From: EDavisMail-AT-aol.com
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 05:01:48 EDT
Subject: HAB: Habermas & Marxism



--part1_11a.295f037.289bc27c_boundary

As Gary Davis has pointed out, there is little sense in which Habermas is 
philosophically a Marxist.  I agree that KHI is a good reference in that 
respect.  

However, in much of his work, Habermas seems to subscribe to a Marxist 
economics.  This is the primary means, ironically, by which he differentiates 
himself from the political economy of the Scottish Moralists and from the 
alleged conservatism of Talcott Parsons.

Let me elaborate: a central theme in TCA concerns, of course, the economic 
and political subsystems.  Habermas suggests that they were originally viable 
coordinating mechanisms for an increasingly complex society, but that they 
have become overinflated, intrude on civil society (Habermas's 
communicative-theoretic reconstruction of the "life-world"), and thereby 
undermine the very institutions that brought them into being.  "[T]he 
rationalization of the lifeworld makes possible a heightening of systemic 
complexity, which becomes so hypertrophied that it unleashes system 
imperatives that burst the capacity of the life-world they instrumentalize"  
(TCA II, p. 155).  Hence we have the well known "media steered interaction" 
bypassing "processes of consensus oriented communication" (p. 183).  

What does this have to do with Marxism?  Habermas writes that "the classics 
of political economy were concerned to show that systemic imperatives were 
fundamentally in harmony with the basic norms of a polity guaranteeing 
freedom and justice.  Marx destroyed this practically very important 
illusion; he showed that the laws of capitalist commodity production have the 
latent function of sustaining a structure that makes a mockery of bourgeois 
ideals" (p. 185).  Habermas uses this Marxist theme to differentiate his own 
perspective from traditional political economy.  Does he succeed?  I'm not so 
sure.  

Habermas interprets "a structure that makes a mockery of bourgeois ideals" in 
a way that is quite different from Marx.  This explains why he felt the need 
to write "Marx and the Thesis of Internal Colonization" in his "Concluding 
Reflections" (TCA II, p. 332-373).  In particular, Marx's labor theory of 
value gets extremely devalued, despite all the work Marx put into advocating 
it (p. 341).  Marx's economics simply cannot exist without the labor theory 
of value.  Marx's idea of exploitation as the "extraction of surplus value" 
also gets mysteriously devalued.  At the same time, Habermas ties Marxism to 
the narrowness action-theoretic approach, which is based quite markedly on 
the subjective theory of value.  The labor theory of value and subjective 
theory of value are like oil and water, fundamentally incompatible.  Consider 
Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk's well-know critique of Marx.  Habermas seems to 
subscribe to both; actually, the classic works of political economy tended to 
do the same thing.  This is why we could have Mill subscribe to the labor 
theory of value when writing on economics, then suddenly expound on 
utilitarianism in the next sitting.  Marx did the same thing, as Bohm-Bawerk 
pointed out in his critique of Marx (actually Marx and Engels).  However, 
there is simply no denying that Marx--more than any other well-known 
economist--subscribed to the labor theory of value.

In Habermas, this value-theoretic contradiction manifests itself accordingly: 
he repeatedly suggests that there are "functional weaknesses" (TCA) and 
"extractions of surplus value" (LC) ultimately on the basis of orthodox 
Marxist assumptions (the labor theory of value), yet the entire 
interpretive-sociological tradition manifested in the work of Max Weber and 
Alfred Schutz is based on the subjective theory of value.  

Habermas simply assumes the same problematic as orthodox Marxism when it 
comes to the market; however, he has repeatedly sidestepped explanation or 
argument along these lines because he has been more preoccupied with 
attacking economistic explanations.  Even and especially if Habermas rids 
himself of an orthodox Marxist explanation of the alleged "functional 
weaknesses" in the market, he is simply practicing classical, non-Marxist 
political economy.  It is something quite akin to Adam Smith and David Hume.  
However, if Habermas does still subscribe to an orthodox-Marxist economics, 
his approach has to answer Bohm-Bawerk's critique of Marxism.  He will have 
to confront the fact that the entire interpretive tradition from which he has 
constructed life-world analysis rests on a subjective theory of value.  I 
don't think that this can be resolved with the system/life-world distinction, 
to be sure.  In either case, the outcome will be something not unlike the 
contemporary political economy of the Austrian School of Economics, but with 
a greater respect for Civil Society.  Indeed, Arato and Cohen's CIVIL SOCIETY 
AND POLITICAL THEORY has already, via Eastern European influences, brought 
much of this Habermasian tendency to fruition.

Hope this helps.

Cordially,
Erik R. Davis
MA, Economics

http://www.sigov.si/zmar/apublici/iib/iib0298.html

--part1_11a.295f037.289bc27c_boundary

HTML VERSION: