7. This overly hasty assimilation of
communicative progress to instrumental progress accounts for a normative
deficit in Marx's outlook. We can see here already that Marx has failed,
according to Habermas, to give full weight to democracy and its institutional
underpinnings as an independent learning process in the domain of social
interaction. Marx had not felt required to independently account for progress
in this communicative domain. He had simply derived the emancipatory values and
norms from the evolution of social labour. Habermas' contention is that the
historical process of human self-creation is marked not only by the discovery
of new technologies and strategies of pushing back the limits of nature but
also new stages of reflection, new modes of social interaction and social
integration which issue in sublimating institutional oppression, dispelling
conventional dogma and freer and more open communication. Habermas does not
deny the inter-dependence between these two developmental forms of rationalisation
but he argues that the problem solving logic of purposive-rational progress can
trigger change but cannot overthrow the relations of production. In fact,
Habermas suggests that it is the communicative learning processes that are the
pacemaker of social evolution insofar as they establish new forms of social
integration and very often make possible the introduction of new productive
forces. This critique of the Marxian paradigm of production-- it led to a
restricted concept of human self-creation through social labour which reduces
the broad range of human learning processes and communicative interactions to
instrumental activity alone-- led to Habermas' call for a paradigm shift to
what he called the paradigm of communicative interaction.
8. Habermas has also specifically drawn attention to the inherent problems of a critical theory that viewed praxis as an indispensable moment of its own realisation. For Marx, the negation of philosophy through its realisation meant that Marxist intellectuals joined a social movement and attempted a direct unity of theory and praxis. However, the consequences of this were generally not promising: too often it has led only to theoretical dogmatism (theory closing itself off to new scientific objections) or moral rigorism (the idea that only the activist is morally worthy). But even more importantly Habermas maintains there are metaphysical residues with the Marxist project. He suggests that despite its emphatic claim for immanence, Marx’s critical theory had not completely broken with the totalising thrust of metaphysics. It simply transferred the teleological figures of the classical metaphysics of nature onto the history as a whole. The survival of the claim to totality in modern philosophy of history from Hegel to Marx fails to meet the fallibilist self-understanding of knowledge characteristic of contemporary knowledge. Habermas also argues that the idea of the proletariat as a macro subject of history fails to fully take into account that the only basis on which the divergent beliefs and conflicting intentions of different individual even within a class can be integrated is inter-subjective processes of communication and deliberation that implies democratic opinion and will formation.
9. Habermas also turned his attention to his immediate Frankfurt School predecessors. Adorno and Horkheimer looked to the work of Max Weber who had focused on the problem of societal rationalisation. In their work the form of rationality dominant in Weber’s account of societal rationalisation (a means /end rationality) is viewed as instrumental reason. Furthermore, they argue that the evolution of Western civilisation itself can be viewed as a narrative of the historical unfolding of this self-preservative, instrumental reason. In Habermas' view they were unable to appreciate the other side of the dialectic of enlightenment associated with cultural learning processes that he designates communicative interaction. As we have seen, these learning processes takes place on the level of social interaction, consensual regulation and moral insight. Rationalisation in the domain of communication removes restrictions on self-reflection and domination free communication; it therefore enhances the possibilities of socio-political emancipation. Adorno and Horkheimer's failure was preordained by their preference for the concept of instrumental reason as the key to understanding the civilisatory process. Their neglect of the bourgeois order as a fertile ground for democratic decision-making, universalistic notions of morality and law, individualist patterns of identity formation and aesthetic experience is nothing more than blindness to the processes of cultural rationalisation and its real institutional consequences. These represent the evolution of communicative reason and its advances in the differentiated cultural spheres of science, morality-law and aesthetic expression. Habermas is no apologist for bourgeois capitalism but he is concerned to overcome the undialectical tenor of the earlier Frankfurt School's identification of rationalisation with instrumental reason.
10. I have already mentioned that one constant theme in Habermas’ work has been the desire to see a healthy liberal democratic society established in Germany. It is therefore not surprising that Habermas devoted his first major work (his Habilitationschrift) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) to the liberal democratic public sphere and its contemporary crisis. On first appearance in 1962 this may have appeared as an Adornoian influenced work of culture critique that fitted into the thesis of the “fully administered society”. However, a difference of perspective is evident from the fact that Habermas clearly takes the ideology of the bourgeois public sphere much more seriously than the first generation of the Frankfurt School. Habermas sets out to reveal the historical origins and normative functionality of the notion of the public sphere in bourgeois social reality and political thought. This notion departs from the division of the bourgeois between public and private, between the bearer of liberal freedoms and the citizen or l'homme. The bourgeois public sphere emerged in opposition to the absolutist state as an intermediary between state and society in which bourgeois citizens could freely articulate and discuss their views on public issues. Beginning with the discussion of culture it quickly turned into a forum for the discussion of the great political questions of the day. As access to this sphere was at least notionally open-ended, the private individual entered it simply as l'homme, obliged to conform to certain standards of rationality and the better argument. While Habermas never for a moment doubts the counter-factuality of this idealisation, his main point is the following: in its classical phase this idea of the public sphere corresponded to the reality of a competitive market economy and a relatively homogenous class of small private entrepreneurs with interest in this forum of publicity. Furthermore, and most importantly, the public sphere rendered political domination legitimate by providing an arena in which the views of private individuals could circulate and be filtered within a sphere of public discussion that became increasingly influential as a gauge of consent. This was a crucial link in the nascent institutions of bourgeois democracy where these same private individuals exercised their political judgement in shaping the laws they would have to obey.
11. This classical model begins to fragment under the pressures of modern dynamism in the course of the last century. His main point is that the public sphere has lost its go-between function mediating between private and public, state and society. The increased interlocking integration between state and society with economic rationalisation and technological development has seen this mediating function pass out of the hands of the public sphere and into those stemming from the private sphere like corporate associations, lobbies, parties and unions. Both big players in the private sphere and government public agencies were able to use their resources to transform the public sphere increasingly orientated to mass media and to distort and manipulate it in their own interests. Publicity remains but its function is now fundamentally changed. It no longer primarily serves rational public consensus but only as advertisement and public relations, to display conflicts of interest and affirm compromises and deals worked out behind closed doors between the bureaucratic apparatus of government and a range of private interests. It is no longer the guaranteed linkage between a rational critical public debate and the democratic legislature under supervision. Having charted the demise of the bourgeois public sphere, however, Habermas steps back from calling it a sham. Even after this structural transformation, the original idea of the public sphere remains a crucial normative dimension of understanding modern democratic constitutionalism. The contemporary task remains to further democratise those private and public agencies that now dominate the public sphere in order to bring real transparency to their activities and recharge the critical-rational element that is the key to the proper functioning of the bourgeois public sphere.
8. Habermas has also specifically drawn attention to the inherent problems of a critical theory that viewed praxis as an indispensable moment of its own realisation. For Marx, the negation of philosophy through its realisation meant that Marxist intellectuals joined a social movement and attempted a direct unity of theory and praxis. However, the consequences of this were generally not promising: too often it has led only to theoretical dogmatism (theory closing itself off to new scientific objections) or moral rigorism (the idea that only the activist is morally worthy). But even more importantly Habermas maintains there are metaphysical residues with the Marxist project. He suggests that despite its emphatic claim for immanence, Marx’s critical theory had not completely broken with the totalising thrust of metaphysics. It simply transferred the teleological figures of the classical metaphysics of nature onto the history as a whole. The survival of the claim to totality in modern philosophy of history from Hegel to Marx fails to meet the fallibilist self-understanding of knowledge characteristic of contemporary knowledge. Habermas also argues that the idea of the proletariat as a macro subject of history fails to fully take into account that the only basis on which the divergent beliefs and conflicting intentions of different individual even within a class can be integrated is inter-subjective processes of communication and deliberation that implies democratic opinion and will formation.
9. Habermas also turned his attention to his immediate Frankfurt School predecessors. Adorno and Horkheimer looked to the work of Max Weber who had focused on the problem of societal rationalisation. In their work the form of rationality dominant in Weber’s account of societal rationalisation (a means /end rationality) is viewed as instrumental reason. Furthermore, they argue that the evolution of Western civilisation itself can be viewed as a narrative of the historical unfolding of this self-preservative, instrumental reason. In Habermas' view they were unable to appreciate the other side of the dialectic of enlightenment associated with cultural learning processes that he designates communicative interaction. As we have seen, these learning processes takes place on the level of social interaction, consensual regulation and moral insight. Rationalisation in the domain of communication removes restrictions on self-reflection and domination free communication; it therefore enhances the possibilities of socio-political emancipation. Adorno and Horkheimer's failure was preordained by their preference for the concept of instrumental reason as the key to understanding the civilisatory process. Their neglect of the bourgeois order as a fertile ground for democratic decision-making, universalistic notions of morality and law, individualist patterns of identity formation and aesthetic experience is nothing more than blindness to the processes of cultural rationalisation and its real institutional consequences. These represent the evolution of communicative reason and its advances in the differentiated cultural spheres of science, morality-law and aesthetic expression. Habermas is no apologist for bourgeois capitalism but he is concerned to overcome the undialectical tenor of the earlier Frankfurt School's identification of rationalisation with instrumental reason.
10. I have already mentioned that one constant theme in Habermas’ work has been the desire to see a healthy liberal democratic society established in Germany. It is therefore not surprising that Habermas devoted his first major work (his Habilitationschrift) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) to the liberal democratic public sphere and its contemporary crisis. On first appearance in 1962 this may have appeared as an Adornoian influenced work of culture critique that fitted into the thesis of the “fully administered society”. However, a difference of perspective is evident from the fact that Habermas clearly takes the ideology of the bourgeois public sphere much more seriously than the first generation of the Frankfurt School. Habermas sets out to reveal the historical origins and normative functionality of the notion of the public sphere in bourgeois social reality and political thought. This notion departs from the division of the bourgeois between public and private, between the bearer of liberal freedoms and the citizen or l'homme. The bourgeois public sphere emerged in opposition to the absolutist state as an intermediary between state and society in which bourgeois citizens could freely articulate and discuss their views on public issues. Beginning with the discussion of culture it quickly turned into a forum for the discussion of the great political questions of the day. As access to this sphere was at least notionally open-ended, the private individual entered it simply as l'homme, obliged to conform to certain standards of rationality and the better argument. While Habermas never for a moment doubts the counter-factuality of this idealisation, his main point is the following: in its classical phase this idea of the public sphere corresponded to the reality of a competitive market economy and a relatively homogenous class of small private entrepreneurs with interest in this forum of publicity. Furthermore, and most importantly, the public sphere rendered political domination legitimate by providing an arena in which the views of private individuals could circulate and be filtered within a sphere of public discussion that became increasingly influential as a gauge of consent. This was a crucial link in the nascent institutions of bourgeois democracy where these same private individuals exercised their political judgement in shaping the laws they would have to obey.
11. This classical model begins to fragment under the pressures of modern dynamism in the course of the last century. His main point is that the public sphere has lost its go-between function mediating between private and public, state and society. The increased interlocking integration between state and society with economic rationalisation and technological development has seen this mediating function pass out of the hands of the public sphere and into those stemming from the private sphere like corporate associations, lobbies, parties and unions. Both big players in the private sphere and government public agencies were able to use their resources to transform the public sphere increasingly orientated to mass media and to distort and manipulate it in their own interests. Publicity remains but its function is now fundamentally changed. It no longer primarily serves rational public consensus but only as advertisement and public relations, to display conflicts of interest and affirm compromises and deals worked out behind closed doors between the bureaucratic apparatus of government and a range of private interests. It is no longer the guaranteed linkage between a rational critical public debate and the democratic legislature under supervision. Having charted the demise of the bourgeois public sphere, however, Habermas steps back from calling it a sham. Even after this structural transformation, the original idea of the public sphere remains a crucial normative dimension of understanding modern democratic constitutionalism. The contemporary task remains to further democratise those private and public agencies that now dominate the public sphere in order to bring real transparency to their activities and recharge the critical-rational element that is the key to the proper functioning of the bourgeois public sphere.
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