File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 184


Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 21:31:06 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: M-TH: 'Wankfurt' & 'Essentialism' combined


At 02:06 AM 2/10/98 +1100, Rob Schaap wrote:
 
>All he reckons is that instrumental reason (that 'knowledge-constitutive
>interest' to do with technical control of our world) has been driving down
>the perceived value we place in mutual understanding (our 'practical
>reason'; the intersubjectivity angle) and has distorted our 'emancipatory
>interest' (the 'freedom from structures of domination' angle)......

A lot of people, including those who have probably never heard of any of the
Wankfurters, have used this conception of instrumental reason in one form or
another.  Habermas' liberalism sounds remarkably superficial, but my only
objection is to his treatment of Marx in KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN INTERESTS,
which made me give up on Habermas before I even started.  Unless I recall
wrong, Habermas' makes out Marx's own adoption of scientific reasoning as
"instrumental", which I believe is a falsehood.

More generally, my objection to "instrumental reason" is that it takes the
form of appearance of a particular attitude at its own valuation, and this
encourages the very mystification it purports to criticize.  All the critics
of technology share in this mystification, many having nothing to do with
the Wankfurters.  I think of Joseph Weizenbaum, an early contributor to
artificial intelligence who turned against this instrumentalism of the
technocratic class.
His characterization of BF Skinner is precisely what you criticize, and I
agree, but it remains on the level of appearances.  I think also of Hannah
Arendt, and her turning of Adolph Eichmann into a passionless bureaucrat for
her own sensationalist purposes.  I've never believed in this form of
myth-making.

>And this on the ascendancy of the managerialist state (in his critique of
>Hegel's Philosophy of Right): 'The bureaucracy has the state, the spiritual
>essence of society, in its possession, as its private property ...
>authority is the basis of its knowledge, and the deification of authority
>is its conviction ... The abolition of the bureaucracy is only possible by
>the general interest actually ...'

Good quote.  Marx against managerialism before managerialism really came
into its own towards the end of the century.

>Camus, Dostchoevsky (however you spell him), Huxley and Orwell trod gound
>like this, didn't they?  If you want more concrete than that, well, I'll go
>with St Bernard ('Begin by considering yourself - no, rather end by that').

There are probably better literary examples to be had, but I meant that if
list members are going to discuss these issues, they might make a more
profound impact if they turn their attention towards their actual
observations of real people in their environment.

I have no problem owning up to my own contradictory attitudes toward working
class people, who are more than letters on the pages of books to me.  I've
never seen anyone else admit to this, but I find the more deeply I learn to
understand people, the more both my empathy and antipathy simultaneously
grow.  Don't you find this curious?

The propagandism of certain individuals aside, I think nobody on this list
is so naive as not to be aware of the limitations of the "autonomous
individual", but the anti-humanist slant is just another manifestation of
cynical reason, itself a manifestation of managerialism that inspires
Stalinism, social fascism, Freudianism, Althusserianism, and all other
variations thereof.  "I'm so clever I can see through everything, but I
still manage to be obtuse and gullible and authoritarian in the last
instance ....."



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