In principle, Habermas' Universal Pragmatics only applies to communicative action — that is “action oriented to reaching understanding {verständigungsorientiert}”2—specifically, spoken/written communicative action. Communicative action he says, must always raise four universal validity claims: (1) that the utterance is comprehensible, (2) is the truth, (3) is uttered truthfully — that is, the speaker desires to speak the truth — and (4) is right in reference to a “recognized normative background.” Anyone acting communicatively must “suppose that ... [the validity claims she raises] can be vindicated {or redeemed: einlösen}”.3 These validity claims are “cognitively testable”; in inviting a hearer to engage with her communicatively, the speaker makes a commitment “to provide grounds or to prove trustworthy” the validity claims raised; on the assumption that this warranty is sound, the hearer can be “rationally motivated” to accept the “speaker's signaled engagement”4
Habermas' focus on communicative action is justified by his assumption that “strategic action” — that is, “modes of action that correspond to the utilitarian model of purposive-rational action”5 — is derivative of communicative action6. This appears to be the same assumption behind the oft sited quote,
What raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we can know: language. Through its structure, autonomy and responsibility are posited for us. Our first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus.7
It is at least true that latent strategic action (deception) depends on the existence of communicative action, although Maeve Cooke, contends that Habermas has not proven that the same can be said of manifest strategic action (coercion)8. It is only possible for me to lie if most speech acts are basically communicative: if people are willing to assume the general truthfulness of speech acts.
Nevertheless, I find it difficult to accept that, “[o]ur first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus”; and I find the idea that “‘reaching understanding inhabits human speech as its telos’ (TCA1, 287)9” suspicious. It does not follow from the fact that language functions communicatively that communicative action is the ultimate purpose of language in the metaphysical sense.
To put it another way:
There is something profoundly ideological, in the pejorative sense of concealing contradictions, about a theoretical project which explicitly assumes that society is constituted by communication. 10
In any case, a theory of language which treats as aberrant such common speech acts as lies and obfuscations can hardly be considered adequate.
Habermas here provides us with what is almost a meta-normative theory. Any validity claim may be challenged, the normative context of an utterance may be hypothetically argued — but it is impossible to act communicatively without accepting the presuppositions that the comprehensible, the true, the truthful, and the right are preferable to the incomprehensible, the untrue, the untruthful, and the wrong11. These must hold for social activities in which communicative action predominates — although this is patently not so of other speech acts.
For Habermas, interaction — in contradistinction to work — is communicative action and is “governed by binding consensual norms, which define reciprocal expectations about behaviour”12. He sees this dynamic as fundamental in society. It governs the distribution of products:
the distribution of products requires rules of interaction that can be set intersubjectively at the level of linguistic understanding, detached from the individual case, and made permanent as recognized norms or rules of communicative action.13
And Cooke explains that, “[for Habermas] in the life world, coordination of action takes place primarily by way of communicative action and depends on the action orientations of individuals in society”14 and consensus is “a mechanism of social coordination”15
For Habermas it is the medium of of social integration16. Societies evolve by introducing new forms of social integration (“securing the unity of a social life-world through values and norms”) when system problems arise in the basic domain of society — basic in the Marxist sense. Doing so requires “knowledge of a moral-practical sort” the development of which is governed by the rules of communicative action17.
The dialectic of history therefore cannot be understood merely as the progression of instrumentality — the greater and greater ability to control external (and internal) nature. Rather, inherent and dialectically developing in human society is a reflexive rationality, a self-critical ability to define ends for the means which we develop through technology. In fact, evolutionary innovations in social integration act retroactively on the base and allow “the as-yet unresolved system problems [to] be treated with the help of the accumulated cognitive potential [technical knowledge]; from this there results an increase in productive forces.”18
But to what degree are these relations constructed intersubjectively?
A conception of society as a general intersubjectivity the interruption of which can be corrected by the “special institutions” of law and morality19, certainly needs some strong qualifications. It is somewhat jarring to see law as a form whose content is the mutual understanding of everyone to whom it applies — a fairly cursory look at modern history would seem to suggest the opposite.
Universal pragmatics shows that an utterance is meaningless unless it is appropriate relative to accepted, recognised, and binding norms — and that these norms, in a 'post-conventional' society, must sometimes themselves be justified. It may be useful to understand these norms in context — on the assumption that laws, governments, and other institutions are structural reflections of the mode of social integration.
If I say, 'I will purchase food at the supermarket,' this is normatively valid, if I were to say instead, 'I am hungry, I'll go forage for some tubers,' this is not likely to be accepted by my hearer for the obvious reason that foraging is no longer the appropriate response to hunger. Similarly, if I say, 'I must find a job,' this presupposes an already existing system of relations (capitalism). To the extent that these norms were ever set intersubjectively, I was not involved. Rather, the communicating, living, social subject is always already bound by pre-existing social institutions and forms.
It is irrelevant to talk about communicative action in the larger context of social integration without coming to terms with the society in which communicative action may take place. A social being is obligated to work in the manner in which society reproduces itself generally and she is obliged to be socialized in the pre-established structure of the family, schools and culture. The social being constructs her subjectivity through the lived experience of being in a particular society. In the context of a class society, this means that social beings do not enter into society as equals, neither then do we always enter into intersubjective relations equally. To the extent that human beings work towards consensus therefore, they do so by reciprocally trying to bring others to accept as valid claims which are the result of the lived experience of inequality. The 'truth' of our statements naturally depends upon the perspective from which we utter them; moreover, the very signs by which we communicate – words such as 'people' or 'society' or 'useful' – can have very different referents depending on whether or not they are being uttered by members of the working class or members of the ruling class.
But this inequality already presupposes that in fact a great proportion of our social relations are not the result of communicative action — that is action intended to bring about universal consensus on the basis of valid intersubjective discussion by everyone involved. This is doubly true when you consider that moral-practical propositions are not even intelligible unless there exists the material means to actualize them — the development of material means not being governed by communicative action. Inequality in society would seem to indicate (historic) success on the part of some sections — that is, it would seem to be the result of well executed strategic action.
Habermas is aware, of course, that communication does not take place in a vacuum. Norms are binding not merely because of mutual recognition, but also often because there are institutions which can enforce them. He could write that the goal (as in telos) of social development is “the organization of society linked to decision-making processes on the basis of discussion free from domination”20 and again, “it is not unconstrained intersubjectivity which we call dialectic, but the history of its repression and re-establishment.”21
These considerations indicated in 1968 are far less prominent in Communication and the Evolution of Society written in 1976. The dialectic given focus is “the fact that with the acquisition of problem solving abilities new problem situations come into consciousness.” In the latest stage of this dialectic, “value came into consciousness as a scarce resource. The experience of social inequality called into being social movements and corresponding strategies of appeasement.” [my italics]22
Social integration, in modern times therefore, has functioned primarily to maintain the system. However, if, as Marx said, “the interests of capital and the interests of wage labour are diametrically opposed”23, that is, if class relations in capitalist societies are such that what benefits one injures the other then there may be cause to modify our understanding of consensus and integration. It is self-evident that there is nothing irrational about a boss seeking to exploit wage workers for profits any more than it is irrational for workers to fight to keep a greater share or even the full value of their labor. Consensus therefore in this situation must injure and benefit either party to lesser or greater degree, but built into these actions are pre-existing inequalities, the dynamic balance of which — far more, I would contend than rational argument — determines the outcome of the struggle. Consensus, as an ideological base for action, must in the long run benefit those already in a position of power.
Social movements in general cannot be understood in terms of communicative action. While it is certainly true, and important, that these movements generate discussion in the private, academic and public spheres it is not true that the “corresponding strategies of appeasement” can be understood as a consensus. Picket lines and placards are hardly the media of rational debate; they are, to put it bluntly, meant to coerce those who have no rational reason to accept the agenda of a movement until the alternative is too expensive. In as much as action intended for consensus is undertaken at all, it is within the movement itself (and those who stand to benefit from it) and not between the movement and its opposition within the rest of society. It would be more accurate, I think, to describe these movements in terms of praxis than communicative action.
Meaningful consensus — that is, consensus reached without the underlying pressures of inequality and false-consciousnesses — is only possible within sections of society that share corresponding interests and so can work from similar premises. As such, communicative action cannot begin to constitute society until the divisions in it which necessitate “diametrically opposed” interests are eradicated. Which is to say until classes no longer exist. Habermas steadfastly ignores this. His method is one of immanent critique24 of bourgeois society and he has kept true to his word: it is hard to imagine a critical theory more thoroughly bourgeois nor one the implications of which are so utterly in favour of the status quo.
2Ibid. pp. 1.
3Ibid. pp. 2-3.
4Ibid. pp. 63.
5Ibid. pp. 41.
6Ibid. pp. 1
7Habermas, Jürgen. “Appendix” in Knowledge and Human Interests (1968) Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Heinmann, London 1972) pp. 314. For a very short riposte to Habermas' idealist focus on language see my essay on this blog "The Marxist Conception of History" section IV. 'Marx's Anthropology' which discusses some aspects of Marx's materialist anthropology. For a literal discussion of Marx's claim that "Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation." (German Ideology pp. 6) see Engels' very short but unfinished essay "The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man". Engels' essay is perhaps somewhat dated, but still useful and interesting.
8Cooke, Maeve. Langage and Reason (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994) pp. 23-24
9Habermas, Jürgen. “Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1” quoted in Habermas: A Very Short Introduction, James Gordon Finlayson (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005) pp. 34.
10Callinicos, Alex. Marxism and Philosophy (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1983) pp. 143. Callinicos' intuition that Habermas' theory is based on an ideological intrusion has, I think, some weight. Habermas' division of speech acts into communicative, symbolic, and strategic is somewhat arbitrary: isn't it likely that people engage in honest speech acts because they believe that they benefit personally from speaking the truth? In that sense, one could just as easily say that communicative action was a sub-category of success oriented strategic action.
11Habermas, Jürgen. “Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism” in Communication and the Evolution of Society Trans. Thomas McCarthy (London, UK: Heinemann, 1979), pp. 177.
12Habermas, Jürgen. “Technology and Science as 'Ideology'” in Toward a Rational Society (1968) Trans. Jeremy J Shapiro (London, UK: Heinemann, 1971) pp.92
13Habermas, Jürgen. “Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism” in Communication and the Evolution of Society Trans. Thomas McCarthy (London, UK: Heinemann, 1979), pp. 132. It is probably accurate to say that language is the medium by which we come to understand the world and speak that understanding. What Habermas has not shown is by what mechanism and to what degree this process — while remaining essentially linguistic — can actually constitute society. It may be helpful when considering this problem to ask how separate an entity an understanding of the world is from the world which is understood.
14Cooke, Maeve. Langage and Reason (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994) pp. 5.
15Ibid. pp. 9.
17Habermas, Jürgen. “Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism” in Communication and the Evolution of Society Trans. Thomas McCarthy (London, UK: Heinemann, 1979), pp. 144-147
18Ibid. pp. 147.
19Ibid. pp. 156.
20Habermas, Jürgen. “The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory” in Toward a Rational Society (1968) Trans. Jeremy J Shapiro (London, UK: Heinemann, 1971) pp.55
21Ibid. 59. These ideas, written in 1968, are explicitly based on Marx's conception of struggle.
22Habermas, Jürgen. “Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism” in Communication and the Evolution of Society Trans. Thomas McCarthy (London, UK: Heinemann, 1979), pp. 164-165. Habermas is here explicitly attempting a reconstruction of historical materialism as Stalin conceived it, it is largely on the basis of this particular form of historical materialism's obvious moral and theoretical bankruptcy that he is able to claim the need for an alternative. It is not our concern here to reclaim or reinterpret Marxist historical materialism as such, but we may at least note that as early as 1936 Franz Jakubowski had already published a version of this theory that had little of Stalin's (or Althusser's) one sidedness and determinism. Torsky by applying the theory in his histories, of course also made no small contribution. More recent theoreticians include Callinicos, Chris Harman and the late Tony Cliff. While we may charitably admit that Stalin's view may have been dominant (although not hegemonic) in 1979 its subsequent total loss of credibility makes Habermas' explicit project appear somewhat quaint.
23Marx, Karl Wage Labour and Capital Plus Wages, Price and Profit (Bookmarks, London, UK 1996) pp.43
24Finlayson, James Gordon. Habermas: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005) pp. 9.
Bibliography:
Callinicos, Alex. Marxism and Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983
Callinicos, Alex. The Resources of Critique. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2006
Cooke, Maeve. Langage and Reason. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994
Finlayson, James Gordon. Habermas: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005
Habermas, Jürgen. Communication and the Evolution of Society Trans. Thomas McCarthy. London, UK: Heinemann, 1979
Habermas, Jürgen. Knowledge and Human Interests (1968) Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro. London, UK: Heinmann, 1972
Habermas, Jürgen. Toward a Rational Society (1968) Trans. Jeremy J Shapiro. London, UK: Heinemann, 1971
Marx, Karl. Wage Labour and Capital Plus Wages, Price and Profit. Bookmarks, London, UK 1996
I'm impressed, Anton. When are you going to start a study group?
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