Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 09:46:36 -0400
From: howleyc-AT-ael.org (Craig Howley)
Subject: Re: HAB: Working Class and Habermas



David Geelan asks...

This is an interesting point: could it be that Marx's work is valuable in
pointing out injustice and making us aware of inequity, but that the
mechanisms it provides for developing solutions are flawed? Habermas,
having seen attempts to implement these mechanisms fail, and understood
some of the reasons, proposes new mechanisms which take into account the
meaning-making imperative of humanity, and which have greater potential for
solving social problems. One of the things that's been intriguing in the
discussion is the extent to which people have assumed that Habermas'
normative statements are fixed and inflexible. My reading, on the contrary,
is that he describes a dynamic interaction between philosophy and social
science so that norms will be generated by contexts and understood through
the development of grounded theories for action. Do others concur with this
interpretation? (It arises mainly from "The Theory of Communicative
Action".)


David, I've always wondered exactly what one has in mind with the claim that
Marx's work provides "mechanisms for developing solutions."  This treads too
close to the misconcstruction of Marx as founded on scientific laws.  Sure,
it was a claim he made, and quite in keeping with the spirit of the 19th
century.

But what would these mechanisms be, except for such understandings as the
twin nature of class struggle and the attendant social relations of
production?  Those ideas remain powerful.  And what about the fetishism of
commodities?  More appopriate now than it ever was.

yet, somehow those ideas don't strike me at all as belonging to the
technical realm ("mechanisms").  Rather, the are sufficiently broad to speak
to the range of human interests (to employ the Habermas jargon).  To allege
"flaws" in these ideas seems oddly disjunct, therefore.  Flaws are technical
errors.  And we're not really talking technique, are we, especially in the
case of Habermas?

Rather, the mechanisms one usally has in view when making such attributions
have to do with the methods of revolution and perhaps the ethical and
practical dilemmas posed by attempts to subvert tyranny.  These dilemmas are
hardly unique to Marx or Marxism.  And they certainly bear on questions of
praxis and emancipation; even if Marx didn't spend a lot of time worrying
about emancipation. Though there is that wonderful line in the 1844
manuscripts somewhere about raising cattle in the morning and engaging
criticism in the evening.

--Craig Howley