Spectres of reification: Weber and Simmel on History and Class Consciousness

Good evening, dear Georg. It’s nice to see you again around here.

Always a pleasure, my friend.

I’ve been meaning to ask you: have you read György’s, I mean, Lukács’ new book?

Yes, I have. I’m not sure what to think about it, though. He has changed so much!

He has indeed. I often think about the five or six years that he lived in Heidelberg and attended the Sunday meetings Marianne and I held in our house at the Ziegelhäuser Landstraße. Do you remember?

Yes, of course. I joined you a couple of times. Back in the good old days, when we were alive … There were so many bright and promising intellectuals in Heidelberg back then!

Indeed, that’s true. So you can recall that Lukács was a constant presence and one of the fiercest critics of bourgeois society. His ideas were already passionate, but he still looked for a way out in mysticism and art, especially of Russian origin.

He was really keen on Dostoyevsky!

Yes, he was. But the enchantment with all things Russian quickly turned into fascination with the Bolshevik revolution.

Indeed, I was caught off guard by his conversion to Marxism and his joining the Communist Party, almost from one day to the next. When I think I suggested that he went to Heidelberg to work under the supervision of Windelband or Rickert …

That sounds so unlikely.

Well, today we’re aware of that. Back then, it seemed to make a lot of sense, given his neo-Kantian tendencies. But I think the war played an important role in Lukács’ transformation. It certainly drove us farther apart, since he radically condemned it while you and I were rather ambivalent towards it.

Let’s not discuss the war again, shall we? But I must say, sometimes I wonder: If it weren’t for the war, would Lukács and I have at least remained close? After we went our separate ways, he wrote in a letter to Marianne that we were like former friends who, despite their mutual liking, were condemned to destroy one other.

Well, you at least appear in a good light in the main essay of the book. There are quite a few positive references to your works. My name, on the other hand, appears mostly when Lukács wants to give examples of bourgeois, reified thought. For him, I remain on the surface in my attempts to grasp the phenomenon of reification. My writings are for him interesting and perceptive only in the matter of detail!

Come on, but your ideas are everywhere in the essay, anyone who is familiar with your work can see that.

I don’t know if the future generations will be aware of that, though. My legacy to philosophy and sociology is very frequently underestimated. There aren’t a lot of ‘Simmelians’ out there.

Nonsense. I’m sure in the future there will be lots of scholars devoted to understanding your work and its influence on other thinkers. And Lukács was your student, after all. He used to follow you a lot …

Well, not anymore. Now Marx has taken the lead. He provides – so says Lukács – the deepest foundations for our ideas.

And to think that we both strived to somehow turn Marx inside out, illuminating certain blind spots of his theory while keeping some of his main insights.

Actually, I turned him inside out and then inside out again, and then –

I noticed – believe me. Anyway: my intention was to complement Marx’s perspective with a cultural analysis of modern capitalism, and I thought Lukács agreed with me to a good degree. But he now claims that the ‘prototype’ of every kind of social relation in modern life lies in the commodity form!

It did draw my attention that Lukács designates the structure of commodity relations as the prototype of all forms of objectivity and subjectivity, as the key ‘to portraying capitalist society in its totality and to laying bare its fundamental nature’. In certain regards, it’s true, that can be seen as a similar position to the one I presented in The Philosophy of Money, in which money is regarded as a symbol of the totality of life, in particular of modern life.

If that’s the case, actually I disagree with both of you. When one regards the commodity form as the prototype of all aspects of modern society, one implies that all of its elements emanate, so to speak, from a single model, located in a particular social domain – namely, the economic sphere. That is a conclusion I sought vigorously to avoid.

In that matter, I must say that we don’t disagree that much! We are both neo-Kantians in that respect, in the sense that, for us, modernity can be understood in terms of a differentiation of ideal worlds or, as you would put it, value spheres.

Even so, your idea of electing money as a symbol of modern life, or even of life in general, might be exposed to a criticism similar to the one I just addressed to Lukács.

I don’t see how.

One should always bear in mind that modern rationality assumes very diverse, even contradictory forms, and thus cannot be simply identified with or have its model in any one of them. In fact, the process of rationalization is much more chaotic than that, since it leads to the unravelling of myriad concurrent modes of rationalization that, taken together, do not constitute a coherent whole. Thus, the project of finding access to a social ‘totality’ by means of a single, prototypical form of rationality is one doomed to fail. And this can also be turned against your own project of understanding modern culture by way of an examination of money. Although, I have to admit, you were much more careful than Lukács in pursuing that path.

What you just described, my friend, is a misunderstanding of my position.

Is it?

However similar in form, Lukács’ perspective and my own have entirely different methodological starting points. As Lukács would have it, the problem of commodities is the central, structural problem of capitalist society in all its aspects. I would never make such a statement with regard to money. I could not say that money is the structural problem of modern culture, simply because in my view it would not be possible to say that about any object. Lukács’ arguments, on the other hand, are based on a somewhat ‘stratified’ conception of society, viewed as hierarchically organized into different levels of analysis. It is only from such a perspective that one is able to speak of a central, structural problem that condenses within itself all the problems of capitalist society – and consequently, all the possible solutions as well. But this means adopting a mode of causation that proceeds from the structure to its ramifications, from centre to periphery.

I think I see what you mean. You did affirm several times a non-stratified – ‘relativist’, as you named it – conception of causality. Even so, this seems to be at odds with your view of money as the main symbol of modern culture. Which, in fact, is quite puzzling: I mean, how could money be placed at the centre if there is no centre?

You should read my methodological statements more closely! In contradistinction to Lukács, my analyses of modern culture imply a kind of circular causality: different elements relate to each other through reciprocal interaction – Wechselwirkung, if you will – in such a way that it is not always clear what is the cause and what is the effect, and both can even reverse their positions. Thus, what I propose is a decentred conception of modern culture: to the extent that everything is dynamically interconnected, there can be no central structure from which everything else emanates. Money holds a privileged place in my analyses only because it is particularly well placed to express key aspects of modern culture and of life in general, not because it has any kind of logical or causal precedence in social reality … In fact, I have in several other pieces of writing considered other objects or phenomena as symbols of modern culture.

That makes more sense. But while I broadly agree with your position in relation to causality, I think that we should proceed methodologically in a different manner. Instead of looking for a prototype or a symbol of a given social reality, we should rather construct a series of interrelated ideal-types by means of which such a chaotic reality can be conceptually grasped.

I’m not against constructing types, as you know, but I prefer to use them in a less purified, let’s say, freer form.

Looser form, you mean … Actually, I find your whole mode of exposition perhaps a little bit too chaotic. Some economists have even said that your analytic style – which might be more accurately described as your art – is ultimately a matter of ‘dividing the air and then uniting it again’.

I wonder if you are one of those economists …

Though I do not entirely agree, I must confess your way of presenting things does seem to me at times strange and uncongenial.

Yes, maybe it is too chaotic – for some people.

Not a few …

What is important here, anyway, is that there is a fundamental difference between treating an object as a ‘prototype’ or a ‘symbol’ of something. The prototype has a causal relation to that which is formed on its basis. It holds a privileged status among those objects with which it forms a totality. That is not how a symbol works, at least in my use of the term. The symbol is a significant expression of a totality – without, however, occupying the position of its main causal source. In short, there can be many symbols, but only one prototype.

That may be true. On the other hand, although I do not agree with Lukács’ ascription of reification to commodity relations, his perspective does have an advantage in relation to yours –

Which is …

– it historicizes reification by interpreting it as a specific phenomenon of modern capitalism, while you envision objectivation, Versachlichung, as resulting from the development of culture in general. I find that rather problematic, since you overlook the diversity of existing forms of rationality, historically developing under different social and cultural conditions.

I beg to differ: I think that’s precisely what gives my perspective its particular strength with regard to Lukács’ approach. And you find that exact thing expressed in our different perspectives on the social consequences of what Marx called ‘commodity fetishism’.

What do you mean?

Let me develop that in a few steps. Following Marx quite closely, Lukács understands the essence of fetishism as lying in the structure of the commodity form. Within the commodity structure, a relation between people takes on the character of a relation between things and thus acquires a ‘phantom objectivity’ or, as you might put it, an Eigengesetzlichkeit that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the social relations between people. So, not only does Lukács distinguish between a ‘fundamental structure’ and its ‘external’ forms of manifestation, but this structure is conceived mainly as a phenomenon rooted in the realm of the capitalist economy.

To be fair, although I myself have criticized Lukács on similar grounds, I actually don’t think it’s that simple.

Go on, then.

There is a certain ambiguity in the way he sees the relationship between the economy and other social spheres. Lukács sometimes even seems to agree with my point of view, according to which the process of rationalization is all-pervasive without, however, having a unique centre. After all, modern rationality spreads through the capitalist market, law, state bureaucracy, entrepreneurial management, even science! At other times in his essay, it’s true, more emphasis is given to the thesis that the other spheres are shaped by imperatives stemming primarily from the domain of the capitalist economy.

But it seems to me that the latter view is predominant in his essay. Hence the difference between our perspectives on commodity fetishism, although both Lukács and I agree on the importance of this figure for understanding the dynamics of modern culture. A decade ago, I had already stated that the fetishistic character which Marx attributed to economic objects in the age of commodity production is only a particularly modified instance of the general fate of our culture. And Lukács has certainly further developed this thought in interesting new directions. However, by bringing this argument back to Marx, he ends up viewing commodity fetishism first and foremost as a phenomenon whose origin lies in the capitalist economy, and one that would spread from there to other social spheres, unjustifiably restricting the origin and the causality of this phenomenon.

Indeed, maybe it isn’t as easy as Lukács thought to bring together Marx’s conception of commodity fetishism with our investigations into modern society … They all presuppose rather different conceptions of historical causality.

Hear, hear!

As for me, I don’t regard commodity fetishism as constituting some kind of origin of modern rationalization, but as merely one expression of this general process, whose different manifestations do not stem from a single, central phenomenon or structure. They are rather the result of an entanglement of specific historical processes which relate to each other as if in an elective affinity. Retrospectively, they can be seen as mutually shaping and reinforcing each other. Let’s say I tried to insert some order in the chaos of social reality, which means I tried to avoid, at the same time, either forcing the diversity of social life to conform to a strict model of causality, like Lukács does, or letting a turbulent myriad of interactions disrupt the coherence of the social scientific enterprise, like you did.

You put too much pressure on yourself, Max.

Anyway … In spite of all the methodological and explanatory discrepancies – and though I do think that there is something very strange in the equation of the phantom objectivity of commodity fetishism with what I called the Eigengesetzlichkeiten of particular spheres – it is nevertheless interesting to notice a number of similarities between my interpretation of the rationalization process and Lukács’ Marxist critique of reification.

Such as?

For one, both of us point to the increasingly formal and calculable character of modern life, resulting in a decreasing consideration of the qualitative properties of subjects and objects alike. In this sense, he might have perceived a Marxian resonance in my own writings, of which my opposition to current Marxists’ economism had not allowed me to be fully aware.

In fact, Lukács hasn’t sufficiently recognized quite how deeply you – and I – have influenced his theory of reification and even the manner in which he has rearticulated Marx’s own theory. As early as the 1890s, I pointed out the fact that, in the monetary economy, the qualitative nature of objects is less and less felt by the subjects in their dealings with them. People increasingly speed past the specific value of things, which cannot be expressed in terms of money. I believe that my analysis of these aspects of modern culture, which are especially – although not exclusively – visible in money, has several points in common with your perspective about modern rationalism presented, for instance, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Not least because of the importance that your essay also gives to the meaning of the transformations of modern culture with regard to psychological experience.

Indeed. Though my intention in that book was also to demonstrate the historical significance of ascetic Protestantism to the conformation of what I called the spirit of capitalism – a historical connection to which you never paid much attention.

You’re right. But that’s because, for me, the affinities between Judaism and the monetary economy have always been more important. Even so, and despite all the differences between our investigations, the similarities between my considerations of the psychology of money and your characterization of the spirit of capitalism are quite remarkable.

I did make reference to The Philosophy of Money, if that’s something you’re complaining about …

Never mind! Anyway, I think the similarity – or, if you wish, the complementarity – of our analyses of individual experiences in the modern monetary economy has been insufficiently noted. Take for instance the paradoxes of the rationality of action: you demonstrated how there is a certain irrationality inherent to modern economic behaviour, when considered from a eudemonistic point of view …

… Which is, indeed, similar to what you characterized as a conversion of means into ends, resulting in the abandonment of the reasonable ultimate ends.

Quite.

Quite. My problem, though, is that you never came to define more precisely from which point of view it would be possible to say that an action is rational or reasonable. Meanwhile, I have clearly defined, in The Protestant Ethic, that it was a matter of an irrationality of purposive rationality on the grounds of eudemonistic criteria. It was problems of this kind that I pointed to when I criticized you for working with an objective, instead of a subjective, concept of the meaning of action.

That doesn’t mean that your account of rationality hasn’t got its problems. On the one hand, you characterize modern economic action as rational – in ideal-typical terms, of course – on the basis of what you would later call a formal conception of rationality.

I would not have put it precisely that way when I wrote The Protestant Ethic, nor did I do that in my later ‘Vorbemerkung’ or prefatory remarks to the collected essays on the sociology of religion. It was mostly in Economy and Society that I laid the conceptual basis for characterizing the modern economy as a formally rational one. But yes, that is a possible retrospective interpretation of my argument about the spirit of capitalism, something that Lukács has very much emphasized.

Indeed. However, by grounding the irrationality of the ‘spirit of capitalism’ on the basis of eudemonistic considerations, you are taking an evaluative stance. You are no longer adopting a distanced position and characterizing the rationality of modern economic action in formal terms, but rather assessing it in material terms, from the standpoint of a particular value position. Hence, your statements about the rationality and irrationality of modern economic action do not stand on the same ground, given that what is involved are actually two different concepts of rationality: purposive (or formal), on the one hand, and evaluative (or material), on the other. So you end up assuming a material stance that you do not, however, either explicitly adopt as your own or make an effort to ground adequately.

Well, that’s not what I meant. The spirit of capitalism is irrational from a eudemonistic point of view not because it leads to unhappiness, but simply because, given its formal character, it does not take into consideration the pursuit of happiness – or any other ultimate value, for that matter. This does not mean that I embrace a specific ethical viewpoint, but only that I am describing what is left out in this particular, formal kind of rationality.

I see. In that case, do you rule out any possibility of criticism of the predominance of this type of action, or not?

Well, you can draw your own conclusions by taking a closer look at what I’ve written in a few places, such as the final pages of The Protestant Ethic …

Still, you would need to unfold the philosophical consequences of those scattered remarks. I believe I have solved that issue to better effect in some of my writings, in particular those dedicated to a philosophy of culture. There, in continuity with the German Bildung tradition, I have established the cultivation of the subject as the standard for evaluating the problematic developments of modern culture. Later on, I have further developed that in terms of a metaphysics of life. And this is something that you, by restricting yourself to the aims of a value-free science, have always refused to do.

That is exactly right, even though it’s a harsh way of putting it. And this brings us back to Lukács and his talk of reification: actually, I’m not sure why we shouldn’t simply say rationalization. Reification is not a well-defined concept, and it’s certainly far from being axiologically neutral. I would have never formulated it that way.

I’m sure you wouldn’t.

Take for instance the definition of reification you mentioned earlier, where Lukács equates the Eigengesetzlichkeiten of the rationalized value spheres with a ‘phantom objectivity’, that is, an ‘alienating’ power that compels human action from the outside.

Those old ghosts again, eh?

Haunting our science as ever! I did say something of the like, using other words, towards the end of The Protestant Ethic. However, the main purpose of the concept of Eigengesetzlichkeit was to support an analysis of the differentiation of value spheres in modernity, each of which develops its rationality in a different manner. It is important to consider, in this regard, that it is not always the case that these specific rationalizations take the form of a social order which determines the lives of individuals with almost irresistible force. Furthermore, I would not formulate this in terms of an ‘alienated’ relation to social reality. This sort of statement is based on a kind of value attitude that is foreign to my scientific endeavours, to the extent that it presupposes an image of ‘authentic’ social relations that I could never have established as the basis of my investigations.

But don’t you see that that’s unavoidable?

I don’t know whether it is, but at least it shouldn’t be. And even if it is unavoidable, we must keep struggling against it.

Well, I think what you called value attitude is not only unavoidable, but also an important component of theoretical activity itself.

It is important, but only to a limited degree …

Not as limited as you would like it to be. As for me, I could never have formulated an analysis of the hypertrophy of objective culture in relation to subjective culture without the idea of an authentic path of human development, some idea of Bildung, which is tragically deviated from and distorted in modern culture. I would even say that some sort of image like that is implied in your writings. Every investigation of modern society is based on some kind of philosophy of culture, or of life, whether we are aware of the fact or not. Precisely because of that, Lukács could read your works and, mistakenly or not, relate them to Marx’s conception of commodity fetishism.

We always have this argument. And as I said before: one should be careful not to fall prey to metaphysics!

Metaphysics is important!

Indeed, you have chosen your own devil: life.

You also have a metaphysics of your own, you just haven’t named it.

That’s a personal matter that forms a condition for science, for sure, but one which must be put to one side as soon as science begins. Wertfreiheit is essential. And that also has significant consequences for my relation to Lukács’ latest work: despite the similarities between our diagnoses, our prognoses differ considerably. As a consequence of the multiplication of cultural value spheres, as I see it, there is no other way of grasping reality if not as an infinite set of phenomena. Since our knowledge, in its turn, is necessarily finite, it’s not possible to eliminate the irrational gap that exists between theory and reality.

And what does this have to do with the difference between the prognoses of Lukács and yourself?

Well, if every scientific endeavour starts from a specific viewpoint, then we cannot count on the idea of a unitary or totalizing perspective that would be capable of theoretically reconstructing the lost unity of reason. The relation of concepts to reality is therefore a selective one. Our destiny, thus, consists in swimming against the tide of the loss of meaning, without ever fully touching the safe ground of epistemological certainty.

Well, Lukács sees that as a typical expression of the antinomies of bourgeois thought.

I don’t know about that, but one needs to be coherent. How can I diagnose a radical loss of meaning brought about by modern rationalism and, at the same time, consider the possibility of dialectically re-establishing the unity of reason in theory, like Lukács does?

But his point is that this reunification must be achieved in practice, not in theory. I don’t agree that that is possible under current circumstances, but we have to admit that it’s an ingenious solution.

It may be. In any way you look at it, action must be fuelled by something other than wishful thinking. Resignation is the price to be paid for a coherent and critical attitude towards modern society. Those who wish to radically condemn certain social developments might quickly fall prey to all-embracing messianic ideologies – like the one Lukács professes when he views the proletariat as the identical subject-object of the historical process. Besides –

Wait, it’s almost seven o’clock! I think he is waking up … We completely lost track of time!

All right, all right, but this discussion isn’t over!

It certainly isn’t … See you some other night, in Lukács’ dreams.

… or nightmares. Till then.