Habermas's Metacritique of Marx - by Joseph Belbruno

8/12/2019 Habermas's Metacritique of Marx - by Joseph Belbruno

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Jurgen Habermass Meta-critiqueof MarxianPraxis

by Joseph Belbruno

Habermas's "Erkenntnis und Interesse' can be found here:

http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?

sourceid=S10023103

or here in translation as "Knowledge and Human Interests":

http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-

bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S10023352

It would not be too unkind to say of Jurgen Habermas, the talented epigone of

the Frankfurt School of Philosophy, that he devoted his lifetime to bridging thegap between theory and practice.in theory alone!And it is not too unkind to say

this when one considers that Habermas fundamentally misconstrued the entire

Marxian notion of praxis intended in the Gramscian sense of an intellectual

activity that in its very theorization of capitalist society contains itscritiquein a

manner thatchallenges directly and practicallythe operation of the society of capital

and that by that very fact is the very first and necessary step toward its

overthrow.

The task ofcritiqueis invariably that of challenging the self-understanding of

capitalist society so as to evince the elements ofantagonismthat lie at its very

core, that indeed form its essence, and that occasion itscrisis. And crisis is

not a thing, but rather a moment, a point in time aco-incidenceon the

occurrence of which we need to be pre-pared,organizedto trans-form the present

order of things. The task of critique is therefore to outline the fault-lines in the

antagonistic asset of capitalist society andgovernmentso as to prepare the

organization for its eventual democratic overthrow.

Anyone who reviews Habermass theoretical oeuvre will be immediately and

starkly aware of how far he was from this aspect of critique: at no stage did his

enormous theoretical output tackle the all-important question of exactlyhowhis

intellectual efforts could beappliedto the overthrow of capitalist society. For this

is a task that must be most prominent and at the forefront of all our intellectual

efforts devoted to the examination of the manner in which capitalism reproduces

itself and tries to do so on an expanded scale.
http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S10023103http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S10023103http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S10023352http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S10023352http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S10023103http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S10023103http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S10023352http://solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/soth/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S10023352


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It may well be that thepolitical problemof the hypostatization of revolutionary

practical analysis into abstract and harmless theory begins really with Marx

himself and his notion of historical materialism that tries to convey at once two

antitheticalsubjectaorsubject-mattersin its interpretation of human affairs:historyon the one hand as the sphere of human political action, andnatureon the other

as theobjective groundof all ontological reality. The difficulty emerges from as

early as theTheses on Feuerbachwhere the Eleventh Thesis reads: Philosophers

have hitherto onlyinterpretedthe world; the point now isto change it. Here Marx

seems to imply that it is possible to interpret the world surely the task of

theory without actually changing it. Here is precisely that separation, that

Trennung, of intellectual and manual labor, of direction or order and

execution, of theory and practice, of Politics and Economics, of Freedom

and Necessity.

Indeed, here is precisely that separation of Subject and Object that Kant will

sanction with the very first Critique that of Pure Reason that will seek to

delimit thetheoretical limitsof human knowledge from apurelytheoretical

viewpoint or intuition (An-schauung) whereby it is Reason that provides the

guide, the direction to the humansenses(Sinne) so that the mind or

spirit (Geist) ultimately controls the body as in the Cartesian dualism ofres

cogitans(the thinking and acting [co-agitare] thing) andres extensa(the inert,

supine thing) the perfect synecdoche for Capital as command over living

labor and the Worker as labor power to be commanded, directed. Recall

Kants neat and telling summation of his epistemology: Intuition without

concepts isblind[no direction, like manual labor] and concepts without

intuition areempty[ideas cannot be put into practice, as with purelyintellectual

labor]. It is thus that the separation of living labor from the means of

production, which enables its reduction toabstract laborunder the command of

capital, turns into a corresponding division of social labor, between intellectual

labor thatcommandsso-called manual labor.

Or so at least the capitalist would have us believe. Thinkers as diverse as Weberand Arendt certainly fell into this prejudicial trap as the following quotations

illustrate. Which is not to say that there are no technical reasons why social

labor should not be divided: but no amount of technical rationality can

impede the democratic supervision of the most technical tasks of social labor!


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Returning to Marx, we have seen how he too believed that it was possible to

separate reflection or consciousness that is, theory and interpretation as

an entity distinct from reality or the world, such that philosophers hitherto

have only interpreted the world. Marx evidently neglects the fact that

interpretations and theories are themselves methods or modalities of humanactivity. Indeed, Marx himself observed that what distinguishes human beings

from other animals is just this ability to theorise or pro-ject conceptually

beforehandthe activities that theyintendto undertake. But thisdichotomyand

antithesisbetween thought asdeliberationand action asexecutionis exactly

what lies at the source of the division of social labor and its separation from

the means of production in the society of capital.

This separation (Trennung) and division (Krisis) needs to be understood and

examined with a view to its overthrow and supersession. The problem with the

philosophicalapproaches of Kant first for he was the one who first

conceptualized thisKrisis and then Hegel and Marx, who were more concerned

with theTrennung that is, with the separation or alienation of living labor

and itsabstractioninto labor power is that they pre-suppose the existence of a

reality, of an objective substratum or world, that can beobserved,theorized,

andknownscientifically. Differently put, all these theories presuppose the

epistemological schism between knowing Subject and known Object a schism

that can be bridged either irrationally or schematically or else dialectically,

but in any case onlytrans-scendentally, that is to say, only by leaving intact the

epistemologicalseparationorbreak(coupure) between concept and reality. And this

has occurred because in the past we haveorientedhuman action in a fashion

polarizedbetween consciousness, the for-itself or action, and reality, the

in-itself that is acted upon.

Had Marx been aware of Nietzsches owncritiqueof Western, and most

specifically of Kantian and Hegelian, metaphysics, he would doubtless have

transliterated his Eleventh Thesis as follows: Philosophers and scientists have

hithertoclaimedthat they were only inter-preting the world, whereas in fact they

were elaboratingstrategieseither to change or to conserve it! If we turn Marxsdictum on its head like this, we soon realize thatin facttheory and practice were

never separate and that therefore philosophy and science are not ideologies

in the sense intended by Marcuse or Heidegger that they contain a pre-conceived

projectordesignof human action. The notion of ideology implies that there are

theoretical practices that are non-ideological. Instead, they should be viewed as

strategiesthat have specific finalities or goals with which we may agree or


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disagree but that in any case are never purelyspeculativeorcontemplativebecause

they remain ineluctablyforms of human activity.

The problem revolves around the human temptation to separate conceptually the

cosmosinto subject and object, as if the mere fact that there are thoughts provedincontrovertibly that there are thinkers and, behind thinkers, subjects

provided with a consciousness capable ofcom-prehending life and the world

autonomously from these last, that is to say, freely and objectively, from an

Archimedian point. The sooner wefreeour-selvesfrom this pre-judice, the better.

Quite rightly, Marx chastises Hegel for making precisely this error that of mis-

taking humanobjectification, the necessary humanimmanent inter-actionwith life

and the world, withalien-ation, the false consciousness arising from the

extrinsication of the Idea in time and in space to the apotheosis ofab-solute

knowledge, the ultimate stage of the Spirit or self-consciousness to the point where

it en-compasses all itspredicates and attributeswhereby it is ab-solved from

further clarification. Hegel therefore mistakes life and the world, immanence,

with thedialectical un-foldingof the Idea: in short, Hegel mistakes Being with

Logic.

Yet the opposite is not the case for Marx!If we consider Marxs work in its entirety,

despite an undeniablescientistic streakinCapital, there is no question of his

having reduced logic to being for the simple reason that this dichotomy does

not occur in his oeuvre and certainly not in the most mature exposition of his

philosophical theorization of capitalist society in theGrundrisse. Such a

theorization is essential, of course, because the overthrow of capitalism has to be

able to understand the needs that lead to it, has to be able to justify itself. But this

self-understanding must occur in a historical perspective that is aimed not at a

generic philosophical totality, at an all-encompassing ontology. Rather, its

principal aim and scope must be that of erecting a novel political orientation of

human social relations of production, a re-orientation of social labor, to correct its

ever-growing distortion on the part of capitalist social relations of production.

Here is how Habermas characterizes (one could be vicious and say caricatures)MarxsEntwurfin the light of our formulation of this problematic thus far:

Thus in Marx's works a peculiar disproportion arises between the practice ofinquiry [Forschungspraxis and the li!ited philosophical self"understanding ofthis inquiry [Forschung# $n his e!pirical analyses Marx co!prehends the historyof the species under categories of !aterial acti%ity and the critical abolition ofideologies& of instru!ental action and re%olutionary practice& of labor and


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reection at once# But Marx interprets what he does in the !ore restrictedconception of the species' self"reection through labor [Arbeit] alone# The!aterialist concept of synthesis is not concei%ed broadly enough in order toexplicate the way in which Marx contributes to reali(ing the intention of a reallyradicali(ed critique of knowledge# $n fact& it e%en pre%ented Marx fro!understanding his own !ode of procedure fro! this point of %iew# )*+,$& p#-.#/

Obvious here is theintentionon the part of Habermas to distinguish thepractice

of inquiry from thephilosophical self-understandingof inquiry. Marx called his

theoretical activity critique precisely for the reason that it was never intended

as mereanalysisordia-gnosisof the workings and status of capitalism but rather

as a practical project, a dia-noia, whose very content, even the most theoretical

and ana-lytical, had to bedesignedto put into political practice the overthrow of

capitalist social relations of production, namely, the command by dead labor over

living labor. Though it is possible, and we would argue even correct, to contend

that Marxs own account of the social synthesis was defective, it certainly doesnot help matters if we start splitting hairs in the manner Habermas suggests, by

engaging in renewed analyses not just of the practice of inquiry which may

be politically justified because there is an immediate link with praxis but also of

the philosophical self-understanding of this inquiry because at that stage we

already indulging in what threatens to become an endless chain of meta-

critiques of knowledge that rapidly spiral into complete irrelevance to

anything practical in a Marxian sense!

What troubles Habermas is the alleged fact that Marx interprets what he does inthe more restricted conception of the species' self-reflectionthroughlabor

[Arbeit] alone, whereas in his empirical analyses Marx had more properly

comprehend[ed] the history of the species under categories of material activity

and the critical abolition of ideologies, of instrumental action and revolutionary

practice, of labor and reflection at once. In other words, the disproportion

[Missverhaltniss] between the practice of inquiry and its philosophical self-

understanding occurs in Marx because he interprets the history of being human

through labor alone. And Habermas understands by labor exactly whathe

wishes to understand, that is, instrumental actionwithoutrevolutionary practice,

material activitybereftof reflection. Already, therefore, Habermass entire

meta-critique of Marx is on shaky ground because he hasexcogitated for himself

an obstacle, a problem or disproportion in Marxs praxis that Habermas (texts

in hand) is about to overcomeon his own meta-critical terms that is,

philosophisch! That is why we protest, despite our humble admiration for him, that

Habermas spent his lifetime bridging theory and practice in theory alone!


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Forwhat purposecan it serve to draw a distinction as subtle as it is casuistic

between the Marxian notion of labor and reflection? As we saw with the

Eleventh Thesis, it is true that Marx leaned too heavily on the dichotomy between

the [real, natural] world and its ideological, fetishistic interpretations,and thence invited those hideous Hegelian-Marxist (mostly Lukacsian)

disquisitions on authenticity and false consciousness. But it is or should be

wholly evident that when Marx spoke of labor he never intended by that term

tomechanicalpro-duction that the bourgeoisie intends by itin opposition tosome

other mysticalartistic notionof labor such as that contained in the classical

distinction betweenpoiesisandtechne. For Marx to have done so would have

amounted to succumbing to the most risible nostalgia of late-romantic dreamers

hankering (like Lukacs and Heidegger and many after them) for the utopia of

totality, of artistic and aesthetic fulfillment and wholeness for Art.

Habermas has set up a straw man, and then proceeds to punch him out of shape!

Exactly in the manner in which thephilosophia perennissince Plato and Aristotle

has sought to present thecosmosas an Other to be subjugated and dominated

by the Subject, Man understood notimmanentlybut rathertrans-scendentally,

that is to say, by reference to an ideal world or a world of Ideas of whichthis

world,thislife are only im-perfect copies mereappearances(blosse Er-

scheinungen), phenomena or mere representations (blosse Vor-stellungen). If

we define labor in terms of itsmechanicala-spect and of itsideal or creativea-

spect, then it is obvious that the two are and will remain utterlyanti-nomicand ir-

reconcilable. It is obvious that we shall forever sway between crude

materialism and refined idealism. Theunbridgeable hiatus this perennial

conundrum of the philosophic mind between con-cept and the re-ality that

it is supposed to grasp or com-prehend (as a totality) belongs to the

bourgeois fables that Nietzsche laughed off so comprehensively inZarathustra

and that indeed he hammered to smithereens in theTwilight(a book whose

subtitle is how to philosophise with a hammer). (Simplybatheticis that

highbrow bourgeois interpretation, invented by Heidegger, of Nietzsches

hammer referring to sounding philosophical thoughts!)

To be sure, it was Heidegger himself who, on the tracks of Lukacss trenchant

critique of The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought (in theGeschichte), sought

valiantly in hisKantbuch(which he intended as volume two ofBeing and Time)to

correct Kants misapprehensions regarding the nature of humanintuitioninto

which Kant fell in the second edition of theKritik der reinen Vernunft. Heidegger


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genially by-passes Lukacss entireHegelianproblematic of the dialectic of self-

consciousness which the Hungarian philosopher had re-worked along

Simmelian lines that led straight into the formal Weberian notion of

rationalization as reification, - which in turn he adapted from Marxs

original discussion of the fetishism of commodities inCapital. ThisdualismoftheArbeit(labor) as the totality of human objectification that isparcelisedand

commodifiedby the capitalist so that itsqualitativecharacter asuse valueis then

reduced to itsquantitativemonetary formas exchange value until asurplus value

is produced over and above the sociallynecessarylabor time needed for the

reproduction of society all this is a colossalfictionfor which Marx himself

was principally responsible, but one that Lukacs ably worked up into an even

greatermythology, on the tracks of Lenins fanciful Bolshevistvanguardor

dictatorship (avant-garde?) of the proletariat as being the Hegelian carrier

(Trager) of the dialectical self-dissolution of capital (the workingclassdressed up

as theKapital-Geist), finally unveiled as the individual subject-object of history

(a concept Lukacs took from Schopenhauers critique of Kants formal distinction

betweennoumenonandphenomenon).

All along this line of reasoning or analysis, we find a laughable string of puerile

distinctions between a real world and an apparent world which serves to

obfuscate our immediatepractical aim the overthrow of the society of capital

(subjective genitive the society created by and for capital) and its final

institutional form, theKeynesian State-Formnow on its last desperate death-

throes.

Habermassproton pseudon(principal [first and foremost] mistake) he himself

articulates in only his second paragraph (!) from the start of his meta-critique

of Marx. Having quoted from a passage of theParis Manuscriptsin which Marx

decries Hegels confusion of human objectification with alienation, Habermas

sums up:

This seal placed on absolute knowledge by the philosophy of identity is broken iftheexternality of nature& both ob0ecti%e en%iron!ental and sub0ecti%e bodily nature&not onlysee!s external to a consciousness that 1nds itself within nature but refersinstead to thei!!ediacy of a substratu! on which the !ind contingently depends# ,ere the!indpresupposes nature& but in the sense of a natural process that& fro! within itself&gi%es rise


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likewise to the natural being !an and the nature that surrounds hi! ""and not intheidealist sense of a !ind that& as $dea existing for itself& posits a natural world asits ownself"created presupposition#-

There are therefore, argues Habermas, both Kantian and non-Kantian

components to Marxs philosophical framework. The Kantian elements are

already made explicit in the terminology adopted which, unlike Hegels

absolute idealism, still posits the external character of nature to mind:

Here the mind presupposes nature. But Habermass adoption of terms

signifiers, symbols aschargedand redolent with the problematic of the

prima philosophia, such as mind and nature means that he has already

saddled Marxs Entwurf with all the worthless paralyzing, mortifying ballast and

baggage carried by Western meta-physics what Nietzsche so valiantlyde-

structed, or demolished critically and then threw overboard! Just listen to thesepearls from the supremeacademic brainof the Teutonic establishment something

to make youbristlewith rage:

Marx is assuming something like a nature in itself.$t is prior to the world of!ankind# $tis at the root of laboring sub0ects as natural beings and also enters into theirlaborprocesses# But as the sub0ecti%e nature of !an and the ob0ecti%e nature of theiren%iron!ent& it is already part of a syste! of social labor that is di%ided up intotwo

aspects of the sa!e 2process of !aterial exchange#2 3hile episte!ologically we!ustpresuppose nature as existing in itself& we oursel%es ha%e access to nature onlywithin thehistorical di!ension disclosed by labor processes# ,ere nature in hu!an for!!ediatesitself with ob0ecti%e nature& the ground and en%iron!ent of the hu!an world#24ature initself2 is therefore an abstraction& which is a requisite of our thought5 but wealwaysencounter nature within the hori(on of the world"historical self"for!ati%e processof!ankind# Kant's "thing-in-itself" reaears un!er the name of a nature

ree!ing humanhistor#. )ch#.& p#6-/

This is patent and despicablenonsense!Had Marx had the misfortune of catching

a glimpse of this kind of utter bastardry from academic poltroons such as

Habermasno-onecould vouchsafe for thephysical integrityof the Frankfurt

professor!Nothing but nothingcould be further from Marxs entire worldview,


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perspective, philosophy call it what you like! than the garbage about Dinge

an sich (things in themselves, thatvelame oscuroor obscure veil one could

call itletame oscuro, obscure filth!) that Kant unloads by the cart-load in the First

Kritik! The plain and overwhelming fact of the matter is that Marx was

attempting by all means available to himto overcome(NietzschesUberwindung)precisely the kind ofmeta-physicalconundrums in which precious bourgeois

minds such as Kants took such obvious delight. That Marx wasunableto

achieve such a feat we will have to wait until Nietzsche for a far more

sophisticated and penetrating effort does not mean that he shared thetrans-

scendental idealistclaptrap of Kant and his German Idealist epigones!

Quite obviously, having set up a phantasmagoric Kantiananti-thesisin Marxs

revolutionary practice between mind and nature, andthereforebetween

labor and reflection or interaction, it is evident that Habermas then

needs asyn-thesis(!) an equally phantomatic effort by Marx to bridge this

Fichteanhiatus irrationalisfrom within the Kantian philosophical, speculative

strait-jacket in which Habermas has entangled Marxspraxis. Once more,

Habermas sees a distortion arising between Marxs practice of inquiry and

his philosophical self-understanding of this inquiry but this distortion

exists only because Habermas has fundamentally pre-distorted Marxspraxisby

re-defining its central revolutionary problematic! Here is how Habermas

summarises his conclusions:

The !aterialist concept of synthesis thus retains fro! *ant the 1xed fra!eworkwithinwhich the sub0ect for!s a substance that it encounters# This fra!ework isestablishedonce and for all through the equip!ent of transcendental consciousness or of thehu!anspecies as a species of tool"!aking ani!als# 7n the other hand& in distinctionfro! *ant&Marx assu!es e!pirically !ediated rules of synthesis that are ob0ecti1ed asproducti%eforces and historically transfor! the sub0ects' relation to their naturalen%iron!ent#.8

3hat is *antian about Marx's conception of knowledge is the in%ariant relation ofthe species to its natural en%iron!ent& which is established by the beha%ioralsyste! of instru!ental action "" for labor processes are the 2perpetual naturalnecessity of hu!an life#2

It is quite mesmerizing to witness the effusive impetus with which Habermas

with nonchalant hermeneutic fury completely misrepresents Marxs most express

theoretical intentions. Doubtless, Marx believed in a subject as well as in


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nature. But why and how are these necessarily retained from Kants fixed

framework? And where oh where is that transcendental consciousness that

Habermas claims to detect in Marx?Nothingis transcendental in Marx! Marx is

inveterate, stubbornimmanence!Nor can the human species for Marx be

described barrenly as a species of tool-making animals because, asHabermas remarks in the very next sentence,

9in distinction fro! *ant& Marx assu!es e!pirically !ediated rules of synthesisthat are ob0ecti1ed as producti%e forces and historiall# transformthesub0ects' relation to their natural en%iron!ent:#

But again,why, in light of this historicaltrans-formation surely a meta-

morphosis, a Goethian trans-crescence, and if not, why not? -, why does this

entitle Habermas to conclude in the same breath that [w]hat is Kantian about

Marx's conception of knowledge isthe invariant relationof the species to itsnatural environment?How on earth can this relation be invariant when

Habermas has just acknowledged that it is liable to historical transformation?

And how can this invariance be established by the behavioral system of

instrumental action -- for labor processes are the perpetual natural necessity of

human life? Why does the Marxian perpetual natural necessity of human life

the evident ec-sistence of being human asliving activity, hence even asArbeit

suddenly become a behavioral system ofinstrumental action?

The conditions of instru!ental action arose contingently in the natural e%olution

of the hu!an species# ;t the sa!e ti!e& howe%er& with transcendental necessity&they bind ourknowledge of nature to the interest of possible technical control o%er naturalprocesses#

The ob0ecti%ity of the possible ob0ects of experience is constituted within aconceptual perceptual sche!e rooted in deep"seated structures of hu!an action;& Dol#I& pp#6=6"-/#

8888

For Marx& the pheno!enological exposition of consciousness in its!anifestations& which ser%ed ,egel only as an introduction to scienti1cknowledge& beco!es the fra!e of reference in which the analysis of the historyof the species stays con1ned# Marx did not adopt an episte!ological perspecti%ein de%eloping his conception of the history of the species as so!ething that hasto be co!prehended !aterialistically# 4e%ertheless& if social practice does notonly accu!ulate the successes of instru!ental action but also& through classantagonis!& produces and reects on obeti%e illusion& then& as part of this


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process& the analysis of history is possible only in a pheno!enologically !ediated)gebrochen/ !ode of thought# The science of !an itself is critique and !ustre!ain so# For after arri%ing at the concept of synthesis through a reconstructionof the course of consciousness in its !anifestations& there is only one conditionunder which critical consciousness could adopt a perspecti%e that alloweddisengaging social theory fro! the episte!ological !ediation of

pheno!enological self"reection5 that is if critical consciousness could apprehendand understand itself as absolute synthesis# ;s it is& howe%er& social theoryre!ains e!bedded in the fra!ework of pheno!enology& while the latter& under!aterialist presuppositions& assu!es the for! of the critique of ideology#

$f Marx had reected on the !ethodological presuppositions of social theory ashe sketched it out and not o%erlaid it with a philosophical self"understandingrestricted to the categorial fra!ework of production& the diNerence betweenrigorous e!pirical science and critique would not ha%e been concealed# $f Marxhad not thrown together interaction and work under the label of social practice)@raxis/& and had he instead related the !aterialist concept of synthesis likewiseto the acco!plish!ents of instru!ental action and the nexuses of

co!!unicati%e action& then the idea of a science of !an would not ha%e beenobscured by identi1cation with natural science# ather& this idea would ha%etaken up ,egel's critique of the sub0ecti%is! of *ant's episte!ology andsurpassed it !aterialistically# $t would ha%e !ade clear that ulti!ately a radicalcritique of knowledge can be carried out only in the for! of a reconstruction ofthe history of the

"" =6 ""

species& and that con%ersely social theory& fro! the %iewpoint of the self"constitution of the species in the !ediu! of social labor and class struggle& ispossible only as the self"reection of the knowing sub0ect#

Habermas's Metacritique of Marx - by Joseph Belbruno

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