Date: Wed, 10 May 1995 12:56:31 +0800
From: rgeeland-AT-cc.curtin.edu.au (David Geelan)
Subject: HAB: Working Class Habermas


In response to Craig and Lenny's discussion on Marx, Habermas, the
proletariat and power:

Lenny's point first: I'd love to hear a fuller description of the
relationship between 'system and lifeworld' and 'public and private
sphere'. I suspect you're right: Habermas accepts that centralised economic
planning is incapable of functioning due to the extreme complexity of
reality, and further suggests (I think) that such an approach shifts power
away from individual's lifeworlds and toward systems.

An interesting point that Noam Chomsky has raised: it was in the interest
of both the USA and the USSR to claim that what was occurring there was
socialism, when in fact it was not. For the USA, the attraction was to say
"let's avoid socialism if it leads to this kind of poverty and opression"
(ignoring the more subtle opression of capitalism), for the USSR, it gave
the advantage of the approval and intellectual/moral appeal of socialism to
a system which was not in fact socialist. I raise this to affirm the fact
that I am not confusing Marxism with eastern European regimes.

Craig: could you clarify your statement that Marx is not a materialist? I
have to confess to an awesome ignorance of Marx's own writings (as opposed
to the later distortions of others), but it seems to me that his concern
with capital, production and economics, and rejection of religion and
spirituality suggest a materialist perspective. Perhaps we just define
'materialism' differently?

How are class differences described these days? Australia, particularly, is
highly egalitarian: although people have different jobs, few people regard
this as placing them in different social classes. (My perception is that
this process is less complete in Europe and America.) Ironically, in
Australia the only people who still talk about class, and divide people on
class lines, are trade unionists. While  in 1870s Europe the struggle for
emancipation was usefully described in terms of class, I believe that there
are better descriptions for this struggle in 1990s Australia.  Perhaps this
helps to explain why I do not feel that the class struggle is useful -
except perhaps as a metaphor: I do not think in class terms at all. My
father worked in a factory, I teach in a university. But we do not see
ourselves as divided on class lines.

As to your question about distorted communication and distorted economics:
I (and I suspect Habermas) define communication (or communicative action)
so braodly that economics becomes a form of communication. And certainly if
this form of communication tends to promote injustice, reform is necessary
and appropriate.

As I stated before, my feeling is that Habermas' concern is with all of
humanity: it is broader than, and therefore able to include, his earlier
Marxian leanings, but is more powerful because more able to explain
struggles other than materialist and class conflicts.

I look forward to further discussion of these interesting issues.