Abstract
Recently, following the social and subjective consequences of the neoliberal wave, there seems to be a renewed interest in work as occupying a central place in social and subjective life. For the first time in decades, both sociologists and critical theorists once more again regard work as a major constituent of the subject’s identity and thus as an appropriate object of analysis for those engaged in critique of the social pathologies. The aim of this article is to present a succinct analysis of Axel Honneth’s thoughts on the concept of work and to propose an approach granting it a more substantial role in social theory. To this end, this article will embark upon a reappraisal of the importance of the material and psychological dimensions of the subject’s interactions in the world of work. It aims to demonstrate that the normative demands associated with these dimensions are, like the normative demands of recognition, immanent and universal. In other words, it will argue that the normative ideals related to individuals’ bodily and psychic life (in the workplace and beyond) are not necessarily utopian in the negative sense (abstract and unrealistic). If this is indeed the case, theorists could take these normative demands for emancipation as a guide to analyzing the sociological, political and moral implications of the transition from the ‘Fordist’ to the ‘post-Fordist’ organization of labor.
Keywords
The primary aim of the early Frankfurt School’s critical theory was to understand why the exploitation produced by the capitalistic organization of labor did not lead to a revolution and a new social system. The innovative elements introduced to address this issue, including analysis of the ‘culture industry’, the dialectical methodology and the interdisciplinary approach, greatly enhanced and extended the scope of the left-Hegelian tradition, and more generally the field of critical social theory. The concept of work was still an essential component – one among others, admittedly, but perhaps the most important – of the dimensions needed to account for the social processes of domination (Herrschaft) and alienation. Essential as it is, however, this concept had never been used to analyze the concrete reality of human interactions in the work process. Progressively, Horkheimer and Adorno abandoned the search in the dynamics of labor, or indeed in any human relationship or behavior for a viable way out of domination. Even Marcuse, whose critical approach was closer to contemporary social praxis, explained the processes of alienation and domination with abstract categories (Renault, 2008), without adopting the perspective of the individuals concretely involved in the work processes.
Thus, in the first generation of Frankfurt School critical theorists, the concept of work remains too abstract to be used for a philosophical-sociological critique of the concrete dynamics of alienation and domination within work as an activity. Let us now briefly turn to Habermas, the most important philosopher of the second generation of Frankfurt School theorists. In his philosophy, the concept of work clearly loses the importance previously attributed to it. There is no doubt that Habermas’s introduction of the concept of differentiated rationality enriched critical social theory, but it is of little help in forging a concrete critique of work alienation and its consequences for ethical and political life. The sphere of ‘instrumental rationality’ can be criticized only indirectly, insofar as it encroaches upon the sphere of ‘communicative action’. The critique is defensive and external: it does not affect the immanent developing of the sphere of instrumental rationality, because the only criterion to evaluate this kind of rationality is its efficiency.
In the field of critical social theory, neither the first nor the second generation of the Frankfurt School critical theorists has the right tools to formulate an incisive critique of the concrete processes of work alienation and reification. In contrast, the third generation seems to reconsider work as an essential component, not only because it can be alienated/alienating, but also because it is a vehicle of emancipatory demands. In what follows, I will present a succinct analysis of Axel Honneth’s thought on the concept of work and propose an approach granting it a more substantial role in social theory. To this end, I will embark upon a reappraisal of the importance of the material and psychological dimensions of the subject’s interactions at work. My aim is to demonstrate that the normative demands associated with these dimensions are, like the normative demands of recognition, immanent and relatively universal. In other words, I will argue that the normative ideals that can be associated with one’s bodily and psychic life (at work and beyond) are not necessarily, and not all, utopian in the negative sense (abstract and unrealistic). If this proves to be true, then it will have important consequences for those who are interested in the kind of critical social theory that Axel Honneth is engaged in. They could take these normative demands of emancipation as a reference in the further development of an analysis of the sociological, political and moral implications of the transition from the ‘Fordist’ to the ‘post-Fordist’ organization of labor.
Axel Honneth’s concept of work
In a recent article on the role of recognition in the social division of labor (Honneth, 2010), 1 Honneth conceives of work as a strong vehicle for individual and collective striving for emancipation. His strategy is to associate mutual recognition – along with its normative expectations of social emancipation – with the structure of labor as a system that implies and allows for social reproduction. By working, individuals contribute not only to the material reproduction of their society, but also to the formation of their own identity, the social division of labor being the core of one of the three spheres of recognition. 2 From this point of view, the concept of work has a twofold value: insofar as it makes social reproduction possible, it is the root of our ‘common good’, and insofar as it defines one of the dimensions of recognition – that of esteem – it also serves as root of the individual’s identity.
Let us now consider how the construct of a vehicle of social and normative progress enters into this concept of work. Honneth contends that, along with the development of the social division of labor, recognition develops relations of solidarity. By participating, through the market, in the constitution and reproduction of their ‘common good’, individuals perceive themselves as mutually related (Honneth, 2010: 234). 3 It is the interweaving of mutual recognition and the labor market that leads to this kind of self-comprehension. Individual and collective aims converge through recognition; being able to contribute to the common good means contributing to one’s own well-being and autonomy – and vice versa. From Honneth’s perspective, this means that it is not only legitimate but also imperative (from a normative point of view) to protest when the existing social and working conditions do not allow people to feel appreciated for their contribution to the development of their community. Indeed, from the very outset, the key idea in Honneth is that only when individuals, tacitly at least, give their (normative) ‘consent’ to the relations of domination related to the market, can they legitimately protest against them (Honneth, 1991). This, however, is precisely what they do, in that they are not merely dominated through the market but, by participating in it, they actively contribute to the formation of their own identity (Honneth, 2010). Disrespect (Missachtung) in the sphere of the market undermines this identity. Individuals need the integrity of their personal identity to participate freely and fully in their social activities. In order to reestablish this integrity, they are compelled to struggle for recognition. From a historical point of view, this struggle for recognition delineates a form of social progress we can interpret as a process of (inter)subjective emancipation (Honneth, 1995). 4 With normative reconstruction of the intersubjective expectations regarding the market sphere, we can measure the scope of both social progress and regression within it (Honneth, 2014).
This conception of work is decidedly cogent in that it allows us to determine the links between individuals striving for emancipation and objective social dynamics through the interconnection of the following three instances: The connection between emancipatory demands and work is based on the normative expectation of recognition, and depends on the consideration (esteem) we receive for our own contribution, as cooperating workers, to the common good. Despite social inequality and differences in the value attributed to particular lines of work, the social division of labor organizes work in a way that theoretically allows every individual to feel recognized for his or her contribution (Honneth, 1995: 126–30, 179). As noted above, if individuals are denied due recognition (disrespect, Missachtung) for this contribution, they are not only entitled to protest, but they are also (normatively) compelled to struggle in order to re-establish recognition.
5
Honneth’s main contention is that this struggle leads to the institutionalization of a surplus of recognition (i.e. to an emancipation that, in the case of work, means a more differentiated, extended and fair evaluation of people’s contribution to the common good).
6
The connection between emancipatory demands and work is immanently included in the process of social reproduction. It is true that work – which is the basis of this reproduction – is managed with codified rules that guarantee its effective performance. However, for Honneth, the market itself is based on mutual recognition. In other words, even though work responds to an instrumental rationality, the social division of labor is rooted in the implicit norms of recognition that are also responsible for the individuation and socialization of the subject.
7
The social division of labor is always rooted in our ethical life. Thus, through the division of labor, the striving for emancipation on the part of the individuals is involved in the reproduction of society.
8
Through this involvement with social reproduction, the concept of emancipation surpasses the limits of what would otherwise remain mere individual desires and takes on an objective and universal dimension.
Starting from this basis, Honneth is able to criticize the theoretical approaches that ground their critique of work on either an aesthetic paradigm or the interactive conception typical of craftwork. 9 Such approaches have not only become obsolete in the modern organization of labor, but refer to an ideal of work that is not interpreted as something involved in the process of social reproduction. Enjoying an aesthetic, playful or rich interaction with the object of our work does not affect the way our society is able to renew itself: hence, such ideals can only persist within strictly circumscribed areas, having no place in a universal and immanent critique. Certainly, the qualitative, interactive, aesthetic and manual aspects of work must still exist, and even retain a certain importance, but the material development of the society can proceed without them.
Since, for Honneth, recognition forms the basis of the social division of labor in the era of the capitalist market, only the normative ideals that constitute expression of mutual recognition are vitally linked to social reproduction. Through mutual recognition, these ideals acquire an emancipatory potential that is not only normative, but also, and at the same time, immanent and universal. On the contrary, the manual, bodily, aesthetic, material and psychological interactions, insofar as they are not involved in the formation of the norms of recognition, have no claim to any such potentiality. Even if the normative ideals associated with these interactions were present, their realization, if any, would be nothing more than expression of a mere subjective wish.
We are now able to draw some conclusions from this brief analysis of the role of work in Honneth’s recent re-elaboration of the concept. Even though it conceptualizes work as a possible vehicle of social and normative evolution, the theory of recognition seems to underestimate the importance of material interactions within it (Deranty, 2007). Conversely, my hypothesis is that these interactions, as well as the psychic dimension implied in the work process, are among the ways to enrich, both normatively and phenomenologically, the concepts of alienation and (the striving for) emancipation within the sphere of work and beyond. Taking into account the bodily (physical and psychological) dimension of work does not imply abandoning a normative theory, nor bowing to an excessively relativistic approach (i.e. abandoning two of the most important premises of Honneth’s theory). In the following pages, I will argue how it can legitimately claim a much more essential position from the perspective of critical social theory along the lines of the Frankfurt School.
Body and work. Beyond recognition
To ensure that theory does not diverge from the actual development of social reproduction, we have to assume the same criteria of immanence and universality found in Honneth’s conception of work. 10 According to the latter, recognition in the sphere of work is essential both for the constitution of the subject’s identity and for social reproduction. In turn, a model of critical theory that attempts to integrate bodily, psychic and material interactions has to show that they are necessary both to the subject’s formation and to the reproduction of society. In doing so, this model aims to enhance the normative potential of the theory without losing the cogency of Honneth’s critical social theory.
Material interactions and subject formation
The French work psychologist Christophe Dejours introduced the idea that not only sexuality – which was at the center of classical psychoanalytic theory – but also work are among the most important components in the formation of a subject’s identity. 11 Dejours conceptualizes the human psyche as the living milieu where a twofold exteriority meets. On one hand, the exteriority of the subject’s own body, in the sense mainly of a sensitive, physical body; on the other hand, the exteriority of the reality of work, essentially as material reality. The hypothesis is that the problems we encounter facing this material reality are able to recompose – through the ‘psychic work’ of which dreams are a key example – the identity of the subject (Dejours, 2009, vol. 1).
Dejours considers the ‘psychic work’ (Arbeit) of the individual as an attempt to overcome his or her suffering in dealing with the material resistance of the reality of work (poïesis). 12 Through this psychical re-elaboration, subjectivity – i.e. the subject’s ability to feel pleasure and create and discover new dimensions of his or her own sensibility – is enhanced. In other words, through engagement in this attempt to tackle the ‘material’ resistance of reality to our action – the adjective ‘material’ referring precisely to this opposition of exteriority to our effort – subjectivity is able to enrich itself and flourish. What is interesting here is that, according to Dejours, these aspects are ‘in part at least, inaccessible by means other than work and the experience of what it is able to provide access’. 13
While what one has inherited in one’s past life (whatever this inheritance might be, cultural or inbred) severely limits this kind of progress, it is nevertheless still possible. Such progress can be achieved if the individual is able to overcome the difficulties of work, re-elaborate and sublimate them. This hinges mostly on elements that he or she cannot control, such as the interactive processes that have led to his or her formation as from birth.
14
However, for Dejours, some leeway is open for the subject’s development. In this case: [T]hrough the experience of work, the worker not only learns to know his or her limits and awkwardness, but also to extend the repertoire of emotional impressions and discover new virtuosities … Because it is also in this way that subjectivity grows and changes: by bodily recognition of the world and, through this recognition, by self-knowledge. To work is not only to produce but also to challenge one’s own body, with the opportunity to become more sensitive than before, and thus to increase the capacity to experience pleasure. (Dejours, 2009, vol. 1: 163)
15
Material interactions and social reproduction
With this approach, Dejours opens the way to interpretation of the material and bodily aspects of work interactions as a central dimension in the subject’s constitution. Thus, we are able to consider this dimension as one of the essential components in the development of the social pathologies related to work. Neglect of it often has negative effects on the subject’s development and flourishing. Can the same also be said for social reproduction? Only by demonstrating that material interactions in the workplace are essential both for the subject’s formation and for social reproduction can we affirm the immanence and universality of the normative demands related to these interactions. This is essential if we mean to maintain the accuracy and strengths of Honneth’s social theory. Certainly, these demands deserve attention and are worthy of consideration, even though they remain subjective demands, depending on the individual’s constitution. And yet the model of critical social theory we are concerned with would have stronger potential if we were able to connect these subjective aspects with the objective development of our societies.
Let us now consider one of the major objections that can be raised against this conception of work. The fact is, we always encounter problems and impediments in our daily life, and we can call this reality a ‘material’ reality insofar as it presents some resistance to our achieving our goals. What, then, is the specificity of the ‘material reality’ at work? Why should the resistance of the reality of work be different from the material reality we face every day? How can the work activity be distinguished from other activities?
In order to answer these questions, we have to look deeper into the concept of work as used in the psychodynamics of work. In this discipline, work is not primarily ‘the wage relation or employment’. Although it is an activity that produces ‘values or wealth’ and, for this reason ‘it is the stake of domination relationships’ (‘Il est l’enjeu de rapports de domination’) (Dejours: 2009, vol. 1: 185), work ‘cannot be reduced to its social dimensions: the social relations surrounding it, relations between the workers, or power relations’. These dimensions have an essential role in defining the real organization of work (Dejours, 2011a: 219–21). 19 However, what primarily characterizes work is the fact that working implies being able to find a way to perform what the work organization’s rules and directives require, and this always calls for strategies that allow the individual to depart from these same rules and directives. The human and non-human reality – made up not only of inanimate material but also of colleagues, whether subordinate or senior – that individuals deal with at work is what stands between the given organization of the work tasks and their actual realization. As an activity that bridges ‘the gap between the prescriptive’ and the ‘concrete reality’ of its performance, work is both a social relationship and a technical, bodily interaction with the environment.
For Dejours: [Work] is what is implied, in human terms, by the fact of working: gestures, know-how, the involvement of the body and the intelligence, the ability to analyze, interpret, and react to situations. It is the power to feel, to think, and to invent. In other words, for the clinician, work is not above all the wage relation or employment but ‘working’, which is to say, the way the personality is involved in confronting a task that is subject to constraints (material and social). What emerges as the main feature of ‘working’ (for the clinician once again) is that, even when the work is well conceived, even when the organization of work is rigorous, even when the instructions and procedures are clear, it is impossible to achieve quality if the orders are scrupulously respected. Indeed, ordinary work situations are rife with unexpected events, breakdowns, incidents, operational anomalies, organizational inconsistency and things that are simply impossible to predict, arising from the materials, tools, and machines as well as from other workers, colleagues, bosses, subordinates, the team, the chain of authority, the clients, and so on. In short, there is no such thing as purely mechanical work. This means that there is always a gap between the prescriptive and the concrete reality of the situation. This gap is found at all levels of analysis between task and activity, or between the formal and informal organization of work. Working thus means bridging the gap between prescriptive and concrete reality. However, what is needed in order to do so cannot be determined in advance; the path to be navigated between the prescriptive and the real must constantly be invented or rediscovered by the subject who is working. Thus, for the clinician, work is defined as what the subjects must add to the orders so as to reach the objectives assigned to them, or alternately, what they must add of themselves in order to deal with what does not function when they limit themselves to a scrupulous execution of orders. (2007: 72; see also 2009, vol. 2: 20–1)
If companies and workshops achieve their productive goals, it is because the invisible working activity continues behind the production processes, even though their formal organization tends to prevent it. However, the subsequent social and technical pressure – that is, the pressure of the prescribed organization of work – on the creativity and autonomy of the subjects has at least two negative and related effects: it is a source of suffering for the subject and consequently lowers the quality of work. To put it in plain terms: the social organization of work can facilitate either the realization of the individual’s creativity, expression, cooperation and autonomy, and the psychic re-elaboration of the challenges he or she encounters when tackling the realities of work, thus enhancing the individuals’ own subjectivity and the quality of production – or, vice versa, it can hinder these processes.
On this basis we are able to find the relation we have been looking for. The development of subjectivity can be associated with social reproduction. By the same means by which subjects seek to overcome difficulties, to sublimate suffering and enhance their subjectivity – i.e. by the travail vivant (working) and the psychic work (Arbeit) related to it – the reproduction of society (social organized work, poïesis) continues in quality and does not risk blockage or deterioration. Subjectivity and work are to a certain extent complementary: social reproduction hinges partly on an activity that, at the same time, enhances the subject’s identity. This enhancement is achieved not only at the level of individual consideration for his or her contribution to the common good, as in Honneth’s theory, but also at the level of the sensibility, of the aesthetic pleasure experienced and, more generally, at the level of interactive exchanges with the human and non-human environment in the workplace and beyond.
Conclusion
On these bases, it is possible to re-evaluate the social pathologies concerning work by making reference to the concept of alienation (Haber, 2007; Renault, 2006). Suffering in the workplace becomes a pathology when the objective conditions of the organization of work obstruct a living and interactive exchange with the concrete realities of the working environment. This may come about, for instance, by separating workers, excluding them from cooperative activity, overloading them with tasks, requiring of them excess in performance and competitiveness, or expecting them to tackle tasks for which the material and organizational conditions are inappropriate. In these cases, the risk is that the subjects may concentrate all their efforts on defenses against suffering, adopting a rigid behavior, unable to overcome the difficulties that may occur, possibly leading to regression in subjectivity, acceptance of domination, insensitivity to his or her own suffering as well as others’, violence (both at work and beyond) (Dejours, 1998; 2011b; Deranty, 2010: 186–90, 213–16), reduced vitality, a sense of humiliation and of inability to adapt, and dynamics that may in exceptional cases lead to suicide (Bègue and Dejours, 2009).
Similarly, the concept of emancipation increases in critical value by integrating those material and bodily dimensions that remain partially in the shade in Honneth’s theory. According to Dejours, the move towards a context in which individuals can exercise their creativity in the workplace and which, consequently, enhances their subjectivity, i.e. ‘emancipation’ in and through work, depends on the establishment of a favorable and the establishment of a favorable, supportive and living work environment. It hinges on political decisions (Dejours, 2009, vol. 2: 178, 198–208) 22 to implement measures in this direction. However, politicians hardly seem likely to adopt such measures in the contemporary neoliberal context, though we can demonstrate, as does Dejours, that unsatisfactory conditions can lead to deterioration in the quality of work.
Workers can find the power to play an important role in political policy only if they have sufficient scope to engage and cooperate with one another. But it is precisely this kind of cooperative scope – essential to establish a travail vivant-friendly environment – which they lack in the contemporary organization of work. On the basis of this diagnosis, critical social theory following the lines of the Frankfurt School should analyze the pathologies of work and propose alternative models to organize it in accord with social practices. 23 We can justify this approach by showing how the suffering caused by inappropriate work organization – which is unacceptable in itself, raising severe moral concerns – is counterproductive both in the production process (material reproduction) and beyond it. By pushing the performance and competitiveness ideal to the extreme, post-Fordist work organization negatively affects the well-being of the people who work and the quality of the social reproduction as a whole (Deranty, 2008). The mediation between these two aspects lies in the concept of subjectivity we can infer from Dejours’ theory. The subject’s ability to overcome suffering and sublimate it constitutes the connection between the effects of work on subjectivity and the political, ethical and social consequences of work organization. By facilitating the formation of subjective defenses against suffering, the post-Fordist organization of work creates ‘massive amounts of anxiety’ and destroys not only ‘individuals’ lives’ but also ‘social bonds and communities’ (Deranty, 2008: 457, 444).
However, recognition is not the only element at stake in these harmful effects of work on individual and collective life. Mutual recognition is rooted in basic layers of bodily and psychical interactions. Through the depletion of subjectivity, the ability of the subject to activate the psychic investment in the human and non-human environment and interact within it positively is also affected. The sphere of work is not isolated from the other spheres of subjective and social life. The alienating processes cannot be separated from one another: deleterious organization of work has a negative effect on the other spheres of human interaction and vice versa. 24 Thus, from the perspective of this article, improved cooperation among workers and the normative demands that could ensue are based on recognition of the workers’ contribution to the common good – they are based on the impossibility, without the recognition of this contribution, of establishing a positive relationship with oneself. Improved cooperation among workers and the related normative demands are also based, however, on the indispensable preconditions to establish living and interactive work activity. In other words, they derive from the difficulty, without this kind of work activity, of establishing rich and flourishing relationships with oneself, and indeed with the human and the non-human environment. What could lapse into crisis, and possibly call for a response that could be the start of collective action, is not only the intersubjectively formed identity of an individual, but also the subjectivity of an individual, the constituents of which are something more than mutual recognition.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.