Date: Thu, 11 May 1995 15:30:17 +0000
From: N.R.Romm-AT-msd.hull.ac.uk (Norma Romm)
Subject: Re: HAB: Working Class and Habermas


O well, I have decided to join this debate now - I suspect ( with David)
that the venomous comments were made by rather materialist-oriented
Marxists. I am curious to see how they respond to David's last letter -
about the need for a more communicative discourse around the issues. I
suppose communication can contain venom - but it is dangerous when venom is
thrown at one on the ground that one is somehow too powerful/advantaged and
that therefore one needs to be denigrated.
I personally can sympathise with a lot of David's comments on the need to
rereify the structures of power and control - as the route to a "better"
world. This was Habermas's critique of a Marxism which did, in the last
analysis,see power as rooted in economic (class) relationships. The
solution to social ills then becomes necessarily a solution on the economic
level ( a change in the mode of production). With Habermas, the solution is
moved to a change on the level of our mode of discourse - the creation and
strenghtening of the fabric of social discourse. It is here that decisions
about ways of organising in a way that is socially just -  can be
discussed. Of course the creation of this sphere is no easy matter. But
moving towards it does mean that one cannot rely on any particular  "agent"
of this revolution (that is, the revolution on the level of the mode of
social discourse). One has to rely on broader social initatives  - all
protest initiatives in society then become relevant to "the revolution"
towards  more democratic forms of social existence.

This of course is a debate which Habermas himself had with Marx. Focusing
on the communicative  dimension, he thinks,  helps us to move towards a
"better" form of social existence. Of course, Marxists criticise this on
the ground that we cannot have discourse when the economy loads the voice
of reason in favour of the (materially) advantaged. Habermas is aware that
reason should not be thus loaded. But he argues that the specific shift in
economic structures as posited by Marxists, itself may become authoritarian
- unless its own vision is  subjected to (heated) debate.  Marxists cannot
have the last word just because they presume they are speaking "for"the
disadvantaged.