Abstract
The extensive work of Habermas’s intellectual legacy is comparable to the depth and complexity of his reflections. The debates among thinkers close to the conclusions of Adorno and Horkheimer and the mature positions of Habermas are also known. However, despite the marked differences, both of them seem to share a common interpretation: that capitalism has entered a self-regenerating stage which perpetuates itself ad aeternum – the last and endless stage of late capitalism – because it has abolished all structural contradictions which could point out the system’s tendency towards a breakdown. The broad aim of this study is to contribute to a profitable dialogue between the various strands of the critical theory of society on this issue. As for the specific aim, it was intended to highlight the analyses of Habermas in relation to the systemic tendencies of capitalism, following the path taken by Marx – a little-known aspect of Habermas’s work, whose contemporaneousness distinguishes itself in times of global economic crisis. This discussion may contribute to the debate of themes associated with education, both in regard to the issues of cultural education (Bildung) and in problems related to public policies.
Introduction
The disagreements of Jürgen Habermas in regard to the impasses created by the anthropological pessimism 1 of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, as well as their subsequent choosing of a determinate negation as the only path to emancipation, led Habermas to engage in a line of thought which, based on the reflections made by the Frankfurt School’s first generation of authors, could still unfold the emancipatory potentials which he thought to be contained in the tradition of modern thought. The epistemological shift of Habermas, whose intention was to recover the emancipatory dimension of reason, presupposes language as a central category of social mediation. Such change of perspective, also in regard to the critical theory of society, culminated in the development of the theory of communicative action in 1981, whose very purpose was the emancipation of the subject, as a social being, while faced with the possibilities created and yet not delivered by the promises of modern reason. In the preface to the work that forms the basis of one of his main theses, Habermas clarifies that: “The theory of communicative action is not a metatheory, but the beginning of a social theory concerned with validating its own critical standards” (Habermas, 1997: xxxix)
With specific regard to the perspectives of emancipation and the need for a paradigm shift, Habermas argues, in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (published four years after The Theory of Communicative Action), that: […] the emancipatory perspective proceeds precisely not from the production paradigm, but from the paradigm of action oriented toward mutual understanding. It is the form of interaction processes that must be altered if one wants to discover practically what the members of a society in any given situation might want and what they should do in their common interest. (Habermas, 2002: 82) First of all, the idea that the dynamics of the history of the genre [of the historical and social formations] should be explained through a history immanent to the spirit, and then the misunderstanding of considering that it is my intention to replace historical contingencies with a developmental rationale. Behind the first misunderstanding is the assumption that I tacitly abandon the materialistic claims about the engine of social development; on the other hand, with regard to the second misunderstanding, I am suspected of logicizing history, and of replacing the analyses of the empirical sciences with philosophical mystifications. (Habermas, 1983:
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35, our own translation)
In general, the criticism addressed to Habermas by critical theorists who remained close to the most pessimistic interpretations of Horkheimer and Adorno – which imply the impossibility of an emancipatory programmatic project – is that the positions of Habermas (notably the ones based on the theory of communicative action) underestimate the importance of the objective conditioning imposed by capitalist socialization. According to Wolfgang Leo Maar, Adorno’s dialectical perspective seeks to comprehend the objective determinations of society (particularly starting from the concepts of cultural industry and half formation – Halbbildung), according to the Marxian approach to investigating the social objectivity of social forms of production. However: “In this dialectic, the universal - as social subjection or reification - is immanent and objectively present, which
Without attempting to answer this question, one runs the serious risk of being constrained by the same idealism that one seeks to criticize, i.e. limited by the a priori uncompromising defense of a theoretical position whose object is society, without taking into account historical and social transformations. The misconception of a critique along these lines is most serious when Habermas’s theoretical developments and, especially, the aim of his reflections, are discarded right at the outset. The aim in question is the emancipation of the subject – conceived as a search for autonomy in the ensemble of social relations, which one may begin to grasp by understanding the subjective conditionings in a given socio-historical objectivity.
If one proceeds without the proper care to comprehend Habermas’s motives, therefore adopting a perspective of thought that places the reflections of Adorno in opposition to the ones made by Habermas, and considers this or that theory as representing the orthodoxy of critical theory, one ends up submerged in the mud of instrumental rationality. An uncompromising defense of Adorno’s negativity, in face of the alleged idealistic mistakes committed by the theorists of communicative action, rather resembles a counter-reaction by critical theory’s “legitimate children” against the boldness of Habermas, the “rebellious son.” If, on the one hand, the distancing of Habermas from the first generation of Frankfurt could suggest an allegorical psychoanalytic interpretation of an “Oedipal overcoming” (by attributing clearly subjective reasons to Habermas’s choices), on the other hand, the same should apply to the critical theorists who doggedly seek to detract from Habermas in favor of Horkheimer and Adorno. These considerations merely aim to emphasize that any allusions made to an “Oedipal overcoming,” even if they are meant as no more than allegories, may only carry some relevance if we pay some attention to the fact that, if Habermas is to be deemed “rebellious,” the same goes for Adorno’s “legitimate children,” i.e. those who did not renounce their “father.”
The extensive intellectual legacy of Habermas reflects the depth and complexity of his reflections, which give rise to a great thematic variety of questions and analyses with respect to social reality. Therefore, the most appropriate thing to do is identify the key points of his thought pertaining to the reflection proposed here. The general objective of this study is to contribute to the dissemination of theoretical work from the Frankfurt School and to stimulate a fruitful dialogue amongst its different strands of critical theory. One specific goal here is to dedicate special attention to Habermas’s analyses of the systemic tendencies in capitalism, based on the reflections made by Marx – a scarcely known aspect of Habermas’s work, the relevance of which stands out in times of global economic crisis, especially with respect to educational policies.
Habermas and the Dialectic of Enlightenment
The main criticism of Habermas to the reflections contained in the Dialectic of Enlightenment can be summarized with the following question: How can these two men [Adorno and Horkheimer] of the Enlightenment (which they both remain) be so unappreciative of the rational content of cultural modernity that all they perceive everywhere is a binding of reason and domination, of power and validity? (Habermas, 2002: 121)
In the context of the criticism of the philosophy of subject, Habermas’s disagreement with the Frankfurtians refers, in summary, to the abandonment – subsequent to the Dialectic of Enlightenment – of the dialectical approach adopted by Horkheimer and Adorno. Thus, Maar (2002: 88) points out that the work of Adorno was characterized, according to Habermas, by:
the abandonment of a dialectical understanding of theory, which was then reduced to the procedure of “determinate negation”. the general approximation between the ideas of Nietzsche and Adorno regarding the understanding of the logic of cultural evolution, particularly in accordance with the works of Nietzsche. (Maar, 2002: 88, our own translation)
Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s impasse, which is refuted by Habermas – for not being dialectical, according to his interpretation – originates from the Frankfurtian interpretation of the alliance between reason and domination. For Habermas, the historical and social context of the first generation of the Frankfurt School has been the reason for this misunderstanding. This context can be characterized by: disappointment with the rise of authoritarianism in the Soviet State ruled by Stalin; the rise of National Socialism and the carrying out of the Holocaust; the total administration of the subsequent mass democracy, whose backdrop reserved the transformation of massive productive forces into paradoxically destructive ones, able to annihilate life on the planet.
The three circumstances described above were established, according to the interpretation of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, in line with the dictates of modern reason, and not in spite of them, especially the latter circumstance, i.e. the cultural climate of post-war mass democracies, which definitely broke down the ideals of bourgeois reason according to the School of Frankfurt, since it made obsolete the very Marxian critique of ideology – as an unveiling of false appearances – developed in the philosophical “shape” of the Enlightenment. Horkheimer and Adorno considered that the total society no longer needed a mystifying speech, i.e. an ideology in itself. “Therefore, in ‘Cultural Criticism and Society’, Adorno states that ideology is now ‘society itself’ and also that it is not that ideologies are false, but rather society, ‘copied’ as being integrated, imposes itself as effective” (Maar, 2002: 101, our own translation). Permeated by the enormous apparatus of the cultural industry, the subjective expectations tended to coincide with the objective conditionings of society.
Therefore, it was this historical context that led Horkheimer and Adorno to abandon the bourgeois ideals of emancipation contained in modern rationality. In this process of the self-destruction of enlightenment, the Frankfurtians avail themselves of the dark authors of modernity, Sade and Nietzsche, whose writings explain the genesis of reason from domination to its ultimate consequences, and not just merely expose the correlation between reason and domination. “Horkheimer and Adorno conceive of enlightenment as the unsuccessful attempt to spring from the powers of fate. The curse of mythic violence still overtakes the one escaping in the guise of the desolate emptiness of emancipation” (Habermas, 2002: 114). That is, escaping the oppression of natural forces through reason (whose first expression affirms itself through myth) can already be considered control, and ultimately self-control. This negative apprehension of reason is what the core of “determinate negation” consists in: after Auschwitz, and in a society which coincides with its own ideology, the last ratio of enlightenment rests only in denouncing the absolute irrationality that society is able to produce, in order to prevent it from ever happening again.
The radical critique of Adorno does not spare even his own conceptualization of society. For Habermas, “[…] Adorno consistently refused to directly clarify the normative content in the fundamental critical concepts. It would have meant a false positivity, for him, to indicate what the structures canceled in the Self by total society consist of.” (Habermas, 1983: 51–52, our own translation). Such positivity might contribute to domination and exploitation and is, therefore, false, as returning to a mythical fate would be. Developing the moments of truth from the false appearance in the social whole should, under this radical criterion, be done with the critical exposition of society’s unrealized promises. In summary, Adorno’s “determinate negation” seeks to present those objective possibilities of emancipation which have not yet been consummated.
Habermas shares this interpretation, especially in the traumatic moments of the era of National Socialism experienced by the Frankfurt School. However, he disagrees that the only option for the social emancipation of the subject would be the determinate negation, a misconception resulting from a monism; that is, from an “attempt to conceptualize historical development in terms of only one dimension [of modern reason]; namely, instrumental rationality” (Whitebook, 2006: 90). The concept of instrumental reason is summarized “in the usurpation of reason’s place by the calculating intellect” (Habermas, 2002: 119). Joel Whitebook (2006) argues that Habermas considered the Frankfurtian pessimism to be valid only in respect to the historical context that generated it. Outside that context, the paradoxical critique of modern reason, on its grounds, posed great danger to the very project of Enlightenment. Thus if, for Habermas, “We no longer share this mood, this attitude [adopted by Adorno and Horkheimer]” (Habermas, 2002: 106), on the other hand “he maintains we can return to a more reasonable depth, which is to say, a more conventional level of theorizing” (Whitebook, 2006: 90).
It is not that Habermas discards the reflections made by his precursors of critical theory. Rather, he considers their conceptualizations to have been highly affected by extremely traumatic historical and social contingencies and thus, in a way, these conceptualizations are historically dated. However, if on one hand Habermas ponders on the contributions of the Frankfurt School, as well as the reasons that led them to the pessimistic impasse: […] on the other hand, at that time Horkheimer and Adorno did not expend any more effort on a social-scientific revision of theory, since skepticism regarding the truth content of bourgeois ideas seemed to call the criteria of ideology critique itself into question. (Habermas, 2002: 129)
Once Habermas’s main disagreements with the positions adopted by Adorno and Horkheimer have been pointed out, especially those outlined in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, two considerations should still be made. The first one refers to a possible turning point in the thinking of Habermas (in relation to the preceding critical theory), from which stems a rich and original intellectual production. Maar (2002: 90) argues that Habermasian lines of thought seek to respond to an apparent lack of options for the continuation of a critical theory of society, resorting to a return to a critical point in the work of Hegel, where the alternative would be found in “an examination of the Hegelian trajectory up to a splitting point from which Hegel abandoned his intersubjective version of reason – one to be recovered in Habermasian communicative rationality – in favor of an imposing unification under the parameters of work” (Maar, 2002: 90, our own translation). Considering that both theoretical trajectories share largely the same references, this nodal point should make it possible to separate the mature positions of Habermas, on the one hand, from those of Horkheimer and Adorno, on the other. For Habermas, the resumption of intersubjective reason (intrinsic to the structures of language and to the ability to conduct discursive reasoning) avoids the very obstacles of monism in the subject–object relationship.
The second consideration refers to the distancing of Habermas from the disturbing questions of the so-called “anti-Enlightenment” (Whitebook, 2006: 95) or “counter-Enlightenment” (Habermas, 2002: 120). This second consideration can also be characterized as an inflection point between Habermas, on one side, and Horkheimer–Adorno on the other. In a discussion on the role of psychoanalysis in critical theory, Whitebook argues that “Ultimately, Adorno and Freud are Enlightenment figures, but, along the way, they certainly gave anti-Enlightenment claims their due.” (Whitebook, 2006: 95). With respect to the term anti-Enlightenment, we should here highlight the relationship of both (Adorno and Freud) with the writings of Nietzsche. In the case of Adorno (and also Horkheimer), it is a reception of rationality, inextricably founded on domination. Freud, however, despite having never admitted to subscribing to Nietzsche’s ideas, further develops and elaborates on the consequences of this unconfessed foundation of reason – essential in psychoanalysis for the characterization of the human drives and of the unconscious – and such conceptions are at the base of the theoretical framework of the Frankfurt School.
Whitebook argues that the acquisition of Freudian theory by Habermas was at first similar to that of Horkheimer and Adorno. However, as Habermas progressed in his own intellectual journey, the psychoanalytical referential lost importance in relation to its contents, while psychoanalytical theory consolidated itself prominently as a methodological model (Whitebook, 2006: 90–91). According to this conception, the estrangement of the individual before society and the emotional ambiguity of psychic life lose ground to the interpretation that pathologies (especially social ones) can be resolved and overcome in accordance with communicative practices that ensure the non-coercive contribution of participants toward a consensus. Psychoanalysis offers a model of communicative action because it is relies on the power of dialogue and language as the main therapeutic instrument. Thus, even if Habermas “was at home with Freud the Aufklärer – the champion of rationality, autonomy, and critique of idolatry,” on the other hand, “he found Freud’s pessimistic anthropology and stress on the irrational uncongenial” (Whitebook, 2006: 95). Habermas rejects – or at least turns sterile – the more severe Freudian concepts of the eternal malaise of the subject in relation to society, contained in the heterogeneous nature of the human psyche, especially in the unfathomable demands of the unconscious: the emotional ambiguity of psychic life, the inextricable presence of aggressive feelings in humans, etc. Unlike Adorno and Horkheimer: With Habermas, Freud loses its tragic stature. He ceases to be the prophet of negative reason, who refuses all syntheses, and becomes the cultural hero of a world governed by communicative action; who authorizes, through a consensual stepping stone, progressive syntheses. (Rouanet, 1986: 354, our own translation)
However, Habermas’s reasons for refuting psychoanalytic theory have remained hidden, markedly with respect to the aforementioned, more controversial issues. If we take, as reference, the anthropological pessimism expressed in Freud’s Totem and Taboo and Civilization and its Discontents – whose most decisive conclusions are shared by Adorno and Horkheimer – Habermas affirms the following, already in 1968, in Knowledge and Human Interests: None of the drive theories put forward until now, however, has succeeded even in making it plausible that the assumption of an invariant need structure in human beings is both meaningful and empirically testable. Through the example of the most prominent and well-thought-out drive theory, namely, the psychoanalytic, it can be convincingly shown, in my opinion, that theoretical predictions about the range of variation of aggressive and libidinal drive potentials are not possible. (Habermas, 1992: 115)
Particularly due to Habermas being deeply knowledgeable in Freudian theory, his distancing further underscores the particular contours that may have motivated his choice, but these reasons do not fall within the purposes of the current study.
The theory of communicative action
Habermas’s interest in the potentials of language and communication – as structure and category of social mediation – is present from the very beginning of his academic career (Whitebook, 2006: 90–91). However, only in the late 1960s and early 1970s does Habermas begin to more systematically develop a theory of action aimed at social transformation, a journey that culminates in 1981 with The Theory of Communicative Action.
Habermas maintains his hypothesis that the chances of resolving the social pathologies that preclude a dignified life rest in the pursuit of autonomy (according to the tradition of the Enlightenment inherited by the critical theory of society). However, for Habermas, autonomy “is implicit in every act of linguistic communication” (Rouanet, 1986: 377, our own translation) and therefore cannot be reduced to the stage of development of the productive forces (Rouanet, 1986: 310). Thus, the concept of communicative action can be summarized as “the process of interaction between at least two subjects capable of speech and action who relate intersubjectively and whose goal is the cooperative search for truth that generates consensus” (Gomes, 2007: 112, our own translation).
However, the possibilities of communicative action have a historical-material counterpart seated on the normative structures of society, which correspond to some extent to the stage of development of the productive forces but, as was mentioned above, are not restricted to them. We shall see later, according to Habermas, how the demands of social normative structures, as well as the corresponding need for legitimacy, put in progress a universalistic tendency which, on the one hand, increases the complexity of domination and exploitation but, on the other one, makes irreversible the presence of the plural needs of society around the discussions determined by legitimization.
The starting point for the theory of communicative action is the concept of the lifeworld or “lived world” (Lebenswelt) as “the place of spontaneous social relations, of pre-reflexive certainties, of the bonds that were never in question” (Rouanet, 1990: 113, our own translation). The acquisition of language itself, an experience shared by all individuals in a society, has its origins rooted in the lifeworld. The lifeworld, besides being a point of origin, is some kind of “background” functioning underneath communicative actions (Gomes, 2007: 133, our own translation). For Habermas (apud Gomes, 2007: 133, our own translation), the lifeworld represents a transcendental place for the encounter between speaker and listener, where it is possible to establish, in a reciprocal manner, the claims of consensus with the (objective, subjective and social) world, as they can criticize and express the fundamentals of their validity claims, whose goals point towards the resolution of differences and the establishment of consensual agreements.
The counterpart of the lifeworld is the system, or the world of system. “Life” and “system” are two different forms, but inextricable and complementary in the processes of social interaction. However, if the lifeworld refers to relations and spontaneous connections and symbolic reproduction, the system manifests itself to subjects “as functional integration, executed from the material reproduction necessary to the survival and preservation of the system” (Gomes, 2007: 140, our own translation).
The process of social evolution
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makes the systemic structures of society – that is, the apparatus belonging to the institutionalized spheres – increasingly autonomous in relation to the demands originated in the lifeworld. Markedly, in modernity, money and power (which Habermas refers to as media) become “controlling elements of systemic integration” (Gomes, 2007: 39, our own translation). It is from the concept of media that “Habermas develops his thesis on the colonization of the lifeworld by the system” (Gomes, 2007: 39, our own translation). This colonization process is expressed in the increasing absorption of the spontaneous and symbolic sphere of socialization by the normativity present in society’s functional contexts which, for Habermas, are the results of the following processes of social transformation: […] first, a scientization of professional practice; second, expansion of the service sector through which more and more interactions were subsumed under the commodity form; third, administrative regulation and legalization of areas of political and social intercourse previously regulated informally; fourth, commercialization of culture and politics; and, finally, scientizing and psychologizing processes of childrearing. (Habermas, 1992: 79–80)
Therefore, the colonization of the lifeworld by the system is, for Habermas, at the very source of the main social pathologies of modernity, hampering the possibilities for a decent life precisely because it derails “the possibility of intersubjective recognition of the validity claims which argumentatively form the consensus” (Gomes, 2007: 35–36, our own translation).
Communicative action, the welfare state and the problem of legitimacy
Although this is not explicitly stated, much of Habermas’s optimism regarding the achievement of a programmatic design seems to rest on the direction taken by social organization post-World War II, especially in the United States and western Europe, with the consolidation of the welfare state in mass democracies. Regarding the impasse between the Dialectic of Enlightenment and its reservations about the revolutionary alternative, Habermas seems to have sought a “radical reformism” (Rouanet, 1986: 353, our own translation; Whitebook, 2006: 89) in order to achieve the objective pursued by him throughout his career: “to prevent the madness [of National Socialism] that seized Germany from returning,” such goal being not only a concern, but “indeed, an obsession” of Habermas (Whitebook, 2006: 89).
The need of sociopolitical legitimacy, demanded by the gigantic technoscientific apparatus, required the presence of a strong welfare state in order to resolve the contradictions between the relations of production and the rapid, constant increase in productive forces. Habermas does not deny the advances of administered society into almost all spheres of life; or, in his own words, the colonization of the lifeworld by the system. However, he can discern, in this dialectical movement of society, the emergence and consolidation of new demands oriented by matters of practical-moral knowledge, and the corresponding institutionalization of such spaces for discussion in the apparatuses of the state. The “radical reformism” of Habermas rests, therefore, embodied in the demands of the welfare state.
Objectively, capitalism in the age of the welfare state already presents the necessary conditions for the elimination of certain old, material shortages (through increased food production, the curing of diseases, etc.), as well as for the elimination or at least repair of the damage caused by capitalist socialization itself (through the regulation of employment and the use of environmental resources, for example). Moreover, for Habermas, social evolution occurs not only with the advance of productive forces. Along with the objectifying thinking, the technical and organizational knowledge, and the instrumental and strategic action – which summarily characterize the productive forces – new learning processes also emerged, outlined by the dimensions of morals, of practical knowledge, of communicative action and of consensual regulation, which characterize the new relations of production that are compatible with the utilization of those “new productive forces” (Habermas, 1983: 13–14, our own translation). The dynamics of social development are expressed through the mutation of the normative structures, dependent on both the challenges pertaining to systemic and economically conditioning problems and the learning processes which represent the response to such challenges. “In other words: Within culture remains a superstructural phenomenon, although in the passage to new levels of development, culture appears to have a more prominent role than what has so far been assumed by many Marxists” (Habermas, 1983: 14, our own translation).
Habermas argues that, if we take the perspective of learning processes not only as technically valuable knowledge, but especially in regard to the moral–practical consciousness, “we can say that there are stages of development for both the productive forces and for the forms of social integration” (Habermas, 1983: 144, our own translation). An unmutilated interpretation of Marx should rightly consider the process of material production and reproduction of life as a “mediation, and one which cannot be assumed in its immediacy, for it is also a historic realization. The social form in which social production is developed also needs to be examined starting from the social structure of production” (Maar, 2002: 92, original emphasis, our own translation), as it seems to have been the option adopted by Habermas.
Thus, if the process of colonization of the lifeworld by the system is expressed in the contingencies of normative social structures, on the other hand such structures are also the space par excellence where communicative action can resolve social pathologies, since the structures of systemic power are compelled to discuss social demands in order to achieve a legitimacy that ensures the continuity of the system itself.
So that we may discuss the problem of legitimacy posed by Habermas, we proceed with a definition of legitimacy or legitimation of sociopolitical systems: “Legitimacy means that there are good arguments for a political order to be recognized as just and fair; a legitimate order deserves recognition. Legitimacy means that a political system is worthy of being recognized” (Habermas, 1983: 219–220, original emphasis, our own translation).
In all social formations, cohesion and order, demanded by the group in question, have always required acceptance, by individuals, of the implicitly or explicitly posed collective norms. The subjection to collective rule required justification, which could be the hierarchical imposition of the parental order (internalized in the form of ontogenetic development of the psychic apparatus) in the case of primitive societies, or an acceptance of the established powers in the great ancient civilizations – powers specifically personified by priests, military authorities or the monarch (and rooted in normative structures of social interaction). Unlike in primitive societies, whose social structure was based on family hierarchy, social complexity in the established social order of ancient civilizations (or traditional societies) called for a legitimization process concomitant with justifications that supported the hierarchical order (whether it be monarchical, religious or military). In short, social congruence would only be possible if, along with the justifications of the established power, there was an established worldview (commonly through mythical or theological interpretations) able to legitimize the power of the ruling class. Only through a discourse capable of promoting a general consensus – that is, a worldview shared by all members of society – could legitimacy for those in power be achieved.
The consolidation of modern rationality corresponds to the emergence of the modern state: a reason detached from mythical–religious grounds, and therefore secular, with irreversible universalist tendencies. For Habermas, this tendency towards universalization could not be explained solely on the basis of demands coming from the material base of society or, in other words, as a mere reflection of the society’s mode of production (in view of a crude, historical-materialistic analysis) and hence we could affirm that it is the focus of Habermas’s analysis. The trend towards universalization can already be found in the very structure of language, developed in the context of modern reason. I do not mean to suggest that only in modernity has humanity experienced the potential of intersubjective consensus through linguistic structure. Still, Habermas argues that it was in the general context of this historical period – with the convergence of social demands, the state of the productive forces and the structure of language – that the trends towards universalization would become irreversible.
The modern state, therefore, still required justifications which could grant it its legitimacy. These, however, became increasingly less grounded on theological and mythological justifications, and gradually constituted more secularized worldviews: the ideas of nation and people, whose substantiation took place in territory. The ideological discourse provided, during this consolidation phase of the capitalist mode and the modern state, the legitimacy capable of promoting collective mobilization around common goals. Ideology possessed the aggregative power of a subjectively shared worldview regarding the secular and pseudo-rational justification for the concepts of people and nation, whose classification was based on cultural characteristics, especially those defined by language.
The social organization of the capitalist mode of production demanded a structure that could only be supplied by the state, within a group of nation states which, despite competing with each other, owed their existence to mutual recognition. Furthermore, the consolidation of capitalist relations required a specific set of social norms that was concocted in the spirit of laissez-faire. Therefore, despite the intentions of the Enlightenment, it was only at the stage of liberal capitalism that the inauguration took place of a “binding force to strictly universalistic value systems, for economic exchange had to be universalistically regulated and the exchange of equivalents provided an effective basic ideology to free the state from the traditionalistic mode of justification” (Habermas, 1992: 87).
Conversely, if in traditional societies domination had a directly political character – for being filled with worldviews that validated it – in capitalism, and especially in its liberal phase, domination occurs in the apolitical sphere of the market, rendering it invisible because, in the market, “the only authority who is perceived as such is that of economic laws, which ensure the (politically neutral) functioning of the economy and at the same time distribute the social product in accordance with the principle of equivalent exchange” (Rouanet, 1986: 274, our own translation).
Capitalist crises led to the breakdown of liberal capitalism and to the consequent vacuousness of the ideology of laissez-faire, which lost the legitimation strength it derived from the sociopolitical system. Thus begins the monopolistic stage, when the logic of capitalist accumulation becomes increasingly coordinated by actions of the state with respect to basic training requirements, investments in technology and innovation, issues related to health and social welfare, and the abatement of the side effects of capitalism’s functional failures. In summary – and in spite of the struggles and social achievements of monopoly capitalism (especially its version of social welfare) – the state control over the economy could be summed up in a single function: to avoid the cyclical crises of capitalism. In the transitional phase from liberal to monopoly capitalism, socioeconomic crises constituted fertile grounds for the resurgence of ideologies that were in a relative state of dormancy. The pseudoscientific ideology of the “people” reaches its heights through naturalistic characterizations of race, taken to the extreme by National Socialism.
Traditional societies and capitalism were faced with the same problem: that of “legitimizing a domination system characterized by private ownership of the surplus and by the unequal distribution of wealth” (Rouanet, 1986: 283, our own translation). As seen above, legitimacy in traditional societies occurred through the use of ideologies that recognized the system of domination and justified it, while capitalism, both in its liberal and monopolistic versions, “attempts to solve the problem by ideologically denying the reality of domination” (Rouanet, 1986: 283, our own translation).
Still, it is due to the rise and consolidation of the so-called welfare state – which shifts once again the issue of legitimacy – that we have the establishment of what Habermas calls a “legitimation crisis of the late capitalism.” If, on the one hand, the bourgeois state lost its capacity for legitimacy by means of an ideologically pure “integrative force of national consciousness” (weakened after the catastrophic fascist experiences), on the other hand there still remained its task of “curbing conflicts inherent to the economic system,” conflicts which, in a formal representative democracy, must be included “in the political system, as an institutionalized struggle for distribution. Wherever this was successful, the modern State took one of the developed forms of mass democracy in the Welfare State” (Habermas, 1983: 233–234, our own translation).
Habermas rejects an “economistic” interpretation when referring to relations of production. He recognizes that the economy – as a subsystem of the system (or the world of system) – may have taken over the functional primacy as well as the role of promoting social development in modern societies. However, Habermas argues that the economy is primarily established by its organizational principles, which are “highly abstract regulations that define ranges of possibility” (Habermas, 1992: 16–17). Thus, the issue of legitimation does not revolve solely around a discussion about material distribution. It resides especially in the public service clientship that is established between members of society and the state, a relationship that is guided by the use value of such services (and last but not least, of the production of knowledge, and of the symbolic production of society).
Habermas, however, was not driven by a naïve interpretation that the late capitalist society would then be compelled by imperatives founded on use values: “There is no question here of some mysterious magnitude; the need for legitimation arises from evident functional conditions of an administrative system that steps into functional gaps in the market” (Habermas, 1992: 58). Distributional and social services policies, as well as the mechanisms for economic regulation and joint mobilization of labor and mass consumption, supported by countercyclical anti-crisis measures, summarize the Keynesian–Fordist policies, whose goal is the maintenance of capitalism.
Despite his clarity, Habermas does not allow himself to be trapped by this generic imperative of capitalist maintenance when he interprets the new issues of legitimacy, “as they cannot be solved without regard to the satisfaction of legitimate needs – that is, to the distribution of use values – while the interests of capital realization prohibit precisely this consideration” (Habermas, 1992: 58). It is in this contradiction that the legitimation crisis of late capitalism is outlined.
The welfare state, however, while mediating this contradiction (regarding the satisfaction of legitimate needs and the interests of capital realization), should take into account the social dynamics – stemming largely from the very capitalist dynamics – whose use values and whose corresponding needs are not static; therefore, its definition becomes extremely complex. These dynamics are also observed in social consensuses, which acquire more and more the aspect of provisional agreements. The consensus mediated by the state is not only a reward for those who submit to the impositions of the system, in the form of collective benefits – which could derive from basic social services such as education, housing, health and social security. “A legitimation crisis arises as soon as the demands for such rewards rise faster than the available quantity of value,
By “workforce,” we are not here limited only to the so-called proletariat. This includes, especially, the highly specialized “hand labor” of scientists and professional researchers, entrepreneurs, agents of cultural production, etc. To cite just one example of the complexity of the objective needs of today’s capitalism, work in the field today requires that the operators of certain agricultural machinery possess knowledge enabling them to perform tasks through electronic commands and with the use of extremely precise geographic coordinate systems. The counterpart of manual skill and strength, once required, is a proficiency in – or at least familiarity with – scientific and technological knowledge. It is paradoxical that these systems, despite their relative ease of operation, owe their existence precisely to the highly abstract and complex scientific knowledge that they carry.
As seen above, Rouanet (1986: 283) argues (in accordance with the interpretation of Habermas) that, since the inception of the liberal stage of capitalism, domination has become invisible because legitimation takes place in the apolitical sphere of the market, ideologically supported by equivalent exchange (specifically, the exchange of labor for its alleged equivalent, the salary), and governed by laws which are coercive but also simultaneously natural and fair, for they are based on reciprocity. Rouanet (1986: 283, our own translation) goes on to argue that, at the monopoly stage, the “veil of value” had already been removed by Marx’s critique of political economy, which could have led to the exposure of the structures of domination. This did not occur, however, because what Marcuse calls “technological veil” comes into scene, and prevents the revelation of domination structures by replacing the automatism of market progress with the automatism of technical progress.
Thus began a process of radical concealment of the domination structures, a process which removed, along with the structures of power, the categories through which it would have been possible to devise social organization projects based on non-instrumental criteria – the critique of ideology (Ideologiekritik) was exhausted. In a way, this was the “one-dimensional” impasse shared by Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and also Habermas. The difference, according to Rouanet, is that Habermas believes that the critique of ideology nowadays “does not simply consist in bringing up class interests which are suppressed and concealed by hegemonic legitimations,” an aspect of the critique that has become historically exhausted and therefore ineffective, and for this reason abandoned by the Frankfurt School. Still, indeed, the Ideologiekritik essentially consists of “recovering one of the fundamental interests of the species, which lies buried under a technocratic consciousness that denies the existence of that interest” (Rouanet, 1986: 283, our own translation).
The fundamental interest of the species would be life itself, a life worth living. The struggle against technocratic ideology would be in the “reproduction of existence under conditions […] of preservation and expansion of symbolically mediated intersubjectivity [one of the fundamental anthropological characteristics], in a violence-free communication context,” and therefore beyond technical control and adapted behavior (Rouanet, 1986: 283–284, our own translation).
Thus, if on the one hand Habermas approaches the pessimistic conclusions of the Frankfurt School by detecting that the domination in late capitalism appropriates even the symbolically mediated intersubjectivity, on the other hand he sees, precisely in this more recent advancement of the power structures, the opportunity for a qualitatively diverse order towards emancipation. It is in this sense that Habermas says, in “Technology and science as ‘ideology’” (Toward a Rational Society), that the reflection demanded by the new (technocratic) ideology “should look back, past historically constituted class interests, until it finds the fundamental interests of humanity as such, in its process of self-formation” (Habermas, apud Rouanet, 1986: 284, our own translation).
“The end of ideologies does not therefore mean the end of the requirement for justification, but the entrance into a stage of permanent problematization” (Rouanet, 1986: 307, our own translation). This is where the possibility is presented for the resumption of intersubjective consensus, for if, on the one hand, the colonization of the lifeworld by the system greatly complicates the possibilities for a consensus based on communicative action and on the practical demands of life, on the other hand the “disenchanted” world, under the aegis of the administered society, of the dominance of instrumental rationality, can only be justified in logical and universalistic terms. A modus operandi according to which systemic power structures inexorably seek to obtain legitimations that will safeguard their continuity in the current terms of late capitalism. A universalist modus operandi that strengthens the emancipatory possibilities of communicative action which are present in the structures of language, and no longer in justifications which are ultimately ideologically restrictive and exclusionary, such as the mystification which tended to conceal the instances of power. It is as if the instances of domination, by appropriating the core structures of language (perhaps the last bastion of the subject) became hostages of the forces that sought to subjugate, shall we say, the claims of universal validity by the participants in communication.
Habermas and the issue of the systemic self-exhaustion of capitalism
The end of ideology thesis, or rather the entanglement of its technocratic version in the lifeworld to the point where it is no longer possible to recognize domination, has as a backdrop the late capitalism which, depending on the context or on who uses the term, can also be called social welfare state, welfare state, post-capitalism, industrial society, post-industrial society, regulated capitalism, organized capitalism, advanced capitalism, etc., whose foundations bear a structural resemblance to monopoly capitalism, despite the comings and goings of the laissez-faire in what may be immediately apparent. What is certain is that both a position that is (shall we say) more orthodox regarding critical theory – one leading towards a pessimistic impasse – as well as the option provided by Habermas of programmatically developing a theory of social action centered on language, both seem to share the same view with respect to administered society.
Looking at the issue more carefully, the most striking difference between the two conceptions is that the pessimistic position of critical theory seeks to denounce and understand the harmful consequences of an administered society, while Habermas seeks to highlight the gaps in the system as well as the dialectically entangled progressive aspects of late modernity where, programmatically, it should be possible to develop the potentials related to the lifeworld, and thereby resolve or overcome social pathologies.
Both the option provided by Habermas and the orthodoxy of critical theory incur in the same mistake: proposing that, with the social welfare state, we have stepped into a sort of self-regenerating system which perpetuates itself ad aeternum – the last and unending stage of capitalism, now immortalized because all the contradictions have been abolished, especially the structural contradictions which could point out the system’s tendency towards a breakdown. Thus, for exhibition purposes and in a rather schematic way, we could characterize the two interpretations in the following manner: according to Habermas’s conception, the social process in which the social welfare state was developed constitutes conducive and irreversible grounds for the realization of the emancipatory potential of communicative action; in contrast, for the orthodoxy of critical theory, it constitutes fertile grounds for the total domination of administered society, a process that has, as its ultimate evolutionary result, the implosion of society.
However, if we have indeed entered “a stage of permanent problematization” (Rouanet, 1986: 307, our own translation) with the end of ideologies, it becomes even more urgent that we be attentive to the social transformations arising from the economic sphere, whether it is understood as the main social basis or as a subsystem of the system (or the world of system). Both determinate negation and communicative action run the same risk of failing in their objectives, for treating the economic sphere as if it were historical capitalist continuum – understood as a monolithic system in relation to its structures. However, this is not simply a problem of theoretical approach. The recent transformations of capitalism, the weakening of the social welfare state and its relation to the processes of economic crisis since the late 1960s introduce new difficulties regarding those analyses that had the interpretations of late capitalism as a backdrop.
It is common to witness, amongst those critical theorists most persistent in the pessimism of Adorno and Horkheimer, the decision to stay away from economic discussions; this because, in the “canons” of critical theory of society, it has been “decreed” that only in the context of culture is it possible to negatively develop some possibility of emancipation. However, despite the appearance of structural stability in the monopoly capitalism of their time, Adorno and Horkheimer never stopped considering the possibility of a systemic breakdown of the capitalist mode of production (or at least they never stopped considering its tendencies towards a breakdown). Marcuse shared a similar understanding in this respect. But what about Habermas?
Unlike many “pessimistic” thinkers of critical theory (for whom Adorno and Horkheimer constitute references), Habermas, in spite of his relative optimism, kept Marx’s darkest analytical predictions regarding the breakdown of capitalism in his horizon of investigation. When speaking of Marx’s analyses, one does not wish to refer to any teleology of history or to his ability to make catastrophic predictions, but rather the extent to which the capitalist dynamism (including its tendencies towards a breakdown) introduces new problems in social issues.
A common misconception derived from this interpretation can be exemplified in the sociological works (not only those based on critical theory) that seem to reproduce the official information conveyed in television news: that the new source of social wealth is in the so-called services sector. In this respect, Habermas considers the structural changes in the sphere of labor, and points out the theory of value’s inadequacy to interpret the socioeconomic dynamics resulting from these transformations. However, he soon ponders that “it is an empirical question whether the new form of production of surplus value can compensate for the tendential fall in the rate of profit, that is, whether it can work against economic crisis” (Habermas, 1992: 57).
Habermas displays a very clear understanding of Marx’s (1991: 315) hypothesized “tendential fall in the rate of profit,” whose synthesis can be thus presented: in the replacement of living labor (variable capital) with dead labor (constant capital), as a consequence of the inexorable search for increasing productivity, lies the decrease of surplus value when reported to the total capital, and thus “the weakening impulse to continuation of the process of accumulation” (Habermas, 1992: 29).
Thus if, on the one hand, in the advanced capitalism, the state is conceived “not as a blind organ of the realization process, but as a potent collective capitalist [Gesamtkapitalist] who makes the accumulation of capital the substance of political planning” (Habermas, 1992: 46, emphasis in the original) – and exactly therein lies the monopolistic character of the structure of late capitalism – on the other hand, while the law of value is critical for the tendency towards a crisis: […] that is, the structurally necessary asymmetry in the exchange of wage labor for capital –
As stated before, the theory of communicative action seems to be based, to a large extent, on the possibilities brought to term by the social welfare state, and especially on account of the legitimation problems emerging from these realized possibilities. The search for consensus becomes a requirement for the maintenance of the system itself, which then enters a stage of constant problematization. However, as has been noted, Habermas does not limit himself to the potentials of the welfare state. He accurately pointed out the possibility of bumps in the apparent pacification of advanced capitalism. He had already done this by 1973, in his book Legitimation Crisis, when the expectation that the capitalist system would go through turbulent times did not yet darken the horizon.
Final considerations
Given all that has been presented in this study, it can be stated that the theory of communicative action is far from being an idealistic raving, and that it offers an important contribution to our efforts in dealing with social problems and their dynamic transformations. The stage of constant problematization which we have entered, as pointed out by Habermas, requires that we question even the structural conditions about which there seems to be very little disagreement – as seems to be the case of late capitalism – for a significant portion of critical theory today. Even if we could not know much more today than my argumentation sketch suggests [on the possibilities of emancipation in the legitimation crisis of late capitalism] – and that is little enough – this circumstance would not discourage critical attempts to expose the stress limits of advanced capitalism to conspicuous tests; and it would most certainly not paralyze the determination to take up the struggle against the stabilization of a nature-like social system over the heads of its citizens, that is, at the price of – so be it! – old European human dignity. (Habermas, 1992: 143, original emphasis)
With the appropriate considerations on the objective conditioning of society (and in line with the path taken by Habermas), the theory of communicative action can be very productive when reviewing the false universalism of values in the bourgeois society, wherein the pursuit of happiness could then mean, rather than (for example) accumulating material and symbolic objects which can be privately owned (according to the idea of happiness suggested by the cultural industry), “producing social relations in which reciprocity reigns and satisfaction no longer means the triumph of one individual at the cost of repressing the needs of another” (Habermas, 1983: 238–239, our own translation).
Considering the issues that have been addressed, two contradictory movements emerge which also express, in broad terms, two basic aspects of education: “Human adaptation to reality, and the emancipatory action that establishes itself as critical to the processes of self-preservation” (Gomes, 2007: 113, our own translation). This challenge in education is at the heart of the issue of formation (Bildung), which lies precisely in the quest for autonomy. In this challenge also resides the task of education, which: […] should be guided by the curbing and reversal of the process of colonization of the lifeworld, by expanding the conditions which allow for the communicative use of language, based on the possibility of a consensus that is to be achieved argumentatively. (Gomes, 2007: 116, our own translation)
Following the lines of this inquiry, a book was published in 2012 in Brazil (Habermas, 2012a) and in England (Habermas, 2012b) which may shed some light on the issue, according to the discussion presented here. It was, in the year of 2012, Habermas’s latest book, whose original edition had been released in Germany in 2011. With respect to the discussions outlined in this article, two points are noteworthy. The first one refers to the broader aspects of his theoretical path. Alessandro Pinzani, who wrote the preface for Habermas’s aforementioned book (Habermas, 2012a), points out a major shift in Habermas’s thought, which places him closer to “the defenders of normative theories of justice which he had previously rejected” (Pinzani, 2012: XXX, our own translation). According to the interpretation of Pinzani, the current theoretical position of Habermas is more precisely characterized: […] by its appeal to the dignity of each person, which imposes itself more powerfully than any other type of argument (dignity is thus defined independently of any reference to consensus among those concerned, of the principles of speech or of the rules of discourse). (Pinzani, 2012: XXX, our own translation)
The second point refers to the specific purpose of this study. In an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit
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in 2008, after being asked whether the global economic crisis did represent a “legitimation crisis of capitalism,” Habermas said: Since 1989-90 it has become impossible to break out of the universe of capitalism; the only remaining option is to civilize and tame the capitalist dynamic from within. Even during the postwar period, the Soviet Union was not a viable alternative for the majority of the left in Western Europe. This is why in 1973 I wrote on legitimation problems “in” capitalism. These problems have forced themselves onto the agenda once again, with greater or lesser urgency depending on the national context. (Habermas, 2012b: 106)
It is understood that, if the hypothesized capitalist tendency towards a breakdown is correct, the problems of legitimacy go even deeper into that “stage of permanent problematization” (Rouanet, 1986: 307, our own translation), which does not invalidate the theory of communicative action and, in addition to that, further indicates the urgent need for consensual practices. A consensus is needed, not in the sense of conformity, but of an endeavor to constantly seek awareness of the social structures as well as their possibilities and limits, and to remain open to new interpretations and arrangements, even if temporary, in the search for dignity and a life worth living.
With a more particular respect to educational issues, the discussion presented in this study (with emphasis on the problems of legitimacy and the limits of capitalism) can contribute to the debates on public policies for education, especially after the economic crisis started in October 2008, which still persists and definitely calls the neoliberal prescriptions into question.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received funding with a doctoral scholarship granted to Renato Crioni by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo Research Foundation) – FAPESP.
Notes
Translated from Portuguese to English by Alexandre Romero nforzato – inforzato@gmail.com