From: "R.Pearson" <R.Pearson-AT-art.derby.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 16:44:51 +0100
Subject: M-PSY: re: Habermas, Marx, and Freud


Tod and Chris raise some interesting points regarding Habermas and the
unconscious. Now I've been putting off reading Habermas fully since I find
him about as interesting as 
watching paint dry, but it looks like I'm going to have to treat him
seriously in the near future. In the meantime, some off the cuff comments:
Tod writes:
>How do we account for people's allegiance to a system that is exploitative
even after its exploitative nature has been explained to them and
understood 
cognitively?  
One thus hypothesizes a buy-in at the level of emotional processes that are
called unconscious.  They are called 'unconscious' because they are
difficult to
>recognize and reflect upon. 

Developed capitalist social relations do not appear exploitative, they
appear as natural and fair even to the extent that a radical might perceive
a particular injustice and then call on the state to remedy the ill, or a
trade unionist call for a 'fair day's pay for a fair day's work' etc. Such
is the dominance of the commodity form that probably only crude
accumulation appears unfair. Thus, if exploitation can be understood at a
cognitive level, from the experiental it can still remain accepted, even in
periods of depression, or for that matter, crisis.
 
The Frankfurt School's rejection of say, their erstwhile colleague,
Grossman's theorisation of valorisation, or later, Mattick's work on the
significance of Marx's critique of political economy, led them to look for
explanations elesewhere. This they increasingly found in the role of the
unconscious and instrumental reason. For Freud, the unconscious is more
than processes at the emotional level. The unconscious represents either
the most hidden and unaccessable level in his topography of the psyche; or
the source of raw, primeval, instinctual energies, in his libidinal economy
of the psyche. 
Now if we grant that the unconscious exists (which may seem a strange
point, except to note that its acceptance is largely unquestioned in most
quarters, an occurence that eleswhere would raise the odd Marxist eyebrow),
it becomes difficult to theorise how the process of capitalist accumulation
'buys-in' to its needs. 
For the needs articulated in the critique, must become naturalised, which
then leads on to the creation of an artficial domain: that of instrumental
reason. This in turn 'colonises' those natural needs with needs of its own.

Now at each step in this process we note a two-fold move. One is to the
reification of the natural- natural needs, natural man etc., and the
second, the counter position of the world of artifice. At no point are the
social relations that articulate these realms every really questioned. Of
note is the fact that instrumental reason, suspects reason and not 
instrumentality per se - its foundation is at the level of discourse, not
human actions. From this, it is an easy move to turn the linguistic screw
once more and to bring in semiotics.

BTW On the question of symbolisation of goods- I do not reject the
connotations produced by designer labels, only those critiques that present
this as an end and ill in itself. For me, there is no contradiction between
(to chose a local example), a Paul Smith suit and revolutionary politics,
(although to be sure, there is a definite tragedy in that I can't even
afford his socks).

Best Wishes,


Russell Pearson.








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