Date: Sat, 13 May 1995 08:05:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Philip Goldstein <pgold-AT-strauss.udel.edu>
Subject: Re: HAB: Working Class and Habermas


	Norma Romm poses the differences between Marxism and Habermas as 
a matter of dogmatic economic authority vs broad discussion: she 
says, "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." I don't think that contemporary Marxists, especially those 
committed to Gramscian notions of hegemony, would disagree with this need 
for debate. The real issue is the normative status of theory. In The 
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas complains that Marxists 
cannot resist totalitarian practices because Marxists allow theory no 
normative grounds. Marxist materialists clearly won't grant that theory, 
whose discourse changes with historical changes, has some absolute 
grounds for its critique; Habermas dismisses them as mere engineers. 

Philip Goldstein