Abstract
The German language publication, Habermas and Historical Materialism, is the outcome of a 2012 conference (Wuppertal University) where fifteen authors discussed Habermas’ relationship to historical materialism. Each chapter is followed by Habermas’ personal response. The book deals exclusively with Jürgen Habermas and historical materialism even though Habermas has, in recent years, hardly written on the issue. Nevertheless, Habermas’ views on historical materialism are problematic, to say the least. Historical materialism may even be discomforting for him. Indeed, one has to read the entire book to confirm a rising suspicion: that the social-democratic Habermas attended the conference with ‘mixed feelings’, as ultimately he himself admits (p.421). To discuss the many challenges that historical materialism poses for Habermas, the book covers five broad areas: Habermas’ communicative turn and the heritage of historical materialism; Habermas’ communicative action in the present situation; economics and politics; morality and law; and the self-explanation of modernity. The book also reflects on the recent global financial crisis (GFC), which is framed as a ‘system failure’ (p.11). But ‘system failure’ seems to imply one of three things: that the system itself is not the problem; that the system tries but, at times, fails; and that the GFC is a “system error” disconnected from capitalism’s fundamental contradictions.
Protected by the corporate mass media, the GFC never seriously challenged the dominant and hegemonic neo-liberal ideology. Based on this, Rapic argues that historical materialism is the better theory – when compared to communicative action – to explain recent capitalist developments (p.17). This challenges Habermas, while perhaps also hinting that Habermas’ ‘mixed feelings’ when travelling from his chosen home at the conservative-bourgeois Starnberger to the working class Wuppertal.
The volume starts with Outhwaite describing Habermas’ relationship to historical materialism as something of a ‘bell curve’ (p.39) - with a rising interest in Marx (1970s), ending with a steady decline towards Habermas’ system-stabilising critique on Europe and democracy. This is followed by Baum arguing that Habermas’ separation between economics and the lifeworld is not a helpful way in which to understand capitalism. Baum notes that Marx and Hegel rely on a unity of lifeworld and economics. According to Baum, therefore, Habermas’ ‘lifeworld represents nothing but mystified class relations’ (p.61).
Nonetheless, Habermas maintains a strong division between both. When I (the reviewer of this book) asked Habermas about this question at a conference in Stuttgart, he made it very clear that lifeworld and economy are separate spheres – one with morality and one with no morality. Neo-liberalism’s Milton Friedman (1970) might agree. Meanwhile, in response to Baum’s challenge, Habermas simply replied, ‘I think I remain a Hegelian’ (p.66). But such as “I-am-an-Hegelian” shows a certain distance from Marx and historical materialism, neatly camouflaged through an inconsequential critique of neo-liberalism (without simultaneously challenging capitalism) (e.g. Benson & Kirsch 2010).
One of the most illuminating chapters of the collection comes from Agnes Heller, who presents a number of romantic hallucinations about former Eastern Europe, claiming that ‘we in communist states had no knowledge of our Western European contemporaries unless you entered a secret section of the Moscow library’ (p.75). Heller argues that the linguistic turn was one in part swayed by intellectual fashion, whilst also acknowledging that Habermas nevertheless remains concerned with truth, justice and freedom. As such, Heller maintains that historical materialism has four foundations: a grand narrative of a progressive world history; the paradigm of production; a labour value theory; and a concern with the world historical role of the proletariat. ‘All these foundations have collapsed’, Heller insists (p.104).
With regard to the paradigm of production, Ingo Elbe argues that this paradigm offers three levels of analysis: ‘on social theory, Habermas doubts that social unity (e.g. solidarity) can be established through work; on social philosophy, Habermas has reservations that work can issue normative-moral imperatives; and with regard to sociology, Habermas believes that labour and work no longer represent central categories under late capitalism’ (p.123). In response, Habermas suggests eliminating the production paradigm in favour of ‘institutional frameworks and interaction defining work – a functionality guided through instrumental rationality’ (p.124f.). The outcome is Habermas’ preference for a ‘social-democratic programme to protect our social existence [this programme is subsequently levelled up] to be a critical sociological theory’ (p.130).
Habermas’ key project is indeed the protection of the lifeworld against the colonisation of system imperatives coming from economy (reality) and neo-liberalism (ideology). Hence, Habermas’ argument is that both are separate spheres, where one should not set imperatives for the other. This remains a social-democratic hallucination, as expressed in both the Gotha Programme (1875) and the Godesberger Programme (1959). The Gotha Programme insisted on both capitalism and parliamentarian democracy. Moreover, it was subsequently brutally enforced during Germany’s 1918/19 revolution, witnessing the massacre of workers (by Noske and Ebert) and assuring a social-democratic pathway to capitalism (Haffner 1973); in the process setting up Germany’s pathway to capitalism and its social-democratic support until today.
Samil Rapic argues that Habermas’ ‘communicative action favours social evolution through communication while historical materialism is taking a backseat’ (p.157). Already in Marx’s “German Ideology” one sees that capitalism is based on domination and ideology camouflaging ‘the real and, above all, inherently contradictory relationships under capitalism’ (p.180). To that, Habermas simply replies that he has given up using the term ideology arguing that we see diversion, fragmentation and a scattering of public opinions. These, according to Habermas, describe reality better than a critique of ideology (Klikauer 2013).
In his chapter, Stefan Müller-Doohm starts with a quote by Habermas: “surely, the theoretical foundations of a Marxian critique of capitalism are outdated”. The hidden transcript reads: capitalism is no longer the norm-setting structure, there are no longer workers and capitalists, the global destruction of our environment, sweatshops, unemployment, global poverty, and so on have really nothing to do with corporations and shareholder-value, profit-maximisation and capitalism (Oxfam 2016). Perhaps for Habermas the logic of this is: since capitalism has disappeared, one does not need historical materialism as an analytical tool. Some might argue that the exact opposite is the case.
In addition, Stefan Müller-Doohm also claims that ‘capitalism should be restrained through democratically legitimised publicly practised politics’ (p.209). Given the reality of global mass media, this is a social-democratic daydream or – alternatively – an inability to see what corporate mass media have achieved. Habermas’ direct predecessors, Horkheimer and Adorno, highlighted the way in which democracy is manipulated through what both called “The Culture Industry” (1944). Even Habermas himself argued along similar lines in his Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1988). But instead of carrying this media critique forward, Habermas went on to take a sudden linguistic turn towards communicative action. In this sense, we might wonder whether communicative action (Habermas) and recognition (Honneth 1995) have made many forget that democracy is, at least partly, co-governed by the likes of Murdoch and the roughly 200 other media moguls manipulating public opinion.
In additional to what appears to be a stark inability to analyse media capitalism, mass-deception, and mass media guided democracy, Habermas and Müller-Doohm seem also to agree that ‘complex economic systems cannot be governed through direct participation’ (p.211) cementing – in turn – social-democratic parliamentarianism. This goes further still in the claim that ‘we must find a way in which democracy can tame the economy’ (p.214). Such fairytale wishes indicate that there exists no appreciation of the degree to which parliamentarianism was introduced precisely to stabilise capitalism. Indeed, parliamentarianism has always flanked capitalism by channelling conflict into institutions, while at the same time keeping up the hopes of those who favour parliamentarian reformism.
But Habermas staunchly subscribes to this view when stating, ‘in my political views I remain a radical reformist’ (p.217); thereby making a clear but also very traditional German choice between a reforming Luther (1483-1546) and the revolutionary Thomas Münzer (1489-1525). Habermas favours an ultra-conservative Pascalian wager: better stick with what you have (reform) than risk what you don’t know (revolution). Such a social-democratic position is consistent with Luther’s reformism as well as with Gustav ‘working-class-killer’ Noske, Helmut ‘Wehrmacht’ Schmidt, and Gerhard ‘Gazprom’ Schröder. In line with Habermas’ parliamentarianism, Regine Kreide emphasises that we have entered the ‘afternoon of the welfare state’ (p.251), despite the fact that it might already be late evening given that a deep darkness has fallen over the welfare state after decades of success on the part of neo-liberalism in its goal of colonising Habermas’ Lifeworld (see, for instance, Schröder’s substantial welfare reduction, Hartz IV).
The English language chapter by Ernest Wolf-Gazo blends auto-biography with a short post-war German history offering remarkable insights into the role of the Frankfurt School and Habermas. Wolf-Gazo starts by stating that ‘Habermas’ generation was involved in the project of re-education’” (p.348) while also highlighting ‘aspects of [Habermas’] Bonn Dissertation 1954’ (p.351). At that time Habermas was interested in alienated labour, seeking not just to understand Marx but also seeking ‘to go beyond Marx’ (p.355). Wolf-Gazo concludes with reference to the so-called ‘Zero Hour’ (p.368) and by claiming that ‘the Bonn Republic was a great success story…Habermas and his generation should accept some credit for this success story’ (p.371). Perhaps somewhat unaware of what he is actually saying, Wolf-Gazo may have highlighted the raison d’être of Habermas’ Frankfurt School. Indeed, in the light of these comments a few facts remain noteworthy. First, the so-called ‘Hour Zero’ remains a key foundation ideology of post-Nazi Germany, propagating the myth that the Nazis appeared in 1933 and went back to Mars in 1945 – ‘hour zero’ marks the moment when the Nazis departed. In reality, of course, there was no “hour zero” at which point Nazi Germany miraculously became good Germany – that is, a modern democratic state with a rising industry, a small number of evildoers prosecuted in Nuremberg, and a few minor ex-Nazis here and there. Secondly, by 1945 the Nazi party had roughly eight million members, many of whom were at the time fleeing the advancing Red Army. These Nazis were welcomed by other (ex-)Nazis in the West, integrating them into the state apparatus. In fact, post-Nazi-Germany was full of ex-Nazis. Despite the quite common “de-Nazification” myth, these ex-Nazis remained almost entirely untouched by “de-Nazification” (re)entering – and continuing to be – Germany’s ruling elite. All that was needed was a little whitewashing [Persilschein], clearing them of their Nazi past. Some even changed their name, others marrying their own wives again like SS-Hauptsturmfüher and the Aachen University President who converted from Hans Ernst Schneider (Nazi) to Hans Schwerte (the not-so-Nazi). But ex-Nazis not only became presidents of universities, they became presidents of the entire German state (Karl Carstens (NSDAP→CDU)), Chancellor of Germany (Kurt Kiesinger (NSDAP→CDU)), as well as seeing those with influential positions under the Nazi regime adopting influential positions under the post-WW2 regime, such as state premier (ex-judge Hans Filbinger) and advisor to Adenauer (Hans Globke).
Third, ex-Nazis entered the economy – or simply stayed on – like Jewish-slave labour selling SS-Untersturmführer Hanns Martin Schleyer becoming BDI-President (Germany’s prime Employer Federation). To ensure that many of these facts remained hidden in West-Germany, the state even outlawed a book publication listing nearly all Nazis in Germany’s institutions. But all this is not a thing of a distant past. As late as May 2015, the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” was put on trial (aged 93) after being protected for more than 70 years.
The fourth myth is that the Germans were re-educated and became good citizens of a now good Germany. Under rampant anti-communism, West-Germany was quickly recruited in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Re-education was no longer wanted. Instead Nazi-intelligence on the Soviet Union and rocket technology became very useful. After only a few years the so-called re-education programme was quietly dismantled. Most Germans remained untouched by re-education carrying Nazi ideology with them for decades to come.
The final “Bonn Republic…success story” myth camouflages the fact that many Holocaust survivors were denied compensation, reparation, acknowledgement and dignity by the “successful” German republic. On top of that, Germany’s economic post-Nazi success was also based on slave labour working in factories of German capital. But it was also a success based on the wealth stolen from Jewish people. Incidentally, this was the above mentioned bookkeepers job: collecting the valuables from dead bodies, count them and ship them from Auschwitz to Berlin. Finally, Germany’s “success story” also meant that many members of the communist party were imprisoned when the KPD was made illegal (1956), with some imprisoned communists meeting the same old prison guards they had known during their Nazi imprisonment.
But on all this, Wolf-Gazo writes, ‘Habermas and his generation should accept some credit for this success story’ (p.371). The more one digs into Germany’s post-Nazi epoch the more such claims become problematic. But all of this might yet evoke an even more unwanted thought when reading through Wolf-Gazo’s festive celebrations: What if Habermas, the rising star of Germany’s Frankfurt School might have just been the right man at the right time? What if, and this is a most horrible coincidence, Habermas’ relatively quick ascendance through the ranks of the post-Nazi academy came at a time when post-Nazi Germany wanted to show the world that “we are good now”? What if the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) project, whereby it arguably used the Frankfurt School to undermine Bolshevism, orthodox Marxism, and historical materialism, was somewhat replayed again to undermine Marxism, historical materialism, and the unwarranted attention on Germany’s immediate Nazi years by showcasing it as a “success story”?
Many of the 1950s-1970s members of the Frankfurt School were never isolated, ignored, hunted and forced to leave Germany in the same way that Marx and others before them had been. To make Germany a success, the post-war generation was treated differently. While previously hunted by the Nazis, Horkheimer and Adorno were allowed to return to Germany. The Frankfurt School became an integrated part of the establishment, furnished with research institutes, scholarships and professorships offering a Marx-denying and system-stabilising critique. Perhaps all of this is a reflection of the communist manifesto: “socialism was, on the continent at least, “respectable”; communism was the very opposite”. Perhaps today it is: critical theory, social-democracy, Habermas and Hegel are respectable, Marx and historical materialism remain the very opposite. Not surprisingly, the Frankfurt School favours communicative action and recognition over historical materialism and Hegel over Marx. Klaus Erich Kaehler notes that, according to Habermas, ‘Hegel was the first philosopher who developed a clear concept of the term modernity’ (p.376). For the Frankfurt School, the object of discussion is modernity – not capitalism.
As Hauke Brunkhorst notes, Hegel seems to work better than Marx during the neo-liberal move from ‘state-embedded markets [to] market embedded states” (p.410). Perhaps this is because Hegel – more than Marx – favoured a strong state rather than a revolution to end state and capitalism. Furnished with such thought-limiting semi-theoretical tools, one might no longer wonder why Habermas is still puzzled when, in his own concluding remarks [Schlusswort] he wonders, “when will Europe’s citizens finally start to defend themselves against market-dominated [markthörigen] governments?” (p.422).
In conclusion, Habermas’ inability to answer such a simple question after no less than six decades of theoretical-philosophical work by the Frankfurt School is a sad indictment of not just how far the Frankfurt School has moved away from historical materialism. It also indicates the inability of the Frankfurt School to deal with one of the fundamental problems of modern society – the “blindspot of communication” (Smythe 1977). Perhaps asphyxiated in its own theoretical-philosophical orbit and blinded by a staunch belief in parliamentarianism, Habermas and the Frankfurt School remain astonishingly resistant to conceptualising the material-historical forces behind what is really happening in a world governed by capitalism (production paradigm), neo-liberalism (ideology) and a global transmission apparatus (corporate mass media). Perhaps, Habermas’ discomforting perplexity about ‘when will citizens defend themselves’ is a testimony to a colossal failure.
There is surely something to be said in favour of Habermas’ linguistic turn and for getting critical theory out of Adorno’s dystopia as well as Honneth’s tireless effort to convert Hegel’s recognition into critical theory. But not following up on Adorno/Horkheimer’s “Culture Industry” and the “Consciousness Industry” (Enzensberger 1974) may have been a terminal shortcoming. Treating virtually everything with an ignorance of what Smythe (1977), Chomsky (1991) and many others have written comes at a high price. If the Frankfurt School does not want to argue itself into irrelevance, perhaps it might start by tackling Habermas’ final bewilderment and for that, historical materialism might just provide a good starting point.
Combining historical materialism with the writings of Marcuse, Enzensberger, Horkheimer/Adorno, Smythe, Chomsky, and so on, might lead the Frankfurt School to re-invent itself as a truly critical-emancipatory theory and social force that can offer so much more than a social-democratic accommodation of capitalism. This would be a critical theory that remains dedicated to emancipation set against capitalism and its hegemonic ideologies.