, such an assertion is none the less correct, and is in keeping with the object to which it refers, namely, experience’ (ibid., p. 148). On this basis Kant claims to have reconciled the heteronomous character of the Newtonian universe with the autonomy of human subjects. This claim, however, rests on a bifurcated account of human subjectivity in which there is ‘no contradiction in supposing that one and the same will is, in the appearance, that is, in its visible acts, necessarily subject to the law of nature, and so far not free, while yet, as belonging to a thing in itself, it is not subject to the law, and is therefore free’ (ibid., p. 28). However, in the sphere of moral behaviour – where (pure) practical reason prevails – Kant argues that it is only possible to preserve the autonomy of human beings by abstracting from the heteronomy of the material world. Thus despite arguing that objectively valid knowledge is possible only if ‘pure reason’ is informed by

From Self-Constitution to Self-Objectiﬁcation 13

‘sensuous intuition’, his ethics is grounded in the view that practical reason is entirely ‘supersensuous’. ‘All material practical principles are, as such, of one and the same kind and belong under the general principle of self-love or one’s own happiness’ (Kant 1956, p. 20). This arises from the fact that Kant equates the ‘material’ interests that drive our ‘empirical’ selves with the form of selfinterested behaviour outlined by Thomas Hobbes. Thus it is possible to reconcile moral subjects within a ‘kingdom of ends’ only by transcending the material interests that divide them. Thus he endorses Rousseau’s search for ‘a form of association … which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before’ (Rousseau 1973, p. 174) while rejecting Rousseau’s substantive form of democracy in favour of a set of formal procedures capable of reconciling the individual with the moral will. To this end, Kant argues that ‘all maxims are rejected which are inconsistent with the will being itself universal legislator. Thus the will is not subject simply to the law, but so subject that it must be regarded as itself giving the law, and on this ground only, subject to the law (of which it can be regarded as the author)’ (Kant 1987a, p. 60). This means that every individual is obliged to ask, ‘do my actions conform to a maxim that can, at the same time, become a universal law categorically binding on all other rational creatures?’ Kant refers to this as a ‘rule of judgement’ for ‘pure practical reason’ which, when operationalized, is capable of reconciling each particular end within a universal ‘kingdom of ends’: Morality consists then in the reference of all actions to the legislation which alone can render a kingdom of ends possible. This legislation must be capable of existing in every rational being, and of emanating from his will, so that the principle of his will is, never to act of any maxim which could not without contradiction be also a universal law, and accordingly always so to act that the will could at the same time regard itself as giving in its maxim universal laws. (Kant 1987a, p. 63) To this extent, obedience to universal principles not only presupposes the autonomy of rational subjects, it also confers autonomy upon them. Rational creatures cannot, therefore, ignore the

14 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

existence of such ‘categorical imperatives’ without jeopardizing their capacity to act autonomously. Nevertheless, the cost of converting Rousseau’s institutional form of democratic self-constitution into a set of formal procedures for generating moral rules is paid for by a loss of ‘material’ content. Thus, rather than resolving the modern problem of moral obligation that arises from Hobbes’s identiﬁcation of material interest with selfinterest, Kant sidesteps it by abstracting from the material content of human ends. To this extent, Kant’s legacy is a problematic one. On the one hand, he fails to reconcile his critique of pure reason with his critique of practical reason, although he goes some way towards this in the Critique of Judgement (1987b) by reintroducing a teleological element into nature. On the other hand, Kant bequeaths a set of binary oppositions that create an unbridgeable gap between the pure, originary, transcendental, universal and necessary form of reason, and the impure, given, empirical, particular and contingent content of material life. It is this legacy that Fichte addresses in The Science of Knowledge (1970).

Overcoming Kantian antinomies While congratulating Kant on grounding the conditional ‘substance’ of the natural world in the unconditional freedom of human ‘subjectivity’, Fichte nevertheless criticizes Kant for placing ‘things in themselves’ beyond the bounds of the rational subject and hence beyond the possibility of unconditional freedom. Thus in order to bring back the world of ‘things in themselves’ within the realm of self-constitution, Fichte argues that rational subjects ‘posit’ (setzen) not only themselves but also the ‘not-self’ of things in themselves. ‘The notself itself is a product of the self-determining self, and nothing at all absolute, or posited is outside the self’ (Fichte 1970, p. 195). This raises the question how ‘things in themselves’ came to be detached from the rational subjects that constitute them. In answer, Fichte argues that this is due to the alienation/externalization (Entäusserung) of the subject from the things that it posits. 2 ‘The independent activity in question proceeds from the act of positing; but it is non-positing that we actually arrive at: hence we may to that extent entitle the latter an alienation’ (ibid., p. 154). In other words, if the ‘transcendental self’ is not uniﬁed with itself this is

From Self-Constitution to Self-Objectiﬁcation 15

because something alien ‘stands in conﬂict with the self’s endeavour [or striving] to be absolutely identical’ (ibid., pp. 233–4). However, once the subject recognizes that ‘things in themselves’ are merely alienated expressions of its own self-positing activity, the subject recognizes itself as the source of all that appears to stand outside it. To this extent, the Fichtean subject possesses the attributes of ‘intellectual intuition’ which Kant had reserved for the ‘primordial being’ (Urwesen) (Kant 1929, p. 90). Nevertheless, this is valid in so far as the ‘intellectual intuition of the self-active self, is the only concept which unites the two worlds that exist for us, the sensible and the intelligible’ (Fichte 1970, p. 234). As such, it comprises ‘the only ﬁrm standpoint for all philosophy. From whence we can explain everything that occurs in consciousness …’ (ibid.). However, Fichte’s claim to have reconciled the antinomies of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’ is rejected by Hegel on the grounds that Fichte merely dissolves the latter into the former. In contrast, Hegel argues that we need to discover a substantive form of ‘subject–object identity’, which is capable of reconciling the selfconstituting powers of rational-autonomy with the conditioned actuality of material-heteronomy. To this end, Hegel repudiates Descartes’ original diremption of the world into subjects and objects in favour of a self-differentiating subject (Spirit) that is alienated from its powers of auto-diremption. Thus, rather than taking the separation of subjectivity and objectivity as given and then attempting to reunite them, Hegel argues that they are merely components of an underlying unity that is internally bifurcated. In the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel traces the development of this subject–object identity through a series of dialectical encounters culminating in absolute knowledge. In its formation (Bildung), Spirit (Geist) passes through various stages or ‘levels’ (Potenzen)3 of ‘externalization’ (Entäusserung) and ‘internalization’ (Er-innerung, literally recollection), in which the subject of history sublates (aufheben) all that stands opposed to it until Spirit encompasses the world as its own self-sundering product. To this extent, argues Hegel, ‘only the study of world history itself can show that it has proceeded rationally, that it represents the rationally necessary course of the World Spirit, the Spirit whose nature is always one and the same, but whose nature unfolds in the course of the world’ (Hegel 1953, p. 12).

16 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

Hegel claims to have resolved the antinomies that vitiate Kant’s account of self-constitution through a narrative of rational development in which Spirit discovers that the material differentiation of the world is merely an expression of its own self-differentiating material. With this, the subject ﬁnds substance to be its content, while substance comes to know itself through the content of the subject.4 Nevertheless, Hegel’s notion of self-externalizing subjectivity falls foul of two fundamental principles of modernity. On the one hand, it restores a teleological element to ‘nature’ which, unlike Kant’s ‘regulative idea’ of natural purposiveness, possesses a substantive content in conﬂict with the modern disenchantment of the world. On the other hand, it reduces human autonomy to a mere means for the realization of a supra-human Spirit. In which case, Hegel’s claim that the world is constituted by Spirit not only ‘subjectiﬁes’ nature, but also ‘objectiﬁes’ humanity. In the following section I examine the latter in relation to Hegel’s attempt to ‘re-moralize’ modernity.

Hegel’s moral philosophy As we have seen, Kant’s ‘kingdom of ends’ is bought at the cost of transcending the material interests that divide empirical subjects. In order to arrive at a substantive notion of ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit) Hegel takes issue with Kant’s identiﬁcation of material interest and self-interest. Thus in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1991) Hegel argues that the empirical individuals which constitute ‘civil society’ (Bürgeliche Gesellschaft) continue to act in an ‘altruistic’ (other-oriented) fashion. ‘Although each appears to do precisely the opposite of the other and imagines that it can exist only by keeping the other at a distance, each nevertheless has the other as its condition’ (Hegel 1991, p. 221). Thus, contrary to Kant’s transcendental solution to the Hobbesian problem of self-interest, Hegel argues that individuals in pursuit of their own self-interest remain embedded in and bearers of the substance of ‘ethical life’. Consequently, rather than attempting to abstract from the material content of individual interests, Hegel argues that the spirit of reciprocal obligations and mutual co-operation is immanent to and inherent within ‘civil society’. He then congratulates political economy for having discovered ‘laws underlying a mass of contingent occurrences’ (ibid.,

From Self-Constitution to Self-Objectiﬁcation 17

p. 228), which regulate and co-ordinate ‘civil society’, on the grounds that this demonstrates that ‘the particular is mediated by the universal so that each individual, in earning, producing, and enjoying on his own account [für sich], thereby earns and produces for the enjoyment of others’ (ibid., p. 233). However, the fact that empirical individuals fulﬁl their social obligations only through acts of self-interest indicates, according to Hegel, that the ethical bonds uniting them are present in an alienated (external) guise. Thus in the ‘division of labour’ workers ﬁnd themselves separated from one another by the specialized tasks they perform and only united by a system of mutual dependence that stands above and beyond them. To this extent, argues Hegel, the bond that uniﬁes the concrete individuals of ‘civil society’ is the abstract bond of money. However, because money accomplishes the feat of reuniﬁcation only through a set of ‘externally’ imposed economic laws, money comprises an alienated expression of ‘ethical life’ – a form of universality that transcends the immediate ends of its particular agents. Consequently, economic agents do not experience their actions as ethically regulated. On the contrary, ‘ethical life’ is externally imposed on atomized subjects in the form of ‘objective’ economic laws without any apparent normative content. For this reason, Hegel looks to the state to ‘re-moralize’ the concrete particularity of self-interested individuals and the abstract universality of market forces. ‘The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea – the ethical Spirit as substantial will, manifest and clear to itself, which thinks and knows itself and implements what it knows and in so far as it knows it’ (ibid., p. 155). Thus, against Adam Smith’s call for ‘freedom of trade and commerce against regulation from above’, Hegel argues that ‘the more blindly [Spirit] immerses itself in its selﬁsh ends, the more it requires such regulation to bring it back to the universal’ (ibid., p. 262). Nevertheless, despite arguing that ‘Spirit is the nature of human beings en masse’, the form of ‘ethical life’ embodied in the state shares with the economy a set of trans-subjective imperatives that undermine the modern individual’s claim to autonomy: The state in and by itself is the ethical whole, the actualization of freedom … . Any discussion of freedom must begin not with the individual self-consciousness, but only the essence of self-

18 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

consciousness; for whether human beings know it or not, this essence realizes itself as a self-sufﬁcient power of which single individuals are only moments. The state consists in the march of God in the world … (ibid., p. 279) Thus, while modern subjectivity is essential to the realization of ethical Spirit, it is the latter that comprises the bond that constitutes the former.5 To this end, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for regarding ‘the universal will not as the absolutely rational element in the will, but only as a “general” will which proceeds out of this individual will as out of a conscious will’ (ibid., p. 157). Hegel further criticizes Rousseau for grounding the general will in the will of individuals rather than the moral laws that bind individuals together in a common historical project. To this extent, Hegel holds Rousseau responsible for grounding social order on an arbitrary, contingent and capricious foundation that ushers in the ‘frightfulness and terror’ of the French Revolution (ibid.),6 even at the cost of advocating a form of ‘ethical life’ that is externally imposed upon participants.

Marx and self-objectifying labour According to Marx, the key problem with Hegel’s theory of the state is that: ‘The real subject … appears as a result, whereas the correct approach would be to start with the real subject and then consider its objectiﬁcation’ (Marx 1975, p. 80). To this extent, Marx echoes Ludwig Feuerbach’s claim that Hegel inverts the proper relationship between human agents and the social world they produce. However, Marx does not believe that it is possible to recuperate the self-constituting powers of humanity simply by overturning the subject and predicate of Hegelian philosophy. On the contrary, argues Marx, the alienation of humanity in religious thinking (including Hegelian philosophy) is merely an expression of the alienation of humanity in practice: Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself

From Self-Constitution to Self-Objectiﬁcation 19

and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must, therefore, in itself be both understood in its contradiction and revolutionized in practice. (Marx 1975, p. 422) Thus, while Feuerbach correctly argues that religion comprises ‘an inverted consciousness of the world’, he fails to realize this is because we live in ‘an inverted world’ (Marx 1975, p. 244). It follows that it is only possible to overcome the inverted world of Hegelian philosophy by overcoming the inverted reality of which it is an expression. Thus the problem with Hegel’s account of the state is not its abstractness but its failure to criticize the abstraction of the modern state from its atomized subjects. To this extent, argues Marx, ‘the modern state which abstracts from real man, was only possible because and in so far as the modern state itself abstracts from real man …’ (ibid., p. 250). Consequently, it is only when ‘real men’ unite in a democratic fashion that it is possible to create a truly ethical form of social unity. ‘Democracy is the solution to the riddle of every constitution. In it we ﬁnd the constitution grounded on its true ground: real human beings and the real people … . The constitution is thus posited as the people’s own creation’ (ibid., p. 87). Nevertheless, while democracy remains an essential ingredient of Marx’s subsequent formulations it loses its synthesizing role in favour of labour. The reason why Marx chooses labour over democracy lies in the former’s capacity to ground the objective laws of political economy in the subjective freedom of humanity. By locating Hegel’s self-objectifying subject in purposive labour, Marx believes that it is possible to unite the agentive component of German idealism with the materialist component of Feuerbach’s critique of it. To this end, Marx argues: The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such. (Marx and Engels 1970a, p. 121)

20 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

The earliest expression of this new synthesis can be found in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, in which the crucial distinction between self-objectiﬁcation and self-alienation makes its ﬁrst appearance. According to Marx, Hegel’s notion of self-externalizing subjectivity confuses two separate forms of self-constitution – a transhistorical form of self-objectiﬁcation in which the human species 7 purposively transforms nature and an historical form of selfalienation in which the human species is estranged from itself. In this way, Marx transfers Hegel’s notion of self-constitution to human labour while arguing that its alienated form is a consequence of capitalism. To this extent, the notion of self-objectifying labour functions as the norm by which Marx condemns the selfregulating powers of capitalism. ‘[In] his fashioning of the objective … man really proves himself to be a species-being. Such production is his active species life. Through it nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labour is therefore the objectiﬁcation of the species life of man’ (ibid., p. 329). Nevertheless, the agent of selfobjectiﬁcation does not control the products of its own labour. On the contrary: … the object that labour produces, its product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labour is labour embodied and made material in an object, it is the objectiﬁcation of labour. The realization of labour is its objectiﬁcation. In the sphere of political economy this realization of labour appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectiﬁcation as loss of and bondage to the object, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation. (ibid., p. 324) Moreover, ‘if the product of labour is alienation, production itself must be active alienation, the alienation of activity’ (ibid., p. 326). Thus, workers must also be alienated from the process of selfobjectiﬁcation. ‘The estrangement of the object of labour merely summarizes the estrangement, the alienation in the activity of labour itself’ (ibid.). But, what causes the alienation of labour from its properties of self-objectiﬁcation? 8 According to Marx, if workers regard the products of their objectiﬁed labour ‘as an alien, hostile and powerful object which is independent of him, then his relation-

From Self-Constitution to Self-Objectiﬁcation 21

ship to that object is such that another man – alien, hostile, powerful and independent of him – is its master’ (ibid., p. 331). In other words, the reason the production process appears alienated is because labour is forced to work for ‘another man’ who owns the production process. However, alienation is more than a question of experiencing capitalism as ‘hostile’, ‘independent’ and ‘powerful’. On the contrary, alienation occurs whether or not workers are aware of it. This is because labour is the ‘ontological’ source of capital and capital is the alienated expression of self-objectifying labour. To this extent, capital exploits a property of labour that labour only appears to ‘alienate’ to capital. On this basis political economy takes the historical separation of workers from production under capitalism as natural and thereby ‘conceals the estrangement in the nature of labour by ignoring the DIRECT relationship between the WORKER (labour) AND PRODUCTION’ (ibid., p. 325). Political economy then substitutes the natural bond uniting labour and production with the historical separation that occurs under capitalism. Consequently, Marx criticizes political economy for failing to recognize the ontological connection that exists between labour and its products. As Chris Arthur argues, Marx’s critique of capitalism is predicated upon ‘an absolute ontological dimension of social life’ (Arthur 1986, p. 12), whereby the products of labour objectify the purposes of workers. Moreover, continues Arthur, without the capacity to juxtapose the underlying transhistorical form of self-objectifying labour to the historical form labour takes under capitalism, ‘private property and exchange’ would appear to be ‘as absolute as productive activity itself’ (ibid.).9 This would undermine the ability of Marx to grasp ‘the conditions of a positive supersession of estrangement …’ (Arthur 1986, p. 12). However, it is one thing to argue that Marxism is only possible if the conditions for the sublation of capitalism are ‘immanent’ to it; it is another to argue that these conditions are grounded in an ontological conception of (self-objectifying) labour. In counterpoising a universalistic notion of labour to its particularistic capitalist form, Marx is in danger of mirroring the very errors he accuses political economy of committing – namely, of tearing labour from its historical context and endowing it with a transhistorical character. This points to a tension between Marx’s attempt to historicize the categories of political economy by grounding them in capitalism and

22 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

his attempt to criticize capitalism from a transhistorical standpoint grounded in production in general. Thus on occasions Marx emphasizes the social nature of humanity. ‘[B]oth the material of labour and man as subject are the starting point as well as the outcome of the movement … So the social character is the general character of the whole movement; just as society produces man as man, so it is produced by him’ (Marx 1975, p. 349), a notion that ﬁnds its most celebrated expression in Marx’s assertion that ‘the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations’ (Marx and Engels 1970a, p. 122). However, Marx more commonly endorses a naturalistic account of human labour that objectiﬁes itself in the world irrespective of its social form.10 This serves to endow sociality with an objective character irrespective of its historical guise. Thus unlike Hegel, for whom self-objectiﬁcation is a form of self-alienation that must be ‘re-internalized’ in order to restore ‘ethical life’, Marx views any attempt to re-internalize the objective characteristics of sociality as abolishing the material world.

Marx’s critique of Hegel’s idealism Marx begins his critique of Hegel by congratulating him for viewing history as a process of self-constitution in which humanity is alienated. ‘Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, objectiﬁcation as loss of object [Entgegenständlichung], as alienation and as supersession of this alienation … he therefore grasps the nature of labour and conceives objective man – true, because real man – as the result of his own labour’ (ibid., p. 386). Unfortunately, continues Marx, ‘the only labour Hegel knows and recognizes, is abstract mental labour …’ (ibid.). Consequently, for Hegel, ‘human nature, man, is equivalent to self-consciousness’ and the ‘estrangement of human nature is therefore nothing but estrangement of self-consciousness’ (ibid., p. 387). To this extent, Hegel equates ‘objectiﬁcation’ (Vergegenständlichung) with ‘alienation’ (Entfremdung) under the rubric of ‘externalization’ (Entäusserung).11 Thus when Hegel calls for the supersession of alienation, he is also calling for ‘the supersession of objectivity, since it is not the particular character of the object but its objective character which constitutes the offence …’ (Marx 1975, p. 391). In which case, ‘The reappropriation of the objective essence of man, produced in the

From Self-Constitution to Self-Objectiﬁcation 23

form estrangement as something alien, therefore means transcending not only estrangement but also objectivity’ (ibid., p. 387), whereas, for Marx, the process of self-objectiﬁcation comprises a purely natural state of affairs that cannot be sublated without sublating the natural world. However, not everybody is convinced by Marx’s critique of Hegel. Gillian Rose argues that ‘Marx produces a Fichtean reading of Hegel’s system as the unconditioned absolute idea which pours forth nature, which does not recognize but creates determination’12 (Rose 1981, p. 214), and to this extent, he treats Hegel’s subject of self-objectiﬁcation as synonymous with human consciousness rather than the identical subject–object Spirit, whereas Marx’s critique of Hegel echoes Hegel’s critique of Fichte in so far as Hegel argues that the main problem with Fichte is that ‘The subjective does indeed become the subject-object, but not the objective; and so the subject is not equal to the object’ (quoted in Lukács 1971b, p. 268). In opposition to Fichte, Hegel argues that it is not a case of submerging the ‘objective’ world beneath (human) ‘subjectivity’, as Marx contends, but of viewing the world as dirempted into its subjective and objective components. Consequently, the sublation of alienation (externalization) does not entail the abolition of objectivity as such, but rather the reconciliation of subjectivity and objectivity within ‘Absolute Spirit’. Neither the subjective nor the objective alone constitutes consciousness; the purely subjective is just as abstract as the purely objective; dogmatic idealism posits the subjective as the real ground of the objective, dogmatic realism posits the objective as the real ground of the subjective … But just as idealism asserts the unity of consciousness, realism with no less validity insists on its duality. (Hegel, quoted in Lukács 1971b, p. 271) Marx is therefore wrong to criticize Hegel for rendering humanity ‘equivalent to self-consciousness’ (1975), when for Hegel Absolute Spirit (Geist) is the bearer of self-consciousness. For this reason, the overcoming of estrangement is not identical with the overcoming of objectivity. On the contrary, Hegel is concerned to provide the objectivity of the social world with moral legitimacy in opposition to Rousseau’s democratic account of moral legitimacy.

24 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

Thus Marx’s decision to abandon the moment of ‘re-internalization’ to idealism not only serves to naturalize the objectivity of capitalist sociality but also to reify the normative content of Marxism, despite the fact that the very act of theorizing capitalist sociality serves to ‘re-internalize’ it. Thus, the question is not ‘how can we avoid the process of re-internalization?’ but ‘on what basis does the process of re-internalization occur?’

Epistemology and social critique Marx is a positivist in so far as he is concerned to generate an objective account of capitalist sociality that eschews moral criticism in favour of ‘scientiﬁc socialism’. However, this depends on being able to transcend the social order under investigation. The question then arises as to the ground for Marx’s critical standpoint. By rejecting a normatively informed critique of capitalism grounded in the struggles of those who oppose it, Marx is in danger of falling into a ‘subjective’ critique lacking in social foundations. If we examine Marx’s account of subjectivity, we ﬁnd it resembles Kant’s trifurcated account. In Marx’s case subjectivity takes the following form: (1) the (transcendental) source of sociality (purposive labour); (2) the (empirical) workers who experience their sociality as external and alienating; and (3) the bearer of ‘objective’ knowledge (Marx). As the bearer of ‘objective’ knowledge, only Marx is aware that the labour of empirical workers possesses self-objectifying powers. However, this begs the question as to the condition for the possibility of Marx’s knowledge. A comparison with Hegel is instructive here. In order to reconcile the transcendental and the empirical forms of subjectivity, Hegel argues that Kant already presupposes a third form of expanded subjectivity that embraces (and hence internalizes) the other two. Hegel grounds this higher and more comprehensive form of knowledge in Spirit. To this extent, Kantian philosophy represents a mere stage in the latter’s overcoming of the modern diremption of subjectivity and objectivity. Thus in the process of recognizing itself as the self-externalizing ground of sociality, Spirit not only overcomes its dirempted character, it also acquires absolute knowledge of itself in the world (and the world in itself). To this extent, Hegelian philosophy comprises the vehicle through which Spirit comes to recognize itself as the subject of

From Self-Constitution to Self-Objectiﬁcation 25

history. Implausible as it might be, this nevertheless provides Hegel’s philosophy with a standpoint in the world, whereby Spirit’s attainment of absolute knowledge comprises the condition for the possibility of Hegelian philosophy. However, in Marx’s case, the subject of self-objectiﬁcation is alienated from its process of objectiﬁcation. Thus the subject is unaware that it comprises the ground of sociality. Further, while empirical workers may experience sociality as a hostile force ruling their lives they are unaware that they are its ultimate source. In their alienated condition they are unable to provide the ground for Marx’s knowledge of labour’s world-constituting powers. To this extent, the subject of self-objectifying labour cannot provide the ground for Marx’s critical standpoint. On the contrary, Marx’s ‘science of society’ must be brought to bear on capitalism from a point outside its historical horizon. Hence, Marx’s turn to a transhistorical ontology grounded in ‘production in general’. As such, Marx is unable to provide an immanent account of the conditions for the possibility of his own knowledge claims. Because Marx believes that the only alternative to an objective (materialist) account of capitalism is a subjective (idealist) one, he retains the subject–object dualism that Hegel endeavours to sublate. Nevertheless, in the very act of theorizing the object of knowledge (for example, capitalism), Marx cannot help but re-internalize it in theory (for example, Capital). However, unlike Hegel, who can claim that the act of theorizing modern sociality is identical with the emerging self-consciousness of the subject of sociality, Marx’s standpoint, like Kant’s, remains dirempted from the productive subject of sociality. Consequently, the act of ‘re-internalization’ (Marxism) appears to be the work of a solitary individual (Marx) – albeit one capable of adopting a ‘God’s eye view’ of the march of history. To this extent, Marx’s claim to have produced an ‘objective’ account of capitalism appears even less credible than Hegel’s claim to be articulating the knowledge of an absolute subject. Indeed, the obstacles before Marx’s account of modernity are more formidable than those confronting Hegel, in so far as capitalism, for Marx, comprises a selfmystifying entity that systematically obscures its origins in human labour. In order to correct Marx’s epistemological deﬁcit it is necessary to specify the social conditions that make Marxism possible. And this

26 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

is, of course, what any account of the development of Marx’s thought does. To this extent, Marxism is parasitic upon the social upheavals that accompanied the birth of industrial capitalism in northern Europe. As is well known, Marx takes the labour theory of value from political economy and above all David Ricardo and his socialist successors. Marx then imbues their account of labour with a notion of self-constitution acquired from German idealism in opposition to the self-valorizing imperatives of capitalist sociality. Unfortunately, Marx substitutes the transhistorical category selfobjectifying labour for the struggles of the labour movement to free themselves from the system’s autopoietic logic. In the process Marx appropriates the subject–object distinction which, as Hegel shows, arises from ‘civil society’. Having cut himself off from the normative content of modernity, Marx’s ‘scientiﬁc socialism’ serves only to naturalize capitalism’s reiﬁcation of sociality. Marx’s failure to do justice to the social struggles that make his own position possible leaves him suspended between an ‘objective’ and a ‘subjective’ account of capitalist sociality. In the next three chapters I shall trace the ramiﬁcations of this failure in the tensions, inconsistencies and contradictions that characterize Marx’s ‘mature’ economic writings, beginning with the way in which his attempt to ground his critique of capitalism in the transhistorical condition of production in general renders him vulnerable to his historically informed critique of political economy.

2 Marx’s Critique of Political Economy versus his Critique of Capitalism

In an article on Max Horkheimer entitled ‘Critical Theory and Political Economy’, Moishe Postone and Barbara Brick argue that: In Marx’s mature theory, the notion that labor constitutes the social world and is the source of all wealth refers to capitalist or modern society alone, and not to society in general. Moreover, his analysis does not refer to labor as it is generally and transhistorically conceived: a goal directed social activity that mediates between humans and nature, transforming material in a determinate manner. Rather Marx analyzes a peculiar role that labor purportedly plays in capitalist society alone: it mediates a new form of social interdependence … that is abstract, quasi-objective, and historically dynamic. In other words, labor in capitalism constitutes a historically speciﬁc form of social mediation that is the ultimate social ground of the basic features of modernity. (Postone and Brick 1993, pp. 247–8) Clearly, this statement is at odds with the case I have been making. Thus, while I agree with Postone and Brick that, for Marx, labour plays a key role in ‘constituting the social world’, I disagree that this is limited to ‘capitalist or modern society alone’ (ibid.). On the contrary, I argue that Marx’s critique of capitalism is grounded in a transhistorical conception of labour – common to and independent of all modes of production – that constitutes sociality whatever its historical form. In this chapter I intend to support my case through 27

28 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

a detailed investigation of the inconsistencies that characterize Marx’s economic writings. As we have seen, Marx’s attempt to uncover a form of selfconstituting subjectivity beneath the surface of capitalist sociality ﬁnds its earliest formulation in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Marx, with Engels, then develops this theme in the direction of production in general in The German Ideology of 1847. To this end, Marx and Engels state that: ‘As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production’ (Marx and Engels 1970a, p. 42). However, it would be a mistake to think that this means social life merely rests on material production. On the contrary, Marx’s ‘materialist conception of history’ implies that social life not only rests on but is ontologically bound up with labour’s purposive transformation of nature. Consequently, although Marx drops any reference to ‘species being’ in his latter writings, this is superseded by ‘production in general’ and the ‘real’, ‘simple’ or ‘actual labour process’. To this extent, argues Derek Sayer, ‘Marx systematically and consistently reformulates the categories of his predecessors as unambiguously transhistorical or historical concepts, the former on the basis of his analysis of production in general and the latter on the basis of the conclusions of his analytic’ (Sayer 1979, p. 147).1 Similarly Marx argues: On the one hand, we name the elements of the labour process combined with the speciﬁc social characteristics peculiar to them in a given historical phase, and on the other hand we add an element which forms an integral part of the labour process independently of any particular social formation, as part of an eternal commerce between man and nature. (Marx 1976, p. 998) Thus, contra Postone and Brick, Marx not only believes it possible but also desirable to abstract from an historically speciﬁc form of capitalist sociality in order to uncover the conditions for the possibility of production in general. Thus, the notion of production in general informs not only Marx’s critique of capitalism but also his critique of political economy. Central to Marx’s critique of political economy is the

Marx’s Critiques 29

view that it confuses the appropriation of the labour process by capital with the labour process itself. As a result, argues Marx, ‘the economists transform the material elements of the labour process into capital, simply because capital itself changes into the material element of the labour process among other things’ (Marx 1976, p. 998). This creates the mistaken impression that capitalism is a natural state of affairs coterminous with the material elements of production in general. However, while all capital is objectiﬁed labour, ‘it is not the case that all objectiﬁed labour which serves as means for new production is capital’ (Marx 1973, p. 258). On the contrary, capital is not a thing, but a social relation. 2 It would, therefore, be impossible for Marx to criticize political economy without the distinction between the transhistorical process of selfobjectiﬁcation and the historical process of self-alienation. ‘The bourgeois economists are so much cooped up within the notions belonging to a speciﬁc historical stage of social development that the necessity of the objectiﬁcation of the powers of social labour appears to them as inseparable from the necessity of their alienation vis-à-vis living labour’ (Marx 1973, p. 832). To this extent, Marx’s critique of political economy consists of the proposition that the latter erroneously conﬂates the historically emergent properties of capital with the transhistorical properties of production in general. This in turn serves to naturalize capitalism so as to render it impervious to social change. In order to thwart this standpoint Marx seeks to rescue the speciﬁcity of capitalist sociality from the structure of production in general. To this end, Marx engages in an historical critique of political economy in order to reground the transhistorical categories of political economy in modern capitalist sociality. But this critical strategy is accompanied by an equal and opposite one that seeks to rescue production in general from the ‘deranged’ form of capitalist sociality. Thus, while Marx is concerned to criticize political economy for depicting capitalism as ‘encased in eternal natural laws independent of history’, he is concerned to preserve a notion of ‘eternal natural laws independent of history’ from which to launch his critique of capitalism (Marx 1973, p. 87). However, the more Marx attempts to historicize the categories of political economy – on the basis of capitalist sociality – the more he threatens to dissolve a transhistorical notion of production in general, while the more he criticizes capitalism – on the basis of

30 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

production in general – the more he risks naturalizing categories that only emerge with capitalism. To appreciate fully the nature of this problem it is necessary to consider Marx’s account of the relationship between production and exchange. According to Marx, production under capitalism takes place for exchange, and exchange regulates production. To this extent, exchange provides production in general with a speciﬁc social form which reacts upon and penetrates the latter. Nevertheless, production must remain resistant to the complete commodiﬁcation (and hence historicization) of exchange. Otherwise capitalism would abolish the condition for the possibility of a transhistorically grounded critique. This distinction between an historical realm of exchange and a transhistorical realm of production also underlies Marx’s distinction between ‘classical’ and ‘vulgar’ political economy. Thus, on the one hand, Marx regards Ricardo’s attempts to abstract from the historical moment of exchange as ‘scientiﬁc’ because it reveals labour to be the source of value, while, on the other hand, he castigates Say for ‘ﬂoundering around within the apparent framework of those relations’ (Marx 1976, f/n, p. 175) because he denies labour is anything more than a commodity under capitalism. Nevertheless, Marx is critical of Ricardo for ignoring the fact that production under capitalism takes place for exchange. This accords labour a speciﬁcally capitalist form, which Ricardo’s ‘embodied labour’ theory of value fails to recognize. To this extent, Marx’s support for Ricardo is moderated by his concern to do justice to the relations of exchange that Say emphasizes, if only because exchange provides production in general with its speciﬁc social form. At the same time Marx can only pursue an exchange-based critique of Ricardo so far before it threatens his own labour theory of value. This is because the laws of exchange make no reference to labour’s role in the production of value. Consequently, the closer Marx comes to an historically speciﬁc analysis of capitalism the further he moves away from a notion of production in general.

Production in general Marx’s clearest and most detailed description of production in general appears in the chapter on ‘The Labour Process and Valorization Process’ in Capital Vol. I. In the ﬁrst half of the chapter

Marx’s Critiques 31

Marx abstracts from the historical form taken by production under capitalism in order to uncover the transhistorical content it possesses in all modes of production. Marx justiﬁes this approach on the grounds that the fact that ‘the production of use-values, or goods, is carried on under the control of a capitalist and on his behalf does not alter the general character of that production’ (Marx 1976, p. 283). This is because labour is ‘ﬁrst of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism [Stoffweschel] between himself and nature’ (ibid.). Thus, rather than attempting to locate labour within a speciﬁc social context Marx argues that labour ‘confronts the materials of nature’ as a ‘force of nature’ without social mediation (ibid.). Consequently, what distinguishes human from animal labour is not its sociality but its purposiveness: A spider conducts operations which resemble those of a weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best bee is that the architect builds the cell in his mind [Kopf] before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally. (Marx 1976, p. 284)3 To this extent, production in general comprises a process of ‘material exchange’ in which ‘subjects’ teleologically fashion the material world and the materially transformed world ‘objectiﬁes’ the purposes of labour. ‘Man not only effects a change of form in the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials’ (ibid.). It is this reciprocal interaction between subjects and objects that serves to endow the former with objective properties. ‘The product of the process is a use-value, a piece of natural material adapted to human needs through a change in its form. Labour becomes bound up with its object. The object is laboured upon [verarbeitet] and labour is objectiﬁed [Vergegenständlicht]’ (ibid., p. 287, translation modiﬁed). To this extent, the cost of subordinating nature to the ‘sovereign power’ of labour is paid for by the reciprocal subordination of labour to nature.4 Thus while labour purposefully moulds nature, nature in turn ‘determines the mode of [the worker’s] activity with the rigidity

32 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

of a law, and he must subordinate his will to it’ (ibid., p. 284). Marx then summarizes his transhistorical account of production in general in the following fashion: The labour process, as we have just presented it in its simple and abstract elements, is purposeful activity aimed at the production of use-values. It is an appropriation of what exists in nature for the requirements of man. It is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction [Stoffweschel] between man and nature, the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence … it is therefore independent of every form of that existence, or rather it is common to all forms of society in which human beings live. (ibid., p. 290) However, ‘purposeful activity’ not only objectiﬁes itself in the transformed materiality of use-values but also in the historical sociality of capitalism. Thus, having isolated production in general from capitalism Marx argues that the latter remains dependent on the former for its social powers. His starting point for this is the dual structure of the commodity.

The dual structure of the commodity Marx begins Capital by noting: ‘The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an “immense collection of commodities”; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form’ (Marx 1976, p. 125). As the repositories of ‘wealth’ under capitalism commodities possess a dual structure in so far as they are both material and social entities. The material content of the commodity comprises its ‘use-value’ and is synonymous with ‘the physical body of the commodity itself, for instance iron, corn, a diamond, which is the use-value or useful thing’ (Marx 1976, p. 126). As such use-values ‘constitute the material content of wealth, whatever its social form may be’ (ibid.), while the social form of the commodity comprises its ‘exchange-value’ and is synonymous with the monetary form of use-values in the exchange process. Marx then asks what it is that permits such particularistic, concrete, sensuous, material, empirical and altogether disparate objects of use to exchange with one another. It cannot be anything intrin-

Marx’s Critiques 33

sic to use-values, argues Marx, as the only thing they have in common is their material differences. It must therefore be something that is added to use-values that enables them to exchange with one another. That something, argues Marx, is human labour. Consequently, if we abstract from the material use-value of commodities, then ‘only one property remains, that of being products of labour’ (ibid., p. 128).5 To this extent, the two-fold nature of commodities is matched by and predicated upon the two-fold nature of the labour that produces them. As material objects commodities are the products of ‘useful’ or ‘concrete labour’. ‘The totality of heterogeneous use-values or physical commodities reﬂects a totality of similarly heterogeneous forms of useful labour …’ (ibid., p. 132). Although concrete labour, like use-values, changes over time and place, it comprises the basic building bricks of all human societies irrespective of their social organization. ‘Labour, then, as the creator of use-values, as useful labour, is a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society …’ (ibid., p. 133). To this extent, concrete labour comprises a ‘force of nature’ which combines with nature to create (materially transformed) use-values. However, as social entities, commodities are the products of ‘social’ or ‘abstract labour’. Labour in the abstract bestows a homogeneous identity upon the concrete heterogeneity of use-values. Even so, Marx’s account of abstract labour is undeveloped and might have escaped notice altogether were it not for the publication of I.I. Rubin’s Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value (Rubin 1973). This led to a distinctive school of Marxism which emphasizes, à la Postone and Brick, the historical character of Marx’s labour theory of value. Nevertheless, when Marx ﬁrst introduces the notion of abstract labour in Capital it appears to refer to a homogeneous form of physical labour. Thus, having abstracted from the sensuous-empirical characteristics of commodities, Marx argues: ‘There is nothing left of them but the same phantom-like objectivity; they are merely congealed quantities of homogeneous human labour …’ (Marx 1976, p. 128). To complicate matters, in the Grundrisse Marx provides abstract labour with an historical foundation in terms of the division of labour under capitalism. Thus, according to Marx, under capitalism labour becomes ‘more and more a purely abstract activity, a purely mechanical activity, hence indifferent to its particular form; a merely

34 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

formal activity, or what is the same, a merely material activity, activity pure and simple, regardless of its form’ (Marx 1973, p. 297). However, as Sayer notes, this would provide Marx with a natural connection between labour and value in the manner of Ricardo and his socialist followers (Sayer 1979, p. 20), whereas Marx is searching for a speciﬁcally social connection between the two. Hence the importance of Rubin’s assertion that abstract labour refers not to the homogenization of (social) labour in production, but rather to the ‘abstraction’ from concrete things in exchange (Rubin 1973, pp. 131–58). To this extent, argues Rubin, abstract labour comprises the social form taken by concrete labour once all material content is abstracted from it in exchange.6 To this end, argues Marx, it is possible to discover an abstract element in the simplest exchange of use-values: In order to express the fact that, for instance, weaving creates the value of linen through its general property of being human labour rather than in its concrete form as weaving, we contrast it with the concrete labour which produces the equivalent of the linen, namely tailoring. Tailoring is now seen as the tangible form of realization of abstract human labour. (Marx 1976, p. 150) However, the more exchange dominates production the more a speciﬁc ‘use-value’ emerges with the function of manifesting abstract labour. ‘The speciﬁc kind of commodity with whose natural form the equivalent form is socially interwoven now becomes the money commodity, or serves as money’ (ibid., p. 162). As such, money comprises the ‘material’ expression of abstract labour – the ‘universal equivalent’ that facilitates the exchange of all use-values. Thus, while the abstraction of labour is implicit in all rudimentary forms of exchange, it is only with generalized commodity production that the qualitative equalization of use-values on the basis of abstract labour manifests itself in quantities of money. Consequently, it is only under capitalism that use-values acquire an ‘objective’ social form that is capable of facilitating their exchange. ‘The product of labour is an object of utility in all states of society; but it is only a historically speciﬁc epoch of development which presents the labour expended in the production of a useful article as an “objective” property of that article, i.e. as its value’ (ibid., pp. 153–4). However, because the role played by abstract labour in

Marx’s Critiques 35

the production of value lies buried beneath the exchange process, it appears that value is responsible for its own ‘valorization’.

Self-objectifying labour and self-valorizing value Marx’s critique of capitalism rests on the contention that labour is inverted by capital and capital is inverted labour. Thus while labour comprises the animating spirit of capitalist sociality its powers are reduced to a mere means for valorizing value. Unfortunately, this side of Marx’s critical strategy is obscured by writers such as Louis Althusser, for whom the notion of inversion appears only in Marx’s early writings (Althusser 1977, p. 192). In keeping with a ‘scientiﬁc’ account of Marxism Althusser seeks to drive out the remnants of normativity that cling to Marx’s critique of capitalism. Nevertheless, it is impossible to read Capital without being struck by Marx’s reliance on Kant’s distinction between subjects, as ends in themselves, and objects, as means to the former’s ends. As Ross Abbinnett notes: ‘The concepts of ideology, alienation and commodiﬁcation, through which the negative unity of “capital” is described, are determined by an originally Kantian opposition of human (productive) spontaneity and the “natural laws of capitalist production”’ (Abbinnett 1998, p. 112). To this extent, ‘living labour’ comprises the ‘subject’ of production, the ‘form-giving ﬁre that animates the instruments of production and animates the world of dead things’: A machine which is not active in the labour process is useless. In addition, it falls prey to the destructive powers of natural processes. Iron rusts; wood rots … Living labour must seize on these things, awaken them from the dead, change them from merely possible into real and effective use-values. Bathed in the ﬁre of labour, appropriated as part of its organism, and infused with vital energy for the performance of the functions appropriate to their concept and to their vocation in the process, they are indeed consumed, but to some purpose, as element in the formation of new use-values … (ibid., pp. 289–90) However, this self-propelling, self-animating, self-actualizing activity is inverted by capital, which appropriates the goal-setting prerogatives of labour for its own self-valorizing imperatives.

36 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

By turning his money into commodities which serve as the building materials for a new product, and as factors in the labour process, by incorporating living labour into their lifeless objectivity, the capitalist simultaneously transforms value, i.e. past labour in its objectiﬁed and lifeless form, into capital, value which can perform its own valorization process, an animated monster which begins to ‘work’, ‘as if its body were by love possessed’. (ibid., p. 302) Consequently, the more capital succeeds in transforming the selfobjectifying subjectivity of living labour into the self-valorizing system of capitalist production, the more the latter assumes the guise of ‘an animated monster’,7 a self-propelling life of the dead which, vampire like, ‘lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks’ (ibid., p. 342). In which case it is no longer labour but value that comprises the ‘dominant subject’ of capitalism: As the dominant subject [übergreifendes Subjekt] of this process, in which it alternatively assumes and looses the form of money and the form of commodities, but preserves and expands itself through all these changes, value requires above all an independent form by means of which its identity with itself may be asserted. (ibid.) To this extent, the conﬂict between labour and capital is grounded in a conﬂict between two opposing ‘subjects’ – the transhistorical subject of (self-objectifying) labour for whom the instruments of production are the ‘means and material of [the workers’] own purposeful productive activity’ (ibid., p. 425) and the historical subject of (self-valorizing) value for whom they ‘are at once changed into a means for the absorption of alien labour [fremde arbeit]’ (ibid., translation modiﬁed). Consequently, the more capital succeeds in transforming the ends of labour into the means for valorizing value, the more capital assumes an autonomous guise governed by its own logic of accumulation. It is no longer the worker who applies the means of production, but the means of production which apply the worker. Instead of being consumed by him as material elements of his productive activity, they consume him as the ferment necessary to their own

Marx’s Critiques 37

life-process, and the life-process of capital consists solely in its own motion as self-valorizing value. (ibid., translation modiﬁed) Nowhere is this inversion of ends and means more evident than in the chapter on ‘Results of the Immediate Process of Production’ in which Marx argues: the rule of the capitalist over the worker is the rule of things over man, of dead labour over the living, of the product over the produce. For the commodities that become the instruments of rule over the worker … are mere consequences of the process of production; they are its products. Thus, at the level of material production, of the life process in the realm of the social … we ﬁnd the same situation that we ﬁnd in religion at the ideological level, namely the inversion of subject into object and vice versa … What we are confronted with here is the alienation [Entfremdung] of man from his own labour … the labour process itself is no more than the instrument of the valorization process, just as the usevalue of the product is nothing but a repository of its exchangevalue. (ibid., p. 990) Thus, in so far as capital succeeds in ‘inverting’ (verkehrter) labour it also creates a ‘deranged’ (verrückten)8 form of sociality with a life of its own; a topsy-turvy world (verkehrter Welt),9 in which the ‘normal’ arrangement of ends and means, subjects and objects, persons and things is reversed;10 a world in which ‘dead’ things are animated and ‘living’ labour becomes a mere ghost in the machine; a world in which concrete labour acquires an abstract form and abstract social forces acquire a concrete content; a mad, magical, mystical world ‘peculiar to and characteristic of capitalist production, of the relation between dead labour and living labour, between value and the force that creates value …’ (Marx 1976, p. 425). In short, a fetishistic world in which humanity’s self-objectifying powers are transformed into the self-valorizing powers of capital.

The fetish character of commodities and their secret11 The notion of fetishism that informs Capital is, to use an Althusserian phrase, ‘overdetermined’ in so far as it not only brings

38 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

together a series of themes from Marx’s earliest writings – including the critique of religion – but also refers to a variety of processes at work within capitalism. However, I am mainly concerned with how Marx’s theory of ‘commodity fetishism’ relates to his labour theory of value. Marx’s discussion of commodity fetishism takes up the question of how concrete, particular, empirical use-values possess the capacity to exchange with each other. As we have seen, Marx answers this question in terms of the labour objectiﬁed in commodities. However, Marx is now concerned to retrace this account in order to problematize the commodity status of use-values. To this end, Marx argues that the commodity is ‘a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties’ (Marx 1976, p. 163). But from whence arises the ‘enigmatic character of the product of labour, as soon as it assumes the form of a commodity’? (ibid., p. 164). Not, according to Marx, from the use-value component of the commodity which is merely an ‘ordinary sensuous’ thing. On the contrary, argues Marx: it arises from this form itself. The equality of the kinds of human labour takes on a physical form in the equal objectivity of the products of labour as values; the measure of the expenditure of human labour-power by its duration takes on the form of the magnitude of the value of the products of labour; and ﬁnally the relationship between the producers, within which the social characteristics of their labours are manifested, take on the form of a social relation between the products of labour. (Marx 1976, p. 164) In other words, the ‘enigmatic character’ of the commodity derives from the fact that the social properties of labour objectify themselves in the exchange relations between use-values. However, because the process of self-objectiﬁcation is completely obscured by the commodity form, it appears that value is a relationship between things in exchange, rather than workers in production. ‘The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists therefore simply in the fact that the commodity reﬂects the social characteristics of men’s own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things’

Marx’s Critiques 39

(ibid., pp. 164–5). This displacement of social relations onto material entities not only obscures the role of labour in the production of value, it also serves to endow the latter with self-animating properties: In order, therefore, to ﬁnd an analogy we must take ﬂight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous ﬁgures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. (Marx 1976, p. 165)12 To this extent, commodity fetishism describes a form of sociality in which an ‘invisible hand’ regulates the economy in an autonomous fashion without conscious human intervention. Recalling his critique of religion Marx contends that capitalism not only inverts the proper relationship between the productive powers of humanity and those of the system, but also creates an inverted world in which the productive powers of humanity manifest themselves as the selfanimating properties of things. This reaches its apotheosis in ‘interest-bearing capital’ in so far as money now appears to generate money independently of the production process. Here, argues Marx, ‘this automatic fetish is elaborated into its pure form, self-valorizing value, money breeding money, and in this form it no longer bears any marks of its origin. The social relation is consummated in the relationship of a thing, money, to itself’ (Marx 1981, p. 516). The notion of money breeding money (self-valorizing value) is absurd to Marx, the mark of a topsy-turvy world that has taken leave of its material origins. But in what does this absurdity consist? Most Marxists are happy to view this as a sign that capitalism is secretly dependent on the material realm of production in which ‘real’ wealth is generated. However, this assumes the possibility of abstracting from capitalist sociality in order to arrive at a sub- or pre-social realm of production in general. To this end, Marx turns to a number of alternative ‘modes of production’ in which the role of labour in the production of ‘value’ is not obscured by the fetishism of commodities, exchange or money, in other words, to modes of production in which the material elements of production are plain for all to see. The danger with this strategy, however, is that it

40 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

tacitly invests categories speciﬁc to capitalism with an erroneously universal status, thereby naturalizing the former. This can be seen in Marx’s ﬁrst example of an alternative mode of production. Flying in the face of his own charge that Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe merely reﬂects bourgeois social relations of production (Marx 1973, p. 83), Marx claims it is, nevertheless, possible to use the novel to illustrate the conditions of production in general. To this end, he argues that Robinson Crusoe (presumably prior to Friday’s arrival) is aware that his many and varied forms of labour are actually different forms of the same human activity (ibid., p. 169). Crusoe is then in a position to abstract from the heterogeneous types of concrete labour he performs in order to ascribe a social value to its products on the basis of duration alone. To this extent, argues Marx, the relationship between Crusoe and the products of his labour ‘contain[s] all the essential determinants of value’ (ibid., p. 170). The same, it seems, can be said of the medieval serf who, despite being ‘shrouded in darkness’ and steeped in ‘personal dependence’, knows that ‘what he expends in the service of his lord is a speciﬁc quantity of his own personal labour-power’ (ibid., p. 170). To this extent, the most ignorant serf is in a better position than the most educated worker to understand the material conditions that govern the production process: [P]recisely because relations of personal dependence form the given social foundation, there is no need for labour and its products to assume a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape, in the transactions of sociality, of services in kind and payments in kind. The natural form of labour, its particularity – and not, as in a society based on commodity production, its universality – is here its immediate social form. The corvée can be measured by time just as well as the labour which produces commodities … (Marx 1976, p. 170) Similarly, the patriarchal rural industry of a peasant family is quite capable of converting its various forms of concrete labour into the uniform expenditure of labour-time. ‘The fact that the expenditure of the individual labour-powers is measured by duration appears here, by its very nature, as a social characteristic of labour itself,

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because the individual labour-powers, by their very nature, act only as instruments of the joint labour-power of the family’ (Marx 1976, p. 171), although it is only with the advent of socialism that the veil of mystiﬁcation is ﬁnally drawn from the countenance of humanity to reveal the underlying homogeneity of labour (ibid., p. 173). What Marx takes from each of these examples is the fact that labour-duration comprises the basis for comparing the value of usevalues in all modes of production, irrespective of whether participants are aware of it. This is because ‘necessity compels’ all human beings to conform to the objective laws of production in general, whether they inhabit a feudal past, a ﬁctitious present or a socialist future. The difference between capitalism and other modes of production is that these ‘natural laws’ assume a mystiﬁed and mystifying character so that they operate ‘behind the backs’ of participants. Thus rather than being undertaken in a conscious fashion by the empirical individuals concerned – on the basis of socially necessary concrete labour-time – they are undertaken unconsciously by an ‘invisible hand’ mechanism – on the basis of socially necessary abstract labour-time. To this extent, the labour theory of value governs all modes of production, although under capitalism the fetish character of commodity relations obscures it. Thus in order to go behind the fetishistic veil that exchange throws over production under capitalism, Marx claims that labourduration is the qualitative and quantitative determinant of ‘value’ in all modes of production. This claim, however, as Marx’s defenders are only too aware – especially in the light of Bohm-Bawerk’s (1984) critique of Capital – is a problematic one. This, in turn, has prompted a shift from an ‘embodied’ to an ‘abstract labour’ theory of value speciﬁc to capitalism alone, as argued by Postone and Brick (1993).

Does abstract labour work? According to writers such as McNally (1988), the problems that vitiate Ricardo’s ‘embodied labour’ theory of value can be avoided by arguing that value-producing labour is speciﬁc to capitalism alone. To this end, McNally argues that under feudalism, goods do not exchange on the basis of labour-time but on the basis of traditional conceptions of custom and practice which ﬁnd their expression in the notion of ‘just price’.13 By the same token feudal peasants lack

42 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

any notion of a homogeneous form of labour-time by which to measure the ‘real’ worth of things.14 This is because ‘labour’ not only takes a variety of different concrete forms, but also because it is part of a network of traditional social practices which means it does not exist in its own right as a purely economic activity. Thus, in order to cut the Gordian knot tying a Ricardian notion of ‘concrete’ or ‘embodied labour-time’ to the speciﬁcally historical form of value under capitalism, members of the Rubin School sever the quantitative connection linking the two. Despite continuing to use the language of ‘realization’ to describe the process by which labour manifests itself in exchange, they reverse the arrow of causation in favour of the way exchange ‘socializes’ labour (de Vroey 1982, p. 40). Thus, according to Himmelweit and Mohun: ‘Only market processes realise the quantitative expression of abstract labour, and this quantitative expression only has a price-form’ (Himmelweit and Mohun 1978, p. 84). The Rubin School can circumvent the problem of grounding value-in-exchange in labourtime by arguing that the series of mediations relating the two is too complex and convoluted to follow, not least because capitalism allocates value to individual ﬁrms on the basis of their ‘organic compositions’ rather than the actual amount of value they produce for the system. Without entering the realms of the so-called ‘transformation problem’, sufﬁce to say that an abstract labour theory of value allows Marxists to escape the problems attending Ricardo’s attempt to relate labour-duration to exchange-value. However, this tactic is not unproblematic. On the contrary, the more the Rubin School views price determination as a function of the system as a whole, rather than a speciﬁc part of it, the more difﬁcult it is to ground value-in-exchange in labour-in-production. Thus, according to Diane Elson, it is not labour-duration but money that comprises the ‘social standard of measurement’. In which case, ‘the object of Marx’s theory of value is not price at all’ (Elson 1979, p. 123). Elson suggests that Marx provides, not a ‘labour theory of value’, but a ‘value theory of labour’ in so far as labour is an indeterminate and ﬂuid activity which acquires a determinate social form only in speciﬁc modes of production (ibid., p. 138). In support of this claim she cites Marx’s assertion that: ‘Labour is the living, formgiving ﬁre; it is the transitoriness of things, their temporality, as their formation by living time’. Nevertheless, this assumes that

Marx’s Critiques 43

labour continues to play a privileged role in the ‘production’ of value under capitalism. Eldred and Hanlon, on the other hand, argue that once the quantitative relationship between labour-time and value is broken it becomes difﬁcult to maintain a qualitative one: ‘To leave the determination of magnitude of value to exchange-relations seems to cut the nexus between productive activity and exchange-relations. The prices of commodities would then be completely capricious, arbitrary measurements of the magnitude of value, wholly divorced from the conditions of production’ (Eldred and Hanlon 1981, p. 43). In order to avoid this they propose an abstract labour theory of price-determination. But they are forced to conclude that it is ‘a mediated one in which the labour performed in the production process has no direct relationship to its acknowledgement as value creating labour …’ (ibid.). Eldred and Hanlon ﬁnd themselves in this position because there is no phenomenological basis for arguing that value is a product of labour under capitalism. On the contrary, the exchange process systematically denies that labour is the source of value. Thus, having turned to an abstract labour theory to avoid the problems associated with an embodied labour theory of value, the Rubin School is confronted with the problem of how to make the return journey from exchange to labour. For if the only independent measure of value operating under capitalism is ‘price’, why speak of labour as its source? It would appear that the answer to this question is not ‘economic’ but ‘ethical’ in so far as it allows Marxists to argue that capitalism robs workers of their powers of self-constituting (Elson 1979). But this assumes that self-constitution is an ‘ontological’ property of labour rather than an ‘ethical’ principle of modernity. Ultimately, Marx’s labour theory of value vacillates between an embodied labour theory of value (à la Ricardo) and an exchangebased theory of value (à la Say). While the former forges the causal link uniting labour with value, the latter demonstrates the importance of exchange on production. Nevertheless, Marx is unable to reconcile the two in a coherent fashion. Thus, far from abandoning Ricardo’s attempt to identify labour-time as an independent measure of value, as the Rubin School aver, Marx argues that labourduration determines price not only under capitalism but under all modes of production in which labour transforms nature. As Marx himself argues, it is only the fetishistic character of commodity

44 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

relations that ensures ‘the measure of the expenditure of human labour-power by its duration takes on the form of the magnitude of the value of the products of labour …’ (1976, p. 164). By ignoring Marx’s continuing allegiance to an independent form of labour at the heart of production, the Rubin School abstracts from the tensions that characterize Marx’s economic analysis and hence the need to account for them. Ultimately, Marx is able to trace the value relation only between commodities in exchange for labour in production on the basis of a transhistorical notion of self-objectifying labour. To this extent, labour functions in the manner of Kant’s ‘transcendental subject’ which accompanies all the ‘empirical’ objects emerging from production and uniﬁes them under an objective form of ‘universal social validity’ (Marx 1976, p. 210). If all roads lead to labour this is because labour is the universal road-builder. In which case, the claim that abstract labour is the source of value under capitalism rests on the prior claim that labour-duration is the transhistorical basis for valuing things in all modes of production. This, however, leaves Marx vulnerable to the charge he levels against political economy – namely, that the employment of transhistorical categories merely serves to naturalize what are historically speciﬁc properties of capitalist sociality. In the next section I shall support this claim with regard to the relationship between Marx’s transhistorical account of self-objectifying subjectivity and his historical account of commodity fetishism.

Objectiﬁcation and fetishization Marx’s account of commodity fetishism is part of a general critique of capitalism’s tendency to personify things and reify persons.15 To this extent, commodity fetishism refers to the process whereby social relations that originate in labour appear to be the property of things in exchange. However, if we compare Marx’s account of commodity fetishism with his account of production in general we ﬁnd that they share many of the same characteristics. Thus, according to Marx’s account of production in general, purposive labour objectiﬁes itself in use-values (things) and use-values comprise the material bearers of (objectiﬁed) sociality. Yet it is precisely because things (commodities) embody social relations under capitalism that

Marx’s Critiques 45

Marx refers to them as ‘metaphysical’. The irony of Marx’s account is that it rests on a transhistorical notion of self-objectifying subjectivity that shares many of the ‘fetishistic’ characteristics he attributes to capitalism, for example, the capacity of things to ‘objectify’ human purposes. This irony is compounded by the fact that it is only in so far as purposive labour objectiﬁes itself in things in production in general that value adheres to things in exchange under capitalism. In other words, it is only because labour possesses the general capacity to objectify itself in things that things in exchange can manifest labour-relations under capitalism. In which case, the ‘personiﬁcation of objects’ and the ‘objectiﬁcation of persons’, which Marx describes as fetishistic, also applies to his own account of self-objectifying subjectivity. While there are undoubtedly differences between the fetishistic notion that value is an attribute of use-values and the notion that value is an attribute of the (abstract) labour objectiﬁed in use-values, it remains the case that for the latter to occur, human purpose must objectify itself in things. To this extent, Marx is guilty of attributing to production in exchange characteristics that belong to (his own description of) capitalism, although this argument is circular in so far as the very charge of fetishism rests on a notion of self-objectifying labour. As a consequence, Marx naturalizes the objectivity of capitalist social relation by regarding it as an inevitable attribute of production in general. The reason for this relates to the subject–object dichotomy that underpins Marx’s account of production in general. Thus, in order to isolate labour from its social context under capitalism, Marx grounds it in the subject–object relationship between ‘man and nature’ in production. In other words, having detached the subject (labour) of sociality (value) from its historical context (capitalism) Marx attaches it to the things it produces. The purposes of labour are then objectiﬁed in things – not just their transformed material form but their social properties. To this extent, Marx is able to sustain his theory of value only by insulating labour from the ‘deranged’ social world it produces. As the subject of sociality, labour must therefore exist prior to the social value it originates in production in a direct (unmittelbar) relationship with nature. However, far from offering a radical critique of capitalism this merely naturalizes its diremption of subjectivity and objectivity. In

46 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

other words, rather than challenging the system’s capacity to assume an ‘objective’ guise over and above its atomized ‘subjects’, Marx argues that the system’s objectivity is an inevitable consequence of the ‘metabolic’ exchange between ‘man and nature’. In which case, Hegel’s amalgamation of alienation and externalization under the rubric of Entaüsserung actually offers a more radical critique of capitalism than Marx’s naturalization of objectiﬁcation. This is because Hegel recognizes the need to ‘re-internalize’ the external carapace of sociality in order to retrieve the form of ‘ethical life’ buried beneath value relations. Nevertheless, there are occasions when Marx argues that only an alienated form of self-constitution manifests itself as an objective form of sociality. Thus in the German Ideology Marx describes capitalism as an ‘objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations …’ (Marx and Engels 1970a, p. 54). While in the Grundrisse he argues that: it is an insipid notion to conceive of this merely objective bond as a spontaneous natural attribute inherent in individuals and inseparable from their nature … This bond is their product. It is a historic product. It belongs to a speciﬁc phase of their development. The alien and independent character in which it presently exists vis-à-vis individuals proves only that the latter are still engaged in the creation of the conditions of their social life, and that they have not yet begun, on the basis of these conditions, to live it. (Marx 1973, p. 162) Thus, far from arguing that there is anything natural or normal about the process of self-objectiﬁcation, Marx now claims that it arises from an historically speciﬁc form of sociality in which individuals are alienated from their sociality. Marx’s critique of political economy thus also applies to his account of self-objectifying labour in so far as it bears ‘the unmistakable stamp of belonging to a social formation in which the process of production has mastery over man, instead of the opposite …’ (Marx 1976, pp. 174–5). To this extent, the objectivity of modern sociality (and the commensurate subjectiﬁcation of its economic agents) is not an inevitable consequence of production in general, but an historical expression of capitalism’s capacity to regulate itself in an autopoietic fashion. In the

Marx’s Critiques 47

next chapter I shall pursue my case against the Rubin School with reference to the sociality of production and exchange under capitalism in order to show that Marx’s attempt to ground his critique of capitalism in a transhistorical conception of labour has its roots in the historical form of capitalist sociality.

3 The Capitalization of Labour and the Sociality of Exchange

In this chapter I focus on Marx’s claim that labour’s lack of a social identity in production accounts for its expression in exchange as a (social) relationship between things (commodities). In section (i) I argue that labour does possess a social identity in production – the social identity of capital. I make this claim on the basis of Marx’s own account of the ‘real subsumption of labour’ beneath capital. It follows that labour cannot be the source, substance and subject of value in exchange and an alternative explanation for the sociality of exchange is called for. In section (ii) I argue that Marx is unable to sustain his characterization of use-value as a mere bearer of sociality. On the contrary, Marx concedes that use-values are socialized in exchange independently of the labour they putatively objectify. Thus, there is no need to ground the sociality of exchange in selfobjectifying labour, as exchange is a social process in its own right. In section (iii) I explore an alternative account of exchange, which seeks neither to reduce it to the subjectivity of labour (à la Marx) nor to the subjectivity of consumers (à la neoclassical economics), but rather views exchange as an inter-subjective process dirempted into the ‘objectivity’ of the system, on the one hand, and the ‘subjectivity’ of its agents, on the other. This dialectical account of exchange can be found in Georg Simmel’s writings on money.

(i) The sociality of labour In the opening chapters of Capital Marx argues that because labour takes a private, individual and independent form in production, 49

50 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

it acquires a public, social and interdependent form only in exchange. Objects of utility become commodities only because they are the products of the labour of private individuals who work independently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact until they exchange the products of their labour, the speciﬁc social characteristics of their private labours appears only within this exchange. (Marx 1976, p. 165, my emphasis) Alternatively, because the producers of commodities do not come into social contact prior to exchange, 1 their labours ‘do not appear as direct social relations between persons in their work, but rather as objectiﬁed (Sachliche) relations between persons and social relations between objects (Sachen)’ (Marx 1976, p. 166, translation modiﬁed).2 Isaac Rubin endorses this view when he notes that for Marx, ‘The comprehensive equalization (through money) of all concrete forms of labour and their transformation into abstract labour simultaneously creates among [the producers] a social connection, transforming private into social labour’ (Rubin 1973, p. 130). The notion that the sociality of exchange is a public manifestation of private labour is echoed by Himmelweit and Mohun, who argue that: ‘It is the process of exchange on the market that manifests the social character of individual labour, establishing the social connection between independent commodity producers’ (Himmelweit and Mohun 1978, p. 233). Similarly, Geoff Pilling argues that ‘under commodity production labour is not immediately social; it becomes social labour only through the mediation of the market’ (Pilling 1980, p. 46). Although Diane Elson notes that at this juncture Marx is ‘abstracting from the internal organisation of each producing unit’ (Elson 1979, p. 146), she does not believe Marx intends to argue that ‘labour as an activity has no social character, and only acquires one after its embodiment in commodities’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, the question remains why Marx is ‘abstracting from the internal organisation of each producing unit’ at this stage of his argument. In answer, Ernest Mandel argues that Marx’s analysis in the opening chapters of Volume I of Capital refers not to industrial capitalism but to an historically prior form of ‘petty’ or ‘simple commod-

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ity production’, in which labour has not yet acquired a social form. To this extent, the presentational form of Capital reﬂects the historical development of capitalism from feudalism, through simple commodity production, to large-scale industrial production (Mandel 1976, pp. 14–15). In the process, argues Mandel, capitalism brings about ‘the objective socialization of labour’ (ibid., p. 945). However, this means that labour does not possess a social character prior to the advent of capitalism. Implausible as this might seem, there is textual support for this view in Marx’s account of the historical development of capital. Nevertheless, once labour has been socialized by capital in production, Marx can no longer claim that labour is a private, individual and independent activity which is only socialized through exchange. On the contrary, with the ‘real subsumption of labour’ beneath capital, labour ceases to exist in its own right. In which case, labour cannot be the independent source of value as labour ‘produces’ value only in so far as it is a component of capital. Value is therefore an attribute of capital and not of labour. From the real to the formal subsumption of labour In his writings on the historical genesis of capitalism, Marx argues that capital ﬁrst establishes its hegemony over exchange, through the commodiﬁcation of land, labour and the instruments of production. Only then does it penetrate the production process where it subsumes the labour process beneath the imperatives of capital. Marx argues that this process occurs in three distinct stages, beginning with the ‘co-operation’ of the workforce (Marx 1976, chapter 13). Thus, initially capital brings together workers who were previously ‘isolated independent workers or small masters …’ (ibid., p. 442). The worker then ‘strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species’ (ibid., p. 447).3 That being the case, argues Marx, prior to the capitalization of production workers do lack a social identity. However, once they are subsumed beneath capital their productive powers acquire a social guise no longer reducible to their individual efforts: [The worker’s] co-operation only begins with the labour process, but by then they have ceased to belong to themselves. On entering the labour process they are incorporated into capital. As

52 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

co-operators, as members of a working organism, they merely form a particular mode of existence of capital. Hence the productive power developed by the worker socially is the productive power of capital. (ibid., p. 451)4 However, this would mean that the more labour is socialized by capital the more the capacities of workers become the attributes of capital. ‘These things are not their own act, but the act of the capital that brings them together and maintains them in that situation … who subjects their activity to his purpose’ (ibid., p. 450). In the second stage (from the middle of the sixteenth century to the last third of the eighteenth century), capital brings about the ‘Division of Labour’ (Marx 1976, chapter 14) in which the labour process is divided into smaller and simpler tasks each allocated to individuals or groups of workers. The resulting series of repetitive and mindless tasks reduces workers, in Marx’s graphic phrase, to ‘crippled monstrosities’ (ibid., p. 481). Finally, in the third stage, entitled ‘Machinery and Large-Scale Industry’ (Marx 1976, chapter 15), science and technology are applied to production to create an ‘industrial revolution’. Workers lose the last remnants of control they retained over the labour process and become mere ‘living appendages’ of the machine. This completes the transformation of workers into mere means for the objective ends of capital. Thus, according to Marx, ‘it is only with the coming of machinery that this inversion ﬁrst acquires a technical and palpable reality’ (ibid., p. 548). At this stage the social powers of labour are rendered identical with the social powers of capital and the former ceases to exist as an independent activity. Commenting on this in the ‘Results of the Immediate Production Process’, Marx writes that the ‘social productive forces of labour, or productive forces of social labour, came into being historically only with the advent of the speciﬁcally capitalist mode of production. That is to say, they appear as something intrinsic to the relations of capitalism and inseparable from them’ (ibid., p. 1052). However, if this is the case, it is no longer possible to identify ‘labour’ as the source of value, as labour exists only as a function of capital. Hence, Marx’s assertion in the Grundrisse that: the question whether capital is productive or not is absurd. Labour itself is productive only if absorbed into capital, where capital forms

Sociality and Exchange 53

the basis of production, and where the capitalist is therefore in command of production … Labour, such as it exists for itself in the worker in opposition to capital, that is, labour in its immediate being separated from capital, is not productive. (Marx 1973, p. 308) But if this is the case, it spells the end of Marx’s labour theory of value and the critical strategy it sustains. In other words, if labour is merely a component of capital, then labour’s capacity to produce value is dissolved into value’s capacity to ‘expand’ itself. In following his historical critique of political economy to its logical conclusion, labour becomes the product of capital rather than the other way round. However, Marx cannot accept this conclusion without forfeiting his entire critique of capitalism. Hence, Marx’s attempt to make a space for value generating labour in production that is impervious to the historical embrace of capital. The source of value At a similar juncture in Capital Marx writes that with the subsumption of labour beneath capital it now appears that the entire development of the productive forces of socialized labour (in contrast to the more or less isolated labour of individuals) … in the immediate process of production, takes the form of the productive power of capital. It does not appear as the productive power of labour … And least of all does it appear as the productive power either of the individual worker or of the workers joined together in the production process. (ibid., p. 1024) However, as the language of appearance suggests, Marx has no intention of surrendering his theory of value to the capitalization of labour. On the contrary, while acknowledging that capital comprises the social form of labour under capitalism, it does not, according to Marx, comprise its inner content. Thus, in the Grundrisse Marx argues that capital is ‘objectiﬁed’ labour, whereas labour in the process of objectifying itself remains independent of capital (notcapital). Marx refers to this non-objective form of labour as subjectivity: ‘The only thing distinct from objectiﬁed labour is nonobjectiﬁed labour, labour which is still objectifying itself, labour as subjectivity’ (Marx 1973, p. 272). Thus, while capital comprises the

54 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

objective form of labour, the latter in its pure subjectivity remains the former’s originary other. To this extent, argues Marx: objectiﬁed labour, i.e. labour which is present in space, can be opposed, as past labour, to labour which is present in time. If it is present in time, alive, then it can be present only as the living subject, in which it exists as capacity, as possibility; hence as worker. The only use value, therefore, which can form the opposite pole to capital is labour, to be exact, value-creating, productive labour. (ibid.) In Capital, Marx’s response to the capitalization of labour is similar in so far as he continues to equate labour that is ‘not-capital’ with the living, active, subjectivity of workers. However, in Capital Marx falls back on a notion of production in general which remains a mere abstraction in the Grundrisse. Consequently, in place of the pure subjectivity of labour, Marx substitutes the unmediated materiality of ‘individual workers’ in the ‘real labour process’. At ﬁrst sight it appears that workers experience capital only as external to them. If this is the case, Marx is merely evoking a phenomenological difference between workers and their capitalist environment, as when he argues that the ‘collective unity in cooperation, combination in the division of labour, the use of the forces of nature and the sciences, of the products of labour as machinery – all … confront the individual workers as something alien, objective, ready-made, existing without their intervention, and frequently even hostile to them’ (ibid., p. 1054). However, the distinction between ‘individual workers’ and the hostile environment they face is not purely experiential. On the contrary, the capacity of ‘individual workers’ to maintain their independence from capital is predicated on the former’s location within the ‘actual labour process’. Hence, Marx’s assertion that: ‘Labour as a social and natural force does not develop within the valorisation process as such, but within the actual labour process … Productive labour – as something productive of value – continues to confront capital as the labour of the individual workers, irrespective of the social combinations these workers may enter into in the process of production’ (ibid., p. 1056). To this extent value-producing labour is not a function of capital, but the material realm in which individual workers confront nature as a force of nature in their own right. As a primor-

Sociality and Exchange 55

dial subject–object domain, the real labour process is impervious to the social forces that organize and regulate production on behalf of capital, thereby allowing labour to remain uncontaminated by the corrupted form of sociality it generates. Nevertheless, in order to sustain a labour theory of value in the face of capitalism’s socialization of labour, Marx reverts to a transhistorical notion of individuality that ﬂies in the face of his claim that it is only in ‘civil society’ (bürgerlichen Gesellschaft) that ‘the individual appears detached (losgelöst) from the natural bonds etc., which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a deﬁnite and limited human conglomerate’ (Marx 1973, p. 83). To this extent, Marx can sustain his labour theory of value only on the basis of a ‘detached’ form of individuality, which he elsewhere acknowledges to be the historical product of capitalist sociality (ibid., p. 84). Ultimately, the choice Marx offers us is between (1) a social conception of labour that is indistinguishable from capital (self-valorizing value), and (2) an asocial conception of labour which retains its independence from capital at the cost of naturalizing the production process. What we are not offered is the possibility that labour, which opposes capital (not-capital), is an historical consequence of workers’ own struggles to free themselves from capitalism. However, once it is conceded that labour is socialized, prior to exchange, in production by capital, it follows that capital rather than labour produces commodities and it is not the private labours of independent producers that exchange ‘socializes’ but the private capital of independent ﬁrms. To this extent, what the market brings together is not independent labours but independent ﬁrms within a competitive environment in which each ﬁrm seeks to produce goods that are demanded at a price that is consistent with their proﬁtable production. Therefore, an alternative account of the sociality of exchange is required that derives not from labour in production but from the exchange process itself.

(ii) The sociality of use-values According to Marx, the distinction between use-values and exchange-values corresponds to the distinction between material and social being. Thus, while use-values comprise the commodity’s material content, exchange-value comprises its social form. 5

56 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

Although use-values have a long and important history – especially in relation to the means of production – they are not, according to Marx, social entities as such (Marx 1976, p. 126). 6 On the contrary, they comprise the ‘material bearers’ of a form of sociality that originates in the application of purposive labour to things in production. However, the notion that use-values are merely the material repositories of sociality is susceptible to Marx’s critique of political economy. Thus Jean Baudrillard (1970) criticizes Marx for treating use-values as an ‘objective, ﬁnal relation of intrinsic purpose, which does not mask itself and whose transparency, as form, deﬁes history (even if its content changes continually with respect to social and cultural determinations)’ (ibid., p. 64). In other words, just as Marx criticizes political economy for equating the historical form of capitalist sociality with the material content of production in general, so Baudrillard criticizes Marx for retaining a ‘naturalistic’ conception of use-values as the incorruptible other and limit of capital. 7 Against the latter Baudrillard argues that the notion of use-value is a modern invention that stamps things with a capitalist form. ‘Use-value is the expression of a whole metaphysic: that of utility. It registers itself as a kind of moral law at the heart of the object – and it is inscribed there as the ﬁnality of the ‘need’ of the subject’ (ibid., p. 67). Baudrillard is aware that by undermining the independent existence of use-values he is also undermining the material basis for Marx’s critique of capitalism. Nevertheless, he believes that it is wrong to ‘posit the “restitution” of use-value, at the end of political economy, under the sign of the “liberation of needs” and the “administration of things” as a revolutionary perspective’ (ibid., pp. 72–3). On the contrary, argues Baudrillard, we should jettison the notion that there exists a non-alienated realm ‘entombed beneath exchange value, like the natural harmony of earthly paradise broken by sin and suffering … inscribed as an invulnerable essence to be disinterred at the last stage of History, in a promised future redemption’ (ibid., p. 74). Instead, we should ‘displace everything into the sphere of the symbolic, where challenge, reversal and overbidding are the law …’ (ibid.). Having abandoned use-value to the hegemony of capital, Baudrillard seeks to locate the transgressive conditions that make critical theory possible in the symbolic sphere. Needless to say, Marx’s defenders regard Baudrillard’s abandonment of economic exchange in favour of symbolic exchange as viti-

Sociality and Exchange 57

ating his critique of Marx. Thus while conceding that Baudrillard’s critique may apply to ‘a speciﬁc version of structuralist Marxian anthropology …’ (Kellner 1989, p. 48), Peter Kellner argues that it leaves untouched ‘dialectical and historicist versions’ of Marxism.8 Nevertheless, if Baudrillard’s criticisms fail to compel, this is not because Marx’s use of transhistorical categories is invulnerable to his critique of political economy, but because Baudrillard fails adequately to demonstrate how this creates problems for Marx’s own analysis of capitalism. From material to social use-values As we have seen, according to Marx, use-values comprise the material content of commodities whose social form they ‘support’. Consequently, unlike exchange-value, which is realized in exchange, use-value is realized without social mediation, in acts of material consumption between persons and things. ‘The use-value of a thing is realized without exchange, i.e. in the direct relation between the thing and man …’ (ibid., p. 177). However, as Marx’s account develops he relaxes the abstractions that sustain his ‘twofold’ account of commodities. In the ﬁrst place this takes the form of acknowledging that exchange comprises a social interaction between persons rather than things. ‘Commodities cannot themselves go to market and perform exchanges in their own right. We must, therefore, have recourse to their guardians, who are the possessors of commodities’ (Marx 1976, p. 178). However, these ‘guardians’ or ‘custodians’ (Hütern) of use-values do not, according to Marx, confer social characteristics upon them. On the contrary, ‘the characters who appear on the economic stage are merely personiﬁcations of economic relations; it is as the bearer [Träger] of these economic relations that they come into contact with each other’ 9 (ibid., p. 179). To this extent, the individuals who enter into exchange with one another comprise mere ‘personiﬁcations’ of ‘economic relations’ whose (objective) sociality is generated elsewhere (that is, by labour in production). Nevertheless, use-values do possess a social character in so far as workers ‘not only produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values’ (ibid., p. 131).10 To this extent, use-values possess a social character in so far as they are not produced for personal consumption but for exchange. 11 It follows that if no one is

58 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

prepared to purchase a ‘use-value’, it has no socially useful status – it is devoid of social utility; further, the usefulness of a use-value is not intrinsic to the thing itself – as Marx argues – but depends on its being desired by another. In which case, the use-value status of commodities is realized in exchange. In partial acknowledgement of this fact Marx argues that ‘the labour expended on [use-values] only counts in so far as it is expended in a form which is useful for others’ (ibid., p. 179). In other words, it is only in so far as a thing is useful that it can be said to contain socially useful labour, and ‘only the act of exchange can prove whether that labour is useful for others, and its product consequently capable of satisfying the needs of others’ (ibid., pp. 179–80). Having thus sought to suppress the social nature of use-values, in order to attribute the social dimension of commodities to labour in production, Marx concedes that exchange is a social process in its own right in which goods and services acquire a socially useful status. Rather than looking to labour to explain why heterogeneous things are exchanged for one another, one can account for this in terms of the willingness of consumers to exchange goods and services for money. In other words, what brings goods and services into relationship with one another is not labour, but the fact that they are exchangeable for money. To this extent, money can be said to ‘adhere’ to goods and services because participants are willing to purchase them. This leads Robert Nozick to conclude that what counts as socially necessary labour depends on the conditions of demand prevailing in exchange. ‘What is socially necessary, and how much of it is, will be determined by what happens on the market!! There is no longer any labor theory of value; the central notion of socially necessary labor time is itself deﬁned in terms of the processes and exchange ratios of a competitive market’ (Nozick 1974, p. 260). Thus not only is it impossible to isolate labour in production from capital, it is also impossible to isolate use-values in exchange from exchange-value. Hence the need for an account of exchange not predicated on self-objectifying subjectivity.

(iii) George Simmel and the sociality of exchange Once it is acknowledged that the sociality of exchange derives not from labour in production, an alternative account of ‘value’ is

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required capable of doing justice to the role (effective) demand plays in bestowing social value on things. Although Marxists are prepared to concede that demand has a limited role to play in determining the social form of value, they are reluctant to explore this further lest it undermine Marx’s labour theory of value.12 Consequently, it has fallen to neoclassical economics to argue that value expresses not the objectiﬁed purposes of individual workers in production, but the ‘subjective preferences’ of individual consumers in exchange. According to neoclassical economics, goods and services possess value in exchange because they are subject to a process of evaluation in which individuals express their subjective preferences. Thus rather than locating subjectivity in the ‘form-giving ﬁre’ of labour, neoclassical economics locates it in the free choice of (sovereign) consumers.13 This has advantages over Marx’s account in so far as it is grounded in an historical form of individualism.14 Although neoclassical economics tends to take this individualism as its ahistorical starting point rather than as an outcome of a drawn-out historical process, the individualization of the consumer in the market has a stronger social foundation than that of workers in production. However, if Marxists underestimate the role of subjective-evaluations in the formation of value, neoclassical economics underestimates the role of money in the formation of demand. Herein lies the importance of Georg Simmel’s attempt to reconcile the subjectivism of neoclassical with the objectivism of Marx’s account of exchange-value. Thus, contra neoclassical economics, Simmel argues that: ‘Although the individual buys because he values and wants to consume an object, his demand is expressed effectively only by an object in exchange. Thus the subjective process which … creates the object as a “value”, changes to an objective, suprapersonal relationship between objects’ (Simmel 1978, p. 79). In other words, because a thing must be both subjectively and effectively demanded, consumers must be in possession of the ‘objective’ means to translate their preferences into a socially valid form of demand. Without this valid form of social demand purchasers no more possess socially recognized needs than unpurchased goods possess socially recognized utility. To this extent, only needs, which are rendered ‘effective’ by money, are considered socially valid in a (pure) market economy.

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Simmel then seeks to supplant both the abstract objectivism of Marx’s theory of value and the abstract subjectivism of orthodox economics through an interactive account of social value. Thus, according to Simmel, just as an adequate conception of value requires an adequate conception of exchange, so an adequate conception of exchange requires an adequate conception of sociality. To this end, Simmel argues that ‘society is a structure that transcends the individual, but that is not abstract. Historical life thus escapes the alternative of taking place either in individuals or abstract generalities. Society is the universal which, at the same time, is concretely alive’ (Simmel 1978, p. 101). On this basis Simmel takes issue with both Marxism and neoclassical economics in so far as they start from the subjectivity of individual agents (whether purposive labour or consumer preferences) and conclude with the objectivity of a selfregulating economic system. For Simmel money is neither an objective nor a subjective entity, but a dialectical combination of the two. ‘The form taken by value in exchange places value in a category beyond the strict meaning of subjectivity and objectivity. In exchange value becomes supra-subjective …’ (Simmel 1978, p. 78). Simmel deploys this interactionist account of money against Marx’s claim that value is embodied in objects prior to exchange. As with the medieval notion of ‘just price’, Marx, argues Simmel, assumes that value resides ‘in the object as a quality of its isolated existence, with which it entered the act of exchange, regardless of the relations between buyers and seller’ (ibid., p. 126), whereas for Simmel value arises in exchange only on the basis of subjects’ effective demand for things. Consequently, there is no difference between ‘value’ and ‘price’, as the former is conferred upon things in exchange only on the basis of the latter. However, this does not mean, as some argue (see Deutschmann below), that Simmel adopts a neoclassical approach to value. On the contrary, Simmel stresses that exchange is a social relation sui generis which endows value with a supra-subjective character. The desire and sentiment of the subject is the driving force in the background, but it could not by itself bring about the value-form, which is the result of balancing objects against each other. The economy transmits all valuations through the form of exchange, creating an intermediate realm between the desires that are the

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source of all human activities and the satisfaction of needs in which they culminate. The speciﬁc characteristic of the economy as a particular form of behaviour and communication consists not only in changing values but in the exchange of values. (Simmel 1978, p. 81) Thus, while Simmel does not believe that things acquire a value prior to exchange – on the basis of purposive labour – neither does he believe that exchange is reducible to the valuation of things on the basis of subjective preferences. On the contrary, for Simmel, money-mediated exchange comprises a form of social interaction (Wechselwirkung) which unites the objective and subjective opponents of value in a dialectical fashion.15 Thus, contra Marx, Simmel argues that exchange contains a ‘subjective’ dimension grounded in the preferences of consumers, and, contra neoclassical economics, that exchange contains an ‘objective’ dimension grounded in the supra-individual validity of money. Simmel refuses to adopt either the ‘methodological individualism’ of neoclassical economics or the ‘methodological collectivism’ of Marx, but argues that the ‘objectiﬁcation’ of sociality is dialectically dependent on the ‘subjectivity’ of individuals. ‘If the notion of the personality as counterpart and correlate must grow in equal measure to that of objectivity, then it becomes clear from this connection that a stricter evolution of concepts of objectivity and of individual freedom go hand in hand’ (Simmel 1978, p. 302). To this extent, argues Simmel, the objectivity of modern sociality is an historically speciﬁc consequence of the emergence of the autonomous subjects and vice versa. In which case, just as the autonomy of the individual is an indispensable condition for the heteronomy of the economy, so the personalization of individuals is an indispensable condition for the depersonalization of the economy. ‘The elimination of the personal element directs the individual towards his own resources and makes him more positively aware of his liberty than would be possible with the total lack of relationships. Money is the ideal representative of such a condition since it makes possible relationships between people but leaves them personally undisturbed …’ (Simmel 1978, p. 303). In short, both objectivity and subjectivity are historical products of a monetary system and dialectically depend on one another.

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However, unlike Adam Smith for whom self-regulating markets and self-regarding individuals are a mutually beneﬁcial arrangement, Simmel argues that it comprises the very epitome of modern ‘reiﬁcation’ (Versachlichung). Reiﬁcation As we have seen, for Marx social objectiﬁcation is a natural consequence of (labouring) subjects acting upon objects in production. Consequently, Marx denies that it is possible to ‘de-objectify’ sociality without ‘re-subjectifying’ humanity. 16 However, according to Simmel, money not only ‘objectiﬁes’ subjective values, it also ‘subjectiﬁes’ objective values. In which case, sociality can possess an objective status only in so far as it reduces participants to atomized subjects. It follows that there is a correlation between the degree to which the economic system acquires a ‘reiﬁed’ existence and the degree to which economic agents are alienated from their own social interactions.17 Thus, on the objective side of the equation, money ensures that ‘a direct interaction between individuals, becomes crystallized in the form of money as an independent structure’ (ibid., p. 175), while, on the subjective side: ‘Money … no matter how much it translates impulsive-subjective modes of behaviour into supra-personal and objective modes, is none the less the breeding ground for economic individualism and egoism’ (ibid., p. 437). Consequently, money not only dirempts the objective economic system from its subjectiﬁed agents, it also reunites them as each is the condition for the continued existence of the other. Money plays a mediating role between the micro- and macroeconomic aspects of the system. To this extent, Simmel’s position vis-à-vis Hegel is different from Marx’s. Whereas Marx appropriates Hegel’s notion of Spirit as a selfobjectifying subject while denying its capacity to ‘re-internalize’ sociality, Simmel views Spirit as a form of sundered intersubjectivity that underlies the dialectic of social objectiﬁcation and subjectiﬁcation. In other words Spirit, for Simmel, comprises a form of dirempted intersubjectivity whose supra-social form is predicated upon the atomization of individuals in ‘civil society’. As Nigel Dodd notes: ‘[Simmel’s] analysis of alienation differs from that of Marx in so far as Simmel focuses above all on interaction, on the relationship between subject and subject, while Marx’s approach is rooted in a

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philosophical anthropology chieﬂy concerned with the interaction between humans and nature, the relationship between subject and object’ (Dodd 1994, p. 47).18 Similarly, I agree with Peter Beilharz’s view that: ‘For Simmel, modernity rests upon complexity, difference, dependence, therefore on interdependence and intersubjectivity’ (Beilharz 1996, p. 27). However, this is not a universally shared interpretation of Simmel’s work. On the contrary, Christoph Deutschmann, writing in the same journal as Beilharz, argues that ‘Simmel’s analysis starts from the premise of a philosophy of consciousness. Philosophically, it unfolds within the neo-Kantian subject-object frame of reference, economically in that of the doctrine of subjective utility’ (Deutschmann 1996, p. 7), unlike Marx’s approach which, according to Deutschmann, is ‘well known’ for not starting ‘from the individual but from the social subject’ (ibid.). Although I disagree with Deutschmann’s analysis of Simmel (and of Marx for that matter), it is the case that Simmel’s writings (like Marx’s) contain a number of contradictory formulations that lend themselves to rival interpretations. Deutschmann can claim some textual support for the view that money is not a form of dirempted interaction but a form of instrumentality for Simmel. Thus, according to Simmel: ‘Money is perhaps the clearest expression and demonstration that man is a “tool-making” animal, which, however, is itself connected with the fact that man is a “purposive” animal’ (Simmel 1978, p. 211). In a similar vein Simmel argues that ‘money is the purest reiﬁcation of means, a concrete instrument which is absolutely identical with its abstract concept; it is a pure instrument …’ (Simmel 1978, p. 211). Thus in a formulation reminiscent of Weber and the later Frankfurt School, ‘reiﬁcation’ is a consequence of the use of technical means to achieve instrumental ends. ‘If we consider the totality of life, then the control of nature by technology is possible only at the price of being enslaved in it …’ (ibid., p. 482). The ‘reiﬁcatory’ character of money appears, not as a consequence of our dirempted intersubjectivity, but as an inevitable if tragic consequence of modernity’s ‘objectiﬁcation of life’ (Versachlichung des lebens) and it is possible to resist the total reiﬁcation of sociality only on the basis of those ‘objects which are not meant to be sold’ (Simmel 1978, p. 403). 19 In other words, by specifying those objects which cannot or should not be brought within the instrumental ambit of money.

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However, any attempt to determine the limits of the economic sphere – in terms of the objects it is inappropriate to commodify – presupposes the existence of an ‘intersubjective’ realm capable of substituting for the pecuniary one. Unfortunately, Simmel, like Marx, has little to say about the social conditions that render such a critical account of money possible. 20 Thus, despite his intersubjective account of reiﬁcation, Simmel’s writings do not contain an intersubjective account of de-reiﬁcation. On the contrary, Simmel tends to retreat into an essentialist conception of humanity as the other of money: Thus the domination of the means has taken possession not only of speciﬁc ends but of the very centre of ends, of the point at which all purposes converge and from which they originate as ﬁnal purposes. Man has thereby become estranged from himself; an insuperable barrier of media, technical inventions, abilities and enjoyments has been erected between him and his most distinctive and essential being. (ibid., p. 484)21 Thus, while Simmel provides a worthwhile corrective to Marx’s reductionist account of the sociality of exchange, his view that history culminates in the ‘objectiﬁcation of culture’ leaves us without an intersubjective alternative to the hegemony of money. On the contrary, in so far as he equates money with tool using, and tool using with reiﬁcation, humanity is condemned to produce an objective form of culture it can no longer assimilate to its own social ends. Accordingly, Simmel depicts socialism as either an atavistic reaction to the ‘complete heartlessness of money’ (ibid., p. 346) or the ‘ﬁnal developmental product of the rationalistic monetary economy’ (ibid.). In either case, socialism has no role to play in expanding the scope of intersubjectivity and healing the rift between the objective system and its subjective agents. To this extent, Simmel lacks an account of resistance to the reifying tendencies of modernity predicated on the struggles of participants to expand the intersubjective sphere at the cost of its dirempted other. However, before taking up the question of resistance in Part II I want to conclude Part I with a discussion of Marx’s theory of exploitation. Despite the superiority of Simmel’s account of exchange, he fails to investigate the interface between money and

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labour. Thus, having abandoned Marx’s labour theory of value in favour of an exchange-based theory of price, Simmel evinces no interest in reformulating the relationship between money and labour in intersubjective terms. It is therefore unsurprising that Marx’s subject-centred theory of value continues to retain support in the absence of an intersubjective account of value capable of doing justice to labour movement struggles to ‘re-moralize’ the system.

4 Marx, Morality and Exploitation

The tension between Marx’s historical critique of political economy and his transhistorical critique of capitalism reaches its apotheosis in his theory of exploitation. This manifests itself in the contradiction between an exchange-based and a production-based version of property rights. Looked at from the (historical) standpoint of exchange, workers receive a value equal to the value of the commodity they sell to capital. Looked at from the (transhistorical) standpoint of production, workers are paid less than the value they produce for capital. Consequently, while capitalism appears just from the standpoint of exchange, it appears unjust from the standpoint of production. At the heart of Marx’s theory of exploitation lies his labour theory of value. As we have seen, Marx is concerned both to retain Ricardo’s theory of value and reformulate it in accordance with production for exchange. This requires him to steer a perilous path between a transhistorical account of labour that is vulnerable to his critique of political economy and an historical one that threatens to dissolve labour into capital. In order to square that particular circle Marx offers a variety of overlapping formulations concerning the relationship between labour and value. These range from the transhistorical materialism of Ricardo to the historical hegemony of exchange-value found in Say.

Natural versus social property rights Marx’s decision to base his critique of capitalism on a labour theory of value was undoubtedly inﬂuenced by the work of Ricardian 67

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socialists such as Hodgskin, Bray and Ravenstone. They, in turn, were attracted to Ricardo’s theory of value because, unlike Smith’s, value is determined by labour-time prior to its distribution between the owners of land, labour and capital. The Ricardian socialists found it easy to convert Ricardo’s quantitative theory of price-determination into a qualitative theory of property rights. Hence Hodgskin’s suggestion that labour not only determines the price at which commodities exchange, but also comprises the source of material wealth. The fact that wealth is allocated on the basis of private property to the owners of the ‘factors of production’ only goes to show that workers are ‘robbed’ of their legitimate property (Rubin 1979). In order to ﬁnesse this critique, Ricardian socialists presuppose that the part played by labour in the production process gives workers a ‘natural property right’ to the ‘wealth’ (use-values) of society.1 Hence Hodgskin’s assertion that the present distribution of wealth is ‘a palpable violation of that natural law which gives wealth to labour only …’ (Rubin 1979, p. 347, my emphasis). Marx, however, is adamant that ‘Labour is not the source of all wealth’ (Marx 1968, p. 315). On the contrary, ‘Nature is just as much the source of use values … as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power’ (ibid.). To this extent, argues Marx, labour is just one natural force amongst others, which helps to produce use-values. Hence, Marx’s distinction between (a) the transhistorical form of ‘concrete labour’ which merely participates, alongside nature and the means of production, in the production of particular use-values, and (b) the historical form of ‘abstract-labour’ that universalizes itself in exchange-value under capitalism. However, this does not mean that abstract labour establishes a purely historical connection between labour and value. On the contrary, the claim that abstract labour comprises the source, substance and subject of value is predicated on the transhistorical claim that purposive labour objectiﬁes itself in use-values in all modes of production. Consequently, despite criticizing the Ricardian socialists for perpetuating a theory of natural property rights, Marx’s own labour theory of value retains a naturalistic underpinning. This can be seen in Marx’s claim that ‘surplus product’ is possible only if labour has the capacity to produce more in a day than it

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needs to sustain it for a day. Thus, according to Marx, ‘If one day’s work were necessary in order to keep one worker alive for one day, then capital would not exist’ (Marx 1973, p. 324): If, however, only half a working day is necessary in order to keep one worker alive one whole day, then the surplus-value of the product is self-evident, because the capitalist has paid the price of only half a working day but has obtained a whole day objectiﬁed in the product; thus has exchanged nothing for the second half of the working day. The only thing which can make him into a capitalist is not exchange, but a process through which he obtains objectiﬁed labour time, i.e. value, without exchange. (ibid.) In other words, the fact that labour can produce more in a day than it needs to sustain itself for a day makes a ‘surplus’ possible. However, this implies that the capacity to produce a surplus is a property of labour, rather than the mode of production which sets it to work.2 Hence, the distinction Marx makes between ‘necessary labour-time’ – the time workers spend producing the use-values necessary to reproduce themselves – and ‘surplus labour-time’ – the time workers spend working without reward creating ‘surplus-product’ (Marx 1976, pp. 324–5). The assumption here is that the use-values workers (help) produce belong to the workers who (help) produce them. But, as Gavin Kitching notes, this contradicts Marx’s claim that labour is not the sole source of use-values as both nature and the means of production possess the capacity to produce more use-values than originally invested in them (Kitching 1988, pp. 100–1). This can be illustrated by the example of a ﬁsherman who uses his hands to catch two ﬁsh a day while only needing one ﬁsh a day to live on. Half his day comprises ‘necessary labour-time’ (catching one ﬁsh) and the other half ‘surplus labour-time’ (catching one ﬁsh). If we assume that it takes him one day to produce a net and this enables him to catch ten ﬁsh a day, the sacriﬁce of a day’s ﬁshing increases his surplus, day in day out, to nine ﬁsh. To this extent the ﬁshing net (cost = two ﬁsh) is responsible – at a material level – for augmenting the ﬁsherman’s surplus-product. The fact that the ﬁsh belong to the ﬁsherman and not to the net is an entirely different matter. Were the net to be the idea of another who then rented it out for, say, seven ﬁsh a day, then a whole host of property relations would come into

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play which could not be reduced to the labour of the ﬁsherman. However, in order to prioritize the labour of the ﬁsherman over the role of the net in augmenting the production of use-values, Marx argues that the surplus arises solely from the difference between (a) the amount of time spent reproducing labour (one ﬁsh), and (b) the amount of time that is worked in excess of this (one ﬁsh without a net and nine ﬁsh with a net). To this extent, Marx shares with his Ricardian predecessors a tendency to confuse the material capacity of labour to ‘help’ produce use-values with the social capacity of labour to establish a right of ownership over them.3 But if concrete labour has no privileged role in the production of things, it cannot have a privileged role in the augmentation of surplus-products. To this extent, it is not the ‘material’ relationship between labour and the products it helps produce, but the social relationship between their owners that establishes property rights over things.4 In order to accommodate the social level Marx argues that while concrete labour helps to produce use-values only, use-values objectify the purposes of workers. To this extent, Marx afﬁrms a direct connection between labour and things in production in so far as the latter socially objectify the former. This permits him to argue that exploitation occurs in all modes of production in which labour is not in control of the surplus it produces. ‘What distinguishes the various economic formations of society – the distinction between for example a society based on slave-labour and a society based on wage-labour – is the form in which this surplus-labour is in each case extorted from the immediate producer, the worker’ (Marx 1976, p. 325). But if exploitation is a transhistorical phenomenon, it must rest upon a transhistorical set of property rights: ‘It is important for a correct understanding of surplus-value to conceive it as merely a congealed quantity of surplus labour-time, as nothing but objectiﬁed surplus labour, as it is for a proper comprehension of value in general to conceive it as merely a congealed quantity of so many hours of labour, as nothing but objectiﬁed labour’ (ibid.). This, however, assumes not only the existence of transhistorical property rights, but also the latter’s priority over the historical form of property rights prevailing in any particular mode of production. Thus, while slavery and feudalism may not be unjust from the standpoint of the mode of production in question, they are unjust in terms of production in general.

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In support of this Marx argues that slaves and peasants also operate with a transhistorical sense of property rights which enables them to view the mode of production they inhabit as unjust. Thus, unlike workers under capitalism who are mystiﬁed by exchange relations, peasants are aware of their exploitation. This is because the wageform ‘extinguishes every trace of the division of the working day into necessary labour and surplus labour, into paid labour and unpaid labour’ (ibid., p. 680), while under feudalism ‘the labour of the serf for himself, and his compulsory labour for the lord of the land, are demarcated very clearly in space and time’ (ibid.). Consequently, ‘every peasant knows that what he expends in the service of his lord is a speciﬁc quantity of his own personal labour-power’ (ibid., p. 170). However, for peasants to possess a sense that what they (help) produce belongs to them presupposes that they own their labourpower. In other words, it presupposes a set of property rights and social distinctions that arise only under capitalism. However, according to Rodney Hilton (1973), far from believing that they are exploited in the Marxist sense of the term, feudal peasants tended to accept the lowly station in which ‘God had placed them’ along with the system of obligations that went with it. Consequently, when they did rise up against their feudal masters it was usually because the lord of the manor had broken a customary arrangement, rather than any insight into their objective property rights (Hilton 1973, p. 114). To this extent, Marx is guilty of projecting his (normative) conception of exploitation on feudalism and then crediting peasants with holding it. However, while it might appear obvious – from a modern perspective – that peasants are exploited, this contradicts the moral texture of feudal life in which individual-based (personal) property rights were grounded in and accountable to (interpersonal) communal ones. Marx’s capacity to abstract from the normative rules that govern property rights arises from his ‘materialistic’ or, more speciﬁcally, subject-centred account of labour. Thus, for Marx, property rights have an underlying material content grounded in the subject–object relationship between people and things. This allows Marx to penetrate the complex web of intersubjective relations that constitute historically mediated property rights in favour of those constituted by production in general. However, as Rousseau notes, the notion of a property right resides not in the claim of ownership, but in the acceptance of this claim by another; in other words, in the intersub-

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jectively established validity of property rights. To this extent, the question of social legitimacy is no mere ideology that plays like an illusion over the surface of material reality, but comprises the very essence of property rights. It follows that the question of legitimate property rights contains an irreducible intersubjective dimension that corresponds to what the participants concerned hold to be valid. Marx may not like the form of property rights established by exchange under capitalism, but he cannot override them on the basis of an objective set of property rights without reifying the ethical dimension of social life.

Exploitation and exchange At the heart of Marx’s labour theory of exploitation lies the difference between what workers receive in exchange for their labourpower and the value they produce for capital. According to Marx, these two are different because they refer to two different things. Thus while workers sell their ‘capacity to labour’ (Arbeitsvermögen) or ‘labour-power’ (Arbeitskräft) to capitalists,5 the latter come to possess a ‘use-value’ with the capacity to create value. In other words, although workers appear to sell their ‘labour’ (or more accurately their labour for a given amount of time, or ‘labour-time’) to capital, they actually sell their ‘capacity to labour’, that is ‘the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capabilities which he sets in motion whenever he produces a use-value of any kind’ (Marx 1976, p. 270).6 Like all commodities, the value of ‘labour-power’ is determined ‘by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this speciﬁc article’ (ibid., p. 274). As such it ‘represents no more than a deﬁnite quantity of the average social labour objectiﬁed in it’ (ibid.). To this extent ‘the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of its owner’ 7 (ibid.). While this introduces a degree of indeterminacy into the value of labour-power in so far as it contains ‘an historical and moral element’ (ibid., p. 275), as long as capitalists pay workers a wage commensurate with the standards prevailing at the time, they have satisﬁed the ‘law of equivalence’ which the labour theory of value establishes.

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Marx argues that workers receive a fair wage for their labourpower based on the ‘objective’ amount of value embodied in the worker. ‘Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is “fair”? And is it not, in fact, the only “fair” distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production?’ (Marx 1968, p. 317). To this extent, the justness of wage-labour rests on the exchange of equivalence that prevails in the market. Hence, Marx’s assertion that the realm of exchange – in which labour-power is bought and sold – comprises: a very Eden of the innate rights of man. It is the exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller, let us say of labour power, are determined only by their free will. They contract as free persons, who are equal before the law. Their contract is the ﬁnal result in which their joint will ﬁnds a common legal expression. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to his own advantage. (Marx 1976, p. 280) This suggests that exchange is a realm of freedom, equality, property and self-interest in so far as it rests on the individual wills that meet therein. This comprises the intersubjective world of property rights. However, nothing in this world can contradict the fact that workers are responsible for creating a surplus. All the intersubjective world can do is validate the property rights of capitalists to this surplus: The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labourpower; he therefore has the use of it for a day, a day’s labour belongs to him. On the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day’s labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can remain effective, can work, during a whole day, and consequently the value which its use during one day creates is double what the capitalist pays for that use; this circumstance is a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injustice towards the seller. (Marx 1976, p. 301)

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The fact that the capitalist can extract a surplus from the labourpower s/he has purchased does not comprise an ‘injustice to the seller’ because workers are paid ‘the value of a day’s labour-power’ (ibid.). To this extent, the justice of capitalism is established on the basis of the buying and selling of labour-power, a transaction that is grounded in both equivalence and consent. Nevertheless, if workers are responsible for producing all the value in circulation, surely they have a right to it? Marx would appear to agree with this proposition. To this end, he invites us to look behind ‘this sphere of simple circulation … which provide the “free-trade vulgaris” with his views, his concepts and the standard by which he judges society of capital and wage-labour …’ (ibid.), to enter the world of production in which ‘the physiognomy of our dramatis personae’ takes on a new guise as the ‘money-owner now strides out in front as a capitalist …’ while the ‘possessor of labour-power’ holds back in a timid and frightened fashion (ibid.). However, it is not just the power relations that change in production, it is also the fairness of the wage-relation. For having purchased ‘labour-power’, capitalists ﬁnd themselves in possession of not one but two use-values: ‘a speciﬁc form of useful labour, such as tailoring, cobbling, spinning etc.’ (ibid.) and ‘the universal valuecreating element … by virtue of which it differs from all other commodities …’ (ibid.). Thus while capitalists compensate workers for their concrete labour – equivalent to the reproduction costs of labour – they also acquire abstract value-producing labour for which no equivalent is exchanged. It is this second use-value that comprises ‘a source not only of value, but of more value than itself’ (ibid., p. 301). The wage-relation therefore, far from being fair, merely masks the process whereby capitalists acquire the means to create value – a capacity that belongs to another.

Capitalism and justice For some, Marx’s theory of justice is hopelessly contradictory. Nevertheless, for others it is possible to reconcile the historical and the transhistorical elements of his account. Thus Joseph McCarney argues that the tension between the buying and selling of labourpower and the extraction of surplus-value disappears once we distinguish between the two realms in question. ‘Marx thinks that capitalist

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exchange is just according to the relevant conception of justice and that the capitalist appropriation of surplus-value falls outside the ﬁeld of reference of that conception altogether’ (McCarney 1992, p. 33). Thus while Marx employs an historical notion of justice in the exchange process, he considers ‘capitalist exploitation to be neither just nor unjust, falling as it does outside the domain of the category of justice’ (ibid., p. 36). As Marx himself argues: ‘If … the amount of value advanced in wages is not merely found again in the product, but augmented by a surplus-value, this is not because the seller has been defrauded: it is merely due to the fact that this commodity has been used up by the buyer’ (Marx 1976, p. 732). In support of his argument McCarney marshals a great deal of supporting evidence from Marx’s writings, as when Marx states that ‘the law of exchange requires equality only between the exchangevalues of commodities given in exchange for one another … it has nothing to do with their consumption …’ (ibid.), or that ‘surplusvalue which costs the worker labour but the capitalist nothing … becomes the legitimate property of the capitalist’ (ibid., p. 731). To this extent, argues McCarney, there is nothing contradictory about arguing that while labour is the source of surplus-value, this surplus belongs to the capitalist. This is because property rights possess an indissoluble historical dimension, which in the case of capitalism is established through exchange: The use-value of labour-power, in other words labour, belongs just as little to its seller as the value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer who sold it. The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labour-power; he therefore has the use of it for a day, a day’s labour belongs to him. (Marx 1976, p. 301) Nevertheless, in so far as labour really is the sole source of value, value is a property of labour. In which case, argues Norman Geras (1992), it is not a question of whether Marx believes capitalism is unjust, but by what criteria he judges it is unjust. Perhaps, as Alan Ryan contends, the notion of justice that arises from production fails to correspond to that which arises from exchange. ‘In buying labour-power the capitalist does not violate the rule of “equals for equals”; in using labour-power he does … [C]apitalism is in contradiction with itself, forced to produce in ways that violate the princi-

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ple of justice which it is simultaneously forced to profess’ (Ryan, in Geras 1992, p. 46). However, while Geras accepts that Marx does criticize the inequities of production from the standpoint of exchange, he believes Marx’s theory of exploitation rests on a series of connections that not only fall outside exchange but also outside capitalism as an historically speciﬁc mode of production. To this extent, argues Geras, Marx employs two conceptions of justice: a relativistic one deriving from exchange and a ‘broader non-relativistic notion of justice implicit in his work and governing some of his most fundamental judgements’ (Geras 1992, p. 40). From a non-relativistic standpoint Marx argues that the property rights established in exchange are purely illusionary when compared to those established by production. This is because under capitalism ‘there is only an apparent exchange, since … the capital which is exchanged for labour-power is itself merely a portion of the product of the labour of others which has been appropriated without an equivalent …’ (Marx, in Geras 1992, p. 49). In other words, capitalism is exploitative because workers do not receive all the value they are entitled to. On the contrary, capitalism ensures ‘the constant appropriation by the capitalist, without exchange, of a portion of the labour of others …’ (Marx quoted in Geras 1992, p. 49). Thus while ‘vulgar economists’ are content to record: each act of exchange by itself, apart from any connection with the act of exchange preceding it and following it … the matter looks quite different if we consider capitalist production in the uninterrupted ﬂow of its renewal, and if in the place of the individual capitalist and the individual worker, we view them in their totality, as the capitalist class and the working class confronting each other. But in so doing we should be applying standards entirely foreign [total fremd] to commodity production. (Marx 1976, p. 732) Although the purchase of labour-power by capitalists may appear to comprise a just relation, in so far as the exchange of equivalents is based on the consent of workers and the reproduction costs of concrete labour, this masks an unjust relation, whereby capitalists appropriate the productive powers of living labour without their consent. Thus, the legitimacy of the property rights established in exchange is an ‘illusion’ and obscures the fact that labour is the true

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source of value. ‘All the notions of justice held by both the worker and the capitalist, all the mystiﬁcations of the capitalist mode of production, all capitalism’s illusions about freedom, all the apologetic tricks of vulgar economics, have as their basis the form of appearance … which makes the actual relation invisible, and indeed presents to the eye the precise opposite of that relation’ (Marx 1976, p. 680). As such, exchange relations merely conceal the act of robbery by which capitalists force workers to produce a surplus for them. Thus, far from accepting the validity of exchange-relations, Marx argues that they merely ‘mystify’ the real basis for property rights grounded in production. ‘Even if … equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, the whole thing still remains the age-old activity of the conqueror, who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has stolen from them’ (Marx 1978, p. 728). Indeed, the notion of equivalence in exchange does not contradict Marx’s theory of exploitation as both assume a labour theory of value. The wage that workers receive in exchange is equal to the amount of value each worker ‘embodies’. But this falls short of the amount of value each worker can produce in a day, assuming that workers alone are responsible for the ‘production’ of value. What is at issue here is not the relationship between equivalence in exchange and non-equivalence in production, but the relationship between the two accounts of justice they support. Although the exchange of equivalents regulates the buying and selling of labourpower, it does not account for the totality of the relationship between labour and capital. On the contrary, having bought the capacity to work, capitalists set it to work to produce ‘use-values’ with a greater value than the value of labour-power. Capitalists are then in a position to produce surplus-value from the surplus labourtime of workers, labour-time for which workers receive no payment. Capitalism is therefore a thoroughly unjust mode of production and workers are quite justiﬁed in struggling to overthrow it.

Self-objectiﬁcation and consent Geras’s analysis reveals the difﬁculty that Marx has in reconciling an historical account of ownership based in exchange, and a transhistorical account based in production. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to argue, as Nancy Fraser does, that the injustice Marx

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describes in Capital ‘is quintessentially a matter of distribution’ (Fraser 1997, p. 17). On the contrary, the distribution of value under capitalism is unjust only because labour is forced to objectify itself in the alien guise of value. To this extent, Marx’s theory of exploitation rests on the view that labour is alienated from its powers of selfconstitution by capitalism. As Harry Brod (1992) notes: From Hegel, Marx retains the idea that the possession of property as the externalization and objectiﬁcation of my will is a necessary part of the free development of my personality. Within Marx’s system, this conception yields the concept of alienation, where what is wrong with capitalist production is not the violation of some principle of distributive justice but rather the violation of the essence of a free human being. (Brod 1992, p. 74) To this extent, the main injustice of capitalism is not the fact that workers produce surplus-value but the fact they produce value – an alien form of sociality that usurps their powers of self-constitution. Nevertheless, Brod’s comparison with Hegel is slightly misleading in so far as the right of workers to own the products they have (helped) produce is established, for Marx, through labour’s (self) objectiﬁcation in value, while, for Hegel, ownership is an intersubjectively mediated right that must be recognized by others in exchange. Thus while Marx argues that the social basis for legitimate property rights is actually ‘produced’ by labour (in the objective form of value), Hegel argues that legitimate property rights arise from the fact that the ‘parties recognize each other as persons and owners of property’ (Hegel 1991, p. 103). Consequently, while exchange is unjust for Marx because workers are not in command of their own objectiﬁcation process, it is just for Hegel because workers freely consent to sell their ‘labour-time’ to capital. 8 However, in so far as consent plays a role in establishing the legitimacy of exchange for Marx, this also creates a tension in Marx’s writings. According to Marx, workers ‘contract as free persons, who are equal before the law. Their contract is the ﬁnal result in which their joint will ﬁnds a common legal expression’ (1976, p. 280). To this extent, Marx suggests that exchange is fair because all the parties have consented to it. But this is not the ultimate basis upon which Marx declares exchange to be just. On the contrary, this rests on the

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‘objective’ fact that the wage workers receive is equal to the value of labour-power. Consequently, the question of consent is not only irrelevant to the question of justice, it comprises one of its chief ‘illusions’. Marx can then ignore the consent of workers because this consent is based upon an illusion – the illusion that the wage is payment for time spent working (i.e. labour-time), although there are occasions when Marx argues that the justice of exchange is predicated on the purchase of labour for a given duration – for example: ‘The owner of money has paid the value of a day’s labour-power; he therefore has the use of it for a day …’ (Marx 1976, p. 301). In reality, workers are not in a position to consent to sell ‘the value of a day’s labour-power’ to capitalists. This is because capitalists do not purchase an actual amount of labour-time but the mere potential to labour. Indeed, as the ‘substance, and the immanent measure of value … [labour] has no value itself’ (ibid., p. 677). Workers can no more consent to sell their labour-time to capitalists than capitalists can consent to purchase it from workers. It is because capitalists cannot purchase ‘labour-time’ that they have no right to command it. Because labour-time is (literally) priceless it cannot form the basis for the wage contract. As the transcendental founder of the wage-labour transaction (rather than a mere partner in it), labour-time gives only the illusion of sale (alienation). The true content of the sale is labour-power for which workers receive a just price in terms of the value of the goods and services necessary to sustain them. Capitalists receive a ‘moveable feast’, an indeﬁnite amount of value-producing labour they are free to utilize as they see ﬁt. In this way Marx subverts the intersubjective bargain entered into by workers and capitalists on the basis of an objective assessment of the underlying production and distribution of value. Marx’s motives are to demonstrate ‘scientiﬁcally’ that workers are exploited irrespective of the arrangements established in that ‘very Eden of the innate rights of man’ exchange (1976, p. 280). This means negating the (intersubjectively constituted) consent of workers in favour of (objectively constituted) value relations. But the upshot of this is the negation of the intersubjectively established norms and values of capitalist sociality along with the ‘subjective’ judgements of participants therein. Thus rather than placing critical theory on the side of the latter in the face of the system’s objectiﬁcation of

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morality (value), Marx sides with the objectiﬁcation of value. The irony is that in the name of self-constitution Marx negates self-constitution. Having subsumed self-constitution beneath selfobjectiﬁcation, Marx sides with the system’s subsumption of social norms beneath objective social structures.

Restoring the ethical content of self-constitution Marx can ignore the norms and values of participants, whether they are capitalists or workers, because he has access to a deeper, ‘objective’ truth. Having ‘discovered’ that value is the (alienated) property of self-objectifying labour neither the justice established in exchange nor the injustice established in production depends on the beliefs of participants. On the contrary, both the illusionary justice of the former and the real injustice of the latter are objective properties of the system whatever participants may think. By ascribing to labour the capacity to constitute itself as value, Marx can dispense with the need for a moral critique of capitalism. Indeed, Marx can dispense with moral judgements altogether in so far as his critique of capitalism is predicated on the real state of capitalist sociality. Instead Marx’s critique is grounded in the contrast between (a) what appears to be the case (in exchange) and (b) what actually is the case (in production). For this reason, Marx has no interest in questioning the objectivity of value-relations. On the contrary, it is their very objectivity that makes it possible for Marx to expose the truth of exploitation. Unfortunately, this formulation bears all the hallmarks of the form of sociality that it criticizes in so far as Marx’s ‘scientiﬁc’ account of exploitation mirrors capitalism’s own objectiﬁcation of value-judgements. Thus, rather than criticizing capitalism for blocking participants’ capacity to make their own value-judgement, Marx substitutes his labour theory of value for the former. Participants are then called on to disregard their moral values (which are grounded in an illusion) in favour of the scientiﬁc truths of Marxism. Having transferred the activity of self-constitution from the agents of capitalism to an agent that constitutes capitalism, Marx abstracts from the (intersubjective) judgements of participants in favour of the (objective) properties of labour. As a consequence, Marx’s own judgements about the injustice of capitalism are predi-

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cated not on the judgements of workers but the value-producing properties of labour. This results in a set of objective value-judgements – judgements that declare capitalism to be unjust from a standpoint outside the latter’s intersubjective terrain. To this extent, Marx employs a series of objective judgements that borrow their trans-subjective character from the trans-subjective system they criticize. In which case, Marx’s critique of capitalism proceeds not on the basis of the latter’s capacity to reify self-constitution, but on the basis of an objective standpoint that assumes that selfobjectiﬁcation is a natural property of labour. Having identiﬁed the true essence of human labour, Marx then eschews normative principles at the price of reifying normativity. Nevertheless, Marx cannot avoid making normative validity claims. On the contrary, his critique of capitalism bursts with righteous moral indignation. However, rather than grounding his moral standpoint in the agents who oppose capitalism, he grounds it in the self-objectifying properties of labour. The irony is that by making self-constitution an ontological property of labour rather than an intersubjective property of the labour movement, Marx betrays the very principle of self-constitution by which he seeks to criticize capitalism. To this extent, argues Richard Winﬁeld, Marx’s attempt to bypass the standpoint of participants evokes a ‘natural will’ in which agency does not arise within any enacted practical relation, but rather precedes them all as an irreducible postulate. In other words, its autonomy exists not in virtue of any agreements or institutions, but in a state of nature that is a ‘natural’ condition precisely by existing independently of the will’s self-determination. Since the will itself exists in such a state of nature, being given rather than determined and brought into existence through willing’s own act, the state of nature is logically prior to any instituted relations that could be in accord with the freedom of the will. (Winﬁeld 1991, p. 92) Against the proposition that ‘self-determination’ is a transhistorical property of our ‘species being’, Winﬁeld argues that it is an historical property of our ‘social being’: ‘freedom is not a natural or monological potential, but an actual structure of interaction consisting in

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the interdirected and mutually respected actions of a plurality of wills’ (ibid.). Similarly Benhabib argues that ‘if humanity is a normative category alone, its interests would have to be deﬁned in the course of struggle and could not be speciﬁed before hand, for humanity itself would only be a telos of struggle and would not refer to a preexistent subject. Not what the theorist claims to be the human interest, but what struggling social actors themselves would come to recognize as their own common goals and desires, would constitute human interests’ (Benhabib 1986, p. 131). On occasions Marx is prepared to acknowledge that self-constitution is not a natural property of labour but an historically emergent property of modern sociality. Thus he argues that ‘human wealth’ comprises the ‘absolute working out of [humanity’s] creative potentialities, with no presuppositions other than the previous historical development …’ (Marx 1973, p. 488). 9 However, such an historical account of self-constitution (freed from its objective integument) must acknowledge its own intersubjective ground in the world.10 In which case, rather than viewing self-constitution as an inalienable property of a self-objectifying subject, it is incumbent upon Marx to view the principle of self-constitution as arising in tandem with the system that curtails it. To this extent, it is incumbent on Marx to acknowledge the extent to which his critique of capitalism rests upon a set of normative principles that only arise with modernity. Unfortunately, Marx often adopts a dismissive attitude towards the normative content of modernity as when he argues that ‘the rights of man’ are ‘nothing but the rights of a member of civil society, i.e. the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community’ (quoted in Lukes 1985, p. 65).11 But Marx can afford to be indifferent to the ‘rights of man’ only because he has already transferred their normative content to the essence of labour. Consequently, rather than grounding his critique of capitalism on the principles of ‘liberté, égalité et fraternité’ which inform the labour movement’s sense of injustice, Marx absorbs them into the ontological properties of self-objectifying labour. Marx then argues that what capitalism violates is not a historically emergent notion of selfconstitution but a transhistorical notion of self-objectiﬁcation grounded in human labour. Marx’s failure to ground his critique of capitalism in the sense of injustice experienced by workers serves to reduce their struggles, as

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Benhabib notes, to instruments of a supra-historical telos. Instead of comprising ends in themselves, workers are transformed into the mere means for a set of ‘inexorable’ historical laws (Marx 1976, p. 929). These ends are held to be commensurate with the purposes inherent within the real labour process rather than those of real workers in the capitalist production process. And yet it is only by grounding his critique of capitalism on the latter that Marx can redeem the principle of self-constitution upon which the former rests. Otherwise Marx is as guilty of blocking the normative judgements of workers as the capitalist system he condemns for blocking the selfobjectifying powers of labour. Consequently, it is only by liberating the ethos of self-constitution from the hold of self-objectiﬁcation that it is possible to redeem the normative content of Marxism.

Towards a normative account of exploitation According to Marx, workers have a right to the products they (help) produce because they objectify their purposes in them. This right is based not on the fact that workers are the sole producers of usevalues, but the fact they are the sole producers of their title of ownership – value. Thus, in so far as value is the basis for the legitimate ownership of things under capitalism, workers have a right to all the wealth (use-values) they (help) produce. However, if we understand value not as a quasi-naturalistic product of labour (à la Marx), but as an intersubjectively mediated form of entitlement (à la Hegel) then the objective connection between labour and ‘its’ products is broken. Any attempt to re-establish this link must take account not only of the intersubjectivity of exchange but also the normative validity claims it establishes. What, then, might a normative account of exploitation look like? According to Gerry Cohen, it remains possible to establish a link between labour and its products without recourse to a labour theory of value. This is because ‘Whether or not workers produce value, they produce the product, that which has value’ (Cohen 1988a, p. 226). To this extent, the question as to whether workers produce value is ‘unnecessary to the thesis that labour is exploited’ (ibid., p. 229) for ‘The worker continues to look exploited if he creates the valuable thing and does not get all the value of the thing created’ (ibid., my emphasis). However, this depends on who is doing the

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looking. From a neoclassical perspective workers are justly remunerated if wages accord with the marginal productivity of labour. For this reason, argues Geras, ‘the bare fact of having made a thing is no more than an arbitrary relation to that thing, of unclear moral relevance’ (Geras 1992, p. 60). Nevertheless, Geras is convinced that it is possible to establish a non-arbitrary and morally relevant connection between labour and the things they (help) produce grounded in ‘effort’. 12 Thus, unlike the owners of the means of production, workers expend effort in the production of goods and services. To this extent, argues Geras, workers are exploited in so far as they do not receive a ‘just reward’ for the cost of their effort (ibid., pp. 60–1).13 Unlike Marx’s model, which assumes that the rate of surplus-value can vary inversely with the experience of oppression, Geras’s equation of exploitation and oppression is more in keeping with a common sense notion of exploitation as oppression. At the same time, Geras can apply this formulation in a transhistorical fashion, grounded in the blood, sweat and tears of the actual labour process. Nevertheless, ‘effort’ is a difﬁcult thing to measure. Does it mean that coal miners are more exploited than computer operators? Do coal miners become less exploited (rather than more exploited, as Marx argues) when machines lighten their workload? The signiﬁcance of effort, for Geras, appears to reside in its unequal distribution between owners and workers. To this extent, Geras’s account of exploitation is similar to Ricardian socialists such as Hodgskin, who condemns the fact that ‘labourers must share their produce with unproductive idlers’ (Rubin 1979, p. 349) and Bray, who claims that ‘Every man has an undoubted right to all that his honest labour can procure him’ (Rubin 1979, p. 348). What these accounts share is an attempt to re-establish the connection between labour and its products lost in exchange. Unfortunately, they ignore the extent to which this reconnection rests upon a series of intersubjectively mediated validity claims. Such as the claim that workers should receive a certain amount of value in keeping with a certain amount of effort. However, once we accept that the legitimacy of capitalist property rights is established in exchange, it is only on the basis of alternative notions of equality, freedom, property and Bentham (to borrow Marx’s formulation) that their legitimacy can be challenged. In which case, it is not a question of discovering an

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attribute of labour that directly connects workers to the products they (help) produce, but of raising a normative validity claim which establishes the intersubjective validity of workers’ property claim. It follows that, in the absence of a labour theory of value, we have no choice but to begin from the normative order capitalism establishes in exchange, and this means beginning from the buying and selling of labour-time as opposed to labour-power. Granted that workers agree to relinquish control over their labour (for a speciﬁed amount of time), they also agree to relinquish any claim to ownership over the goods and services they (help) produce during the time their labour belongs to capital. The task of connecting workers to ‘their’ products is thus a matter of reconnecting workers to ‘their’ labour. At the heart of Marxist and Ricardian socialist theories of exploitation lies the claim that behind the apparent disconnection of workers and their labour in exchange lies the essential connection between them in production. This is because it is workers, and no one else, who apply their skills, expend their effort and donate their time to producing things while receiving a wage that falls short of the value of the things they (help) produce. Hence, the moral relevance of the lyrics to Ralph Chaplin’s song ‘Solidarity’ with which Cohen opens his article on exploitation: It is we who ploughed the prairies, built the cities where they trade/Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid/Now we stand outcast and starving, ’mid the wonders we have made … (Cohen 1988a, p. 209) At the heart of this song is the contrast between the ‘wonders’ workers (help) produce and their lack of any right to them. However, as Geras notes, the bare fact of having made a thing is of no clear moral relevance. What gives this ‘bare fact’ moral relevance is the claim that workers own their own labour and hence the things they (help) produce with it. But in order for this claim to be realized in practice it must be grounded in an alternative set of property rights to the effect that ‘workers should own the things they help produce’. Such a distributive claim is inseparable from the claim that workers have a right to control their own labour in the production process, not least because it is this loss of control over the production process that sunders workers from the purposes to which production is put.

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Marx believed he could circumvent this loss of purposive control by discovering a natural form of teleology that attaches itself to things in the production process. The products of labour can then be found to objectify the intentions of workers. But, as Winﬁeld (1991) notes, this refer not to the ‘empirical’ intentions of workers which, as Marx acknowledges, are informed by the purposes and plans of capitalists, but to a form of ‘transcendental’ intentionality that is the inalienable property of workers, irrespective of their actual consciousness. Consequently, if we are concerned to ground critical social theory in the critical social practices that sustain it, the purposes of labour can only be said to diverge from and come into opposition with those of capital when workers’ socially formulated purposes assume an independent organizational form. Hence the importance of ‘solidarity’ in so far as it refers to a normatively constituted bond between workers irreducible to the economic bond constituted by capital. Thus rather than laying claim to an economic bond already existing beneath the surface appearances of capitalist sociality, the bond uniting workers in a common set of interests must be forged by breaking the bonds of value production. The bonds of solidarity are generated by workers in their struggles to free themselves from the autopoietic imperatives of the system. To this extent, it is only in so far as workers are capable of breaking free from capital’s self-valorizing logic that they are capable of challenging the property rights established in exchange. Marx is, therefore, correct to prioritize self-constitution over distribution in so far as questions of economic distribution can only be raised once a degree of ethical autonomy has been established. But he is wrong to subsume the property of self-constitution beneath selfobjectiﬁcation as this robs participants of their capacity to make moral judgements as to the justice of capitalism. Thus while agreeing with Marx that capitalism violates the ethical autonomy of participants, this principle cannot be attached to labour per se without violating the ethical principles that motivate workers to free themselves from the system. Hence, the need to replace Marx’s subjectcentred account of self-constitution with an intersubjective one grounded in the struggles of participants to acquire a degree of democratic control over their own sociality. Unfortunately, attempts to reformulate critical theory on the basis of an intersubjective conception of self-constitution tend to bypass

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the claims of labour. Thus, the leading proponent of a normatively charged critical theory, Jürgen Habermas, has drawn the boundaries of intersubjectivity in a way that excludes labour from its moral remit. By limiting the normative content of modernity to ‘communicative action’, labour acquires a purely instrumental guise in keeping with the ‘non-normative’ status of the system. To this extent, Habermas’s attempt to provide an intersubjective basis for self-constitution serves only to afﬁrm the subordination of labour to capital. However, this begs the question whether labour’s instrumental status is a (transhistorical) function of its ‘metabolic’ exchange with nature or a function of its social regulation by capitalism. It is to this question that I now turn by way of an examination of Habermas’s attempt to place critical theory on an intersubjective foundation grounded in the normative content of modernity.

Part II

5 Communicative Action

In recent years the notion of an originary subject that constitutes the world in its own image has been dealt a severe blow from a number of quarters. This has led some to proclaim the ‘death of the subject’ in favour of a trans-subjective alternative, such as Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse (Foucault 1976). However, others, such as Jürgen Habermas, have sought to preserve the modern ethos of autonomy by providing it with an intersubjective foundation. In this chapter I trace the origins of Habermas’s attempt to provide critical theory with a normative ground from Marx through Georg Lukács to Habermas’s Frankfurt School predecessors. In particular, I want to emphasize the importance of Max Weber’s account of ‘instrumental reason’ on this trajectory and the errors it has led to.

From Marx to Lukács The strength of Weber’s account of modernity lies in the weakness he exploits in Marx’s. And we have seen that Marx’s decision to subsume the modern ethos of self-constitution beneath an ontological account of self-objectiﬁcation naturalizes the objectivity of capitalism. Thus, contra Marx’s claim that the development of the ‘forces of production’ facilitates humanity’s liberation from the domination of capitalist ‘relations of production’ (Marx 1976, p. 929), Weber argues that the latter are an inevitable consequence of the former. To this end, Weber regards Marx’s notion of selfobjectifying subjectivity as a species of ‘purposive’ or ‘instrumentalreason’ (Zweckrationalität). Thus, while agreeing with Marx that 91

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self-objectiﬁcation is a natural consequence of purposive labour, Weber disagrees that this can be overcome by organizing production differently. On the contrary, argues Weber, the bureaucratization of modernity is an unavoidable consequence of the increasing rationalization of production. ‘The primary source of the superiority of bureaucratic administration lies in the role of technical knowledge which, through the development of modern technology and business methods in the production of goods, has become completely indispensable. In this respect it makes no difference whether the economic system is organized on a capitalist or a socialist basis’ (Weber 1978, p. 223). This reversal is best understood in Hegelian terms. As we have seen, Hegel looks to a redemptive form of ethical ‘internalization’ (Er-innerung) to sublate the ‘externalization’ (Entäusserung) of Spirit within ‘civil society’, whereas Marx distinguishes between a natural form of ‘objectiﬁcation’ (Gegenständlichung), beyond ‘re-internalization’, and a historical form of ‘alienation’ (Entfremdung) capable of sublation (Aufhebung) by socialism. Weber, however, collapses the distinction between objectiﬁcation and alienation and argues that it is possible to ‘re-internalize’ the externalization of ‘ethical life’ only by undermining modernity’s technical progress. 1 Thus, the Enlightenment’s promise of self-constitution terminates in a bureaucratic ‘iron cage’ (stahlhärtes Gehäuse) it is our fate to build and our tragedy to inhabit (Weber 1992, p. 181). Nevertheless, Weber’s attempt to portray self-alienation as an inevitable consequence of self-objectiﬁcation does not go unchallenged. On the contrary, having come to Marxism via Weber, Georg Lukács was well placed to recognize the threat posed by the latter’s fatalistic diagnosis of modernity to the former’s emancipatory project. If Weber is correct, and the objectiﬁcation of sociality is an inevitable by-product of the development of the ‘forces of production’, then Marx’s dream of liberating humanity from capitalism’s alienated ‘relations of production’ is utterly utopian. However, rather than attempting to reopen Weber’s pessimistic elision of objectiﬁcation and alienation, as Marx does in his early critique of Hegel,2 Lukács argues that the objective character of capitalist sociality is a product of the hegemony of commodity relationships. In keeping with Simmel’s writings on money, Lukács argues that commodity exchange comprises a form of ‘reiﬁcation’ (Verdinglichung) in

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which atomized individuals are confronted by a set of objective ‘natural laws’. The atomisation of the individual is, then, only the reﬂex in consciousness of the fact that the ‘natural laws’ of capitalist production have been extended to cover every manifestation of life in society; that – for the ﬁrst time in history – the whole of society is subjected, or tends to be subjected, to a uniﬁed economic process, and that the fate of every member of society is determined by uniﬁed laws. (ibid., p. 92) To this extent, argues Lukács, the reiﬁed character of capitalism arises from its capacity to assume an ‘autocephalous’3 life of its own over and above the agents who produce it (ibid., p. 90). On this basis Lukács criticizes German idealism for failing to provide an historically informed account of the diremption of subjectivity and objectivity. Lukács begins by congratulating Kant for placing self-constituting subjectivity at the centre of his account of the objective world. Nevertheless, Lukács takes Kant’s identiﬁcation of the former with a ‘transcendental’ notion of agency as symptomatic of the alienation of ‘empirical subjects’ from their sociality under capitalism. To this extent, the ‘epistemological doublings’ which characterize Kant’s attempt to overcome the diremption of ‘autonomy’ and ‘heteronomy’ express ‘the unresolved, insoluble and … permanent conﬂict between freedom and necessity …’ in social reality (ibid., p. 124). Kant’s failure to sublate modernity’s dialectic of freedom and determinism provokes Fichte and Hegel to seek a more comprehensive conception of reason capable of (re-)internalizing its dirempted parts. ‘In contrast to the dogmatic acceptance of a merely given reality – divorced from the subject – they required that every datum should be understood as the product of the identical subject-object, and every duality should be seen as a special case derived from this pristine unity’ (ibid., p. 123). Having argued that the ‘heteronomy’ of the world is the creation of an alienated subject, it is then incumbent upon Fichte and Hegel to identify a ‘subject’ capable of ‘re-internalizing’ the alienated world. To this end, argues Lukács, ‘it is necessary both to discover the site from which to resolve all these problems and to also exhibit concretely the “we” which is the subject of history, that “we” whose action is in fact history’ (ibid., p. 144). However, just

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as Hegel rejects Fichte’s self-objectifying ‘ego’ (Ich) as too subjective, so Lukács rejects Hegel’s World Spirit (Geist) as too objective. Thus Lukács criticizes Hegel for subsuming the ‘spirit of the people’ beneath a supra-human ‘World Spirit’. As this means that: the spirit of a people only seems to be the subject of history, the doer of its deeds … [When] in fact it is the World Spirit that makes use of that ‘natural character’ of a people which corresponds to the actual requirements and to the idea of the World Spirit and accomplishes its deeds by means of and in spite of the spirit of the people. (ibid., p. 146) However, rather than attempting to recuperate Hegel’s ‘spirit of the people’, Lukács follows Marx in locating the ‘we’ that is the subject of history in human labour. To this end, he commends Marx for discovering that ‘beneath the cloak of the thing lay a relation between men … beneath the quantifying crust there was a qualitative living core. Now this core is revealed it becomes possible to recognize the fetish character of every commodity based on the commodity character of labour power …’ (ibid., p. 169). Having discovered that the objectiﬁcation of capitalism is predicated on the subjectiﬁcation of its agents, Lukács argues that the latter’s consciousness plays a key role in overcoming the reiﬁcation of the former. This follows from the fact that the proletariat’s consciousness ‘is not the knowledge of an opposed object but is the selfconsciousness of the object: the act of consciousness overthrows the objective form of its object’ (ibid., p. 178). Consequently, the more workers recognize themselves as the producers of capital, the more they reappropriate the ‘objective’ structures of capitalism.4 ‘[W]hen the worker knows himself as a commodity his knowledge is practical. That is to say, this knowledge brings about an objective structural change in the object of knowledge’ (ibid.). However, in so far as a change in the consciousness of the proletariat brings about a change in the reiﬁed state of capitalism, Lukács leaves himself open to the charge of ‘idealism’ (Althusser 1979, p. 140). Despite stressing, in his later essays, the importance of ‘the party’ in dereifying the system, Lukács found himself condemned by the Fifth Congress of the Comintern for ‘voluntarism’. This rebuke, in conjunction with Stalin’s authoritarian leadership of the Soviet

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Union and the publication of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, led Lukács to renounce his elision of self-objectiﬁcation and self-alienation in favour of Marx’s distinction between them. Thus in the 1967 Preface to the German edition of History and Class Consciousness, Lukács argues that his attempt to ‘out-Hegel Hegel’ was a failure because ‘when the identical subject object transcends alienation it must also transcend objectiﬁcation at the same time. But … to take it back into the subject would mean the end of objective reality and thus of any reality at all’ (ibid., p. xxiii) whereas Lukács now believes that ‘objectiﬁcation is … a phenomen[on] that cannot be eliminated from human life in society’, in so far as it comprises a ‘neutral phenomena’ that accompanies all human practices (ibid., p. xxiv). However, by accepting that the ‘objectiﬁcation’ of capitalist sociality is an inevitable consequence of the purposive transformation of nature, Lukács leaves Marxism defenceless against Weber’s identiﬁcation of self-objectifying subjectivity and the heteronomy of capitalist sociality.

From Lukács to Habermas Although Lukács is unable to resolve the problems created by his attempts to reincorporate capitalist objectivity into an historically emergent ‘subject–object unity’, his critical combination of Simmel, Weber and Marx proved highly inﬂuential on the Frankfurt School. Thus Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse were strongly inﬂuenced by Lukács’s attempt to transform Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism into a comprehensive critique of Occidental reason. However, it is not the Frankfurt School’s attempts to subsume Weber’s fatalistic diagnosis of modernity beneath Marx’s emancipatory conception of material progress, but their later reversal of this schema for which they are now best known.5 As such, the Frankfurt School is associated with Adorno and Horkheimer’s attempt, in The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1972), to ground modern alienation in humanity’s primordial struggle for self-preservation. Echoing Weber’s pessimistic account of modernity, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that: ‘Men pay for the increase of their power with alienation from that over which they exercise their power. Enlightenment behaves toward things as a dictator towards men’ (ibid., p. 9).6 In this way, argues Habermas, Adorno and Horkheimer

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sought to ‘anchor the mechanism that produces the reiﬁcation of consciousness in the anthropological foundations of the history of the species, in the form of existence of a species that has to reproduce itself through labor’ (Habermas 1984b, p. 379). With the association of modern ‘totalitarianism’ with the development of instrumental reason, the Frankfurt School abandoned Marx’s emancipatory faith in the proletariat for a non-labour-based form of critical theory that culminates, according to Habermas, in Adorno’s quasi-Heideggerian contention that the reconciliation of subjectivity and objectivity lies in the ‘mimetic’ character of high art (ibid.). To correct what he sees as an error grounded in his Frankfurt School predecessor’s indebtedness to an exhausted ‘philosophy of consciousness’ (ibid.), Habermas takes a detour through Hegel’s early writings in order to retrieve an intersubjective foundation for consciousness: Because Hegel does not link the constitution of the ‘I’ to the reﬂection of the solitary ‘I’ on itself, but instead understands it in terms of formative processes, namely the communicative agreement [Eigigung] of opposing subjects, it is not reﬂection as such which is decisive, but rather the medium in which the identity of the universal and the individual is formed. (Habermas 1973, p. 152) To this extent, Habermas ﬁnds in Hegel’s early writings the outlines of a theory of ‘communicative action’ in which subjectivity is constituted not through a solitary self-reﬂecting conscious, but agreement between subjects. Nevertheless, it is not Habermas’s wish to overturn completely the ‘philosophy of consciousness’ in favour of an ‘intersubjective’ account of modernity. On the contrary, Habermas is concerned only to create a space in which the latter can free itself from the objectifying properties of the former. Consequently, Habermas shares with his Frankfurt predecessors a Weberian-inspired view that the reiﬁcation of sociality is an inevitable result of the purposive character of labour. ‘As consciousness gains the unintended fruit of its labor through technical rules, it returns back to itself from its reiﬁcation, and, indeed, it returns as the cunning [or artful] consciousness which, in its instrumental action, turns its experience of natural processes against these processes themselves’ (ibid., p. 154).

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What emerges from this critique is a dualistic account of humanity’s development via two independent but complementary forms of selfconstitution. This analysis ﬁnds an early formulation in the essay ‘Technology and Science as “Ideology”’ (1971)7 written to commemorate Marcuse’s seventieth birthday (1968). In this essay Habermas criticizes Marcuse for identifying an instrumental stance towards nature with the domination of humanity, on the grounds that this means critical theory is only possible on the basis of a non-instrumental relationship to nature in which ‘we can encounter her as an opposing partner in a possible interaction’ (ibid., p. 88). Contra Marcuse, Habermas seeks the other of instrumentalism not in the aesthetic-expressive dimension, but in the social dimension of ‘symbolic interaction’ (ibid.). To this end, Habermas distinguishes between (a) purposive-rational action whose instrumental orientation to nature is regulated by technical rules and (b) communicative action whose ethical orientation to others is regulated by consensual norms (ibid., pp. 91–2).8 This permits Habermas to circumvent Weber’s fatal elision of objectiﬁcation and alienation in favour of an alternative form of ethical sociality grounded in ‘communicative action’. Thus while agreeing with Weber that purposive labour generates an objective social system above and beyond its participants, Habermas preserves a normative notion of self-constitution within the intersubjective lifeworld from which to launch a critique of the former. To this extent, Habermas departs from his Frankfurt predecessors in two key respects. On the one hand, he adopts a sanguine view of the loss of freedom that accompanies the development of ‘instrumental reason’. While, on the other hand, he views ‘communicative action’ as a normative bulwark against the former’s tendency to subject the ethos of self-constitution to the demands of technical efﬁciency. Having thus separated the subject–object domain (in which labour confronts nature in a teleological fashion) from the subject–subject domain of symbolic interaction, Habermas sets about replacing Adorno and Horkheimer’s mimetic orientation to nature with an intersubjective notion of ‘reciprocal recognition’ modelled on George Herbert Mead’s account of ‘symbolic interaction’. ‘This means, on the one hand, a change of paradigm within action theory, from goal-directed to communicative action and, on the other hand, a change of strategy in an effort to reconstruct the modern concept

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of rationality that became possible within the decentration of our understanding of the world’ (ibid., pp. 391–2). The resulting dualistic account of humanity allows Habermas to counter an instrumental orientation to nature with the notion that ‘the human species maintains itself through the socially coordinated activities of its members’ (ibid.). Habermas can then avoid the amalgam of objectiﬁcation and alienation that stymied his predecessors’ accounts of modernity, by arguing that the self-constitution of the species takes two independent routes – one leading through the subject–object realm of instrumental labour and the other through the subject–subject realm of normative interaction. Consequently, in so far as ‘coordination has to be established through communication – and in certain central spheres through communication aimed at reaching agreement – then the reproduction of the species also requires satisfying the conditions of a rationality that is inherent in communicative action’ (Habermas 1984b, p. 397). Having thus detached the objective form of sociality grounded in labour from the intersubjective form grounded in mutual understanding, Habermas argues that: ‘The utopian perspective of reconciliation and freedom is ingrained in the conditions for the communicative sociation of individuals; it is built into the linguistic mechanism of the reproduction of the species’ (ibid., p. 398). This forms the basis for his contention that modernity is characterized by the ‘uncoupling’ of the (economic) system from the (symbolic) lifeworld.

The uncoupling of system and lifeworld According to Habermas, in the pre-modern era both ‘material’ and ‘symbolic’ forms of self-constitution are integrated within an overarching normative order. ‘In the non-monetarized economic activities of archaic societies, the mechanism of exchange has so little detached itself from normative contexts that a clear separation between economic and non-economic values is hardly possible’ (Habermas 1987a, p. 163). However, as the capacity of the species to dominate nature develops, there emerges an independent economic realm that uncouples itself from the lifeworld (ibid., p. 168). This culminates in a modern form of capitalist economy in which participants are governed by the ‘non-normative steering mechanism’ money.

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In conjunction with the emergence of a modern self-regulating economy, there arises an administrative state apparatus, which also achieves a measure of independence from the normative lifeworld in so far as it relies on the quasi-instrumental ‘steering mechanism’ of power. To this extent, the more money and power transcend their intersubjective context in the lifeworld, the more linguistically mediated forms of ‘social integration’ are replaced by non-linguistically mediated forms of ‘system integration’. ‘Media such as money and power attach to empirical ties; they encode a purposive-rational attitude toward calculable amounts of value and make it possible to exert generalized, strategic inﬂuence on the decisions of other participants while bypassing processes of consensus-orientated communication’ (Habermas 1987b, p. 183). With what Habermas (following Luhmann) refers to as the ‘technicization of the lifeworld’, the system comes to ‘ethically neutralize’ those sections of human endeavour oriented towards the material reproduction of the species (Habermas 1987a, p. 310). 9 However, unlike Weber, for whom this inevitably results in an all-encompassing bureaucratic system, Habermas argues that the rise of ‘non-normative’ steering mechanisms is offset by a ‘normatively’ steered lifeworld. The notion of ‘lifeworld’ (Lebenswelt) is taken from Husserl and Schutz, for whom it represents the general background values, beliefs and ideas that comprise the intersubjective realm of everyday life. To this extent, the lifeworld is both reproduced by participants through their symbolic interactions and comprises an historical resource that transcends them. Habermas then expands their notion of lifeworld to include: (a) the normatively integrated sociality that preceded modernity; (b) the portion of sociality which is ‘technicized’ by the system; and (c) the remaining symbolic sphere in which ‘communicative action’ emerges. Thus, while the lifeworld retains pre-modern residues, Habermas is concerned to emphasize the extent to which its rationalization by the system generates a compensatory form of ‘communicative action’, which performs three key ‘functions’ for modernity. ‘Under the functional aspect of mutual understanding, communicative action serves to transmit and renew cultural knowledge; under the aspect of co-ordinating action, it serves social integration and the establishment of solidarity; ﬁnally under the aspect of socialization, communicative action serves the formation of personal identities’ (Habermas 1987a, p. 137). This in turn

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corresponds to the structural distinction that Talcott Parsons makes between ‘culture’, ‘society’ and ‘personality’. I use the term culture for the stock of knowledge from which participants in communication supply themselves with interpretations as they come to an understanding about something in the world. I use the term society for the legitimate orders through which participants regulate their membership in social groups and thereby secure solidarity. By personality I understand the competencies that make a subject capable of speaking and acting, that put him in a position to take part in processes of reaching understanding and thereby to assert his own identity. (Habermas 1987a, p. 138) Habermas then differentiates between those aspects of the lifeworld which fall within the private and those which fall within the ‘public sphere’ (Öffenlichkeit): The institutional core of the private sphere is the nuclear family, relieved of productive functions and specialized tasks of socialization; from the systemic perspective of the economy, it is viewed as the environment of private households. The institutional core of the public sphere comprises communicative networks ampliﬁed by a cultural complex, a press and, later, mass media; they make it possible for a public of art-enjoying private persons to participate in the reproduction of culture, and for a public of citizens of the state to participate in the social integration mediated by public opinion. (Habermas 1987a, p. 319) It is the ‘public sphere’ which, according to Habermas, carries the normative hopes of humanity, in so far as it enables participants to interrogate reﬂexively the background assumptions of their culture through the deployment of ‘communicative reason’.

The emergence of communicative reason The notion of ‘communicative reason’ comprises Habermas’s most important reworking of the critical tradition in which he stands. Nevertheless, it groans under the weight of the theoretical burden placed upon it. This is because it seeks to combine all the normative

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counterweights that emerge in contradistinction to the subsumption of the lifeworld beneath ‘an instrumental attitude toward work interpreted in utilitarian terms’ (Habermas 1984b, p. 241). To this extent, it encompasses Rousseau’s account of ‘popular sovereignty’, Kant’s ‘practical reason’, Hegel’s ‘ethical totality’, Marx’s ‘utopia of labour’, Mead’s ‘symbolic interactionism’, Durkheim’s ‘organic solidarity’, Lukács’s ‘subject–object identity’, Peirce’s ‘communicative community’, Parson’s ‘culture’ and linguistic theory from Wittgenstein through Austin to Apel inter alia. Armed with this impressive array of normative resources Habermas contends that Weber wrongly argues that normative ends lose their ‘objective’ force once they are rationalized by the system. On the contrary, argues Habermas, the dissolution of a theologically-based form of substantive ethics gives way, under the impetus of rationalization, to a new form of procedural morality (ibid., pp. 209–15). To this extent, ‘the binding force of moral agreement grounded in the sacred’ is transformed into a mode of ‘moral agreement that expresses in rational form what was always intended in the symbolism of the holy’ (Habermas 1987a, p. 81). In other words, with the secularization of ethical agreement, ‘Convictions owe their authority less and less to the spellbinding power and the aura of the holy, and more and more to a consensus that is not merely reproduced but achieved, that is, brought about communicatively’ (ibid., p. 89). It follows that the more the system comes to ‘de-linguistify’ the premodern lifeworld – by making social integration a function of ‘nonnormative’ steering mechanisms – the more the ‘linguistiﬁcation of the sacred’ ensures that ‘social integration no longer takes place directly via institutionalized values but by way of intersubjective recognition of validity claims raised in speech acts’ (ibid.). Although Habermas denies that this schema possesses a teleological intent (Habermas 1990, p. 210), he retains an evolutionary vocabulary to trace the development of communicative reason through a series of ‘problem-solving’ stages (1990, p. 125). To this extent, ‘morality as grounded by discourse ethics is based on a pattern inherent in mutual understanding in language from the beginning …’ (ibid., p. 163). This inherent component of language culminates in the modern ‘post-conventional’ stage of morality in which participants no longer seek to justify their beliefs on the basis of traditionally ascribed norms, but on the basis of rational

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discourse. This, however, makes ‘the autonomous justiﬁcation of morality an unavoidable problem’ as the ‘very perspective that makes consensus possible are now at issue’ (ibid., p. 162). Fortunately, the modern problem of ‘self-assurance’ contains its own solution, as the conditions which render normative justiﬁcation possible are located within the ‘discursive procedure that redeems claims to validity’ (ibid., p. 163). Thus the threat of ‘relativism’, which haunts the intersubjective redemption of validity claims, is avoided by discovering the rules of ‘fundamental reciprocity’ inherent within the primordial structures of communicative action (ibid.). It follows that ‘Once a community of believers has been secularized into a community of cooperation, only a universalistic morality can obtain its obligatory character’ (Habermas 1987a, p. 90). In short, with the transition from a religious to a communicative-based ethic of social regulation the universal and unconditional forms of normative integration inherent in sacred forms of social solidarity from the outset manifest themselves in the procedures of ‘communicative reason’. Habermas’s account of ‘communicative reason’ is modelled on Emile Durkheim’s attempt to apply the binding force of the sacred to the modern problem of social order (Durkheim 1965). Thus, like Durkheim, Habermas seeks to retain the universal, unconditional and quasi-transcendental properties of pre-modern forms of morality, while jettisoning their metaphysical underpinnings. However, unlike Durkheim’s substantive notion of collective conscious, ‘communicative reason’ is a purely procedural affair grounded in the dialogical generation of consensus: The rationality of values underlying action preferences is not measured by their material content but by formal properties … Only values that can be abstracted and generalized into principles, internalized largely as formal principles, and applied procedurally, have so intensive a power to orient action that they can cut across various particular situations and, in the extreme case systematically penetrate all spheres of life and bring an entire bibliography, or even the history of social groups, under a unifying idea. (1984b, pp. 171–2) ‘Communicative reason’ is therefore a child of Weberian rationalism, in so far as it eschews a substantive notion of ‘the good life’ in favour of the formal procedures which endow arguments that have

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successfully navigated its ‘tribunal of reason’ (the phrase is Kant’s) with universal validity (Habermas 1990, p. 178). However, unlike Kant’s monological attempt to make room for a ‘kingdom of ends’ in a world of heteronomous causal laws, Habermas’s dialogical conception of ‘practical reason’ seeks to make actual argumentative practices the test of modern reason. Thus, while retaining Kant’s goal of achieving ‘a universally valid view of the world’ in which what is good for each is in the interests of all, ‘communicative reason’ no longer relies on the categorical imperative to ensure that each acts on maxims that comprise rules for all (Habermas 1995, p. 117). In its place, Habermas proposes ‘an inclusive and noncoercive rational discourse among free and equal participants’ that is capable of generating a ‘we-perspective’ in the manner of Mead’s ‘ideal role-taking’ in which each adopts the standpoint of the other (ibid.). At the same time, Habermas maintains Kant’s trifurcation of reason as distinct ‘validity spheres’, each with its own criteria of evaluation. Thus validity claims raised in relation to the ‘objective world’ are judged on the basis of their truth and efﬁcacy. Validity claims raised in relation to the ‘intersubjective’ (or social) world are judged on the basis of their ethical correctness and rightness, while validity claims raised in relation to the ‘subjective world’ are judged on the basis of their sincerity and authenticity (Habermas 1984b, p. 84). All three worlds are then united by a common set of procedural rules designed to bring about the dialogical redemption of validity claims. ‘Speakers integrate the three formal world-concepts, which appear in the other models of action either singly or in pairs, into a system and presuppose this system in common a framework of interpretation within which they can reach an understanding’ (ibid., p. 98). To this extent, all three worlds are located within a normatively regulated context presided over by the democratic principles of communicative reason. Of these three ‘validity spheres’ Habermas is most concerned with the ‘social world’: not least because it comprises the realm in which our orientation to all three ‘worlds’ are intersubjectively redeemed.

Discourse ethics and modernity According to Habermas, ‘discourse ethics’ comprises a self-reﬂexive space of argumentation that detaches itself from the ethical structure of the lifeworld and permits participants to arrive at a truly moral

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point of view. The moral viewpoint is not bound in space and time as ethical principles are, but presupposes a ‘limitless communicative community’ in which the force of the better argument prevails. Nevertheless, despite its transhistorical sweep ‘discourse ethics’ is designed to preserve the modern ‘idea of autonomy according to which human beings act as free subjects only in so far as they obey just those laws they give themselves in accordance with insights they have acquired intersubjectively’ (Habermas 1996, pp. 445–6). To this extent, ‘discourse ethics’ reserve a place for self-constitution in a society dominated by the objective imperatives of the economy. It achieves this by specifying the formal procedures that must be met for normative rules to receive the stamp of social validity. ‘Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse’ (Habermas 1990, p. 66). Nevertheless, despite embodying normative rules that only emerge with modernity ‘discourse ethics’ realizes principles that are grounded in language orientated to reaching understanding from the outset. Thus, according to Habermas: in the symmetry conditions and reciprocity expectations of everyday speech orientated to reaching understanding there already exists in nuce the basic notions of equal treatment and general welfare on which all morality turns, even in premodern societies. The ideas of justice and solidarity are already implicit in the idealizing presuppositions of communicative action, above all in the reciprocal recognition of persons capable of orientating their actions to validity claims. (Habermas 1993, p. 50) Thus what Habermas refers to as an ‘ideal speech situation’ is present in the meaning structure of language itself. To this extent, meaning and morality are interwoven in ‘communicative action’ through the overlap of understanding (Verständigung) and agreement (Einverständnis). Nevertheless, ‘discourse ethics’ is a modern phenomenon in so far as it requires the development of certain social conditions before its ideals can be realized in practice – conditions such as ‘freedom of access, equal rights to participate, truthfulness on the part of participants, absence of coercion in taking positions, and so forth’ (Habermas 1993, p. 56). As Habermas

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acknowledges, ‘discourse ethics’ is dependent on a modern form of democratic life to ‘meet it halfway’ (Habermas 1990, p. 109). However, while modernity is a sine qua non for the realization of ‘discourse ethics’, the latter transcends the historical context in which it is realized. This is because ‘discourse ethics’ can produce universal moral rules only by bursting free of every social context – including the modern social context that makes it possible. Habermas is motivated to ground the procedures of ‘discourse ethics’ in a transhistorical conception of language out of a fear of relativism. Nevertheless, as we have seen with Marx, any attempt to provide the normative content of modernity with a transhistorical foundation contradicts the very principle of self-constitution that comprises the ‘ethical life’ of modernity. To this extent, modernity and ‘discourse ethics’ have an uneasy relationship to one another. Although ‘discourse ethics’ is dependent on modernity for its historical realization, modernity comprises a vehicle for the realization of ‘discourse ethics’. Thus the capacity of modernity to transcend its historical context is predicated on the transhistorical capacity of ‘discourse ethics’ to transcend all social contexts, including that of modernity. Hence, Habermas’s assertion that ‘in modern societies, moral norms … are ground solely in an abstract social identity that is henceforth circumscribed only by the status of membership in some society not in this or that particular society’ (Habermas 1993, p. 47). Thus in so far as ‘discourse ethics’ is beholden to modernity for the conditions that make it possible, its capacity to transcend all historical contexts rests on a particular form of ‘ethical life’ which emerges only with modernity. Consequently, Habermas circumvents relativism only by absolutizing modernity. Modernity is the culmination of an historical process that is implicit in language from the outset. The institutional setting that makes ‘discourse ethics’ possible serves to realize a potential in language that is alienated from itself in pre-modern times. With the emergence of modernity the normative principles inherent in ‘communicative action’ acquire an institutional form in keeping with the latter’s intersubjective essence, while modernity acquires an ‘unconditional’ status in keeping with the capacity of ‘discourse ethics’ to transcend time and space. To this extent, Habermas’s account of ‘discourse ethics’, despite claims to the contrary, is indebted to a philosophy of history

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that culminates in modernity. The normative content of modernity thus remains beholden to a developmental logic that reduces social agents to mere means for the realization of moral formulations present within language from the outset. The normative content of modernity results, not from an intersubjective process of argumentation, but from a supra-historical telos that employs participants as means (in the manner of a Hegelian Spirit) to realize its own worldtranscending ends. To this extent, Habermas’s account of language bears the hallmarks of pre-modern forms of sociality. What they each have in common is a tendency to absolutize social life by attaching its contingent historical principles to a set of necessary universal laws. In pre-modern societies this takes a religious form whereby morality is endowed with a cosmic status in line with the ends of a suprahuman deity or power. The ‘unconditionality’ that Habermas attaches to successfully redeemed validity claims seeks to preserve the context-bursting characteristics of religion without the contextspeciﬁc notion of God. ‘Postmetaphysical thought differs from religion in that it recovers the meaning of the unconditional without recourse to God or an absolute’ (Habermas 1993, p. 146). Nevertheless, whether or not we personify the absolute by associating it with a deity, the claims that Habermas makes for ‘discourse ethics’ have a distinctly pre-modern (and in Habermasian terms) ‘metaphysical’ ring. In this light ‘discourse ethics’ resembles a space in which what is true, moral and authentic in itself manifests itself to us. In which case, ‘discourse ethics’ retains a foothold in religion, if only because there is no other answer to the question ‘why should we be moral?’ (ibid.). Having thus lifted morality far above the everyday interests of ‘ethical life’, humanity is left demotivated by its own moral ascendancy. ‘In this respect,’ argues Habermas, ‘it may perhaps be said that to seek to salvage an unconditional meaning without God is a futile undertaking …’ (ibid.). However, rather than viewing Habermas’s evocation of the absolute as an atavistic legacy of pre-modern times, I want to emphasize what modern and pre-modern forms of sociality have in common – namely, a lack of democratic control over the structures which inform social identity. To this extent, Habermas’s failure to generate a sense of morality that corresponds to the normative

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context of modernity is symptomatic of modernity’s failure to redeem the promise of self-constitution in practice. The fact that ‘discourse ethics’ seeks both to realize the modern ethos of selfconstitution and place it on an absolute footing which negates the autonomy of participants manifests tensions inherent within modernity. This tension can be recast in terms of the system’s role in (a) making possible the conditions for an intersubjective form of ethical autonomy, while (b) comprising its heteronomous other. To this extent, the emergence of a lifeworld grounded in ‘action orientated to mutual understanding’ and a system grounded in ‘action orientated to success’ are not only ‘complimentary developments’ but also ‘counteracting tendencies’. Only if we differentiate Gesellschafthandeln into action orientated to reaching an understanding and action orientated to success can we conceive the communicative rationalization of everyday action and the formation of subsystems of purposive-rational economic and administrative action as complimentary developments. Both reﬂect, it is true, the institutional embodiment of rational complexes, but in other respects they are counteracting tendencies. (Habermas 1984b, p. 341) With the uncoupling of lifeworld and system, each sphere comes to embody a different set of rational criteria depending on whether participants are seeking to achieve a consensus on moral actions or the success of instrumental ones. This creates a potential for conﬂict between, on the one hand, a rationalization of everyday communication that is tied to the structures of intersubjectivity of the lifeworld, in which language counts as the genuine and irreplaceable medium of reaching understanding, and, on the other hand, the growing complexity of subsystems of purposive-rational action, in which actions are coordinated through steering media such as money and power. (Habermas 1984b, p. 342) As a consequence modernity is threatened on two sides – by ‘atavistic’ social movements ranging (somewhat incongruously) from Marxism to ‘religious fundamentalism’ which seek to dissolve the

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system into the lifeworld,10 and by ‘positivistic’ forces which seek to dissolve the lifeworld into the system in the name of ‘instrumental reason’. Although both lead to ‘pathological’ consequences, Habermas’s reputation as a critical theorist rests on his attempt to protect the lifeworld from the system. This arises when ‘communicative action’ no longer beneﬁts from its rationalization by the system, but is damaged by its incursions. ‘The rationalization of the lifeworld makes possible the emergence and growth of subsystems whose independent imperatives turn back destructively upon the lifeworld itself’ (Habermas 1987a, p. 186). Habermas formulates this in terms of an imperialistic metaphor in which ‘the imperatives of autonomous subsystem make their way into the lifeworld from the outside – like colonial masters coming into a tribal society – and force a process of assimilation upon it’ (Habermas 1987a, p. 355). However, this analogy is inappropriate in so far as the lifeworld is worthy of protection only if it has already been rationalized by the system. Thus, according to Habermas, the rationalization of the lifeworld by the system is considered progressive in so far as it transforms a theologically-based form of substantive morality into a secular form of procedural morality. But it becomes regressive when the system attempts to subsume ‘practical reason’ under its ‘instrumental’ guise. To this extent, modern ‘pathologies’ such as ‘reiﬁcation’, ‘anomie’, ‘meaninglessness’, ‘loss of freedom’, ‘hedonism’ and ‘distortions’ in ‘communicative action’ arise after, and not as a consequence of, the ‘technicization of the lifeworld’ by the system (Habermas 1987a, pp. 148 and 325). Thus, the task of critical theory is not to liberate the lifeworld from the system tout court, but to protect the rationalized portion of the lifeworld from complete subsumption beneath the system. 11 In other words, the task is not ‘to supersede an economic system having a capitalist life of its own and a system of domination having a bureaucratic life of its own but to erect a democratic dam against the colonization of the lifeworld’ (Habermas 1992b, p. 444). This, however, raises the question as to the point at which the progressive ‘mediatization’ of the lifeworld is transformed into its regressive ‘colonization’: If bureaucratization has to be viewed, to begin with, as a normal component of modernization processes, the question arises of how to distinguish from this those pathological variants to which

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Weber referred to with his thesis of a loss of freedom. In order to locate, at least in analytic terms, the threshold at which the mediatization of the lifeworld turns into its colonization … (Habermas 1987a, p. 318) According to John Sitton (1996), the viability of Habermas’s critical project depends on its capacity to answer this question. Nevertheless, it is not one to which Habermas gives an unequivocal response. On the contrary, Habermas’s dualistic account of modernity makes an equivocal response almost inevitable given his concern to reconcile the capacity of agents to regulate their own sociality with the system’s capacity to regulate itself. Thus while Habermas is concerned to underwrite the capacity of agents (in the lifeworld) to render their sociality democratically accountable, he is also concerned to prevent the latter from undermining the technical gains institutionalized in the system – including the techniques employed by ‘discourse ethics’ to transcend the lifeworld. As a consequence, ‘communicative reason’ is caught between two opposing forms of rationality, one grounded in the lifeworld judgements of participants, the other grounded in the objective imperatives of the system. These two opposed forms of rationality render the universal status claimed for ‘discourse ethics’ problematic.

The ‘universal’ status of discourse ethics In the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas writes of his concern to steer ‘between the Scylla of absolutism and the Charybdis of relativism …’ (Habermas 1987b, p. 300). However, as we have seen, Habermas, like Odysseus before him (Homer 1992, pp. 126–31), is more concerned to avoid the ‘whirlpool’ of relativism than the ‘monster’ of absolutism. 12 Hence Habermas’s decision to adopt what Albrecht Wellmer refers to as a set of ‘unconditional validity claims … which transcends each particular language and each particular life-form’ (Wellmer 1991, p. 164). Thus, while validity claims are always raised ‘here and now’ they possess a capacity which ‘“blots out” space and time …’ (Habermas 1987b, p. 323),13 thereby transforming historically valid ‘ethical’ valuations into universally valid ‘moral’ ones. But what comprises the ground for this universal dimension to ‘ethical life’?

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As we have seen, the capacity of ‘discourse ethics’ to transcend its lifeworld context is grounded in language oriented to reaching understanding from the outset. However, it is only with the rationalization of the lifeworld by the system that this acquires a ‘postconventional’ form free of substantive historical contexts. To this extent, ‘the formally organized spheres of action of the bourgeoisie (the economy and the state apparatus) form the foundation of the post-traditional lifeworld of the homme (the private sphere) and the citoyen (the public sphere)’ (Habermas 1987a, p. 328). This would suggest that the capacity of ‘discourse ethics’ to transcend the social context in which validity claims are raised, is parasitic upon the capacity of the system to transcend the lifeworld in which participants redeem validity claims. Thus, there exists a symbiotic relationship between the system’s capacity to invest ‘discourse ethics’ with context-transcending powers and its capacity to regulate a portion of the lifeworld in a ‘non-normative fashion’. To this extent, the problems associated with Habermas’s attempt to provide ‘discourse ethics’ with context-transcending powers has its roots in the capacity of the system to ‘colonize’ the lifeworld. It is therefore no coincidence that the objective rules of ‘discourse ethics’ and the ‘non-normative’ structures which regulate the system both contradict the democratic principles that the former is designed to safeguard. This manifests itself in a conﬂict between the intersubjective character of the actual argumentation process and its capacity to transcend all intersubjective contexts. At the very least, this suggests that the content of the argumentation possesses a different status to the formal rules that ascribe context-transcending properties to redeemed validity claims. In order to ensure that all claims which pass the dialogical test of discursive procedures are imbued with a ‘context transcending validity’, Habermas argues that ‘every argumentation, regardless of the context in which it occurs, rests on pragmatic presuppositions from whose propositional content the principle of universalism (U) can be derived’ (Habermas 1990, p. 82). In support of this claim Habermas adopts Apel’s argument that even when we attempt to refute such presuppositions, we nevertheless employ them. To this extent, there is something ‘inescapable’ about the rules of discursivity that means speakers commit a ‘performative contradiction’ in the act of denying them. This is signiﬁcant in so far as ‘the existence

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of performative contradictions helps to identify the rules necessary for an argumentation game to work; if one is to argue at all, there are no substitutes’ (Habermas 1990, p. 95). Nevertheless, Habermas is aware of the dangers inherent in such a formulation – especially with regard to Apel’s less cautious use of it. For this reason Habermas argues that the ‘must’ to which agents are subjected by the rules of discourse is only a form of ‘weak transcendental necessitation’ and not the ‘prescriptive must of a rule of action’ (Habermas 1993, p. 81). As such, the rules of discourse are too weak to compel action, but strong enough to lift redeemed validity claims out of their historical context.14 Nevertheless, Habermas remains vulnerable to the charge that ‘discourse ethics’ entails a ‘performative contradiction’ of its own in so far as the procedures which ‘universalize’ redeemed validity claims have not themselves been discursively redeemed by participants. Thus the fact that Habermas’s putative discovery of context-transcending rules remains controversial is itself contradictory in that the universality of validity claims is supposed to reﬂect agreement between participants. But in this case there is no agreement. Thus, Habermas’s transcendental ‘must’ is imposed on participants against their will – in an authoritarian fashion. In order to escape such a ‘performative contradiction’ Benhabib argues that the ‘necessity’, which grounds the principles of ‘discourse ethics’, must itself be grounded in a modern form of ‘ethical life’. To this end, Benhabib argues, ‘even the so-called “universal” pragmatic presuppositions of human discourse have a culturalhistorical content built into them’ which derives from the Enlightenment attempt to transcend all empirical differences in the name of human equality (Benhabib 1986, p. 306). We are thus confronted by two opposed notions of ‘universality’ – one that derives from the capacity of ‘discourse ethics’ to transcend the ‘ethical life’ of modernity and the other that derives from the drive to generalize the ‘ethical life’ of modernity. While the former comprises an ontology that can be disclosed through an epistemological validity claim, the latter corresponds to a speciﬁc historical form of life and hence comprises an ethical validity claim. As such, there is disagreement not only as to the status of redeemed validity claims, but also as to the appropriateness of their type. Habermas makes clear his continued allegiance to positivism by appealing to cognitive validity

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claims in his analysis of social values to the detriment of normative ones, whereas Bernstein, in support of a normative conception of universality, argues that ‘the force of the claim of universality derives not from its utter universality, its speaking to the unlimited communication community, but rather from the fact that it acknowledges claims which existing universality suppresses; the new universality reveals past universality to be the non-acknowledgement of implicit claims, the reiﬁcation of an inessential particularity’ (Bernstein 1995, p. 194). Thus rather than attempting to ground the universality of ‘discourse ethics’ in the capacity to transcend all forms of ‘ethical life’, Bernstein argues that it is grounded in a form of ‘ethical life’ dedicated to securing equal participation irrespective of empirical differences. The drive for greater universality is not, then, a drive for ‘utter universality’ – the transcendence of all historically limited social contexts – but a drive for ‘ethical universality’ – the transcendence of the particular masquerading as universals. In other words, rather than assuming a pre-existing form of human solidarity grounded in language (which trumps ethical particulars), human solidarity is a social construct grounded in the normative content of modernity (which endeavours to unite ethical particulars). David Couzens Hoy makes a similar point in debate with Thomas McCarthy when he argues that: ‘If solidarity starts locally, it can be expanded as we widen our interpretations through forward-looking encounters with others. But there is no reason to posit a single, universal solidarity at the end of the process’ (Hoy and McCarthy 1994, p. 262). Having thus distinguished between a normative notion of universality, grounded in modernity, and an unconditional one, grounded in language from the outset, Bernstein sets the former against the historical conditions that make the latter possible – namely, the capacity of the system to transcend the lifeworld. Thus, according to Bernstein, the critical force of ‘communicative reason’ lies in its appeal to ‘a radical and participatory democratic polity against the silencings and neutralizations of democratic ideals consequent upon the rationalization of the economy …’ (Bernstein 1995, p. 194). In which case, irrespective of the role it once played in preparing the way for universal participation, the system now comprises its main impediment. To this extent, it is not a question of transcending an

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historically circumscribed form of ‘ethical life’, but of transforming an objective economic system that prevents participants from exercising their right to intersubjectively constitute themselves.

Reiﬁcation and judgement At one point in his subtle and thought-provoking study of Habermas, Bernstein asks whether Habermas’s theory ‘repudiates the very modernity it means to foster’ (Bernstein 1995, p. 124). I want to pursue this question with regard to Habermas’s claim to be a ‘post-metaphysical’ thinker. Habermas employs the term ‘postmetaphysical’ to refer to the shedding of transcendental notions of reason in favour of an intersubjective one grounded in ‘mutual understanding’ (Habermas 1992a, p. 43). Habermas then argues that the superiority of his own account lies in its capacity to combine two key aspects of language in an ‘equi-primordial’ fashion. Thus, while language sets itself off from the speaking subjects ‘as something antecedent and objective, as the structure that forges conditions of possibility’ the linguistic formation of consensus ensures that it ‘remains dependent upon the autonomous “yes” and “no” positions that communication participants take towards criticseable validity claims’ (ibid.). However, while ‘communicative action’ enables participants to subject their conditions of possibility to an ongoing intersubjective critique, this does not apply to the conditions that make ‘communicative action’ possible. On the contrary, for this Habermas retains a transcendental toehold in the unconditional attributes of language oriented to reaching understanding. Thus while language expresses a relationship between subjects, it is more than the intersubjective sum of its agent’s parts. The relationship between ‘subjects’ is supplemented by ‘primordial rules’ which not only assure that any consensus reached transcends the time and place of its achievement, but also assume the existence of a temporally and spatially transcendental consensus inherent in language that makes it rational. To this extent, consensus is not a purely intersubjective achievement of participants but is objectively ascribed to language from the outset. The transcendental rules that make consensus possible comprise a form of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ by which it is possible to

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measure (objectively) the damage done to the lifeworld by the system. The ‘facts of reason’ that Habermas ‘discovers’ in dialogue form the basis for his diagnosis of modernity’s ‘pathologies’. In the manner of a medical practitioner, Habermas employs a notion of healthy sociality irreducible to a participant’s sense of personal wellbeing. ‘If we do not wish to renounce altogether standards of judging a form of life to be more or less misguided, distorted, unfortunate, or alienated, if it is really necessary the model of sickness and health presents itself’ (Habermas 1972, p. 262). However, while the gap between ‘doctor’ and ‘patient’ cannot be too great if critical theory is to remain in touch with participant’s own sense of justice, it cannot be too small lest it undermine the possibility of claiming that agents are suffering from ‘pathologies’ of which they are unaware. Thus in order to retain a degree of epistemological insight into the defects of modernity, Habermas refuses to surrender the normative content of ‘discourse ethics’ to modernity. Nevertheless, in so far as the procedural rules of ‘discourse ethics’ comprise an objective yardstick by which to measure the health of modernity, Habermas repudiates the very normative content he seeks to foster. Thus, in so far as Habermas refuses to ground his critique of modernity in the judgements of those who live under modernity, Habermas opposes the ethos of self-constitution which ‘discourse ethics’ is designed to redeem. Thus, Habermas, like Marx before him, deploys the norm of self-constitution in a fashion that robs participants of their capacity to exercise it. In Habermas’s case ‘discourse ethics’ reiﬁes normativity by making it a ‘fact of reason’ rather than an expression of participant’s own judgements. The resulting form of critical theory is, then, incapable of reconciling its objective form with its intersubjective content, its external structures with its internal agents, its transcendental conditions with its empirical possibilities. To this extent, Habermas remains a ‘metaphysical’ thinker who calls upon a pre-existent community of consensus – a counterfactual Gemeinschaft that underlies the everyday world of argumentation – in order to ensure not only agreement, but agreement on the basis of what is apodictically right, on the grounds that there is nur eine einzige richtige Theorie. Consequently, consensus through contention is possible only in so far as consensus is itself a precondition for contention. As such, the notion of a ‘post-conventional morality’ is less an evolutionary advance over

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traditional forms of legitimation, than a continuation of a premodern yearning to ground the quotidian in the absolute. Does this mean that Habermas’s attempt to provide ‘discourse ethics’ with an unconditional character has a pre-modern origin? The answer is yes, in so far as Habermas is concerned to retain the context-bursting validity claims that once attached to religion. However, from a modern perspective this looks more like an attempt to endow the context-speciﬁc norms of a particular form of sociality with a legitimacy that cannot be challenged by participants. In which case, the pre-modern origin of ‘transcendental pragmatics’ is less relevant than what pre-modern and modern forms of sociality have in common – namely, their disregard for the will of participants. To this extent, the unaccountable structures of feudal society are repeated in the economic system’s capacity to ‘jut out’ of the lifeworld. It is therefore no accident, argues Bernstein, ‘that the system perspective has come to dominate since, in the ﬁrst instance, it was not the theorist who objectiﬁed, reiﬁed, interpersonal activity but capital itself. The logic of capital works behind the backs of the agents of capital, and its comprehension therefore necessarily invokes the perspective of the thinker-observer’ (Bernstein 1995, p. 138). However, rather than challenging this state of affairs in the name of ‘practical reason’, Harbermas vacillates between the latter and its ‘instrumental’ alternative depending on whether he is concerned to legitimate the lifeworld or the system. But what Habermas cannot legitimate is his tendency to circumvent the argumentative procedures that render propositions intersubjectively valid. On the contrary, his arguments in support of the system ‘jut out’ of ‘discourse ethics’ as violently as the autopoietic imperatives that ‘colonize’ the lifeworld. To this extent, the tensions engendered by the immortal longings of ‘discourse ethics’ are symptomatic of the system’s capacity to exclude participants from the normative content of modernity.

6 Labour and Morality

Habermas’s writings comprise an important attempt to retrieve the normative content of self-constitution buried beneath Marx’s notion of self-objectifying subjectivity. Unfortunately, the move from a subject-centred to an intersubjective account of self-constitution leaves labour behind. This, however, creates a tension in Habermas’s account of modernity between the democratic principles of ‘discourse ethics’ and the ‘non-normative’ structures that steer the economy. In this chapter I want to explore this tension in relation to Habermas’s instrumental analysis of labour, beginning with his ‘redemptive critique of Marxism’.1

A redemptive critique of Marx? In Knowledge and Human Interests (1972), Habermas argues that Marx’s writings contain two competing versions of ‘self-constitution’ – an instrumental one located in the purposive transformation of nature that expresses itself through the forces of production, and a social one located in the relations of production that expresses itself in class struggle. To this extent, argues Habermas, ‘the selfconstitution of the species takes place not only in the context of men’s instrumental action upon nature but simultaneously in the dimension of power relations that regulate men’s interaction among themselves’ (Habermas 1972, p. 51). Thus, while the ‘species’ owes its emancipation from ‘external forces of nature’ to the development of ‘technically exploitable knowledge’, it owes its emancipation from ‘the compulsion of inner nature’ to ‘the revolutionary 117

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activity of struggling classes’ (ibid., p. 53). Unfortunately, continues Habermas, Marx tends to subsume the latter within the former to the detriment of labour’s normative content. This suggests the possibility of reclaiming the normative content of self-constitution buried beneath Marx’s instrumental account of labour. However, rather than attempting to do this on the basis of labour’s subsumption beneath an unaccountable economic system, Habermas argues that labour is an inherently instrumental activity which accounts for the system’s lack of normative content. Thus the more Habermas distances himself from Marx’s writings on class struggle the more he assimilates labour to a ‘production paradigm’ that eschews normative redemption, ﬁnally concluding that Marx’s production paradigm ‘screens out of the validity spectrum of reason every dimension except those of truth and efﬁciency. Accordingly, what is learnt in innerworldly practice can only accumulate in the development of the forces of production. With this productivist conceptual strategy, the normative content of modernity can no longer be grasped …’ (Habermas 1987b, p. 320). Habermas then rejects any attempt to reafﬁrm the normative content of labour on the grounds that ‘the production and useful employment of products has structure-forming effects only for the metabolic process between human beings and nature …’ (ibid., pp. 80–1). With this Habermas abandons labour to the system on the grounds that an ‘emancipatory perspective’ no longer proceeds ‘from the production paradigm, but from the paradigm of action orientated toward mutual understanding’ (ibid., p. 82). Although Habermas argues on occasions that Marx ‘unmasked the humanistic self-understanding of modernity by suing for the normative content of bourgeois ideals’ (Habermas 1987b, p. 282), for the most part he views Marx’s ‘revolutionary praxis’ as an atavistic attempt to ‘bring the independent economic process back into the horizon of the lifeworld again, and free the realm of freedom from the dictates of the realm of necessity’2 (Habermas 1987a, p. 352). To this end, Marx opposes a pre-capitalist conception of ‘concrete labour’ – grounded in the aesthetic-expressive nature of craftwork – to a capitalized conception of ‘abstract labour’3 which is indifferent to ‘the particular kinds of activity as well as to the working individuals and their social situations’ (ibid., p. 341). Habermas criticizes Marx for failing to acknowledge the extent to which capitalism’s

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‘abstraction’ of labour comprises an evolutionary advance over its ‘concrete’ predecessor. ‘Marx conceives of capitalist society so strongly as a totality that he fails to recognize the intrinsic evolutionary value that media steered subsystems possess’ (ibid.). Thus while Habermas acknowledges that ‘the transformation of concrete into abstract labour is a process in which communal and individual life becomes reiﬁed’ (ibid., p. 336), he does not believe this can be rescinded without revoking the rational gains of modernity (ibid., p. 339). To this extent, the transformation of ‘concrete’ into ‘abstract labour’ comprises ‘a higher and evolutionary advantageous level of integration by comparison to traditional societies …’ (ibid., p. 339). Habermas then abandons Marx’s labour-theoretic critique of modernity in favour of a communicative-theoretic critique on the grounds that only the latter can ‘distinguish the destruction of traditional forms of life from the reiﬁcation of posttraditional lifeworlds’ (ibid., p. 340). Clearly Habermas’s interpretation of Marx owes a great deal to his analysis of modernity. This can be seen from Habermas’s penchant for translating Marx’s categories into his own. But, unfortunately, much gets lost in the translation – not least, Marx’s concern to preserve the ‘technical’ gains of capitalism under socialism. Thus in the Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels not only celebrate capitalism’s capacity to augment the forces of production, but also its capacity to collectivize labour. There is no nostalgia in their declaration that: ‘The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors” …’ (Marx 1952, p. 44). On the contrary, Marx and Engels congratulate capitalism for ridding workers of their atavistic attempts ‘to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages’ (ibid., p. 54), in favour of a futureoriented struggle to surpass capitalist sociality. Thus far from seeking to measure reiﬁcation ‘against the nostalgically loaded, frequently romanticized past of premodern forms of life’, as Habermas argues (Habermas 1987a, p. 342), Marx seeks to measure it against a futural form of socialist sociality. Habermas also misinterprets the nature of the distinction Marx draws between concrete and abstract labour. Thus, while Habermas correctly argues that abstract labour comprises a modern capitalist

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form of labour, he fails to appreciate that it comprises the activity through which the species constitutes itself under capitalism. To this extent, it is not concrete use-value-forming labour, but abstract value-forming labour that comprises the vehicle for self-objectifying subjectivity. Consequently, far from opposing a traditional form of expressive-labour to a modern form of instrumental-labour, Marx opposes the capacity of labour to produce sociality to the alienated form this takes under capitalism. Thus, the tension in Marx’s account of labour is not between concrete and abstract labour, but between the value-creating capacity of abstract labour and the emancipatory achievements of the labour movement – in other words, between precisely those two forms of self-constituting activity which Habermas originally identiﬁes in Knowledge and Human Interests (1972). However, rather than taking issue with Marx’s attempt to subordinate the struggles of the labour movement to the struggles of the self-objectifying powers of purposive labour, Habermas argues that the objectivity of the system is a natural consequence of instrumental labour. It is not possible to ‘re-moralize’ labour without reversing the technical gains of modernity. Nevertheless, Habermas’s decision to abandon workers to the autopoietic imperatives of the system jeopardizes his own attempt to develop a comprehensive account of ‘communicative reason’. Having excluded labour from the normative content of modernity Habermas is unable to fulﬁl the promise of participative parity. Thus, while Habermas looks to a comprehensive conception of ‘communicative reason’ to combat the ‘irrationalism’ of his postmodern adversaries, he cannot do so without sacriﬁcing the very principle of ethical autonomy that makes his account of modernity preferable to theirs.

Towards a comprehensive account of communicative reason In the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas takes issue with a number of authors he regards as having prematurely bid farewell to the ‘dialectic of enlightenment’ (Habermas 1987b, p. 86). In particular, he criticizes Bataille, Derrida, Foucault and Heidegger for adopting Nietzsche’s exclusion in opposition to Hegel’s diremption model of reason:

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Whereas the diremption model of reason distinguishes solidary social practice as the locus of a historically situated reason in which the threads of outer nature, inner nature and society converge, in the exclusion model of reason the space opened up by utopian thoughts gets completely ﬁlled in with an irreconcilable reason reduced to bare power. (Habermas 1987b, p. 306) Contra what he takes to be the exclusion model’s tendency to counterpoise an ‘irrational other’ to reason’s instrumental form, Habermas promotes the diremption model’s capacity to ground the antinomies of modernity in an alienated form of ‘ethical totality’ (Sittlichkeit). Above all, argues Habermas, the diremption model generates ‘a more far-reaching and comprehensive reason’ (ibid.) capable of sublating the ‘division’ (Entzwieungen)4 between instrumental reason and its expressive other. Habermas accordingly criticizes Nietzsche’s cult of Dionysus, Heidegger’s world-constituting ‘Being’, Bataille’s ‘heterogeneity’, Derrida’s ‘différance’ and Foucault’s ‘the body and its pleasures’. In a move that departs from his earlier formulations Habermas then rejects Kantian attempts to deﬁne the limits of reason, in favour of ‘a horizon of reason reaching beyond this drawing of boundaries’ (ibid., p. 302). To this end, he locates the validity spheres of ‘outer nature, inner nature and society’ (ibid.) within a ‘solidary social practice’ modelled on Hegel’s notion of ‘ethical totality’ (Habermas 1987b, p. 316). This is reformulated in terms of ‘communicative reason’ in so far as ‘acts of mutual understanding take on the role for coordinating action’ (Habermas 1987b, p. 316). Consequently, despite retaining ‘its purely procedural character … disburdened of all religious and metaphysical mortgages’ ‘communicative reason’ is credited with restoring ‘ethical life’ to a lifeworld threatened by its instrumental other. However, because Habermas is unwilling to accord a normative status to labour, his quest for a comprehensive conception of communicative action takes a functionalist turn in relation to the tasks communicative action performs for ‘lifeworlds in general’. Habermas then adopts a systems-theoretic perspective in which ‘interaction participants … no longer appear as originators who master situations with the help of accountable actions, but as the products of the traditions in which they stand …’ (ibid.).5 Thus rather

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than attempting to make reason comprehensive by including the ‘subjects’ who labour within the system, Habermas regards the system as a ‘subject’ in its own right. Consequently, rather than overcoming subject-centred thinking Habermas merely ascribes the latter’s characteristics to the system as a whole. This, according to Benhabib, means: Habermas reverts to the discourse of the philosophy of the subject at those points in his theory when the reconstruction of the species competencies of an anonymous subject – humanity as such – does not remain merely an empirically fruitful research hypothesis, but assumes the role of a philosophical narrative of the formative history of the subject of history. (ibid., pp. 330–1) In the process the normative content of modernity is assimilated to the self-preservation of the species, with unhappy consequences for the ethic of self-constitution that underpins Habermas’s version of critical theory. Thus, rather than drawing on ‘the experience of moral and political activity from which a genuine “we” can emerge …’, Habermas grounds the comprehensiveness of communicative reason in a supra-social ‘collective singularity’ (Benhabib 1986, p. 331) commensurate with the species as a whole. As a consequence, Habermas not only fails to counter the Nietzschean claim that ‘the embodied, speaking and acting subject is not master in its own house …’ (Habermas 1987b, p. 310), he also renders humanity ‘dependent upon something prior, anonymous and transsubjective’ (ibid.) – in this case, the objective imperatives of the system. However, this is not the only reversal that Habermas’s search for a comprehensive account of ‘communicative reason’ undergoes. On the contrary, in an extraordinary passage from the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas recasts Hegel’s ‘unfathomable causality of fate’ as a ‘covenant between Yahweh and the people of Israel’ (ibid., p. 316) in order to support Klaus Heinrich’s claim that: Keeping the covenant with God is the symbol of ﬁdelity; breaking this covenant is the model of betrayal. To keep faith with God is to keep faith with life-giving Being6 itself – in oneself and others. To deny it in any domain of being means breaking the covenant with God and betraying one’s own foundation … Thus

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betrayal of another is simultaneously betrayal of oneself; and every protest against betrayal is not just protests in one’s own name, but in the name of the other at the same time … (ibid.) Thus despite having argued that the comprehensiveness of ‘communicative reason’ must be obtained without ‘religious and metaphysical mortgages’ (ibid.), Habermas now argues that ‘The theory of communicative reason … lets itself be guided by an intuition that can be expressed in the concepts of the Old Testament …’ (ibid., p. 325). This ‘intuition’ presupposes the existence of a ‘covenant’ (Bundes) between ‘partners’ (Bundesgenosse), whereby a crime against another is simultaneously a crime against oneself and the ‘universal confederation’ (Bundesgenossenschaft) to which all belong. To this extent, argues Habermas, ‘In the restlessness of the real conditions of life, there broods an ambivalence that is due to the dialectic of betrayal and avenging force’ (ibid., p. 325). However, by tying Hegel’s ‘causality of fate’ to an Old Testament conception of crime and punishment, Habermas exchanges an intersubjective form of ‘ethical totality’ for a trans-subjective one based on a pre-modern form of ‘cosmic morality’. Thus, rather than viewing ‘crime’ as an infringement of moral obligations which derive their validity from their intersubjective constitution, Habermas views crime as an infringement of a pre-constituted moral order whose obligatory structure transcends those regulated by it. But if, as Habermas argues, in his more democratic moments, normative solidarity is no stronger, deeper or broader than the rules we generate to govern ourselves, then anything above and beyond this comprises a ‘crime’ against the modern ethic of self-constitution. Habermas’s theologically inspired conception of the causality of fate thus ‘betrays’ the normative content of modernity in favour of the very ‘irrationalities’ it was originally designed to avert. Realizing perhaps that he has strayed too far from the legitimating principles of ‘communicative action’, Habermas sets a course back to its human bearers.7 Thus, while continuing to appeal to the ‘transcendental necessity’ of fate in opposition to the empirical reality of ‘day to day communicative practices’ (ibid., pp. 325–6), Habermas now argues that the ‘universal structures’ of morality can only manifest themselves ‘through the medium of action orientated towards mutual understanding’ (ibid.). However, the return to a more

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concrete form of life remains qualiﬁed in so far as ‘communicative reason’ comprises a medium through which morality manifests itself in the lifeworld rather than a means through which participants arrive at ethical rules to regulate their own social conduct. In these passages Habermas reveals the difﬁculty he has in reconciling a comprehensive account of communicative reason with an ethic of self-constitution. Thus just as Hegel, in his attempt to ‘reinternalize’ the economy, relinquishes the autonomy of modern individuals to the heteronomy of Spirit, so Habermas’s subsumes ‘practical reason’ beneath its ‘functional’ other. In order to remedy this Habermas returns to his Kantian-inspired ‘exclusion model’ in which the technically practical realm of labour is dirempted from the morally practical realm of communication (Kant 1987b, p. 10).8 The resulting uncoupling of system and lifeworld reafﬁrms the opposition between an instrumental form of labour and an ethically charged form of communication. Thus, despite claiming that system and lifeworld overlap one another in mutually dependent ways (Habermas 1991, p. 257), Habermas’s recent accounts of their uncoupling (Habermas 1996) do little to assuage the accusation of ‘dualism’. On the contrary, the opposition between the two spheres appears, if anything, to have grown starker since Habermas has abandoned Weber’s ‘instrumental’ conception of reason in favour of Luhmann’s ‘functional’ one (ibid., p. 353). It is possible to argue on empirical grounds alone that Habermas’s ‘exclusion model’ fails to do justice to labour’s inclusion within the normative content of modernity.

System and lifeworld interdependencies According to Stephen Bronner, Habermas’s distinction between system and lifeworld rests on the ‘quasi-ontological’ distinction between ‘material’ and ‘symbolic’ forms of reproduction (Bronner 1994, p. 304). To this extent, Habermas assumes that a line of demarcation can be drawn between the system’s commodiﬁcation of ‘material’ resources, and the lifeworld’s protection of ‘symbolic’ ones. However, in practice, such a distinction is impossible to draw as the social world comprises an interplay between the two. Even without its ontological underpinning, Habermas’s ‘materialistic’ account of the economy appears outdated in the light of the bur-

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geoning services sector. One does not, therefore, have to be a supporter of the post-industrial thesis to argue that the crude materialism underlying Habermas’s treatment of labour has lost whatever plausibility it once possessed. Thus, Habermas’s system/lifeworld divide is less an analytical account of opposed forms of social being than a descriptive account of opposed social practices. However, in so far as he endows them with analytically distinct properties, Habermas is guilty of abstracting from the complex interface between them. This is summed up by Honneth in the following fashion: ‘If capitalist societies are conceived … as social orders in which system and lifeworld stand over against each other as autonomous spheres of action, two complementary ﬁctions emerge: (1) the existence of a norm-free organization of action and (2) the existence of power-free spheres of communication’ (Honneth 1991, p. 298), whereas Honneth argues that just as there is no undiluted realm of ‘normativity’ there is no pure realm of ‘norm-free’ action. On the contrary: ‘Actions produced in organizations such as management and administration not only remain dependent upon practices of social understanding … they are also bound to a process of normative consensus formation …’ (ibid., p. 299). To this extent, argue Cohen and Arato, Habermas’s ‘uncoupling model’ exaggerates the degree to which the system ‘juts out’ of the lifeworld to the detriment of the former’s dependence on the latter (Cohen and Arato 1992, p. 134). In particular, Habermas’s attempt to limit the normative content of modernity to ‘communicative action’ seriously underestimates the degree to which normatively charged social institutions place ethical constraints on the operations of the system. Hence the importance of Michael Walzer’s attempt to identify those ‘blocked exchanges’ which limit the capacity of the system to commodify the lifeworld (Walzer 1983, p. 100), including legislation relating to ‘The eighthour day, minimum wage laws, health and safety regulations’, which serve to ‘establish basic standards, below which workers cannot bid against one another for employment’ (ibid., p. 102). Similarly, Claus Offe (1992) argues that the economic system depends for its day-today working on the existence of normatively charged ‘associative relations’ in the production process (ibid., p. 76). Thus contra Habermas’s claim that ‘the classical model of bureaucracy is right in one respect: actions within organizations fall under the premises of

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formally regulated domains of action’ (Habermas 1987a, p. 310), Offe argues that the capitalist labour process is informed by normative rules, which ‘constitute environments of action that … allow questions of fairness and mutual obligation to be raised …’ (Offe 1992, p. 83). In which case, the so-called ‘non-normative’ system is not only reliant on ‘normative’ networks to integrate and protect their members, but also on intersubjectively constituted forms of ‘ethical life’ at the heart of the production process. As such, Habermas’s contention that ‘inner organizational relations’ are ‘ethically neutralized’ (ibid., p. 311) fails to appreciate the degree to which workers are imbedded in a rich and complex network of normative relationships that mediate between the world of work and the system imperatives that regulate it. While Habermas continues to draw on Weber’s economistic contention that labour comprises a technical resource equivalent to other ‘factors of production’, organization theory has long since recognized the normative content of what it calls ‘human capital’. This is reﬂected in the literature of ‘personnel management’ now known as ‘human relations’. The plethora of recent books on ‘ethical business practices’ demonstrate that even the managers of commercial organizations recognize the need to treat labour in a normatively informed manner – if only to fulﬁl their corporate ends. To this extent, there has been a shift from neoclassical to more sociological accounts of labour’s normative content (Ray and Reed 1994). Thus, modern management theory appears to subscribe to a more ‘enlightened’ view of its workforce than the instrumental one Habermas adopts from Weber, although even Habermas concedes that ‘The lifeworlds of members, never completely husked away, penetrate here into the reality of organizations’ (Habermas 1987a, p. 311). Thus, while not wishing to dispute the fact that the autopoietic imperatives of the economic system transcend the normative obligations of the lifeworld, it is important to differentiate between the objective steering mechanisms which regulate the economy as a whole and the internal life of business organizations. Although market forces relieve participants of their normative obligations, workplaces comprise quasi-lifeworlds in which a range of normative expectations are redeemed. To this extent, the interiors of ﬁrms comprise intersubjective zones that mediate between the impersonal imperatives of the system and the normative claims of workers.

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Consequently, the more businesses seek to incorporate labour on the basis of ‘mission statements’ afﬁrming their moral obligations to the workforce, the greater scope there is for the organizations to assume a normative guise susceptible to the ends of participants. Of course, this is only a management strategy behind which the old power structures remain intact. Nevertheless, it does demonstrate the extent to which Habermas’s etiolated version of intersubjectivity fails to unlock the rich texture of ‘ethical life’ immured within capitalist workplaces. The problem, however, is not Habermas’s etiolated version of intersubjectivity so much as the assumption that there is a rational basis for the system/lifeworld divide; that there is something about labour which renders ‘non-normative’ regulation appropriate. Hence Habermas’s decision to switch between two opposed forms of reason depending on whether he is seeking to defend the system from the lifeworld, or vice versa. However, this raises the question of whether the system/lifeworld division rests on the inherent differences between labour and ‘communicative action’, or whether it is merely the expression of an historically contingent conﬂict between the self-regulating properties of the system and the self-determining principles of its participants.

The limits of discourse ethics Even were Habermas to concede that his restrictive conception of normativity does not accord with the empirical complexity of modern sociality, it does nevertheless accord with the system’s capacity to neutralize ‘ethical life’. Thus, the issue is not the degree to which the system escapes the demands of ‘practical reason’ in fact, but the degree to which this is socially valid. As we have seen, Habermas is just as concerned to protect the system from the lifeworld as he is to protect the lifeworld from the system. To this end, he argues, each institutionalizes a different form of reason. Thus while the system embodies ‘instrumental’ or ‘functional reason’ the lifeworld embodies ‘practical’ or ‘communicative reason’. However, this presupposes that there exists a point at which the legitimate scope of one form of reason ends and the other begins. Any attempt by either to overstep this point generates ‘pathologies’. But how does Habermas determine this point of

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demarcation? As we have seen, the answer lies in the essentially different properties he ascribes to labour and ‘communicative action’. Thus while labour is relegated to the level of an instrumental activity, ‘communicative action’ is elevated to the level of ‘ethical life’. As John Keane notes, for Habermas: ‘Work is that process through which those who labour are at most instrumentaum vocale, mere speaking tools …’ (Keane 1984, p. 205). As a consequence, what comprises a valid form of social regulation is determined not intersubjectively by participants but by Habermas on the basis of an objective account of modernity. Thus rather than seeking to determine the validity of opposed forms of social regulation on the basis of participants’ own intersubjectively formulated ends, Habermas assumes the standpoint of an objective observer with the capacity to determine the rational ends of modern sociality for its members. To this extent, argues Stephen Crook, Habermas attempts ‘objectively [to] specify the appropriate balance between spaces and rationalities with reference to a developmental logic’ (Crook 1991, p. 119). In which case, Habermas employs a ‘functional’ account of reason in order to determine the limit of its ‘practical’ other. Habermas then declares that the economy and its state apparatus comprise ‘systemically integrated action ﬁelds that can no longer be transformed democratically from within … without damage to their proper systemic logic and therewith their ability to function’ (Habermas 1992b, p. 449). However, by adopting the standpoint of ‘functional’ over ‘practical reason’, Habermas violates the very principles of ‘communicative action’ he sets out to defend, namely, ‘the complete inclusion of all parties that might be affected, their equality, free and easy interaction, no restrictions of topics and topical contributions, the possibility of revising the outcomes etc.’ (ibid., p. 449). By arguing that democracy damages the system’s ability to function, Habermas not only places restrictions on the outcome of ‘discourse ethics’ he also usurps the argumentative process from which valid forms of social regulation emerge. Nevertheless, this claim can be disputed on both epistemological and ethical grounds. According to Bowles and Gintis (1986), increases in democracy can lead to increases in efﬁciency. This is because the rule of capital provides few incentives for workers to augment the productivity of their labour, whereas under a more democratic system of workers’ control they would stand to gain

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more from the increases of productivity they initiated. But even if we were to concede some kind of trade-off between democracy and efﬁciency, this does not mean the former should be sacriﬁced to the latter.9 On the contrary, it will depend on the relative importance attached to autonomy versus efﬁcacy by participants. This in turn will depend on where participants are situated economically. Thus while the owners of capital are likely to prioritize the efﬁcacy of production over the autonomy of workers, the owners of labour are likely to argue the opposite. By prioritizing the damage done to the system by democratic practices over the damage done to the democratic demands of participants by the system’s ability to function Habermas not only sides with ‘functional’ against ‘practical reason’ but also capital against labour. The view that this comprises an ‘objective’ account of the system’s developmental logic merely serves to reify the ethical interests prescribed in Habermas’s account. By ascribing ‘functional reason’ to the standpoint of capital, Habermas lifts the system above the mundane world of ethical validity claims. This, however, places him at odds with his account of ‘discourse ethics’ in so far as the latter prioritizes the standpoint of participants over the system. As Habermas himself states: ‘Ultimately, there is only one criterion by which beliefs can be judged valid, and that is that they are based on agreement reached by argumentation’ (Habermas 1990, p. 14). As Thomas McCarthy argues, even questions of social evolution and system complexity ‘must on Habermas’ own principles, be subordinate to communicative rationalization of life as a measure of progress’ (McCarthy 1991, p. 133).10 Habermas’s failure to abide by his own rules of argumentation arises from his contention that the system is an inevitable by-product of modernity. For this reason, Habermas does not believe it is possible to democratize the system without sacriﬁcing the gains of economic efﬁcacy and functional co-ordination. Consequently, rather than regarding the system as reiﬁed – on the basis of criteria drawn from ‘practical reason’ – he legitimates the system’s ‘technicization of the lifeworld’ on the basis of criteria drawn from ‘functional reason’. He then denies that it makes sense to submit the system to the democratic demands of participants. Thus in a revealing passage from Between Facts and Norms, Habermas argues that while we once believed it was possible to do this ‘through the media of law and political power.

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Today we know better, now that sociological analyses have enlightened us about the actual circulation of power’ (Habermas 1996, p. 482). However, this not only assumes a sociological consensus on the ‘actual circulation of power’ but also the ‘actual circulation of power’ comprises a fait accompli. To this extent, as Eva Knodt notes, Habermas’s ‘choice of system’s theoretical framework precludes the idea of a normative centre that would allow modern society to form a critical consciousness of itself as a whole and thus take control of its own evolution’ (Knodt 1994, p. 98). There is, of course, nothing new in this. On the contrary, it mirrors Durkheim’s call to ‘treat social facts as things’. To this extent, Habermas’s account of the economy shares with Durkheim’s a propensity to naturalize the objective, external and constraining properties of capitalist sociality. Nevertheless, it is an approach that critical theory has traditionally sought to counter with an alternative call to ‘treat social facts as reiﬁed social interactions’. To this end, critical theory has challenged the naturalization of modernity by regarding the ‘facticity’ of the system as symptomatic of the reiﬁcation of labour. Thus, unlike symbolic interactionists, who argue there is something ‘ﬁctitious’ about the system’s facticity, critical theorists regard the system’s facticity as a ‘true’ expression of its capacity to reify the ends of participants. If Habermas’s account of modernity is riven with tensions, this is because it expresses the tensions of modernity. However, rather than attempting to resolve these tensions in practice, Habermas’s bifurcated theory of modernity seeks to allocate its opposing properties to discrete social spheres. But this is doomed to fail because modernity lacks a common moral basis from which to determine the legitimate scope of its conﬂicting social aspects. In which case, the attempt to assume an objective observer standpoint by which to justify the system’s ‘non-normative’ status on functional grounds contradicts the right of participants to determine intersubjectively their social identity on practical grounds. For this reason, Habermas’s attempts to justify the system’s ‘technicization of the lifeworld’ on the basis of system-theoretic criteria comprises an unjustiﬁable attempt to bypass the argumentative procedures of ‘discourse ethics’, and, far from combating the ‘colonization’ of the lifeworld, Habermas contributes to it by taking the side of the system against the democratically formulated ends of participants.

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To this extent, the democratic principles of ‘discourse ethics’ possess a more radical potential than Habermas is willing to realize.

The promise of discourse ethics Kant could escape the radical consequences of his ‘kingdom of ends’ because it transcends the material interests that divide its empirical subjects in practice. Habermas too, despite McCarthy’s denial that he is attempting to renew ‘transcendental philosophy’ (McCarthy 1990, p. ix), engages in ‘weak transcendental arguments’ (Habermas 1990, p. 32). Nevertheless, Habermas’s reasons for preserving the tradition of ‘transcendental philosophy’ are equivocal. On the one hand, it serves to confer unconditional status upon the underlying structures of ‘discourse ethics’ while, on the other hand, it serves to lift the ‘ideal speech situation’ above the social world from which in practice it is absent. To this extent, Habermas’s attempt to confer transcendental status upon an ‘unlimited communicative community’ serves to abstract the process of consensus formation from a world divided by social dissent and so maintain the potential for critical theory in a world from which it is lacking. However, in so far as Habermas regards this ‘unlimited communicative community’ as no more than a ‘methodological ﬁction’ (Habermas 1996, p. 323), with only a ‘virtual relation to action’ (ibid., p. 113), he not only protects this moral ideal from social reality but also protects social reality from this moral ideal. The paradoxical result is a set of formal procedures that make few demands on the system, while sustaining a promise of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ that is implacably opposed to it. However, unlike Kant’s ‘monological’ account of morality, Habermas’s ‘dialogical’ one is intersubjectively institutionalized in the ‘public sphere’. To this extent, he is committed to ensuring that the transfer of normative content from Marx’s conception of labour to ‘the transcending force of universalistic validity claims’ does not ‘reestablish an idealism that is incompatible with the naturalistic insights of historical materialism’ (Habermas 1987b, p. 321). It is therefore incumbent on Habermas to secure an institutional basis for ‘discourse ethics’ in the real world. ‘A communicative power of this kind can develop only in undeformed public spheres … from structures of undamaged intersubjectivity found in non-distorted

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communication’ (ibid., p. 148). Thus, as Georgina Warkner argues, Habermas is committed to supplementing his ‘top-down’ with a ‘bottom-up’ approach to ethics grounded in ‘forms of life, cultural values, and tradition through which people ﬁnd their lives meaningful’ (Warkner 1995, p. 133). To this end, Habermas grounds the transcendental ideals of ‘practical reason’ in an empirical form of life that ‘meets it halfway’ (Habermas 1996, pp. 113, 302 and 358). ‘Naturally, even a proceduralized “popular sovereignty” … cannot operate without the support of an accommodating political culture, without the basic attitudes, mediated by tradition and socialization, of a population accustomed to political freedom: rational political will formation cannot occur unless a rationalized lifeworld meets it halfway’ (ibid., p. 487). To this extent, there exists a tension between the system’s capacity to regulate the lifeworld in a ‘non-normative’ fashion and the lifeworld’s capacity to regulate itself in a normative one. This tension is evident in the exchange between Fraser and Habermas. Fraser asks Habermas: ‘Isn’t economic equality – the end of class structure and the end of gender equality – the condition for the possibility of a public sphere, if we are talking about what makes it possible for people to participate. Is capitalism compatible with this?’ (Fraser 1994, p. 469). Habermas responds by accusing Fraser of adopting a ‘utopian socialist’ standpoint. But this is to miss the point. Fraser is merely calling on Habermas to acknowledge the extent to which his conception of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ retains a ‘utopian socialist’ dimension that predicates the realization of moral consensus on the realization of a moral society. As Habermas himself once argued: Only in an emancipated society, whose members’ autonomy and responsibility (Mündigkeit) have been realized, would communication have developed into the non-authoritarian and universally practised dialogue from which both our model of reciprocally constituted ego-identity and our idea of true consensus are always implicitly derived. (Habermas 1972, p. 314) Fraser is surely right to point out that the capitalist system comprises a major impediment to the realization of ‘discourse ethics’ in so far as its autopoietic imperatives suppress the ethical participa-

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tion of workers. By denying workers access to the normative content of modernity, the system ‘damages’ their capacity intersubjectively to co-ordinate their lives. Thus even if we remain within the terms of Habermas’s etiolated notion of intersubjectivity the ideal of ‘undistorted communication’ cannot be realized while the system steers the lifeworld in a ‘nonnormative’ fashion. This is because the system deforms communication by subsuming the right of participants to exercise ‘practical reason’ beneath the ‘functional’ imperatives of the system. To this extent, the conﬂict between ‘functional’ and ‘practical reason’ goes to the heart of modernity’s attitude to labour. Or put another way, the ‘labour question’ continues to pose an irresolvable dilemma for modernity. Nevertheless, Habermas’s account contains in embryonic form the possibility of reconciling labour and ‘discourse ethics’ in a mutually beneﬁcial fashion. This is because, on the one hand, discourse ethics’ lack of comprehensiveness results from its exclusion of labour. While, on the other hand, labour’s instrumental character results from the exclusion of workers from the normative content of modernity. Consequently, by reconnecting workers to the normative content of modernity it is possible to generate a comprehensive notion of intersubjectivity capable of charging the system with reifying ‘ethical life’. Thus, it is not a question of choosing between Marx and Habermas but of extending the latter’s intersubjective insights in the direction of the former’s subject-centred account of self-constitution. However, this is a purely academic exercise if workers do not experience their intersubjectivity as damaged and struggle to rectify it accordingly. Hence the importance of Honneth’s attempt to extend the normative content of modernity to labour on the basis of workers’ own struggles to obtain social recognition.

7 Struggles for Moral Redemption

From his earliest writings Axel Honneth has sought to widen and deepen the normative ground of critical theory in order to extend the remit of intersubjectivity to labour. Honneth thus rejects Habermas’s abandonment of labour to the ‘non-normative’ system in favour of reformulating workers’ struggles in normative terms. Nevertheless, Honneth’s alternative to Habermas’ communicative paradigm is restricted to the latter’s culturally bound account of moral agency. Thus in his work on ‘struggles for recognition’ Honneth largely concedes the diremption of ‘morality’ from ‘materiality’ to the detriment of the latter’s emancipatory potential. Honneth then compensates for the lack of substance that results from this bifurcated account of modernity by grounding his own version of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ in an underlying ‘philosophical anthropology’. To this extent, Honneth, like Marx and Habermas before him, grounds critical theory, not in the struggles of participants to redeem the normative promise of modernity, but in a social ontology that the latter is tasked to realize. At the same time, Honneth shares with Marx and Habermas an historically informed account of critical theory grounded in the modern ethos of autonomy. Hence Honneth’s declaration that: ‘Critical Theory in its innermost core – whatever its congruence with other forms of social critique may be – is dependent on the quasi-sociological speciﬁcation of an emancipatory interest in social reality itself’ (Honneth 1994a, p. 256). Unfortunately, Honneth fails to redeem this viewpoint consistently by grounding critical theory in the struggles of participants to overcome the heteronomy of the system. Instead, 135

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Honneth adopts the standpoint of an objective observer with the capacity to rule on what is and what is not ‘pathological’ about modernity. Thus just as Marx grounds the ‘human species’ in selfobjectifying labour, and Habermas in language oriented to mutual understanding, so Honneth emphasizes the role played by social recognition in the ‘successful development of identity’ (ibid., p. 263). Armed with this objective deﬁnition of what comprises an undamaged form of intersubjectivity, Honneth criticizes modernity for failing to obtain this normative ideal. It will not, however, be possible, in what follows, to do justice to the intricacies and complexities of Honneth’s account of recognition. Instead I shall limit myself to his account of workers’ struggles to ‘re-moralize’ labour as this demonstrates that critical theory’s ‘normative turn’ need not be at the expense of labour. Nevertheless, Honneth inherits from Habermas a tendency to generate a model of critical theory that is at one and the same time too strong and too weak – too strong in the sense that it transforms workers’ struggles for recognition into mere means for a supra-social teleology; too weak in the sense that it fails to criticize the system’s capacity to ‘damage’ intersubjectivity. To this extent, Honneth’s version of critical theory is dependent on an objective standpoint that arises from the system’s capacity to reify intersubjectivity. Thus, it is not possible to reground critical theory within the struggles of participants to realize the normative promise of modernity without challenging the system’s diremption of ‘ethical life’.

The moral content of labour In an early essay entitled ‘Work and Instrumental Action: On the Normative Basis of Critical Theory’, Honneth argues that Habermas’s attempt to extend Marxism in the direction of intersubjective understanding ‘is paid for by the disappearance of the conﬂict potential still available in social labour from the theory of action’ (Honneth 1995a, p. 40). In other words, by reducing labour to a purely technical relationship between humanity (subject) and nature (object), Habermas ‘dissolves the categorical connection which Marx attempts to establish between social labour and social liberation’ (ibid., p. 44). What is at issue here, argues Honneth, is not the instrumental status of labour but who is in charge of its application:

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A critical concept of work must grasp categorically the difference between an instrumental act in which the working subject structures and regulates his own activity on his own initiative, according to his own knowledge, in a self-contained process, and an instrumental act in which neither the accompanying controls nor the object-related structures of the activity is left to the initiative of the working subject. (Honneth 1995a, p. 46) Thus, it is not labour’s instrumental character that robs workers of their autonomy, but workers’ lack of control over the labour process. To this extent, argues Honneth, labour retains a normative dimension ‘based not upon the consciousness of systemically distorted relations of communication, but the experience of the destruction of true acts of work in the course of the rationalization of production techniques’ (ibid., p. 47). The ‘moral damage’ that accompanies modernity is not, therefore, restricted to impaired communication, but extends to the ‘systematic expropriation’ of workers’ own work activity. ‘The valid normative claim which thus comes to expression results from a moral vulnerability which grows not from the suppression of communicative modes of mutual understanding but from the expropriation of the workers’ own work activity’1 (ibid., p. 47). It follows that the more work is subject to external determination, the more this is attended by ‘an opposing action process on which working subjects cooperatively seek to reclaim control over their own activity. Thus, oddly enough, a moment of practical recollection would then seem to dwell within the unjustiﬁed domination of alienated labour’ (ibid., p. 48). Honneth then argues that it is possible to reconnect labour and normativity through a notion of what comprises ‘the conditions of an undistorted act of work’ (ibid., p. 45). Nevertheless, there are problems with this formulation. In the ﬁrst instance it presupposes that ‘undistorted acts of work’ continue to underlie the ‘distortions’ of the capitalist labour process. This is reminiscent of Marx’s ‘subject-centred’ account of labour as an inherently purposive activity. Thus rather than grounding critical theory in the struggles of workers collectively to ameliorate the consequences of capital, Honneth evokes a naturalistic account of labour that stands opposed to capital in its own right. In partial recognition of these problems, Honneth’s next attempt to reconcile the

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moral insights of Habermas with the material interests of Marx takes an intersubjective turn. The starting point for Honneth’s later essay, ‘Moral Consciousness and Class Domination’ (Honneth 1995a), is the proposition that ‘late capitalist state interventionism dries up the political and practical interests of wage workers by means of a policy of material compensations and the institutional integration of the wage policy of the labour unions’ (ibid., p. 216). This serves to undermine the importance of redistributive notions of justice for class struggle. Hence the need to switch from an account of injustice grounded in ‘the unequal distribution of material goods’ to one grounded in ‘the asymmetrical distribution of cultural and psychological life chances’ (ibid., p. 217).2 In which case, it is not the maldistribution of material resources but the ‘maldistribution of opportunities for cultural education, social honour, and identity-guaranteeing work …’ (ibid., p. 218) that forms the basis for workers’ struggles. To this end, Honneth draws on Sennett and Cobb’s work (1972) to argue that workers suffer ‘hidden injuries’ that arise from the ‘unequal distribution of social dignity’ (Honneth 1995a, p. 218). These are felt, primarily, by ‘lower, primarily manually employed occupational groups’ who are deemed to be most at risk from a loss of ‘recognition’, ‘esteem’, ‘honour’, ‘dignity’ and ‘respect’ (ibid., p. 218). However, because this group of workers lack ‘the identity supporting recognition structure of a collective social movement … practical reactions to these daily experiences of injustice are limited to individual or group-speciﬁc constructions of a counter culture of compensatory respect …’ (ibid., p. 218). Consequently, ‘lower-class workers’ lack the ‘coherent linguistic expression’ (ibid., p. 219) required to articulate their injuries in a politically recognizable form. It then falls to social scientists (such as Honneth) to view ‘labour struggles, which lie below the threshold of publicly recognized normative conﬂict, as indicators of a consciousness of injustice which implicitly lays claim to the right to the autonomous organization of work’ (ibid., p. 219). Thus rather than attempting to ground critical theory in the struggles of the organized working class, Honneth grounds the origins of resistance in agents that lie ‘below the threshold of publicly recognized normative conﬂict’ (ibid.). Honneth justiﬁes this approach on the grounds that ‘the social protests of the lower classes are not motivationally guided by posi-

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tively formulated moral principles, but by the violations of intuitive notions of justice’ (Honneth 1995a, p. 262). To this extent, they draw on a raw, unreﬁned, ‘pre-theoretical resource’ (vorwissenschaftliche Instanz) that equates with the moral core of human identity. Nevertheless, Honneth’s emphasis on the struggles of the ‘lower classes’ sits uneasily alongside his claim that moral concerns have supplanted material ones. For if it is the case that a higher standard of living deﬂects the class struggle from ‘material’ towards ‘immaterial’ goods, then this should primarily affect the struggles of ‘higher-class workers’ whose material concerns have already been met. Why, then, privilege sections of the workforce for whom material concerns have greater priority? Thus, while Honneth’s emphasis on the moral motivations of struggles serves to bring a normatively invigorated critical theory back into relationship with those who labour within the system, it also abstracts from the ‘empirical’ concerns that motivate workers to struggle collectively against the system. To this extent, Honneth’s attempt to uncover a ‘pre-theoretical’ basis for resistance – grounded in the moral identity of humanity – circumvents the struggles of the labour movement to confront the morally incapacitating imperatives of the system. Unfortunately, as Honneth’s work on the moral foundations of workers’ struggles has developed, so has the concern to anchor the latter in an ‘ontological’ conception of intersubjectivity. Thus rather than attempting to articulate the struggles of workers to attain greater autonomy, Honneth seeks to discover the ‘moral grammar’ upon which their autonomy depends. To this end, Honneth sets out to locate within intersubjectivity the conditions for the possibility of an ‘undistorted relation to oneself’ (Honneth 1995b, p. 1). Having thus deduced an undamaged form of identity formation Honneth criticizes those aspects of modernity that ‘disturb’, ‘distort’ or otherwise ‘deform’ healthy modes of ethical development.

Struggles for recognition In Struggles for Recognition (1995b) Honneth sets about replacing Habermas’s claim that ‘undistorted communication’ comprises the normative core of critical theory in favour of ‘undistorted recognition’. Whilst remaining true to Habermas’s attempt to ground

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critical theory in a universal conception of ‘ethical life’ common to and independent of all particular social forms: In contrast to those movements that distance themselves from Kant, this concept of the good should not be conceived as the expression of substantive values that constitute the ethos of a concrete tradition-based community. Rather, it has to do with the structural elements of ethical life, which, from the general point of view of the communicative enabling of self-realization, can be normatively extracted from the plurality of all particular forms of life. (ibid., p. 172) Thus, while seeking to broaden and deepen the normative ideals that underlie Habermas’s conception of ‘communicative action’, Honneth retains the latter’s commitment to a general account of morality unencumbered by the ‘substantive values’ of a particular community. To this end, Honneth, like Habermas, seeks to discover the core moral identity of humanity in Hegel’s early writings on intersubjectivity, although Honneth departs from Habermas’s emphasis on the distinction between labour and interaction in the belief that Hegel’s writings on recognition can embrace both. Honneth then follows Ludwig Siep in arguing that Hegel’s notion of struggles for recognition comprises a normative reworking of Hobbes’s notion of struggles for self-preservation. What Honneth ﬁnds in Hegel is the notion that property struggles are not only injurious to an individual’s material well-being, but also to his/her moral dignity. This is demonstrated by the fact that the injured party is willing to engage in a life-and-death struggle with their adversary. Having demonstrated that human dignity is more important than mere survival, Hegel argues that the reconciliation of conﬂict requires not a Leviathan state with a monopoly of violence as Hobbes recommends, but a set of morally sanctioned property rights capable of determining the legitimacy of ownership claims (ibid., p. 47). 3 To this extent, argues Honneth, Hegel’s reinterpretation of Hobbes comprises an ‘epoch-making new version of the conception of social struggle, according to which practical conﬂict between subjects can be understood as an ethical moment in a movement occurring within a collective social life’ (ibid., p. 17). Nevertheless, Honneth

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is critical of Hegel’s attempt to ground ‘ethical life’ in a ‘metaphysical’ world-view. To correct this Honneth turns to the writings of the social psychologist George Herbert Mead to provide a ‘naturalistic’ counterweight to the former’s ‘speculative’ account of social recognition. Honneth is drawn to Mead’s account because, like Hegel’s, it is based on a prior conception of mutual dependence in which individual identity arises from an intersubjective process of validation (Mead 1970). To this extent Hegel and Mead are agreed, in principle, that the reproduction of social life is governed by the imperative of mutual recognition, because one can develop a practical relationto-self only when one has learned to view oneself, from the normative perspective of one’s partner in interaction, as their social addressee. (Honneth 1995b, p. 92) Nevertheless, Honneth expresses dissatisfaction with the empirical and historical aspects of Mead’s approach on the grounds that it lacks a ‘post-conventional’ conception of morality (ibid., p. 109). Honneth then returns to Hegel in order to generate a universal account of recognition capable of transcending every particular historical context (ibid., p. 110). This, however, as Honneth acknowledges, is a risky manoeuvre that threatens to reintroduce the very metaphysical underpinnings he sought to expel from Hegel through the turn to Mead. Nevertheless, Honneth believes that this comprises the only way to arrive at a general account of the intersubjective conditions for the possibility of human autonomy (ibid., p. 176). Honneth then seeks to renew Hegel’s attempt to produce a philosophy of history grounded in the contention that just as unredeemed relations of recognition generate social struggle, so social struggle serves to expand relationships of recognition. In Hegel this takes the form of a theory of moral development which progresses through three ‘stages of social conﬂict’ (ibid., p. 23). The ﬁrst is situated in the concrete-particular sphere of family life, the second in the abstractuniversal sphere of law (Recht) and the third in the concreteuniversal sphere of moral solidarity. Each of these stages corresponds to a different form of recognition:

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[I]n the affective relationship of recognition found in the family, human individuals are recognized as concrete creatures of need; in the cognizant-formal relationship of recognition found in law, they are recognized as abstract legal persons; and ﬁnally, in the emotionally enlightened relationship of recognition found in the State, they are recognized as concrete universals, that is as subjects who are socialized in their particularity. (ibid., p. 25) Honneth then sets about reconstructing Hegel’s theory of ‘moral development’ in order to generate an historically evolving conception of ‘intersubjectivity in general’. However, by eschewing the very speciﬁc – and quintessentially modern form of – ‘ethical life’ which grounds this project in ‘social reality’, Honneth risks transforming historically speciﬁc forms of identity formation into a transhistorical blueprint for identity formation in general.

Three steps to heaven? Step one: love In Hegel’s schema ‘love’ represents the ‘ﬁrst stage of reciprocal recognition, because in it subjects mutually conﬁrm each other with regard to the concrete nature of their needs and thereby recognize each other as needy creatures’ (ibid., p. 95). To this extent, love is restricted to the ‘private sphere’ of friendships, partnerships and parent–child relationships and is not, according to Honneth, amenable to moral development. To give concrete content to this stage, Honneth turns to Donald Winnicott on the grounds that his ‘object-relations’ approach is well suited to a ‘phenomenology of recognition’ (ibid., p. 98). In particular, Honneth emphasizes Winnicott’s suggestion that adult maturity is ‘dependent on the capacity, acquired in early childhood, to strike a balance between symbiosis and self-assertion’ (ibid.). According to Winnicott, at a certain stage in its development the child acts aggressively towards its ‘mother’ in order to test whether ‘she’ exists in ‘her’ own right (ibid., pp. 101–2). ‘If the “mother” managed to pass the child’s unconscious test by enduring the aggressive attacks without withdrawing her love in revenge, she now belongs, from the perspective of the child, to a painfully accepted external world’ (ibid., p. 104). Through this process each comes to recognize the other as not only

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dependent on them for ‘love’ but also an independent being in their own right. Children who succeed in passing through this developmental stage go on to become normal, healthy, autonomous adults.4 ‘This fundamental level of emotional conﬁdence … which the intersubjective experience of love helps to bring about, constitutes the psychological precondition for the development of all further attitudes of self-respect’ (ibid., p. 107). To this extent, Honneth takes Winnicott’s writings on child development to represent an ‘ideal of interaction’ that comprises the transhistorical basis for ‘normal’ family development in general (ibid.). Thus despite criticizing Hegel for universalizing the ‘patriarchal model of bourgeois family relations’ (ibid., p. 176), Honneth sanctions Winnicott’s universalization of white, middle-class, patriarchal family life in 1950s America. Thus, in support of Winnicott, Honneth argues that conﬁdent adult roles are dependent on the child’s relationship with the mother. According to Honneth’s translator, the term mother designates ‘a role that can be fulﬁlled by persons other than the biological mother’ (ibid., p. xiii). So the term appears in scare quotes in the English translation, but not the German original. This gives the impression that the role of mother is one of the ‘invariant basic structures’ of family life. Families that fail to conform to this norm can be charged with exhibiting ‘pathology’, ‘disorder’ and ‘deviation’ from the ‘normal’ form of family life (ibid., p. 106). The problem here is not so much Honneth’s attempt to associate critical theory with an outdated view of family structures – although that is bad enough – but his attempt to confer on the latter a transhistorical status grounded in the moral grammar of intersubjectivity. Thus it is one thing to claim that one family form is morally superior to another; it is another to argue that this judgement rests on an objective evaluation of family forms, not least because this ﬂies in the face of critical theory’s concern to expand the capacity of participants to determine their own moral principles – as in Habermas’s account of ‘discourse ethics’ – rather than looking to an objective expert to prescribe what constitutes a ‘normal’ form of family life irrespective of participant’s culture, concerns and values. Taken in conjunction with his claim that the ‘private sphere’ does ‘not admit of the potential for normative development’ (1995b), Honneth appears to endorse the view that family relationships in

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1950s America comprise the norm for growing healthy and happy humans. Anything that departs from this norm comprises a ‘pathological’ deviation from the ideal form of identity formation. Indeed, if the family form is not amenable to moral development, it follows that feminist calls to restructure family life are – as Winnicott himself argues – an ‘abnormality’ (Winnicott 1986, p. 188), thereby placing Honneth’s version of critical theory at odds with the struggles of the women’s movement to enhance social autonomy in line with the normative content of modernity. This also raises concerns about Honneth’s claim that the family comprises a ‘private sphere’ in which recognition claims are restricted to ‘love’. While this may have been the prevailing norm in the 1950s, since the advent of feminism and its ‘politicization of the personal’ gender identities have acquired a more ‘public’ guise. The norm of ‘participative parity’ once foreign to the ‘private sphere’ has subsequently become one of the key issues that men and women struggle with on a day-to-day basis. All of which casts doubt on Honneth’s claim that family relationships do not avail themselves of normative development.5 Step two: rights According to Honneth, it is only with the ‘stage’ of law or rights (Recht) that normative development occurs. This begins with the bourgeoisie’s struggle to free itself from the status-bound evaluations of feudalism. To this extent, argues Honneth, the bourgeoisie play a key role in generating a universalistic conception of ‘legality’ that underlies the modern notion of autonomous individuality. Nevertheless, Honneth is reluctant to support Mead’s assertion that legal rights arise from a speciﬁc form of ‘concrete-community’ (Honneth 1995b, p. 109). On the contrary, argues Honneth, such ‘rights’ possess a ‘post-conventional’ character in keeping with Hegel’s philosophy of history. ‘With the transition to modernity, the post-conventional principles of justiﬁcation that had already been developed in philosophy and political theory made their way into established law …’ (ibid.). In this way modernity brings into being a legal system that expresses the ‘universal interests of all members of society’ (ibid.) whereby each agrees to recognize all others ‘as persons capable of autonomously making reasonable decisions about moral norms’ (ibid., p. 110). However, while the recognition of individuals as ‘ends in themselves’ knows no further

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development, the conditions under which individuals are free to exercise their autonomy are capable of expansion. Consequently, the more individuals are enabled by social circumstances to act in an autonomous manner, the more relations of recognition are expanded throughout society. Thus having generated a ‘post-conventional’ form of civil rights, the bourgeoisie ﬁnd themselves under pressure ‘from below’ by ‘disadvantaged groups’ seeking to expand citizenship rights beyond the legal sphere. To theorize this process Honneth turns to the writings of T. H. Marshall in support of his claim that workers can avail themselves of ‘bourgeois liberties’ only when ‘the appropriate preconditions [are] present for equal participation in a rational agreement’ (Honneth 1995b, p. 115). The importance of Marshall’s work, for Honneth, lies in its developmental conception of citizenship rights. This takes a three-stage form. In the ﬁrst stage civil rights guarantee an individual’s liberty; in the second political rights guarantee participation in the formation of laws; and in the third social rights guarantee basic welfare needs (ibid.). Thus it is only in so far as disadvantaged groups avail themselves of the most ‘political rights’ that they can take advantage of ‘civil right’ and it is only in so far as they acquire ‘welfare rights’ that they can take advantage of ‘political rights’. To this extent, argues Honneth, ‘to be involved as morally responsible persons, individuals need not only legal protection from interference in their sphere of liberty, but also the legally assured opportunity for participation in the public process of will-formation, an opportunity they can only actually take advantage of, however, if they also have a certain social standard of living’ (ibid., p. 117). Nevertheless, rather than analysing the third and ﬁnal ‘stage’ of social solidarity as an attempt by workers to extend the normative content of modernity into the economic system, Honneth views it as a means to acquire the material conditions necessary for the achievement of individual autonomy. As a consequence, his account of social solidarity is insufﬁciently informed by workers’ struggles to ‘re-moralize’ the economy. Step three: solidarity According to Honneth, the sphere of solidarity arises from the need to evaluate individuals on the basis of their speciﬁc contribution to the life of the community. However, he rejects Mead’s assertion that

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it is possible to relate the determination of social worth to the division of labour. ‘The solution that Mead envisions here involves linking self-realization to engaging in socially useful work. The degree of recognition accorded to persons who, within the context of the societal division of labour, fulﬁl their functions “well” is enough to help them develop a consciousness of their individual particularity’ (ibid., p. 88). On the contrary, argues Honneth, ‘the evaluation of the various functional jobs depends, for its part, on the overarching goals of the community’ (ibid., p. 90). In Habermasian terms this is equivalent to arguing that the social validity accorded different occupations arises not from the economic system but from the symbolic lifeworld. Hence, Honneth’s attempt to link social recognition to the abstract goals of society through a ‘value-community’ (Wertgemeinschaft) in which ‘“prestige” or “standing” signiﬁes only the degree of social recognition … the individual earns for his or her form of self-realization by thus contributing, to a certain extent, to the practical realization of society’s abstractly deﬁned goals’ (ibid., p. 126). Nevertheless, Honneth’s rejection of Mead’s approach leaves the nature of the relationship between the cultural sphere and the economic sphere under-theorized. Thus it is unclear whether the ‘valuecommunity’ complements the economic system as in Parsonian functionalism or conﬂicts with it as in Marshall’s writings on the welfare state. This points to an important lacuna in Honneth’s account of social recognition. Although Honneth is concerned to identify a greater social role for recognition in motivating social struggle, this is largely conﬁned to the non-economic sphere. For this reason, Honneth deﬁnes ‘value’ predominantly in cultural terms, whether in the form of ‘cultural self-understandings’ which function to ‘realize culturally deﬁned goals’ (ibid., p. 122), or in the form of ‘cultural conﬂict’ between groups that deploy ‘symbolic force’ to control ‘the climate of public attention’ (ibid., p. 127). The economic system that forms the backdrop to Habermas’s writings on the lifeworld is in danger of disappearing into the background in Honneth’s analysis. When it does appear it takes the form of strategic subjects who pursue their material interests in a utilitarian fashion devoid of moral meaning beyond questions of redistribution. This, however, lapses behind Hegel’s attempt to ground material struggle in a more substantive conception of ‘ethical life’.

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Money, markets and morality The impetus for Honneth’s recognition-theoretic account of sociality arises from the desire to uncover the role played by moral claims in motivating class struggle. These moral insights are opposed to the Marxist category of material ‘interests’. ‘The motives for rebellion, protest, and resistance have generally been transformed into categories of “interest” and these interests are supposed to emerge from the objective inequalities in the distribution of material opportunities without ever being linked, in any way, to the everyday web of moral feelings’ (Honneth 1995b, p. 161). Against this Honneth seeks to reconnect the motives for social struggle to the ‘moral grammar’ of human life. ‘Unlike all utilitarian models of explanation, it suggests the view that motives or social resistance and rebellion are formed in the context of moral experiences stemming from the violation of deeply rooted expectations regarding recognition’ (ibid., p. 163). This, as Foster notes, leads Honneth to adopt Habermas’s distinction between ‘the sphere of normative interaction and the sphere of production’ (Foster 1999, p. 7). Thus, according to Honneth: ‘In the ﬁrst case, we are dealing with the analysis of competition for scarce goods, whereas in the second case we are dealing with the analysis of struggle over the intersubjective conditions for personal integrity’ (ibid., p. 165). However, by focusing on the cultural sources of social conﬂict, Honneth perpetuates the divide between ‘materiality’ and ‘morality’ that detaches labour from the normative content of modernity. Although Honneth acknowledges that a recognition-theoretic model has a ‘duty not only to extend but possibly to correct’ an interest-based model of social conﬂict (Honneth 1995b, p. 166) in so far as ‘relations of social esteem are … indirectly coupled with patterns of income distribution’ (ibid.), he falls short of Nancy Fraser’s claim that ‘recognition is the fundamental concept of justice and can encompass distribution’ (Fraser 1997, p. 74). 6 By restricting struggles for recognition to the ‘intersubjective conditions for personal integrity’ (1995b), Honneth bypasses the role played by the economy in reifying questions of social recognition. Thus, according to Foster, ‘what is lacking from [Honneth’s] work thus far is an account of the relation between the denial of recognition and structurally reproduced forms of material exclusion’ (Foster 1999, p. 13).

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Above all, Honneth fails to acknowledge the way the economy transforms status-based forms of social worth into pecuniary forms of market value. However, this calls for a more substantive conception of ‘ethical life’ capable of placing a normative ﬂoor under the economy. The notion that money comprises a means to allocate social worth is not alien to Honneth’s writings. Unfortunately, it remains little more than an aside in an otherwise culturally determined account of social recognition. To this extent, Honneth’s account of recognition requires augmenting in terms of the relationship between property and prestige. Thus, according to Veblen, under modern conditions: ‘The possession of wealth … becomes in popular apprehension, itself a meritorious act. Wealth is now itself intrinsically honourable and confers honour upon its possessor’ (Veblen 1992, p. 37).7 In this way, inequalities in the distribution of material wealth are linked to the web of moral feelings prevailing in society through the role money plays in allocating social esteem under capitalism. Money does not displace morality so much as appropriate its role in disseminating social validation. Thus, the question of property ownership is not separate from the question of social esteem, as the former now comprises the basis for the latter. As Veblen notes, once ‘the possession of property becomes the basis of popular esteem … it becomes a requisite to that complacency which we call self-respect’ (ibid., p. 38).8 Moreover, just as social esteem is a source of ‘material’ power in pre-modern times, so money is a source of ‘material’ power in modern times. The difference is that now the modern medium of social recognition is capable of purchasing goods and services directly as a social power in its own right. Indeed, it is this that comprises the ‘material’ power of money. However, this should not distract from its ‘moral’ content. On the contrary, the fact that the medium of social validation is also the means to acquire goods and services demonstrates the degree to which questions of distribution are predicated on questions of social worth. To this extent, money – in the absence of an alternative value-community – is the key means for determining human worth in a modern capitalist system. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that the ‘valuecommunity’, which oversees this state of affairs, should reﬂect its utilitarian calculus.

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Thus against Talcott Parson’s suggestion that modern sociality generates an anti-Hobbesian ‘value-system’ which integrates strategic actors within a common set of moral beliefs (Parsons 1968), Robert Merton argues that the key value promoted by modern capitalism is ‘pecuniary success’. In other words, rather than arguing that the value-system of modern societies is an antidote to the selﬁshness engendered by market capitalism, Merton argues that the former is a vehicle for the promotion of the latter. To this extent, the ruthless pursuit of pecuniary goals, coupled with the connotation between high income and high social status, comprises the hegemonic value-community of modern capitalism. Thus, it is not simply a question of opposing morality to the amorality of interestbased actions, but of opposing a collective morality based on cooperation, community and social justice to an individualistic ethos based on self-interest, success and technical efﬁciency. If Merton is correct, then a recognition-theoretic-based form of critical theory cannot afford to ignore the role played by the economy in allocating social esteem. Thus rather than viewing social recognition in primarily cultural terms, we need to enquire what it is about the economic system that allows it to usurp the role of allocating social recognition. Unfortunately, Honneth fails to ask this – partly because he views the system as an expression of material interests and partly because he has adopted an increasingly individualistic conception of autonomy (Kalyvas 1999, p. 100). As a consequence, Honneth neglects the role workers’ struggles play in generating alternative value-communities that resist market-based forms of value-allocation in favour of welfare criteria. Thus rather than simply adopting the contrast between the language of interests and the language of morality, critical theory needs to examine the extent to which their diremption comprises two sides of an ‘ethical totality’ which workers’ struggle plays a key role in reconciling. It is thus possible to argue that the pursuit of utilitarian interests only appears to lack a moral content because such interests operate in a social environment in which ‘ethical life’ has been monetarized. As we have seen, Hegel was the ﬁrst theorist to analyse this phenomenon in any detail. Unfortunately, Marx’s identiﬁcation of labour with self-objectifying subjectivity deprived critical theory of these normative resources. Hence the importance of Simmel’s account of the way the economic system serves to transform moral

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duties into monetary obligations. According to Simmel, with the advent of modern markets ‘the honorary prize, which reﬂects the cooperation of the whole group, has to be replaced by the money prize, which reﬂects the ultimate recognition of the performance. The enlargement of the social group requires the transition to expressing merit in money terms because it means the inescapable atomization of such a group’ (ibid., p. 348). To this extent, there exists a dialectical relationship between the monetarization of social recognition and the atomization of individual decision-making. Thus the more questions of social recognition acquire an economic form, the more individuals are freed from anterior moral obligations. However, while this creates a tremendous boost for individual autonomy it also serves to disguise the extent to which social agents are dependent on one another. Whereas in the period prior to the emergence of a money economy, the individual was directly dependent upon his group and the exchange of services united everyone closely with the whole of society, today everyone carries around with him, in a condensed latent form, his claim to the achievements of others. Everyone has the choice of deciding when and where he wants to assert this claim, and therefore loosen the direct relations of the earlier form of exchange. The extreme signiﬁcant power of money to lend to the individual a new independence from group interests is manifested not only in the basic differences between a money and a barter economy but also within the money economy itself. (Simmel 1978, p. 342) In this way the monetarization of social recognition fosters autonomy by freeing individuals from the status-based value-communities to which they formerly owed their moral allegiance. Thus while Honneth is quite correct to emphasize the relationship between universalistic forms of social recognition and the development of individual autonomy, he fails to account for this in terms of the emergence of a monetarized system of social recognition in which the pursuit of economic interests becomes detached from anterior moral obligations. However, in so far as the economy performs ‘moral’ tasks in an ‘amoral’ fashion any attempt to enlarge the ﬁeld of normative deci-

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sion-making must revoke the system’s reiﬁcation of intersubjectivity. Hence the importance of Marshall’s account of the role played by workers’ struggles in extending the normative content of modernity into the ‘material’ sphere. Thus rather than conﬁning moral struggles to the cultural sphere, Marshall shows how workers help to democratize the economy’s capacity to shape the social identities of citizens, not only between the distribution of wealth and individual autonomy but also between the distribution of wealth and collective autonomy. Unfortunately, Honneth fails to acknowledge the extent to which modern forms of social solidarity result from the struggles of participants to establish control over the autopoietic impulses of the system. Consequently, his notion of social solidarity assumes a functional rather than a critical orientation to the system’s capacity to commodify labour. However, before developing these insights further in the next chapter I want to re-examine Honneth’s appropriation of Hegel’s notion of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ in relation to labour.

Beyond Hegel? According to Honneth, in Hegel’s latter writings, ‘the programme of the philosophy of consciousness gained the upper hand … over all intersubjectivist insights …’ (ibid., p. 62). This is a controversial claim that writers such as Robert Williams (1992) dispute. Nevertheless, even if we were to concede the point, it still needs explaining. The only clue that Honneth offers concerns Hegel’s move from a theory of ‘communicative action’ to one grounded in ‘the theoretical and practical confrontation of individuals with their environment’ (Honneth 1995b, p. 29). This suggests that the transition from an intersubjective to a subject-centred account of modernity arises from Hegel’s attempt to incorporate an ‘instrumental’ relationship to nature into his model of ethical solidarity. To this extent, Honneth appears sympathetic to Benhabib’s claim that the subject-centred character of both Hegel and Marx’s writings arises from their attempt to model human activity on labour. ‘[B]ecause the primary model of human activity to which both resort is, in the ﬁnal analysis, work and not interaction, the discourse of transsubjectivity comes to dominate’ (Benhabib 1986, p. 68). In other words, given labour’s inherent tendency to self-objectiﬁcation, a labour-

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based model of humanity inevitably results in a ‘trans-subjective’ account of sociality.9 However, if we start from the view that labour is a social process – even under capitalism where it appears to be pared down to its instrumental essence – then rather than regarding labour under capitalism as the paradigmatic form of humanity’s ‘metabolism’ with nature, labour’s instrumental character is to be regarded as arising from its capitalist organization. In which case, Hegel’s tendency to subordinate an intersubjective to a subject-centred account of modernity can be explained, not in terms of his adoption of a ‘labour model’ of sociality, but in terms of his attempt to do justice to the autopoietic imperatives of the economy. As Honneth notes, for Hegel, ‘individuals’ market-mediated activities and interests – which later come to be gathered under the title “civil society” – comprise a “negative” though still constitutive “zone” of the “ethical” [Sittlich] whole’ (Honneth 1995b, p. 13). To this extent, ‘civil society’ comprises an alienated (externalized) form of ‘ethical life’ in which moral prescriptions take the objective form of economic laws.10 Money is that materially existing concept, unitary form, or the possibility of all objects of need. By elevating need and work to this level of universality [Allgemeinheit] a monstrous [ungeheures] system of common interest and mutual dependence is formed among a great people, a self-propelling life of the dead [ein sich in sich bewegendes Leben des Toten], which moves hither and thither, blind and elemental and like a wild animal, it stands in constant need of being tamed and kept under control. (Hegel 1979, p. 249)11 Nevertheless, Hegel has no wish to return to feudal forms of economic arrangements. On the contrary, he sees the way to salvation through a form of ‘ethical life’ capable of re-internalizing the market’s ‘invisible hand’ mechanism. However, because Hegel, like Marx, Habermas and Honneth after him, regards the system’s ‘externalization’ of morality as a natural consequence of modernity, only an objective form of morality can tame the ‘self-propelling’ imperatives of the system. Thus Benhabib’s ‘trans-subjective’ form of sociality is less a function of labour than the economic system that sets it to work. Consequently, rather than arriving at a form of ‘ethical life’ commensurate with modernity’s subjectiﬁcation of substance, Hegel

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sacriﬁces individual autonomy to the autonomy of a self-objectifying subject writ large. Substance is then reconciled with subject in the form of an ‘absolute subject’ modelled on the autopoietic system it is designed to ‘tame’. In which case, as Benhabib argues, Hegel’s ‘model of crises integration and management does not alleviate the consequences for citizens of their loss of freedom, but encourages the emergence of a second sphere of social relations, which are as omnipresent vis-à-vis the citizens as the laws of the market are vis-àvis the bourgeoisie. This second sphere is the bureaucratic system of justice and administration’ (Benhabib 1986, p. 100). If we are concerned to arrive at an intersubjective notion of morality, which avoids the system’s reiﬁcation of morality, it is necessary to link the former to the struggles of agents to ‘re-moralize’ the system. If it has failed in this it is because critical theory entertains a naturalistic account of labour that views the objectivity of the system as an inevitable consequence of the purposive transformation of nature. Once it is assumed that the objective character of sociality is inescapable it must then be analysed in an objective fashion. In Marx’s case, this takes the form of ‘scientiﬁc socialism’, in Habermas’s case a ‘post-conventional’ notion of morality, and in Honneth’s case a ‘trans-subjective’ account of ‘ethical life’ that grounds the ‘moral grammar of social conﬂicts’ in a teleological account of historical development. Thus, rather than inquiring into the normative principles employed by modern agents to justify their struggles, Honneth seeks to deduce the transcendental conditions for the possibility of a ‘successful life’ from the internal structure of intersubjectivity. As a result, Honneth follows Marx and Habermas in assuming an ‘objective’ standpoint over and above the intersubjective standpoint of participants in the lifeworld. This enables each to ground his critique of modernity in a ‘moral ideal’ commensurate with the essence of humanity. Armed with an objective account of ‘ethical life’ Honneth then translates the normative concerns of critical theory into a scientiﬁc account of modernity’s ‘pathologies’.

Pathology and social critique Honneth is explicit about his desire to abstract from the moral ends of participants in order to arrive at the moral ends inherent within

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intersubjectivity per se. ‘This framework lets an objective-intentional context emerge, in which historical processes no longer appear as mere events but rather as stages in a conﬂictual process of formation, leading to a gradual expansion of relationships of recognition’ (Honneth 1995b, p. 170). Nevertheless, this not only transforms social agents into unwitting means for a set of transhistorical objectives, it also transforms critical theory into a positivistic account of modernity in which the ethical formulations of participants are buried beneath the objective assessments of experts. This is conﬁrmed in an interview with Simon Critchley in which Honneth argues that ‘the only chance we have to keep the tradition of Critical Theory alive is to continue … the social-philosophical enterprise of a kind of diagnosis of our present culture, the pathologies of that culture, of a certain capitalist culture’ (Honneth 1998, p. 37). Questioned about the suitability of the language of ‘pathology’ for critical theory, Honneth replies: ‘I guess I think you can’t do it [critical theory] without the language of pathologies … the Critical Theory of society presupposes some vision of a society that would exclude the sorts of damage they describe. So this kind of normative underpinning of an enterprise like the critique of social pathologies is always there’ (ibid.). In conclusion, Honneth argues, ‘we [critical theorists] are the specialists for the deﬁciencies of society … we are, in a sense, the doctors of society’ (ibid., p. 39). However, in departing from his attempt to ground ethical life in the ‘moral autonomy of human beings’ in favour of ‘the conditions for their realization in general’ (Honneth 1995b, p. 172), Honneth risks sacriﬁcing a ‘human’ in favour of a ‘supra-human’ conception of self-constitution. The struggles of participants to articulate modernity’s moral ends are in danger of being reduced to mere means for an unfolding supra-historical telos. To this extent, Honneth fails to complete the ‘intersubjective’ reformulation of critical social theory begun by Habermas. As a consequence, critical theory ﬁnds itself in conﬂict with, rather than articulating, the moral ends of participants. In his doctoral role Honneth seeks objectively to determine what comprises a ‘healthy’ form of sociality. Thus rather than arguing that a ‘healthy’ form of sociality is one in which agents are in a position to intersubjectively determine their own sense of well-being, Honneth endorses an expert culture in which welfare regimes are imposed on participants from without.

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By assuming the standpoint of a ‘doctor’ Honneth removes himself from the need to engage in a dialogue of equals with the agents he is concerned to liberate. Armed with a notion of what comprises their rational interests there is no need to enquire what comprises the rational interests of agents. This perhaps explains why Honneth is reluctant to ground his account of workers’ struggles in the organized labour movement, preferring instead to voice the inarticulate concerns of the ‘lower social classes’, who are incapable of diagnosing their own ills and suggesting their own remedies. Having discovered a set of moral principles that makes autonomous agency possible, there is no need to subject them to the validation of autonomous agents. On the contrary, because the struggles of social agents are not the starting point for his version of critical theory, Honneth can ignore what James Bohman calls the ‘knowledgeable social agents to whom its claims are publicly addressed’ (Bohman 1996). Ultimately, Honneth’s failure to identify with the struggles of participants to render the system accountable is symptomatic of critical theory’s failure to challenge the system’s ‘colonization’ of the lifeworld. Thus Honneth believes that it is possible to keep ‘social philosophy’ (his term for critical theory) alive only in terms of a ‘formalistic anthropology’ grounded in the fundamental conditions of human life in general (Honneth 1996, p. 394). However, by adopting a ‘medical model’ of social diagnosis Honneth only compounds the weakness of critical theory by aligning it with the capacity of the system to reify intersubjectivity. Thus rather than endorsing an intersubjective version of critical theory in which ‘members of a concrete society decide what counts as “pathological” in their own social lifeform …’ (ibid., p. 393), Honneth borrows from the system’s capacity to reify the lifeworld in order to generate an objective account of social normality. However, if we wish to reconcile critical theory with the normative content of modernity it is necessary to do justice to the ethos of autonomy that informs it. This means repudiating attempts to provide critical theory with an ‘anthropological’ underpinning in favour of the struggles of participants to resist the reifying tendencies of the system. The substantive content of critical theory is supplied not by the invariant structures of humanity, but by the capacity of social movements to ‘humanize’ the system, on the

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understanding that the ethos of humanism develops in opposition to the systems transformation of participants into mere means for its autopoietic ends. In the next chapter I attempt to rethink the welfare state in terms of the struggles of participants to expand the intersubjective sphere at the cost of its reiﬁed other.

8 Struggles for Social Welfare

Without doubt Honneth’s attempt to reconnect morality and labour through the notion of struggles for recognition represents a major advance over Habermas’s consensus-driven model of communicative action. Nevertheless, by restricting morality to the ‘cultural’ sphere Honneth endorses Habermas’s uncoupling of the economy from the normative content of modernity. Thus, while Honneth is to be congratulated for replacing Marx’s subject-centred account of labour with an intersubjective account, he fails to acknowledge sufﬁciently the ‘moral’ content of workers’ ‘material’ struggles. To rectify this I propose to view workers’ struggles as attempts to retrieve the intersubjective domain lost beneath the system’s diremption of ‘ethical life’. Although Habermas and Honneth both claim to have sublated ‘subject-centred thinking’ they leave intact the social mechanisms that sustain it. In Habermas’s case this expresses itself as ‘strategic action’ and in Honneth’s case as ‘utilitarian interests’. In both cases ‘subject-centred thinking’ is associated with the kind of material activities that Marx places under the rubric of ‘metabolic exchange’ (Stoffwechsel). To this extent, critical theory continues to view economic activity as inherently ‘non-normative’. Nevertheless, one cannot escape what Bourdieu calls ‘the ritual either/or choice between objectivism and subjectivism’ (Bourdieu 1977, p. 4), by simply discovering an alternative intersubjective terrain from which to analyse modernity. On the contrary, while notions such as ‘lifeworld’, ‘value-community’ and Bourdieu’s own ‘habitus’ go some way to identifying an ethically charged form of social solidarity, they remain, for the most part, restricted to the cultural sphere. This is 157

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because in practice the economy dirempts ‘ethical life’ into its objective and subjective components. In which case: (1) any appeal to a purely theoretical resolution to this dichotomy will remain limited in scope; and (2) any attempt to resolve this dichotomy in practice must do so at the expense of the economy’s hegemony of intersubjectivity. It is not, therefore, possible to overcome ‘subject-centred thinking’ (in either its macro- or micro-social forms) without overcoming the social conditions that support it. Namely, the diremption of intersubjectivity ‘up’ into the objective structures of the system and ‘down’ into the subjective preferences of strategic actors. However, because the ‘objectiﬁcation’ of sociality is predicated on the system’s ‘subjectiﬁcation’ of agency, changing the social status of the latter helps bring about a corresponding change in the status of the former. As individuals come together in a collective fashion so the system loses its alien character. What was once the prerogative of market forces comes increasingly to be mediated by social institutions. As a consequence, the system loses some of its ‘non-normative’ appearance in the eyes of participants. However, this process of ‘reinternalization’ cannot be divorced from the economy’s tendency towards instability. Because the system is incapable of securing the conditions for its own possibility, some degree of state regulation is required to protect the economy from its own failures. Thus neoclassical economics considers state intervention legitimate when the market proves incapable of utilizing economic resources efﬁciently, while welfare economics extends this justiﬁcation to questions of equity and autonomy – even when they jeopardize efﬁcacy. To this extent, the scope of state intervention is predicated on both the system’s failure to function in an efﬁcacious manner and the labour movement’s success in placing its welfare needs on the political agenda. Although Habermas accords only a limited role to the welfare state in rendering the economic imperatives of the system accountable to the intersubjectively formulated ends of participants, he remains concerned to ground the legitimacy of administrative power in the democratic procedures of the lifeworld. To this end, he allocates a key role to the law in connecting the weak force of ‘communication action’ to the strong force of economic regulation. However, because the bridge connecting the democratic impulses of the lifeworld to the autopoietic imperatives of the system bypasses the welfare state, Habermas’s version of ‘practical reason’ is too

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weak to challenge the economy’s diremption of intersubjectivity. This creates a tension between the radical implications of Habermas’s principle of ‘domination-free communication’ and his conservative acceptance of the system’s suppression of ethical autonomy. By taking as a fait accompli the system’s capacity to regulate itself in an autopoietic fashion, Habermas renders the lifeworld incapable of redeeming the promise of ‘communicative action’.

Rethinking the normative ground of critical theory In Between Facts and Norms (1996) Habermas severs his remaining links to Marx’s attempt to locate an alienated form of human agency beneath the system’s self-valorizing imperatives. In its place Habermas adopts Luhmann’s system-theoretic account of the economy on the grounds that his ‘new type of objectivistic social theories avoid the narrowness and the normative ballast associated with the holistic concepts of a philosophy of history’ (ibid., p. 47). Habermas then exchanges his predecessor’s ‘negative’ stance towards the system in favour of an ‘afﬁrmative’ account of its capacity to ‘wipe out [verwischt] all the hermeneutic tracks that point the way into society for an action theory starting from the actor’s own self-understanding’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, Habermas is unwilling completely to abandon the promise of democratic self-constitution to the system’s capacity to ‘wipe out’ the autonomy of participants. He therefore criticizes Luhmann for failing to acknowledge the extent to which the ‘objective’ system is countermanded by an intersubjective lifeworld in which ‘popular sovereignty’ has been set aﬂoat communicatively. Habermas then reformulates the task of critical theory as one of demonstrating ‘how the old promise of a self-organizing community of free and equal citizens can be re-conceived under the conditions of complex societies’ (ibid., p. 7). Nevertheless, because Habermas views the system as devoid of normative content, he locates the remnants of ‘ethical life’ outside its economic walls. In the ﬁrst instance this corresponds to the substantive form of ethical norms that comprises the context-bound values of the lifeworld. However, because they are incapable of achieving the context-transcending rationality of moral norms, Habermas calls on individuals to abstract ‘from the heterogeneous features of contingent interests and value orientations,

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particular sociocultural forms of life, and identity shaping traditions …’ (ibid., p. 164) in order to acquire an ‘autonomous will’ capable of moral deliberation. To this extent, as David Ingram notes: ‘Only a concept of practical reason that can be fully articulated independently of action, with its inevitable strategic constraints, and aesthetic intuition, with its quasi-speculative, contemplative preunderstanding of totality, sufﬁces for him as a possible basis for critical theory’ (Ingram 1987, p. 74). Having displaced the critical content of ‘practical reason’ into the normative sphere ‘puriﬁed of all substantive elements’ (Habermas 1996, p. 228), Habermas is then faced with the problem of how to reconnect the ‘abstract’ world of impartial argumentation with the everyday world of ‘substantive’ interests. ‘When a theory of justice … attempts to justify the principles of a well-ordered society by operating beyond existing institutions and traditions, it faces the problem of how its abstract idea of justice can be brought back into contact with reality’ (ibid., pp. 197–8, my emphasis). To resolve this problem Habermas looks to the law to convert the weak force of ‘communicative power’ into an effective form of ‘administrative power’ (ibid., p. 150). To this extent: ‘Law … functions as the “transformer” that ﬁrst guarantees that the socially integrating network of communication stretched across society as a whole holds together’ (ibid., p. 56). Nevertheless, by restricting the democratic principles of ‘popular sovereignty’ to a ‘desubstantialized’, ‘subjectless’ and ‘anonymous’ form of communicative action (ibid., pp. 486–7), ‘practical reason’ appears powerless to resist the proﬁt-driven imperatives of global capitalism. Such a diagnosis of impotence can, however, be justiﬁed on the grounds that it represents a ‘realistic’ assessment of the current state of power relations. To this extent, Habermas can claim to be reﬂecting the sovereignty of the system over its atomized agents. Nevertheless, it is one thing to argue that the forces sustaining critical theory are weak beside those confronting it, it is another to argue that critical theory should adopt an ‘afﬁrmative’ stance towards the system’s capacity to neutralize social agency. On the contrary, nothing in Habermas’s account of ‘communicative action’ justiﬁes this conclusion. Indeed, the very opposite is the case in so far as the system impedes the exercise of ‘practical reason’, violates the normative content of modernity and transforms participants into mere means for its autopoietic ends.

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In order to redeem Habermas’s insights into the normative promise of modernity it is necessary to reconnect critical theory to the ‘material’ interests that motivate participants to struggle for a more just, egalitarian and democratic form of life. By placing Habermas’s vision of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ in its historically emergent context it is possible to overcome the uncoupling of ‘morality’ from ‘materialism’ which renders the pursuit of material interests ‘amoral’ and the pursuit of moral ends ‘immaterial’. As Iris Marion Young argues, the problem with Habermas’s account of ‘practical reason’, is that: ‘Either an agent reasons only selﬁshly, considering only what will best promote his or her own selﬁsh desires and goals, or he or she will reason from an impartial general point of view that has no particular desires or interests in view’ (Young 1990, p. 106). Consequently, Young calls for a notion of morality that arises not from ‘lonely, self-legislating reason’, but ‘from the concrete encounter with others who demand that their needs, desires, and perspectives be recognized’ (ibid.). As we have seen, Habermas responds to such criticism by supplementing his ‘anterior’ approach to the moral regulation of the system, with an ‘interior’ one grounded in ‘a form of life that meets it halfway’ (Habermas 1996, pp. 302, 358, 487). To this end, he argues that a ‘deliberative politics’ requires a substantive form of ‘popular sovereignty’ grounded in civil society to redeem it. However, given that his ‘top-down’ alternative to this ‘bottom-up’ approach is mired in performative contradictions and transcendental impotence it is perhaps time to drop the ‘methodological ﬁction’ of an ‘ideal communication community’ that makes ‘contexttranscending validity claims’ possible (ibid., pp. 322–3) in favour of a substantive notion of intersubjectivity capable of doing justice to the ethical validity claims of historically grounded participants. Not least because it is impossible to acquire a ‘post-metaphysical’ account of ‘ethical life’ whilst retaining a ‘post-conventional’ account of morality’s capacity to transcend the lifeworld. In other words, if Habermas is serious about privileging the perspective of participants over that of the observer, as he says he is (Habermas 1992, p. 36), then he must ground his vision of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ in the ‘empirical’ concerns of the former, rather than the latter’s access to the timeless constituents of language orientated towards mutual

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understanding, especially when his objective account of morality accords with the system’s objectiﬁcation of ‘ethical life’. To this extent, Habermas’s attempt to discover an objectively structured form of moral order within language serves only to conﬁrm the system’s objectiﬁcation of morality, thereby setting up correspondence between Habermas’s attempt to deduce the norms of ‘practical reason’ from the immanent structures of intersubjectivity and the system’s capacity to ‘wipe out’ the normative standpoint of participants. In both cases the perspective of social agents is overridden in the name of a higher form of rationality, whether this refers to the rules of ‘practical reason’ grounded in the formal procedures of ‘discourse ethics’ or the rules of ‘functional reason’ grounded in the autopoietic imperatives of the system. Ultimately, in Habermas’s schema, we are reduced to the role of actors in a Manichean struggle between two opposed forms of rationality that can only be comprehended from the ‘outside’ on the basis of an objective observer perspective. Consequently, if critical theory is concerned to retrieve ethical autonomy from the heteronomy of the system it must align itself with the struggles of participants to render the economy accountable to their collectively formulated ends. This, however, requires a rethinking of the system’s capacity to neutralize ‘ethical life’.

Rethinking intersubjectivity The notion that the ‘objective’ status of the system is predicated on the ‘subjectiﬁcation’ of its agents ﬁnds its seminal formulation in Hegel’s early writings on ‘civil society’, although such a notion is present in Adam Smith’s account of the relationship between the ‘invisible hand’ of the market and the ‘self-regarding’ individuals who compose it. However, unlike Smith, Hegel regards ‘ethical life’ as latent within the economy – albeit in an alienated ‘amoral’ guise. Nevertheless, because Hegel is unable to countenance a democratic solution to the antinomies of ‘civil society’, the retrieval of ‘ethical life’ takes an external form that subjects the economy to moral regulation on behalf of a supra-social Geist, thereby conﬁrming the system’s own objectiﬁcation of morality. Of those seeking to renew Hegel’s insights into the normative character of economic life only Simmel succeeds in restoring an intersubjective content to ‘civil society’. Nevertheless, echoes of

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Simmel’s Hegelian insights can be heard in Habermas’s writings on the origins of the subject–object dichotomy, especially in regard to his adoption of Hegel’s ‘causality of fate’: The dynamism of fate results … from the disruption of the conditions of symmetry and of the reciprocal dependencies of an intersubjectively constituted life-context, where one part isolates itself and hence also isolates all other parts from itself and their common life. This act of tearing loose from an intersubjectively shared lifeworld is what ﬁrst generates a subject–object relationship. (Habermas 1987b, p. 29) Thus, rather than arguing that the ‘non-normative’ form of the system is a natural expression of the ‘instrumental’ character of labour or the ‘functional’ regulation of the lifeworld, Habermas argues that the former is a consequence of severing individuals from the intersubjective context of ‘ethical life’. ‘An ego-instance shorn of all normative dimensions and reduced to cognitive achievements of adaptation does indeed form a functional complement to the sub-systems that are steered by media …’ (Habermas 1992a, p. 197). In which case, the capacity of strategic actors to ‘slip out’ of the normative lifeworld corresponds to the system’s capacity to ‘mediatize’ it. ‘The strategic actor no longer draws from an intersubjectively shared lifeworld; having himself become worldless, as it were, he stands over and against the objective world and makes decisions solely according to standards of subjective preference’ (ibid.). This is all the more signiﬁcant now that Habermas has abandoned Weber’s claim that the objectivity of the system is a consequence of its institutionalization of ‘instrumental reason’, in favour of Luhmann’s claim that autopoiesis is a consequence of the institutionalization of ‘functional reason’. Having severed the remaining links between the ‘non-normative’ status of the system and the ‘instrumental’ status of labour, Habermas appears to have abandoned his long-standing (Arendtian) claim that there is something inherent to ‘labour’ which places it beyond the sphere of moral deliberation (Arendt 1958). Hence the importance of Habermas’s claim that the system’s capacity to ‘objectify’ the lifeworld is an expression of the former’s capacity to dirempt intersubjectivity, as it follows that the attainment of an ethically informed ‘public sphere’ is less a function of agent’s capacity to

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transcend their ‘material’ interests than their capacity to overcome the system’s atomization of individuals. Thus in so far as the ‘demoralization’ of the system is predicated on the ‘demoralization’ of its ‘strategic actors’, the development of a normatively informed ‘public sphere’ is predicated on the capacity of individuals to overcome the atomizing tendencies of the system. Seen in this light, Habermas’s claim that individuals must transcend their material interests in order to become capable of moral deliberation only conﬁrms the very uncoupling of materiality and morality that ‘communicative action’ struggles to overcome. Hence the difﬁculty Habermas has in bringing morality back to bear upon a material realm it had to escape in order to become moral in the ﬁrst place. If, however, the ‘demoralization’ of the system is predicated on the diremption of intersubjectivity, then the ‘re-moralization’ of the system must depend upon the reuniﬁcation of its subjects. In which case, the construction of a strong, vibrant and substantive ‘public sphere’ rests on the capacity of individuals, not to discard their material interests, but to enlarge the intersubjective sphere’s regulation of the economy. As we have seen, Honneth goes some way towards achieving this through his insights into the role of workers’ struggles in expanding the normative content of modernity to include labour. However, by limiting his account to cultural forms of social recognition Honneth fails to address the labour movement’s role in re-normatizing the system. In order to correct this oversight I propose to relate workers’ struggles to amend the commodity status of labour with the capacity of the welfare state to subject the economy to moral obligations. This means dispensing with Marx’s attempt to juxtapose the self-objectifying subjectivity of labour to the self-valorizing imperatives of capital in favour of the struggles of workers to free labour from the autopoietic imperatives of the system. This, however, calls for a signiﬁcant rethinking of the relationship between the struggles of workers to ‘re-moralize’ the system and the normative content of critical theory.

Labour movement struggles In order to differentiate between the justice of exchange and the injustice of production Marx argues that workers sell their potential

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and not their actual labour to capital. Indeed, because the latter possesses no intrinsic value, according to Marx, capitalists are as incapable of buying ‘labour’ as workers are of selling it. In which case, workers are simply incapable of ‘alienating’ their labour to capitalists in the exchange process. It follows that the surplus that emerges from the production process is not only created by but also the possession of labour. However, once we relinquish Marx’s objective in favour of an intersubjective account of property rights, then exchange assumes a crucial role in legitimizing the system’s appropriation of labour. By agreeing to sell their labour time to capital, workers not only renounce their right to the proceeds of the production process but also their control over it. Any attempt to criticize capitalism from the standpoint of labour must therefore start from the normative relations capitalism establishes in exchange and, in particular, the principle that no one should be used as the means to another’s ends without their prior consent. This however does not prevent a discrepancy arising between the normative content of exchange and the normative content of production. On the contrary, the fact that employers can ‘consume’ labour only by setting the sellers of labour to work means that workers must accompany their ‘labour’ down into the production process. This generates a potential ‘clash of rights’ (Bowles and Gintis 1986) between the autonomy claims of workers and the private property claims of owners.1 According to Marx, such clash is at the heart of the struggle over the length of the working day: The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working day as long as possible … On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchase, and the worker maintains his right as a seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to a particular normal length. There is here therefore an antinomy, of right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchange. Between equal rights, force decides. (Marx 1976, p. 344) If, however, workers acquiesce to the property rights established in exchange process and accept the right of capital to set labour to work, this tension lays dormant. But when workers organize themselves in the production process – as they often do – they call into

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question the legitimacy of the wage contract and, with it, the right of capital to treat labour as a mere ‘instrument of production’. Thus in place of Marx’s notion that labour comprises the originary source of value, labour can only be said to differentiate itself from capital when it seeks to place its ends on a collective foundation. The motives for this are not difﬁcult to understand. As commodities workers are reduced to the status of things that can be legitimately treated as means to another’s ends. In challenging their commodity status, workers struggle to extend the normative content of modernity to the production process in order to force employers to recognize them as ends in themselves and treat them accordingly. For this reason, workers’ struggles to afﬁrm their normative status are closely aligned to workers’ struggles to decommodify labour. As Esping-Andersen notes: As commodities, workers are replaceable, easily redundant, and atomized. De-commodiﬁcation is therefore a process with multiple roots … It is … a precondition for a tolerable level of individual welfare and security. Finally, without de-commodiﬁcation, workers are incapable of collective action; it is accordingly, the alpha and omega of the unity and solidarity required for labormovement development. (Esping-Andersen 1990, p. 37) In other words, the more workers are reduced to the status of commodities the more they are vulnerable to the exigencies of the market. Reduced to the level of things their own ends are subordinated to those of capital. 2 Nevertheless, this runs contrary to the very principles by which the system seeks to legitimize itself: namely, the consent of participants. To this extent, the struggles of workers to decommodify labour correspond to the extension of ‘practical reason’ to the production process. This alternative history of the development of ‘practical reason’ tends to get lost in Habermas’s evolutionary account of the system’s institutionalization of ‘functional reason’. Thus, on the grounds that the ‘abstraction’ of labour by capital represents an evolutionary advance over traditional forms of craftwork, Habermas argues that ‘Taylorist’ forms of ‘scientiﬁc management’ comprise a progressive augmentation of the system’s rationality. The fact that these management techniques, and the Fordist forms of assembly-line produc-

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tion that built upon them, were introduced to counter the autonomy of labour (Braverman 1974) is therefore of little consequence to Habermas, for whom the normative content of modernity stops at the factory gate and ofﬁce door. On the contrary, such attempts to reimbed the system within the lifeworld are viewed as deleterious to the rationality of the system. Nevertheless, in contrast to Habermas’s championing of capital as the bearer of ‘functional reason’ the labour force not only seeks to reafﬁrm its collective autonomy in the face of the system’s attempt to wipe it out, but also press for reforms designed to mitigate the commodity status of labour. To this extent, argues Holloway, new forms of industrial unionism ‘grew out of the new relations at work. The spread of Fordism meant the spread of a new type of mass, unskilled workers working in large factories’ (Holloway 1995, p. 19). Similarly, Cleaver stresses the connection between the emergence of new trade union structures and new welfare practices: On the material foundations reorganized a decade earlier by Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford … arose a wholly new structure of working class power: that of the factory mass workers to impose collective bargaining and a new kind of unionism at the industrial level coupled with the social power to impose full employment, rising wages, social security. Unemployment compensation and other pillars of a new ‘welfare’ state. (Cleaver 1995, p. 149) To this extent, there exists a symbiotic relationship between the new forms of collective resistance that developed in the wake of Taylorism and Fordism and the politics of Roosevelt’s New Deal that emerged in the wake of the Depression in the United States (Holloway 1995, p. 19).3 As Michael Walzer argues: ‘New Deal politics would have been impossible without an enfranchised, mobilized working class which, though it never seized state power on the Marxist model, did use the state to alter the pattern of social relations across several of the spheres of justice’ (Walzer 1995, p. 286). As such, the labour movement plays a signiﬁcant role in imposing moral restraints on capital’s ‘right’ to treat labour in an instrumental fashion. However, it would be wrong to conclude that the labour movement merely seeks to legitimize its actions on the basis of ‘practical’

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to the detriment of ‘instrumental’ or ‘functionalist reason’. On the contrary, the labour movement is also concerned to foster long-run economic stability of the type ‘market optimists’ argue is guaranteed by the system. Consequently, when the system proves incapable of redeeming its promise to ‘deliver the goods’ the labour movement is at the forefront of calls to subject the system to state regulation. To this extent, the labour movement not only struggles to expand ‘practical reason’ in the face of the system’s autopoietic tendencies, but also ‘functional reason’ in the face of the system’s tendency to malfunction. The task of assessing the economy’s capacity to deliver on both its ‘practical’ and ‘functional’ promises falls to welfare economics. To this end, welfare economics is charged with subjecting the economic system to ‘normative scrutiny’. However, while welfare economics is associated with the existence of ‘market failures’ this is far from a purely technical matter. On the contrary, the identiﬁcation of ‘market failures’ is intimately bound up with the system’s capacity to meet the ‘material’ ends of participants. Consequently, the question of ‘market failures’ cannot be divorced from the capacity of the labour movement to place the welfare of workers on the political agenda.

Welfare economics and the re-normatization of value According to Simon Clarke (1982), the wholesale reformulation of economic theory that took place at the end of the nineteenth century occurred in response to the challenge of the labour movement: ‘The more general context of the marginalist revolution was a concern with understanding the possibilities and limits of State intervention in the regulation of economic relations, including in particular the resolution of the labour question. The general background of the concern was the increasing role of the state in economic and social life’ (Clarke 1982, p. 149). In particular, ‘neoclassical economics’, as it became known, sought to limit social reforms by demonstrating the beneﬁcial and advantageous effects of free competition (ibid., p. 150). Its starting point is Pareto’s contention that ‘in the absence of any distortions a freely competitive equilibrium would ensure allocative efﬁciency’ (Begg et al. 1984, p. 322). It then follows that state intervention is only legitimate when a ‘market failure’ can be identiﬁed.

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At ﬁrst sight there would appear to be an overlap between Habermas’s use of ‘functional reason’ to justify the efﬁcacy of the system, and the neoclassical view that market forces ensure the most rational allocation of economic resources. However, while Habermas, following Luhmann, grounds the rationality of capitalism in the standpoint of an ‘objective’ observer (Habermas 1996, p. 47), neoclassical economics grounds the rationality of the market in the fact that it offers ‘the most perfect expression of the preferences of the members of the society’4 (Clarke 1982, p. 164). In other words, while the former emphasizes the ‘objective’ capacities of the system to use scarce resources efﬁciently, the latter emphasizes the extent to which it satisﬁes the ‘subjective’ preferences of consumers. While these two standpoints are not opposed – they are merely two sides of the same criteria of allocative efﬁciency – they do provide different channels of development. Above all, welfare economics offers a way to bring the apparently ‘technical’ workings of the system under the purview of normative criteria. Thus while the question of economic welfare corresponds, for Habermas, to the capacity of the system to institutionalize ‘functional reason’, for neoclassical economics it corresponds to the subjectively perceived ‘welfare’ of participants. In the latter case, the system’s capacity to fulﬁl the ends of participants is grounded in the doctrine of ‘consumer sovereignty’. At the centre of welfare economics, argues Clarke, lies the call ‘for the moral and political regulation of capitalist social relations to moderate the conﬂicts that arose out of the unfettered pursuit of economic interest …’ (ibid., p. 138). However, rather than pursuing this normative line of thought, Clarke falls back upon an orthodox Marxist critique of the system. Neoclassical economics is then criticized for completing the ‘naturalization’ of capitalist social relations begun by political economy (ibid., p. 186), despite the fact that, as Clarke himself acknowledges, it is also responsible for opening the economy to moral interrogation (Begg et al. 1984, p. 312). To this extent, welfare economics offers a means to extend the normative scope of critical theory beyond the cultural sphere and into the system. In short, welfare economics discloses an intersubjective space in which to evaluate the system’s capacity to beneﬁt its participants. Hence Pareto’s contention welfare economics is more at home in sociology than economics (cited in Parsons 1968).

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This has implications for Habermas’s account of ‘ethical life’ in so far as welfare economics brings the ‘material’ sphere within the purview of the ‘public sphere’. In other words, rather than the latter concerning itself only with a defence of the lifeworld from the system, welfare economics takes the ethical concerns of participants into the heart of the system. Moreover, it does this on intersubjective terms. Thus whereas Habermas views the system’s capacity to fulﬁl efﬁcacy criteria in objective terms, welfare economics judges this in terms of the system’s capacity to meet the subjective preferences of participants. Welfare economics then aggregates the latter in order to determine whether the goods and services produced optimize the beneﬁts of consumers. At this point the question of efﬁciency acquires a normative character that ﬁnds expression in the debate between ‘market optimists’ and ‘market pessimists’. According to the former the risk of ‘market failure’ is low and only a limited amount of state intervention is justiﬁed, while according to the latter the risk of ‘failure’ is high and a greater degree of state intervention is therefore justiﬁed. Ultimately, though, this debate turns on the capacity of the system to use economic resources – and above all labour – in an optimal fashion. For this reason the deep economic depression of the 1930s had a profound effect not only on economic theory but also on economic policy. As a result of the depression the pendulum swung towards state regulation at either end of the political spectrum. Socialists and Fascists alike agreed on the need for greater state involvement in the economy to overcome its inherent instability. This, in turn, provoked a dramatic refashioning of welfare economics in the shape of John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Interest, Employment and Money (1936). In the General Theory Keynes sought to identify a set of ‘market failures’ that were more comprehensive than those acknowledged by neoclassical economics, but that required less radical remedies than those advocated by Socialists or Fascists. Thus while Keynes was famously willing to contemplate the ‘comprehensive socialisation of investment’, he hoped that full employment could be restored through demand management policies alone (ibid., p. 378). However, it was the advent of the Second World War that brought ‘Keynesian economics’ acceptability, thereby legitimating the use of

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the state to fulﬁl a number of key macroeconomic goals. No longer content to play second ﬁddle to its positivistic rival, welfare economics now claimed the comprehensiveness of a ‘general theory’ charged with the management of the system as a whole. Having seemingly demonstrated that large-scale state intervention could overcome the deﬁciencies of the market, the social policies necessitated by the Second World War appeared to prove Keynes right. This engendered a new conﬁdence in the state’s ability to regulate the economy in a morally responsible fashion. To this end, Western governments assumed an obligation to ensure key policy ends such as full employment, low inﬂation and steady growth through the application of demand management techniques. At the heart of this strategy lay the welfare of labour in so far as its level of employment comprised the foundation of economic well-being. To this extent, the Keynesian emphasis on full employment marked a recognition of the labour movement’s role in placing the treatment of workers high on the political agenda. From this emerged a new and (with hindsight) fragile convergence of interests between, on the one hand, the business community’s concern for long-term economic stability and increased productivity and the labour movement’s concern for higher wages and better working conditions, on the other. At its high point the ‘social democratic settlement’ (as it became known) equated the welfare of labour with the welfare of the system. As such, the rise of the welfare state to combines the ‘material’ concerns of workers with the ‘remoralization’ of the economy. Its theoretical highpoint being T. H. Marshall’s writings on social citizenship. As we have seen, for Marshall, citizenship develops through three stages. The ‘civil rights’ of individual subjects, the ‘political rights’ of democratic agents and ‘the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society’ (Marshall 1973, p. 72). However, unlike Honneth, who fails to relate these new forms of ‘social solidarity’ to the struggles of workers to ‘remoralize’ the system, Marshall explicitly relates the latter to the welfare state’s capacity to suspend market-based forms of ‘value’. To this end, Marshall connects the struggles of workers to decommodify labour with the capacity of the welfare state to demarketize value. Thus in order to eliminate what he refers to as the ‘anti-social elements

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in the capitalist market system’ (ibid., p. 135), Marshall calls for the ‘re-moralization’ of the system by the state. ‘Social rights in their modern form imply an invasion of contract by status, the subordination of market price to social justice, the replacement of the free bargain by the declaration of rights’ (ibid., p. 111). This in turn engenders a new notion of value – one that progressively replaces ‘market’ with ‘welfare value’. To this extent, argues Marshall, ‘welfare value’ is ‘estimated, not objectively as a commodity in the market nor subjectively as a [thing] in use, but as a thing for use, which can be classiﬁed and valued in relation to others of its kind’ (ibid., p. 116). Moreover, this alternative notion of ‘welfare value’ is bound up with the welfare state’s capacity to not only intervene in the market but also adopt some of its key functions (ibid., p. 107).5 As such, the expansion of ‘welfare value’ serves to render the ‘private’ realm of capitalist ‘property rights’ accountable to the ‘public’ world of ‘citizenship rights’. Marshall’s writings on economics arise from his attempt to rethink value-relations in the context of greater state intervention. In the process, he arrives at a position close to Simmel’s in so far as market value is viewed as simultaneously combining and dirempting the objective values of the system and the subjective values of participants. Consequently, the more the state intervenes in the allocation of economic resources the more ‘welfare value’ comprises an intersubjective zone in which the objective and subjective aspects of ‘market value’ are reconciled. This then demonstrates the extent to which the formation of a substantive ‘public sphere’ requires the progressive sublation of ‘civil society’ and its subject–object antinomies. In other words, the formation of a normatively charged ‘public sphere’ presupposes a partial ‘socialization’ of ‘civil society’ and a corresponding diminution of its autopoietic powers. The substance of this intersubjective sphere – in which Marshall’s notion of ‘social citizenship’ is imbedded – derives from its capacity to perform economic functions on the basis of welfare criteria. In this way, argues Marshall, participants acquire a measure of democratic control over the system’s capacity to function independently from them. Nevertheless, as Barry Hindess (1993) notes, Marshall offers an overly benign account of the welfare state and its democratic content to the detriment of the role it plays in reproducing the system, whether this is understood in Marxist terms as the domina-

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tion of labour by capital or in Weberian terms as the domination of humanity by an administrative ‘iron cage’ (ibid.). This, in turn, corresponds to Habermas’s contention that the welfare state serves to ‘pacify’ the working class and ‘bureaucratize’ the lifeworld. Habermas on this basis seeks to counterbalance his defence of the system’s capacity to normatively cleanse the lifeworld with a critique of the state’s capacity to neutralize the personal autonomy of citizens.

Rethinking the welfare state In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Habermas argues that the emergence of the welfare state is coterminous with the ‘degeneration’ of rational discourse (Habermas 1989b, pp. 232–5). Thus, rather than viewing the emergence of the welfare state as an expression of struggles ‘from below’ to give substance to the normative content of modernity, Habermas associates it with capacity of the system to ‘mediatize’ the lifeworld.6 Although Habermas claims to have changed his mind about the relative importance of the ‘plebeian public sphere’ (Habermas 1992b, pp. 426–7), his association of welfare reforms with the ‘bureaucratization’ of the lifeworld has, if anything, grown stronger (ibid., p. 436). To this end, Habermas, argues that the welfare state is a ‘dilemmatic’ structure that simultaneously guarantees and takes freedom away (Habermas 1987a, p. 361). Habermas theorizes this ambivalence in terms of the process of ‘juridiﬁcation’ (Verrechtlichung) in which the state serves to cushion citizens from the vagaries of market forces while transforming them into ‘clients of welfare-state bureaucracies’ (ibid.). Thus while the welfare state regulates private capital’s use of labour, it also transforms citizens into clients of a bureaucratic apparatus. Consequently, the more the welfare state throws ‘a net of client relationships over private spheres of life, the stronger are the anticipated pathological side-effects of a juridiﬁcation that entails both a bureaucratization and a monetarization of core areas of the lifeworld’ (ibid., p. 364). In other words, while Habermas acknowledges the welfare state’s role in protecting workers from the demands of private capital, he is more concerned to emphasize its capacity to bureaucratize private life. Thus despite continuing to refer to the welfare state’s ‘dialectic of empowerment and tutelage’ in his more recent writings (Habermas

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1996, p. 433), its emancipatory role is conﬁned to redistributing material resources so as to facilitate individual autonomy. Thus, unlike Marshall, for whom the welfare state engenders a collective form of self-constitution, Habermas argues that: ‘The welfare paradigm of law is oriented exclusively towards the problem of the just distribution of socially produced life opportunities’ (ibid., p. 418; my emphasis). To this extent, the welfare state is legitimate only when it satisﬁes the ‘material preconditions for an equal opportunity to exercise individual liberties …’ (ibid., p. 416). Habermas then employs the writings of Iris Marion Young to provide ‘feminist’ support for his contention that the welfare state’s concern for distributive justice neglects more important forms of procedural justice. According to Young, distributive forms of justice serve to ‘block the political imagination from envisioning more emancipatory institutions and practices’ (Young 1990, p. 75). To remedy this, Young argues that: ‘Theorizing about justice should explicitly limit the concept of distribution to material goods like things, natural resources or money’ (ibid., p. 33). However, this assumes that money is a ‘material good’ or ‘thing’ rather than (as Marx argues) a social relation in its own right. As Winﬁeld notes, ‘the premise that economic relations are normative social structures to which citizens must attend if they are to live in justice has not found general acceptance in modern theory. On the contrary, a great many modern thinkers have rejected the idea that economic relations are social in character and denied that they have any normative content at all’ (Winﬁeld 1991, p. 228). It would therefore appear that Young shares with Habermas a disregard for the internal workings of the economy in favour of a formalistic conception of democratic procedures. However, on closer examination, Young’s work does not conform to Habermas’s description of it as ‘a feminist theory of law that rejects the welfare paradigm’ (Habermas 1996, p. 419). On the contrary, while Young argues that the welfare state ‘depoliticizes public life by restricting discussions to distributive issues’ (Young 1990, p. 98; my emphasis), she also acknowledges that it has ‘helped create the possibility of a more politicized approach to meeting needs’ (ibid., pp. 86–7, my emphasis). The welfare state does this, according to Young, by fostering ‘the morally proper distribution of social beneﬁts and burdens among society’s members’ not only in terms of ‘wealth, income and other material resources’ but also in terms of

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‘non-material goods such as rights, opportunity, power, and selfrespect’ (ibid., p. 16). Young then disputes Habermas’s attempt to limit the notion of ‘popular sovereignty’ to the ﬁeld of communicative action, on the grounds that: ‘Economic equalization and democratization … foster one another and should occur together to promote social justice’ (ibid., p. 94).7 In this way, Young counterbalances Habermas’s concern with the ‘juridifying’ effects of the welfare state on ‘private autonomy’ with a concern for the undemocratic effects of the economic system on ‘public autonomy’. Hence, Young’s distinctly un-Habermasian assertion that ‘democratic workplaces and democratic governments are mutually enforcing’ (ibid., p. 223). For Young, the welfare state does more than secure individual autonomy, by redistributing economic resources, it also expands the terrain of democratic self-governance, by rendering the economy accountable to the collectively expressed ends of participants. For this reason a more nuanced account of the ‘dilemmatic’ character of the welfare state is called for, one that acknowledges the extent to which the welfare state is both a terrain of and a resource for social struggle. This means differentiating between the role of the welfare state in expressing the collectively formulated ends of workers and in securing the conditions for capital accumulation. As Jean Cohen argues: It would be extremely misleading … to assume that all welfare state reforms have the same structure or logic. Surely legal reforms that secure the freedom of wage workers to organize unions and bargain collectively, that protect them from being ﬁred for such collective action, and that secure workers representation on company boards differ in kind from means-tested grants to single-parent households and from social services that ‘instruct’ clients on how to function properly as childrearers and responsible providers according to some preconceived model. (Cohen 1995, pp. 73–4) Thus while Habermas is correct to point out the extent to which public autonomy is predicated on private autonomy, he is wrong to de-emphasize the extent to which the welfare state also fosters the public autonomy of wage workers. Consequently, while it is important not to paint a romantic picture of the welfare state, it is also

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important to recognize – in the spirit of Habermas’s retrieval of critical theory from the one-dimensional standpoint of his predecessors – the degree to which the welfare state institutionalizes the normative content of modernity. In the words of Cohen, this means recognizing the way in which welfare reforms ‘empower individuals to act together collectively, to develop new solidarities and to achieve a greater balance of power relations’ (ibid., p. 74) – not least because ‘Such reforms create “receptors” in the economic subsystem for the inﬂuence of the norms and modes of action of civil society …’ (ibid.). Unfortunately, in his drive to render communicative action the only viable vehicle for ‘popular sovereignty’ Habermas abstracts from the collective forms of self-constitution that support the ‘public sphere’. This oversight is particularly damaging in the light of New Right attempts to subsume the welfare state beneath the autopoietic workings of the system. By emphasizing the disciplinary to the detriment of the emancipatory side of the welfare state, Habermas at best weakens the normative basis for defending the welfare state against neoliberal attack, and at worst aligns himself with the New Right’s claim that the welfare state suppresses private autonomy. It is therefore necessary to acknowledge a further sense in which the welfare state is ‘dilemmatic’ – the sense in which the welfare state’s capacity to counter the system’s endemic failures occurs at the cost of ‘politicizing’ economic decision–making. This is how Benhabib interprets Habermas’s earlier and more radical notion of ‘legitimation crisis’: The dilemma is that in order to compensate for the steering problems that arise from the continuing capitalist control of the economy, the state has to assume an increasingly active role. Yet this active role of the state can lead to an increased demand for legitimation, thereby augmenting the pressure on the state and its agencies to justify publicly the reasons and rationale behind their actions; these processes, in turn, may result in demystifying capital. (Benhabib 1986, p. 235) From this perspective the rise of New Right can be seen as a conscious attempt to rescind the capacity of the lifeworld to embed the system in a network of ethical obligation in favour of a re-marketi-

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zation of sociality that purchases the ‘re-mystiﬁcation of capital’ at the cost of enhanced economic uncertainty. The dilemma of social democracy can be stated as follows: the more the welfare state intervenes in the economy, the more it helps create the intersubjective conditions for resistance to it; the less it intervenes in the economy, the more it is prone to ‘market failures’. By undermining the extent to which atomized individuals are reliant on the disciplinary matrix of market forces, the welfare state helps facilitate social movements dedicated to redeeming the normative content of modernity, whether this takes the form of trade union militancy, new social movements or student radicalism (Scott 1992).8 To this extent, argue Jones and Novak: ‘It was less the economic costs of welfare … than its political consequences that were seen to be the problem. The increased conﬁdence of ordinary people and their growing expectations, their demand to be treated decently as human beings, to be accorded rights and a fair share of the income and wealth they produced …’ (Jones and Novak 1999, p. 32).

The New Right and the de-normatization of value Central to New Right strategy lies the policy of reducing income tax. This serves both to diminish the capacity of the state to intervene in the economy and enhance the capacity of individuals to exercise their ‘consumer sovereignty’. To this end, the New Right seeks to replace traditional social networks – in which individuals are constituted as tenants, students, passengers, pensioners, patients, etc. – with market networks in which individuals are constituted as ‘customers’ (Saunders 1993), while ‘consumers’ are increasingly called on to provide for their own housing, education, transport, welfare and health care needs. This shift in social policy coincided with the breakdown of the ‘post-war boom’ and an upsurge in trade union militancy. This, in turn, led inﬂuential sections of the business community to view social democracy not as a prophylactic against but as a precipitator of economic instability. With a growing sense of conﬁdence in the market’s capacity to deliver economic stability the New Right argued that the economy’s problems stemmed not from too little but too much state regulation. Thus, under the guise of ‘mone-

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tarism’, the New Right sought to restore money’s capacity to steer the economy in a ‘non-normative’ fashion. 9 This strategy proved successful in so far as it led to a diminution in the intersubjective sphere’s capacity to subject the economy to ‘popular sovereignty’. To this extent, Habermas’s etiolated version of intersubjectivity (and its correspondingly robust version of the system) bears witness to the defeats suffered by the labour movement since the 1970s. Such defeats are most apparent in the English-speaking economies of the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand – where post-war economic orthodoxy was overturned in favour of ‘supplyside’ economics. To a greater or lesser extent New Right-inﬂuenced governments in these countries rejected Keynesian justiﬁcations for state intervention, grounded in the existence of ‘market failures’, in favour of New Right justiﬁcations for unimpeded free markets grounded in the notion of ‘state failure’ (Hutton 1996). 10 Consequently, as unemployment swept towards three million in Britain, a combination of free-market policies, anti-trade union legislation and labour movement defeats (most notably the miners’ strike of 1984–5), weakened the organized working classes’ capacity to defend the (public) obligations imposed upon (private) capital by the welfare state. In furtherance of these aims successive Conservative governments, from 1979 to 1997, pursued a series of policies, from the privatization of nationalized industries to the deregulation of ﬁnancial services, designed to liberate the market from the network of normative responsibilities placed upon it since the Second World War (Gamble 1994). This, in turn, occasioned an ideological shift from the view that citizens should be collectively protected from the risks associated with a free-market system, towards the view that individuals are privately responsible for protecting themselves from such risks. In the neoliberal ‘Nightwatchman State’ only the poorest can expect protection from the exigencies of market forces, and then only at rates set to discourage anyone but the most desperate. To this extent, the weakening of the public sector strengthens not only the (invisible) hand of the market but also the privatization of social provision. As Kavoulakos argues, widening the picture to include Europe, ‘the crippling of the trade unions’ resistance or their effective controlling by the state has been a fundamental precondition for the imposition of the privatizations, the dissolution of the

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welfare state and the deregulation of the labour market …’ (Kavoulakos 1999, p. 39). In which case, it is not the technicization of the lifeworld that comprises the problem but its capitalization: the destruction of the defensive remedies and welfare solidarities which participants have struggled to erect against the relentless logic of valorization. The fact that this also serves to confer a naturalistic guise upon the economy is no unintended consequence of New Right policies. On the contrary, it comprises their raison d’être. By extending the market deeper and deeper into the fabric of social life the New Right seeks to undermine the very possibility of collective decisionmaking on behalf of citizens, in line with Margaret Thatcher’s assertion that ‘there is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families’. To this extent, the greatest ‘success’ of the New Right has been the re-naturalization of the economy so as to remove it from the sphere of public discourse. To this extent, Habermas’s depiction of the system as a ‘non-normative’ facticity presided over by the criteria of ‘functional reason’ demonstrates the extent to which this view has ‘colonized’ critical theory. The effects of this resurgence in neoliberal thinking have therefore been dramatic, not least on the ‘counter-culture(s)’ of the 1960s. Thus the radical impulses of the 1960s have been deﬂected into cultural struggles that at best regard the system as a site of redistributive struggles and at worst an inevitable consequence of modernity. The naïve optimism that once marked the can-do philosophy of the ‘hippy generation’ has given way to the cynical pessimism of ‘generation X’. Conﬁdence in the ability of society to generate collective solutions to publicly deﬁned problems has yielded to the view that individuals must ﬁnd personal solutions to privately deﬁned problems. This has been matched by the tendency of many on the ‘Old Left’ to abandon ‘grand narratives’ as ‘terroristic’ (Lyotard 1984), in favour of the local, the marginal and the symbolic – a somewhat inadequate response to the resurgence of modernity’s most powerful, uniﬁed and conﬁdent ruling ideology. Nevertheless, the capacity of atomized individuals to forge intersubjective alliances in opposition to the system’s ‘de-normatization’ of sociality continues to emerge from new and unexpected quarters. The demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organization in late 1999 displayed a newfound willingness to challenge the rules

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of global capitalism, while the capacity of European consumers to resist genetically modiﬁed organisms evinces the power of consumers to resist the proﬁt-driven blandishments of transnational companies – even when supported by national governments (as in Britain). Consequently, while it is easy to adopt a fatalistic attitude to capital’s capacity to transcend nation-bound forms of social regulation, the very process of globalization renders the system increasingly vulnerable to world ﬁnancial crises and normatively charged resistance (Soros 1998). Indeed, now that the myth of the ‘mixed economy’ has been dissolved, the nature of capitalism is exposed in stark relief. Herein lies the cause of the ‘legitimation crisis’ that Habermas is now committed to resolving on behalf of the system. It would, however, be a mistake for critical theory to abandon its traditional stance towards the vicissitudes of the economic system just as the latter is subordinating the entire human race to its ‘nonnormative’ imperatives. On the contrary, the task of critical theory remains to support social movements struggling to steer the economy in a democratically accountable direction. Not least because there is no guarantee that the emerging world order will be either stable or enduring.

Concluding Remarks

These are undoubtedly unpropitious times in which to question the foundations of critical theory. Nevertheless, in so far as these foundations are complicit in the social conditions they seek to criticize this cannot be avoided. All attempts to anchor the normative content of modernity in a ‘philosophical anthropology’, whether labour, ‘communicative action’ or mutual recognition, controverts the ethos of autonomy that grounds the normative content of modernity. For this reason, critical theory’s attempt to discover an undamaged form of (inter)subjectivity in an inherent ‘social ontology’ is less a means to judge the ‘pathologies’ of modernity than a manifestation of them. No matter how benign the motives behind this undertaking, it comprises an attempt to criticize modernity from a standpoint incompatible with its normative content. Thus, while welcoming Habermas’s ‘normative turn’, it cannot remain restricted to ‘communicative action’. On the contrary, the strength of the latter’s transcendental form is no substitute for the weakness of its empirical content. Only a substantive form of ‘practical reason’ can unlock the system’s reiﬁcation of intersubjectivity. Which means, from a theoretical standpoint, extending Habermas’s etiolated version of ‘ethical life’ into the economic system with a view to replacing Marx’s subject-centred with an intersubjective account of self-constitution. To this extent, ‘ethical life’ is both absent from and present within the system – absent, in so far as strategic actors relate to their external economic environment as they would to an objective entity with its own ‘natural laws’; present, in so far as the economy is grounded 181

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in a set of value relations that embody the evaluations of participants. The fact that these value judgements take an ‘external’, pecuniary form that reduces its participants to strategic actors serves only to reify the allocation of social worth, the performance of social obligations and the constitution of social identities. Nevertheless, even without recourse to a labour theory of value it remains possible to retain an agent-theoretic account of the system grounded in the capacity of participants intersubjectively to constitute their own sociality, as long as it is recognized that such a claim is no less moral than epistemological, grounded as it is in a form of ‘ethical life’ that places self-constitution at the heart of our intersubjectivity. Such an account of ‘ethical life’ undermines Habermas’s attempt to discover a line dividing the ‘functions’ of the system from those of the lifeworld, along with the assertion that modern ‘pathologies’ arise when either side of the equation violates the legitimate terrain of the other. On the contrary, in the absence of a ‘rational’ basis for determining the legitimate limits of either, the degree to which intersubjectivity is reiﬁed is a matter of practical judgement and social struggle. The question of ‘social pathology’ cannot be separated from the intersubjectively formulated standpoint of participants. Thus rather than looking to individuals to acquire moral identities via the sublation of material interests, critical theory should look to the way individuals forge new social identities in response to the individuating forces of modernity (Beck 1992). Let me reiterate, the recovery of ‘ethical life’ is not achieved by transcending sociality but by transforming it in line with the normatively constituted ends of participants. In this regard, I have chosen to emphasize the importance of workers’ struggles in forging new forms of intersubjectivity – capable of rendering the private ends of capital accountable to the public welfare of citizens. This is because the labour movement – through its ‘socialization’ of economic agents – plays a key role in generating a comprehensive form of ‘ethical life’ capable of redeeming the Hegelian warrant to ‘re-internalize’ the system. By building a normative bridge between agents and their alienated form of sociality the labour movement helps create a vision of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ – one that derives not from the innate properties of labour, language oriented to mutual understanding or mutual recognition, but from the struggles of participants to collectively redeem

Concluding Remarks 183

the normative content of modernity. At one time this project was known as socialism. However, according to Nancy Fraser, we are now living in a ‘“postsocialist” condition’, as exempliﬁed by the ‘general decoupling of the cultural politics of recognition from the social politics of redistribution …’ (Fraser 1997, p. 3). Fraser’s remedy for this condition is to ‘develop a critical theory of recognition, [capable of] distinguishing those claims for the recognition of difference that advance the cause of social equality from those that retard or undermine it’ (ibid.). While not wanting to disagree with the importance of this task I am unconvinced it can be achieved without regard to the ethos of selfconstitution that lies at the heart of critical theory. Without the underpinning of the latter an artiﬁcial wedge is driven between the ‘politics of recognition’ and the ‘politics of redistribution’, as exempliﬁed by Fraser’s claim that the injustice which characterizes the economy is primarily a matter of distribution (ibid., p. 17). I want to argue that the economy not only allocates social recognition but it also usurps self-constitution. Thus while agreeing with Fraser as to the redemptive potential of transformative politics, I believe the redistribution/recognition divide is a symptom of the former’s present state of weakness. The so-called ‘“postsocialist” condition’ is then marked by a fragmentation of social struggle so that the politics of any one social axis of oppression can ﬁnd itself in conﬂict with any other (Jordan 1994). One possible solution to this condition would be to identify a common cause for these various forms of oppression. However, the days of arguing that they each have their source in the economic needs of capital have long since passed. It could, nevertheless, be argued, with greater plausibility, that the triumph of neoliberal capitalism is responsible for producing the conditions in which social difference becomes a breeding ground for social intolerance. In which case, the link between ‘struggles for recognition’ and ‘struggles for redistribution’ is made by ‘struggles for ethical autonomy’ not dissimilar to Laclau and Mouffe’s strategy for reunifying the Left around the notion of ‘radical democracy’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). Both comprise attempts to enlarge the intersubjective terrain so that more ‘humanistic’ versions of the future can resist the dystopian visions of turbo-capitalism. As the activism of the 1960s demonstrates, it is the critical mass of social movements themselves that creates the intersubjective conditions for

184 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

the possibility of new ways of being (modern), which circumvent the pathways of conformity mapped out by the system. In this ﬂux of social alternatives the normative promise of self-constitution is intersubjectively grasped as a project common to the myriad forms of social oppression that gather under the system’s hegemony. Nevertheless, in so far as socialist values have lost their foothold in the lifeworld, it is incumbent on critical theory to steer a course between a ‘realistic’ account of capitalism and its ‘utopian’ critique. The trick is neither to succumb to the facticity of global capitalism nor invalidate it from a transcendental standpoint. Thus while Marxism may appear too ‘utopian’ (or even dystopian!), contemporary critical theory can appear too ‘realistic’. Hence the need to combine them in a fashion that makes no concessions to existing power structures while acknowledging the depleted social resources that sustain their critique. To this end, I argue that while the system comprises a reiﬁed form of intersubjectivity, opposition to it is limited to those forms of intersubjectivity – grounded in the normative content of modernity – that resist its ‘non-normative’ grasp. Consequently, it is possible to sustain the utopian promise of the system’s democratic recuperation only via a realistic appraisal of critical theory’s intersubjective underpinnings. In which case, the validity of critical social theory is contingent on the viability of the critical social practices that sustain it. Thus, rather than looking to a privileged moment of subjectivity that produces the objective form of sociality out of its metabolic exchange with nature, as Marx does; or a sequestered space in language orientated to understanding, as Habermas does; or, for that matter, an ontology of social recognition that comprises the underlying foundation upon which human autonomy rests, as Honneth does, the ethos of self-constitution must be located in the selfsustaining struggles of social movements to redeem the normative content of modernity. Hence my attempt to chart a path of development (there are others) from the ethical premises of the enlightenment to the struggles of workers to throw a moral canopy over the system. Thus while I endorse Habermas’s attempt to overcome the subject-centred failings of Marxism, I am not persuaded that his etiolated version of intersubjectivity can do justice to the normative content of modernity. Indeed, by accepting the diremption of

Concluding Remarks 185

system and lifeworld as a condition of modern rationality, Habermas endorses the ‘damage’ done to labour by the system. By counting the ‘de-normatization’ of labour among the rational consequences of modernity, Habermas rationalizes the exclusion of workers from the ‘right’ of self-constitution. In which case, rather than claiming that the objectivity of the system is an inevitable result of its capacity to institutionalize ‘instrumental’ or ‘functional reason’, I argue that it comprises a contingent consequence of the system’s capacity to dirempt intersubjectivity into its objective and subjective components. To this extent, the degree to which the system ‘juts out’ of the lifeworld depends ultimately on the balance of forces between systematization and democratization, between a dirempted form of self-constitution that grants autonomy to the autopoietic system and its strategically orientated actors, on the one hand, and a normative form of self-constitution that grants autonomy to its intersubjectively reconciled participants, on the other. At the same time, there are limits to the system’s capacity to liberate itself from the lifeworld. For this reason capitalism remains a dilemmatic structure, caught between the urge to free itself from the normative constraints imposed upon it by the lifeworld, and the need to fall back upon them – especially during times of economic instability – at the cost of fostering democratic resistance to its failing structures. It is this dilemmatic character that creates the conditions for the possibility of critical theory. To this extent, as Marx notes, the system’s vulnerability to economic crisis is predicated upon its capacity to suppress the democratic demand of participants. This, however, is no mere ‘legitimation crisis’, as it goes to the heart of the system’s capacity to reproduce itself in an autopoietic fashion. Nevertheless, the possibility of regaining the ground lost to critical social practice since the 1980s is not dependent on an economic crisis – although such a crisis appears more likely the more the system breaks free of the lifeworld’s stabilizing mechanisms. On the contrary, the task of critical theory remains one of articulating collective responses to the system grounded in the normative content of modernity. If critical theory is to prove itself adequate to the task, it must not only be re-thought along intersubjective lines but also along substantive ones. My aim in this is at once modest and ambitious – modest in so far as it seeks to rethink social struggles in terms of the

186 Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory

expansion of intersubjectivity; ambitious in so far as it seeks to extend the scope of intersubjectivity to embrace Marx’s labourtheoretic account of self-constitution. In this regard my aim is to overcome the sterile divisions between work and communication, materiality and morality, system and lifeworld, redistribution and recognition, in favour of a comprehensive account of critical theory capable of retrieving the project of self-constitution immured within the autopoietic imperatives of the system.

Notes Chapter 1 1 As Andrew Bowie notes, the importance of this term is lost in translation, referring as it does to a process of formation (bildung) in which sensuous data are turned into coherent images that have the power (Kraft) to institute ourselves (ein) (Bowie 1990, p. 18). 2 The term Entäusserung means both alienation and externalization. 3 Potenz is a mathematical term meaning to raise to the power of, to increase or to multiply. For a more detailed account of its philosophical usage, see H. S. Harris’s introduction to Hegel’s System of Ethical Life (Hegel 1979, pp. 15–20). 4 To this extent, Spirit not only comprises ‘the identity of identity and nonidentity’ but also ‘the difference of identity and difference’ and hence the preservation of difference within identity (Williams 1992, p. 284). 5 Robert R. Williams provides a reconstruction of the importance of individual subjectivity in Hegel’s writings on ‘recognition’ (Williams 1992). 6 According to Hegel, any attempt to ground the rational constitution of society in the ‘wild idea of the people’ means that humanity will be ‘connected only as an aggregate, a formless mass whose commotion and activity could therefore only be elementary, irrational, barbarous, and frightful …’ (ibid., p. 198). 7 The English term ‘species’ translates the German word Gattung which can also mean kind, sort and genus and need not imply a biological meaning (see Wallimann 1981, p. 18). 8 Like Hegel, Marx assumes a distinction between the necessary properties that make up the essence of an entity and the contingent ownership of these properties by another. 9 To underscore this point, Arthur (1986) argues that Marx makes a systematic distinction in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Marx 1975) between ‘labour’ – by which he means ‘alienated labour’ – and ‘life-activity’ and ‘productive-life’ – by which he means the (non-alienated) species activity of self-objectiﬁcation. However, I can detect no such systematic distinction. On the contrary, Marx sometimes uses the term labour to mean alienated labour (ibid., p. 354), while on other occasions he uses the term to mean self-objectifying subjectivity (ibid., pp. 324 and 328). 10 In Spectres of Marx (1994), Derrida argues that the vehement attacks on Max Stirner which occupy much of the German Ideology arise from Marx’s failed attempt to ‘exorcise’ his own reliance on an ontology of humanity (ibid., p. 170). 187

188 Notes

11 Although, as Arthur (1982) reminds us, Hegel does not use the term ‘objectiﬁcation’ (Vergegenständlichung) but rather Entäusserung (externalization/alienation). 12 Richard Winﬁeld also criticizes Marx for reducing the Hegelian enquiry ‘to an egological positing’ (Winﬁeld 1991, p. 157).

Chapter 2 1 Although I would question the degree to which Marx pursues this strategy ‘systematically’, ‘consistently’ or ‘unambiguously’. 2 Thus, when Adam Smith argues that: ‘capital is “accumulated (realized) labour (properly, objectiﬁed [Vergegenständlichte] labour), which serves as the labour for new labour (production)”, then this refers to the simple material of labour, without regard to the formal character without which it is not capital’ (Marx 1973, p. 257). 3 As Richard Winﬁeld notes: ‘The ﬁrst moment is labour as such, that original praxis in which self-consciousness achieves its concrete reality independent of a system of social relations’ (Winﬁeld 1991, p. 140). 4 In the Theories of Surplus-Value, Marx writes that ‘Man himself is the basis of his material production, as of any other production that he carries on. All circumstances, therefore, which affect man, the subject of production, more or less modify all his functions and activities, and therefore too his functions and activities as the creator of material wealth …’ (Marx 1972, p. 288). 5 Marx is well aware that just as not all use-values are ‘material’ so not all use-values are the products of labour, but these complications are placed on one side for the moment in order to concentrate on the general theory. 6 A similar formulation can also be found in the Grundrisse where Marx writes: ‘All production is an objectiﬁcation of the individual. In money (exchange value), however, the individual is not objectiﬁed in his natural quality, but in a social quality (relation) which is, at the same time, external to him’ (Marx 1973, p. 226). 7 As Thomas Keenan (1993, p. 157) reminds us, Marx often depicts capitalism as a ‘monstrosity’ (ungeheuerlichkeit). Unfortunately, the opening sentence of Das Kapital in which Marx refers to capitalist wealth as an ‘ungeheure Warensammlung’ is routinely translated as an ‘immense collection of commodities’ in English editions. 8 Both terms share a common sense of ‘reversal’. Thus while kehr means to turn, ruck means (to go) back. 9 The notion of a topsy-turvy or inverted world (verkehrter Welt) was widely employed in Germany during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to denote abnormal forms of reversal that contravened the natural order of things. 10 Unfortunately, this aspect of Marx’s critique tends to get lost in translation as the Penguin edition of Capital gives verrückung as ‘distortion’, verrücktheit as ‘absurdity’ and verrückten as ‘absurd’ (ibid., p. 169).

Notes 189

11 The notion of ‘fetishism’ has a long cultural history and was widely used in Marx’s day to refer to the ‘primitive’ worship of inanimate objects (William Pietz 1993). 12 Thus Marx applies the Enlightenment critique of religion to capitalism in order to show how the latter appears irrational in terms of the former’s strictures against attributing ends to things. 13 According to McNally, the feudal notion of ‘just price’ is transformed by political economy into the notion of ‘natural price’ which then leads to the search for an independent determinant of ‘value’ beyond the exchange-process (McNally 1988, p. 225). 14 According to E. P. Thompson, it is only with the industrial revolution that the measurement of labour by time comes to prevail in the production process (Thompson 1966). 15 In the Grundrisse both Versachlichung and Vergegenständlichung are translated as ‘objectiﬁcation’ whereas in Capital Versachlichung is translated as ‘reiﬁcation’.

Chapter 3 1 In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx argues that: ‘Commodities are the direct products of isolated independent individual kinds of labour, and through their alienation in the course of individual exchange they must prove that they are general social labour, in other words, on the basis of commodity production, labour becomes social labour only as a result of the universal alienation of individual kinds of labour’ (Marx 1970b, p. 85). 2 The English translation of Capital gives this as ‘material [Dinglich] relations between persons and social relations between things [Dingen] …’ (Marx 1976, p. 166), while my German edition gives this as Sachliche and Sachen (objective and objects) respectively. This is important because the English term ‘reiﬁcation’ is used to translate the German term Versachlichung, rather than Verdinglichung which Marx, to my knowledge, does not use. 3 It is clear from the context that ‘individuality’ refers here to the previous historical form of handicraft and not to the buying and selling of labour-power. 4 In this passage, the previously ‘isolated’ character of workers could refer to either ‘individual isolated labour-power’ in the labour market or the fact that they are employed as ‘unconnected men’. 5 Although as Marx notes this distinction is already present in Aristotle’s De Republica, I,i,c. (Marx 1976, f/n, pp. 255–6). 6 In the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Marx argues that: ‘To be a use-value is evidently a necessary prerequisite of the commodity, but it is immaterial to the use-value whether it is a commodity. Use-value as such, since it is independent of the determinate economic form, lies outside the sphere of investigation of political economy. It belongs in this sphere only when it is itself a determinate form’ (Marx 1970c, p. 28).

190 Notes

7 Derrida makes the same point in Spectres of Marx (1994, p. 460) without acknowledging Baudrillard’s work in this area. 8 On the one hand, Kellner claims that Marx anticipates Baudrillard’s critique with his historical conception of human needs (Kellner 1989, p. 36) while, on the other hand, he argues that Baudrillard’s attempt to historicize human needs renders him ‘unable to articulate standpoints from which one can criticize capitalist society …’ (ibid., p. 37). 9 As Marx’s translator notes: ‘The concept of an object (or person) as the receptacle, repository, bearer (Träger) of some thing or tendency quite different from it appears repeatedly in Capital …’ (Marx 1976, f/n, p. 179). However, no explanation is offered for this. 10 To which Engels adds not only must the product be a use-value for others, but the product ‘must be transferred to the other person, for whom it serves as a use-value, through the medium of exchange’ (ibid.). To which I would add ‘through the medium of monetary exchange’. 11 I am assuming here, like Marx, a pure form of market capitalist economy in which all goods and services are produced for exchange, and there is no state intervention to realize ‘social use-values’ in an alternative fashion. 12 According to Rosdolsky (1977), Marx does acknowledge the role demand plays in the determination of value once he drops the ‘simplifying assumptions’ of Capital Vol. I. 13 In this simpliﬁed version of neoclassical economics I am abstracting from the key role played by ‘entrepreneurs’ in combining factors of production. 14 Although Marx is aware that market capitalism generates a modern form of abstract individualism, he fails to apply this to his own conception of subjectivity. Thus, in the Grundrisse Marx notes that: ‘The real point is not that each individual’s pursuit of his private interest promotes the totality of private interests – the general interest … The point is rather that private interests is itself already socially determined interests, which can be achieved only within the conditions laid down by society and with the means provided by society …’ (Marx 1973, p. 156). 15 Simmel makes use of the fortuitous overlap in German between interaction and exchange to emphasize his differences with Marxism and between interaction and effective exchange to emphasize his differences with neoclassical economics. 16 Michel Henry argues that in the Grundrisse Marx does develop a notion of ‘re-subjectiﬁcation’ in so far as ‘objectiﬁed labour … is torn from the jaws of death only by the action of living subjectivity and only inasmuch as this action never ceases to be realized’ (Henry 1983, p. 260). However, this does nothing to change the fact that for Marx the objective character of sociality is perfectly natural. 17 Under the rubric of the ‘objectiﬁcation of culture’ Simmel (1978, p. 459) argues that modernity not only ‘depersonalizes’ feudal forms of obligation, by making them part of the objective money-system, but also ‘personalizes’ individuals by generating new forms of subjective autonomy no longer tied to obligatory moral duties (ibid., p. 338).

Notes 191

18 As we have seen, the proposition that money reiﬁes sociality is not entirely foreign to Marx, although most examples of this tendency appear in the Grundrisse. For example Marx argues that ‘the existence of money presupposes the objectiﬁcation [Versachlichung] of the social bond’ (Marx 1973, p. 160). (As previously noted, in Capital the term Versachlichung is translated as ‘reiﬁcation.’) 19 Similar attempts to limit the legitimate sphere of money can also be found in Michael Walzer (1983), Jürgen Habermas (1987a), and André Gorz (1989). 20 Simmel’s decision to include in his list of inalienable property ‘businesses and factories’ says less about the method he employs to determine the limits of the market, and more about the inﬂuence of socialist ideas in Germany at the time. 21 The fact that this deﬁnition of humanity contradicts his earlier conception of ‘man’ the ‘tool-maker’ merely serves to emphasize the tensions in Simmel’s account of money.

Chapter 4 1 This is somewhat different from the Lockean claim that workers have a right to all they have ‘mixed their labour with’. 2 This has similarities to Quesnay’s ‘physiocratic’ view that surplus (net) product arises from the difference between the cost of agricultural inputs and the value of agricultural output (Rubin 1979, p. 126). 3 Indeed it could be argued – as Marx does with reference to ‘primitive communism’ – that labour, in the absence of means of production, is incapable of producing a surplus, although this is disputed by Marshall Sahlins (1974). In which case, the very existence of the distinction between ‘necessary’ and ‘surplus labour-time’ depends upon the development of the means of production. 4 As Marx argues in the Critique of the Gotha Programme: ‘Man’s labour only becomes a source of use-values, and hence also of wealth, if his relation to nature, the primary source of all instruments and objects of labour, is one of ownership from the start, and if he treats it as belonging to him’ (1968). 5 The term mögen derives from möglich, meaning possible or potential, while the term Arbeitskräft is used in German to denote the selling of labour as in the phrase: seiner Arbeitskräft verkaufen. 6 Note the overlap here between Marx’s and the Ricardian socialist conception of labour as the physical producer of use-values. 7 There is also the suggestion that the value of labour-power is commensurate with the value consumed in the production process. In other words, the cost of reproducing labour is equal to the cost of consuming labour. However, just as workers need to consume whether they work or not, so leisure also consumes energy that needs to be replenished from the wage.

192 Notes

8 Hegel’s account also rests, ultimately, on a subject-centred conception of sociality. Nevertheless, the transcendental agent of self-constitution (Geist) does not render the intersubjective contracts of exchange ‘illusionary’ as it does in Marx, although there is a tension between the intersubjective character of ‘civil society’ and the objective character of the state in Hegel’s writings. 9 According to Benhabib, ‘This passage expresses in a nutshell the normative ideal underlying Marx’s critique of capitalism. Marx’s vision is that of an active humanity, dynamic, enterprising, transforming nature and unfolding its potentials in the process’ (Benhabib 1986, p. 112). 10 It could be argued that these capacities must have potentially existed in pre-modern forms of sociality. In which case, they too are the (unconscious) creations of their participants. However, it is only with capitalism that the capacity of participants to constitute sociality acquires a conscious form. 11 Lukes argues that Marx possesses a ‘narrow and impoverished’ conception of ‘the rights of man’ which abstracts from their application to ‘non-egoistic, non-bourgeois forms of life, and their consequent relevance to the struggle for socialism …’ (Lukes 1985, p. 65). 12 Similarly Marx argues that ‘real labour is what the worker really gives to the capitalist in exchange for the purchase price of labour … It is the expenditure of his life’s energy, the realization of his productive faculties; it is his movement and not the capitalists’. Looked at as a personal function, in its reality, labour is the function of the worker, and not of the capitalist’ (Marx 1976, p. 982). 13 A similar argument can be found in Cohen when he distinguishes between workers who produce ‘what has value’ and capitalists who are not ‘labourers in that sense’. Thus, while workers supply labour ‘the capitalist supplies capital, which is not a kind of labour’ (Cohen 1988a, p. 227).

Chapter 5 1 Indeed, according to Weber, modern bureaucratic forms of organization comprise a ‘lifeless’ form of ‘congealed spirit (Geist)’ (quoted in Marcuse 1988, p. 222). 2 Writings not published at the time of History and Class Consciousness and hence unavailable to Lukács. 3 The term ‘autocephalous’, meaning self-governing, is the term Weber uses to deﬁne the modern capitalist economy (Weber 1978, p. 63). It has since been superseded by Luhmann’s use of the term ‘autopoietic’. 4 Later in the same essay Lukács argues that ‘the proletariat represents the true reality, namely the tendencies of history awakening into consciousness’ (ibid., p. 199). Thus, while the proletariat is seen as the ‘subject of history’, history is seen as the unfolding of ‘objective’ tendencies which come together in the ‘subject-object unity’ of proletarian consciousness.

Notes 193

5 See Goran Therborn’s ‘The Frankfurt School’ in New Left Review, No. 63 (1970). 6 A stance echoed by Marcuse’s contention that: ‘Not only the application of technology but technology itself is domination (of nature and men) …’ (Marcuse 1988, p. 223). 7 An earlier essay with this title dating from 1967 appears in the English collection Theory and Practice (Habermas 1973). 8 A number of writers, such as Thomas McCarthy (1978), have pointed out the similarities between this distinction and one made by Hannah Arendt in the Human Condition (1958). 9 The economic system can then be viewed as consisting of three interdependent forms of ‘technical reason’. (1) The strategic action employed by utility-maximizing individuals; (2) the functional reason which regulates the economy in an ‘autopoietic’ fashion; and (3) the instrumental reason which institutionalizes the ‘purposive’ transformation of nature. 10 The annexation of the system by the lifeworld can take various forms, such as a utopian Marxist extension of ethically oriented self-regulation based on praxis philosophy; a neo-conservative extension of aesthetically oriented expressivism that Habermas associates with both Aristotelian communitarians and Heideggerian postmodernism; or a liberal bourgeois extension of symbolic interaction of the sort endorsed by Richard Rorty on hermeneutic grounds (Habermas 1987b). 11 As Berger (1991) notes for Habermas ‘the site of reiﬁcation is not the factory, and its source is not a particular form of organization of alienated labour’, but rather ‘the border between “lifeworld” and “system”, and consists in the deformation of lifeworld structures by forms alien to everyday practice’ (Berger 1991, p. 175). 12 In Germany, as in Britain, the Scylla and Charybdis have come to represent two equally unattractive options. However, in the original story, Odysseus is advised by Circe to avoid the latter at the cost of passing close to the former. Given the original story Habermas’s association of absolutism with Scylla and relativism with Charybdis appears remarkably apt. 13 The word tilgt, translated here as ‘blots out’, can also be rendered as ‘obliterates’. 14 On occasions Habermas translates his ethic of universal agreement into an apriori universal fact: ‘A cognitivist ethical theory understands the operation of practical reason in purely epistemic terms’ (Habermas 1993, p. 78).

Chapter 6 1 In an interview which appears in the ‘Concluding Remarks’ to Habermas and the Public Sphere (1992b), Habermas declares himself to be not only a ﬁerce defender of Marxian social theory (p. 464), but also (even more implausibly) ‘the last Marxist’ (p. 469).

194 Notes

2 Habermas accuses Marx of dreaming of a future society in which ‘the objective semblance of capital has dissolved and the lifeworld, which has been held captive under the dictates of the law of value, gets back its spontaneity …’ (ibid., p. 340). 3 To this extent, Habermas conﬂates Marx’s productivist notion of ‘abstract labour’ in the Grundrisse, with the exchange-based notion that supersedes it in Capital (Rubin 1973). 4 The term is more commonly translated as ‘diremption’, although Benhabib (1986) translates it as ‘bifurcation’. 5 Similarly, in The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. II Habermas argues that: ‘These reﬂections suggest a change of method and of conceptual perspective, namely an objectivating view of the lifeworld as a system … Survival imperatives require a functional integration of the lifeworld that takes effect in and through the symbolic structures of the lifeworld and cannot be grasped directly from the perspective of participants’ (Habermas 1987a, pp. 348–9). 6 Not only does this formulation contradict Habermas’ disenchanted employment of self-constituting intersubjectivity, but also his critique of Lebensphilosophie. 7 It is worth recalling that the reason Habermas embarks on this journey is to sublate the ‘doublings’ of transcendental and empirical subjectivity which arise from a subject-centred approach to sociality (ibid., p. 298). 8 We do not, however, agree with Eva Knodt that the system/lifeworld distinction is ‘rooted in the classical rational/irrational distinction’ (Knodt 1994). 9 As LeGrand and Robinson note, it is relatively easy to increase the efﬁcacy of the criminal justice system by compromising the liberties of citizens (LeGrand and Robinson 1984). 10 Although, according to the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould (1996) not only is it inappropriate to apply evolutionary models to the history of humanity, it is also inappropriate to apply a developmental logic to biological evolution.

Chapter 7 1 Echoes of Marcuse’s early attempts to incorporate Heidegger’s conception of ‘authentic self-possession’ (Eigentlichkeit) into critical theory can be heard in Honneth’s account of workers’ property rights over their own labour. 2 Although the two are not mutually exclusive in so far as ‘The existence of class society based upon the unequal market chances of individual productive agents … results in a lasting inequality in the distribution of chances or social recognition’ (ibid., p. 218). 3 Although it is worth noting that Hobbes does not reduce all recognition claims to ‘material’ ones. On the contrary, Hobbes argues that: ‘The public worth of a man, which is the Value set on him by the Common-

Notes 195

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10

11

wealth is that which men commonly call DIGNITY’ (Hobbes 1968, p. 152). According to Honneth, ‘instrumentalism’ only arises in ‘pathological’ cases in which ‘egocentric independence’ or ‘symbiotic dependence’ turn into ‘disorders’ such as ‘masochism’ and ‘sadism’ (ibid., p. 106). Although Honneth does concede that freedom is enhanced the ‘more rights come to be shared by partners’ (ibid., p. 107). Indeed, Honneth speciﬁcally argues that ‘not all forms of resistance have their roots in injuries to moral claims’ as there are many instances in which ‘the securing of economic survival … motivated massive protest and revolt’ (Honneth 1995b, p. 166). It is interesting to note that while Hobbes argues that the value of a person is commensurate with the price their capacities command in the market, he also recognizes an intersubjective element to evaluation. ‘The Value or WORTH of a man, is as of all other things, his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power: and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependent on the need and judgement of another’ (Hobbes 1968, pp. 151–2). Trade unionists often point out that in so far as money is a measure of social esteem under capitalism, it not only contributes to the ‘material’ well-being of workers but also their sense of social worth. One is reminded again of Hannah Arendt’s (1958) contention that there is something inherently reifying about labour that renders it intersubjectively unassimilable. According to Lukács, the German terms Entäusserung and Entfremdung are simply translations of the English word ‘alienation’ which was used ‘in works of economic theory to betoken the sale of a commodity, and in works on natural law to refer to the loss of an aboriginal freedom, the handing over or alienation of freedom to the society which came into being as a result of a social contract’ (1971b, p. 538). The reference is to Hegel’s First Philosophy of Spirit (1979), but the translation is a slightly modiﬁed version of the one that appears in Lukács’ Young Hegel (1971b, p. 333).

Chapter 8 1 In many respects the autonomy of individuals is itself a function of private property relations, in which case the conﬂict is a conﬂict over two forms of property right. 2 As Marx notes, ‘Capital … takes no account of the health and the length of life of the worker, unless society forces it to do so’ (Marx 1976, p. 381). 3 According to the French Regulation School, the higher levels of productivity which followed from Fordism introduced a new tension into the production process between, on the one hand, the higher (pecuniary and social) wages needed to compensate workers for their soulless activi-

196 Notes

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

ties, and on the other, workers’ organized resistance to the monotony of labour (Aglietta 1979). In Habermas’s later writings there is a suggestion that the system’s generation of strategic action has moral consequences in so far as it enhances the ‘negative freedom’ of individuals to act in an autonomous fashion. However, this remains undeveloped due to Habermas’s contention that the system ‘wipes out’ all action-theoretic starting points within its domain (Habermas 1996, p. 47). Although Marshall continues to describe welfare decisions as ‘essentially altruistic’ as if they existed in abstraction from the ‘material’ interests they serve. Calhoun criticizes Habermas for failing to acknowledge that ‘throughout its existence the bourgeois public sphere was permeated by demands from below. These took the form not only of calls for broader inclusivity but also more basic challenges and the pushing of new issues forward on the agenda’ (Calhoun 1992, p. 32). Habermas speciﬁcally argues that democratic movements ‘must give up holistic aspirations to a self-organizing society …’ (Habermas 1996, p. 372). Although New Social Movements represent an alternative to traditional forms of working-class politics, the institutional gains of the latter helped provide the social basis for the development of the former (Scott 1992). Although, as Andrew Gamble (1994) reminds us, re-marketizing the economy in this radical fashion requires a strong state to suppress dissent and respond to the social problems (such as rising crime) engendered by this strategy. In Germany, inﬂuential sections of the business community are only now coming to favour an American free-market model and the advantages of ‘share-holder value’ over the beneﬁts of social integration and consensus politics (Wirtschafts Woche No. 20).

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Index Abbinnett, R., 35–7 absolute spirit, 23 abstract labour, 41–4, 55, 118–19 abstract objectivism, 59–63 abstract subjectivism, 59–62 action, communicative, 91–115 action, purposive-rational, 97, 107 administrative power, 158, 160 Adorno, T., 95–7 Aglietta, M., 195–6 Althusser, L., 35, 94 Apel, K., 101, 111 Arato, A., 125 Arendt, H., 163, 193, 195 Arthur, C., 21, 187 Austin, J., 101 Bataille, G., 120–1 Baudrillard, J., 56–7, 189–90 Beck, U., 182 Begg, D., 168 Beilharz, P., 63 Benhabib, S., 82–3, 111, 122, 151, 153, 176, 192, 194 Bentham, J., 73, 84 Berger, J., 193 Bernstein, J., 112–13, 115 Bohman, J., 155 Böhm-Bawerk, E., 41 Bourdieu, P., 157 Bowie, A., 187 Bowles, S., 128, 165 Braverman, H., 167 Bray, J. F., 68, 84 Brick, B., 27, 41 Brod, H., 78 Bronner, E. S., 124 Calhoun, C., 196 capitalism and justice, 74–7

capitalization, of sociality, 49–65 Chaplin, R., 85 citoyen, 100, 110, 131–2, 163–4, 170, 172–3, 176 civil society, 16–17, 26, 55, 62, 82, 92, 152, 161–2, 172, 176 Clarke, S., 168 Cleaver, H., 167 Cobb, J., 138 Cohen, G., 83, 85, 192 Cohen, J. L., 125, 175–6 collective conscious, 102 commodity, dual structure of, 32–5 communicative action, 91–115 communicative reason, 100–3 discourse ethics, 103–13 from Lukács to Habermas, 95–8 from Marx to Lukács, 91–5 modernity, 103–9 reiﬁcation and judgement, 113–15 uncoupling of system and lifeworld, 98–100 communicative reason, 100–3, 119–24, 127 consent, and self-objectiﬁcation, 77–80 Critchley, S., 154 critical theory and political economy, 27 critical theory, see social welfare, 159–62 critique of capitalism, Marx, 27–47 critique of political economy, Marx, 27–47 Crook, S., 128 De Vroey, M., 42 Defoe, D., 40 Derrida, J., 120–1, 187, 189 207

208 Index

Descartes, R., 11 Deutschmann, C., 60, 63 dialectic of enlightenment, 95, 120 diremption model of reason, 120–4 discourse ethics and modernity, 103–9 universal status of, 109–13 division of labour, 17, 33, 52, 54, 146 Dodd, N., 62–3 dual structure of the commodity, 32–5 Durkheim, E., 101–2, 130 Eldred, M., 42 Elson, D., 42, 50 embodied labour theory, 43 Engels, F., 19, 22, 28, 46, 190 epistemology and social critique, 24–6 Esping-Andersen, G., 166 ethical content of self-constitution, 80–3 ethical life, 16 ethics and modernity, 103–9 exchange and exploitation, 72–4 exchange, sociality of, 58–65 exclusion model of reason, 120–4 exploitation, 67, 72–7, 83 feminist theory of law, 174 fetishism, 37–41, 44–5, 95 fetish character of commodities, 37–41 Fichte, J. G., 14–15, 94 Foster, R., 147 Foucault, M., 91, 120–1 Frankfurt school, xi, xii, 63, 91, 95–7 Fraser, N., 77–8, 132–3, 147, 183 Gamble, A., 178 Geras, N., 75–6, 84–5 Gintis, H., 128, 165 Gorz, A., 191 Gould, S. J., 194

Habermas, J., xii, 87, 91, 95–111, 113–15, 117–33, 135–6, 139–40, 152–4, 157–64, 166–7, 170, 173–5, 178–81, 184–5, 191, 193–4, 196 Habermas and communicative action, 95–8 Hanlon, M., 42 Harris, H. S., 187 Hegel, G. W. F., 15–18, 20, 22–4, 46, 62, 78, 83, 94–6, 101, 121–4, 140–4, 149, 151–3, 162–3, 187 Hegel idealism, Marx’s critique of, 22–4 moral philosophy, 16–18 moral redemption, beyond Hegel, 151–3 Heidegger, M., 120–1, 194 Heinrich, K., 122 Henry, M., 190 Hilton, R., 71 Himmelweit, S., 42, 50 Hindess, B., 172–3 Hobbes, T., 140, 194–5 Hodgskin, T., 68, 84 Holloway, J., 167 Homer, 109 homme, see private sphere, 100, 110, 142–4, 173 Honneth, A., 125, 133, 135–9, 140–55, 157, 164, 184, 195 Horkheimer, M., 27, 95–7 Hoy, D. C., 112 Hume, D., 11 Husserl, E., 99 Hutton, W., 178 Ingram, D., 160 intersubjectivity and social welfare, 162–4 judgement and reiﬁcation, 113–15 justice, and capitalism, 74–7 Jones, C., 177 Jordan, T., 183

Index 209

Kalyvas, A., 149 Kant, I., 11–15, 35, 101, 103, 121, 124, 131 Kantian antinomies, 14–16 Kantian subject, 12–14 Kavoulakos, K., 178–9 Keane, J., 128 Keenan, T., 188 Kellner, D., 57 Keynes, J. M., 170–1 Kitching, G., 69 Knodt, E., 130, 194 labour abstract, 1, 22, 33–4, 41–4, 50, 55, 68, 118–20 actual, 28, 54, 84, 165 alien, 36 capacity to, 72 see labour, power communicative reason, 120–4 discourse ethics, limits and promises, 127–33 exclusion of, 6, 133 human, 1, 4, 20, 22, 25, 33–4, 38, 44, 68, 81–2, 94 instrumental, 98, 120 lifeworld interdependencies, 124–7 living, 29, 35–7, 76 Marx, redemptive critique of, 117–20 materials, 70 moral content, 136–9 morality and, 117–33 objectiﬁed, non-objectiﬁed, 20, 29, 31, 36, 38, 44–5, 50, 53–4, 59, 69–70, 72, 115 own, 20, 22, 30, 37–8, 68, 85 physical, 33 potential, 164 power, 4, 38, 40–1, 44, 53, 68, 71–7, 79, 85, 94, 120 private, 50 process, xiv, 28–32, 35–7, 51–2, 54–5, 83–4, 126, 137 productive forces, 52–4

purposive, xii, 3, 19, 24, 44, 56, 60–1, 68, 92, 120 self-objectifying, 35–7 self-valorizing value of, 35–7 social/socialized, 29, 33, 50, 52–3, 70, 72, 136, 189 -time, 40–3, 68–70, 72, 77–9, 85, 165 labour movement struggles, 164–8 Laclau, E, 183 LeGrand, J., 194 lifeworld, xiv, 5–7, 93–103, 107–10, 112, 114–15, 118–19, 121, 124–7, 129–30, 132–3, 146, 153, 155, 157–9, 161, 163, 167, 170, 173, 176, 179, 182, 184–6 uncoupling of system and, 98–100 Luhmann, N., 99, 124, 159 Lukács, G., 91, 94–5, 101, 192, 195 Lukács and communicative action, 94–8 Lukes, S., 82, 192 Lyotard, J., 179 Mandel, E., 50–1 Marcuse, H., xii, 95, 97, 192–3 market failure, 168–70, 177–8 Marshall, T. H., 145, 151, 171–2, 196 Marx, K., xi, 18–26, 28–35, 37–46, 49–65, 67–87, 91–5, 101, 105, 107, 114, 117–120, 131, 135–7, 149, 151, 153, 157, 159, 164–6, 181, 184–92, 194–5 Marx and communicative action, 91–5 critique of capitalism, 27–47 critique of political economy, 27–47 critique of Hegel’s idealism, 22–4 labour and morality, redemptive critique, 117–20 morality and exploitation, 67–87 self-objectifying labour, 18–22 McCarney, J., 74–5 McCarthy, T., 112, 129, 131, 193

210 Index

McNally, D., 41, 189 Mead, G. H., 97–8, 101, 103, 141, 144–6 Merton, R., 149 modernity and ethics, 103–9 Mohun, S., 42, 50 money, markets and morality, see moral redemption, 147–51 moral content of labour, 136–9 moral philosophy, Hegel’s, 16–18 moral redemption, 135–56 Hegel (beyond), 151–3 money, markets and morality, 147–51 pathology of, 153–6 recognition, 139–42 social critique of, 153–6 steps to Heaven, 142–7 struggles for, 135–56 morality, 67 and communicative reason, 120–4 and discourse ethics, limits and promises, 127–33 and exploitation, see Marx, 67–87 and labour, 117–33 lifeworld interdependencies, 124–7 critique of Marx, 117–20 Mouffe, C., 183 natural property rights, 67–72 New Right and de-normatization of value, 177–80 Nietzsche, F., 120–1 normative account of exploitation, 83–7 normative ground of critical thinking, see social welfare, 159–62 Novak, T., 177 Nozick, R., 58 objectiﬁcation and fetishization, 44–5 Offe, C., 125–6

Parsons, T., 100–1, 149, 169 Peirce, C. S., 101 phenomenology (of spirit), 15, 142 Pietz, W., 188 Pilling, G., 50 positive supersession of estrangement, 21 Postone, M., 27, 41 private capital, 55, 173 private sphere, see homme, 100, 110, 142–4, 173 production in general, 30–2 property rights, natural versus social, 67–72 public sphere, see citoyen, 100, 110, 131–2, 163–4, 170, 172–3, 176 qualitative theory of property rights, 68 quantitative theory of price determination, 68 Ravenstone, P., 68 Ray, L. J., 126 Reed, M., 126 reiﬁcation and judgement, 113–15 Ricardo, D., 26, 30, 42–3, 67–8 rights civil, 144–5, 171 political, 144–5, 171 social, 144–5, 171 Robinson, R., 194 Rorty, R., 193 Rosdolsky, R., 190 Rose, G., 23 Rousseau, J. J., 13, 101 Rubin, I., 33–4, 50, 68, 84, 191, 194 Rubin school, 42, 44, 47 Ryan, A., 75–6 Sahlins, M., 191 Saunders, P., 177 Sayer, D., 28, 34 Schutz, A., 99 Scott, A., 177

Index 211

self-alienation, 3, 18, 20, 22, 29, 92, 95 self-constitution, 11, 80, 117 self-externalizing subjectivity, 16, 20, 24 self-objectiﬁcation/self-objectifying (labour), 11, 18, 20, 35–6, 44, 77 self-objectiﬁcation and consent, 77–80 self-objectifying labour, Marx, 18–22 self-valorizing value, 35–7 Sennett, R., 138 Siep, L., 140 Simmel, G., 49, 58–65, 95, 149–50, 162–3, 190 Simmel and the sociality of exchange, 58–65 Sitton, J. F., 109 Smith, A., 62, 68, 162, 188 social critique, epistemology and, 24–6 sociality, of capitalization of, 49–65 exchange, 49–65, 58–65 labour, 49–55 use values, 55–8 social property rights, 67–72 social welfare, 157–80 de-normatization of value and, 177–80 intersubjectivity and, 162–4 labour movement struggles and, 164–8 New Right and, 177–80 normative ground of critical thinking of, 159–62 re-normatization of value of, 168–73 value and, 168–73, 177–80 welfare economics, 168–73

welfare state, 173–77 Soros, G., 180 species-being, 20 system, uncoupling of, and lifeworld, 98–100 Taylor, C., 11 Thatcher, M., 179 Therborn, G., 193 Thompson, E. P., 189 uncoupling of system and lifeworld, 98–100 undistorted communication, 133, 139 undistorted recognition, 139 universal status of discourse ethics, 109–13 universalism, 110 valorization process, 30, 36–7 value, de-normatization and the new right, 177–80 Veblen, T., 148 Wallimann, I., 187 Walzer, M., 125, 167, 191 Warnke, G., 132 Weber, M., 91, 95, 97, 101, 109, 124, 126, 163, 192 welfare economics and renormatization of value, 168–73 welfare state, 173–7 welfare value, 172 Wellmer, A., 109 Williams, R. R., 151, 187 Winﬁeld, R. D., 86, 174, 188 Winnicott, D. W., 142–4 Wittgenstein, L., 101 Young, I. M., 161, 174–5