Martin Morris - The Critique of Reification in Habermas

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Capitalist Society and Its Real

Abstractions: The Critique of

Reification in Habermas's Social

TheoryMartin Morris

Published online: 05 Jan 2009.

To cite this article: Martin Morris (1998): Capitalist Society and Its Real Abstractions:

The Critique of Reification in Habermas's Social Theory, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal

of Economics, Culture & Society, 10:2, 27-50

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Rethinking MARXISM Volume 10,Number 2 (Summer 1998)

Capitalist Society and Its Real Abstractions:The Critique of Reification in Habermas’sSocial Theory

Martin Morris

It has become clear to those following the course of Jurgen Habermas’s work since his

major Theory of Communicative A ction (1984, 1987b) that he aims to make a clearbreak with past formulations of critical theory and to develop a qualitatively new theory

of society and social action. While his project in the 1970s included considerable ef-

fort toward the “reconstruction” of historical materialism (see Habermas 1979), thecentral theory of communicative action is now intended to replace rather than modify

historical materialism (Rockmore 1989). In his recent major social-theoretical texts,

he attempts to develop a comprehensive theory of society that attains the level of so-

phistication and critical power possessed by the Marxist theory of society while avoid-

ing its inherent but discredited “subjectivist” and “productivist” biases.

Central to this effort is Habermas’s “double-conception” of society composed

of the twin concepts of “system” and “lifeworld.” Loosely defined, these refer to dis-

tinct domains of society in which action is coordinated by purposive-rational calcu-

lations (instrumental rationality) or by processes of reaching understanding in lan-guage (communicative rationality). Habermas wants to maintain a strict distinction

between these spheres of society for without it, he maintains, identification and ex-

planation of the social pathologies especially prevalent in capitalist societies become

difficult and obscure. Such identification and explanation are essential to the mean-

ing of a critical theory. In the (Hegelian) Marxist tradition, the concept of reification

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28 Morris

(Verdinglichung),’which mediates between the levels of Basis and Uberbau,2has

served as a central diagnostic tool. In his later work, Habermas seeks to reconstructthe concept of reification within the theory of communicative action by way of a

renewed critique of Marx and M arxism that is designed to recover its critical power

within a paradigmatically new theoretical context.

A number of critics have focused on problems with Habermas’s central distinc-

tion between lifeworld and system. To mention just a few, McCarthy (1985) has

pointed out the porousness of system s, the shifting boundaries of organizations, and

the embeddedness of their regulating features as elements interpretively deployed

by the ac ting mem bers of even formally constituted organizations, which questions

Habermas’s use of systems theory concepts to mark the differences betw een actionwithin and outside systems. McCarthy has further criticized Habermas’s uncoup ling

of the “political-administrative” system from the lifeworld, a move that suggests too

extreme a distinction between the “public sphere” of politics (e.g., dem ocratic forms)

and the “delinguistified” administration of legitimized pow er. Dallmayr (1984) con-

tends that Habermas’s designation of human relations w ith nature as strictly instru-

mental actually erases the possibility of safeguarding the integrity of social bonds

by removing “nature” as a possible barrier to their instrumentalization. Assessing

Habermas’s theory against its intended aim to be practically enlightening, Misgeld

(1985) argues that the “objectivating attitude” and highly general argum ents requiredby Habermas for inquiry into systems organization cannot be meaningfully trans-

lated back into the particular “participant perspectives” of the lifeworld so as to criti-

cally inform actors dealing with everyday social realities. Hence, M isgeld contends

that Habermas’s Hegelian impulse to give primacy to a theory of the whole (via a

reconstructed theory of social evolution and objectivist systems theory) does not

recognize the entwinement of theorizing in actual histories and in the practical orga-

nization of society. Closer to my concerns here, Fraser (1985) has criticized Hab-

ermas’s concept of reification for its gendered blind spots, arguing that central con-

cepts in Haberm as’s social theory are not “gender-neutral” and further, that the verydistinctions he maintains between lifeworld and systems concepts replicate rather

than combat male dominance in the social spheres and institutions they name.

In this substantial commentary on and criticism of H abermas’s theory of society,

there has been little sustained direct investigation from a M arxist-inspired perspec-

tive of H abermas’s transformation of the crucial concept of r e if i~ a ti o n .~wish to

1. The concept of reification is featured in L uk ks ’s (1971) pioneering development of Marx’s con-cept of commodity fetishism found in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital.2. The se concepts used by Marx are most comm only translated as “base” and “superstructure,” respec-tively, which allows an overly mechanistic or determinist misreading of Marxist theory. I have chosen

to leave them in the G erman to register this d anger and to distinguish my reference to them from suchmisreadings.3. At the time of w riting, I had not yet becom e acquainted with M oishe Postone’s (1996, chap. 6 ) pointedcritique of Haberm as from a M arxist perspective. His critique shares some im portant similarities withmine, although he leaves aside discussion of the necessary repression entailed by com modity exc hang ethat I emphasize in the present work. I cannot comment further on Postone’s work here, bu t I believeour critiques to be complementary to a large degree.

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H ab em as and Reifcat ion 29

pursue Habermas’s reformulation of the critique of reification in order to raise seri-

ous questions-primarily with respect to its adequacy as a replacem ent for the Marxistcritique and the theo ry of ideology, and additionally concerning H abermas’s theory

of society itself, in w hich subsystems of purposive-rational action a re neatly abstracted

from “practical” spheres. My discussion proceeds in three main steps. First I sum-

marize Habermas’s conception of ideology critique in late capitalist society. I then

move quickly in the next two sec tions through H abermas’s dialectical view of sys-

tem and lifeworld to an extended discussion and critique of this dual conception of

society by focusing on the way in w hich reification is conceived. The final section

employs the notion of “real abstraction” in order to draw out the im portant contrasts

between the Marxist conception of reification4 and Habermas’s reformulation. Atroot, I argue that Habermas has lost sight of the underlying “socialness” of the

exchange relation-an “essence” that is crucial for Marxist ideology critique-by

severing the concept of reification from the social production of exchange. There is

hence an important and fundamen tal element of the theory of reification missing in

Habermas’s account. What has taken the place of analysis of the socialness of ex-

change is analysis of the prior sociality of linquistically mediated communication.

The theoretical priority of language and comm unication i s itself an achievem ent of

the profound “paradigm shift” in social theory that Haberm as cham pions, from the

philosophy of the subject (in which he locates Marx and the M arxist tradition) to thetheory of communicative action. While leaving a discussion of the significant dimen-

sions of this parad igm sh ift to one side, I would like to present a view of the theoreti-

cal and critical costs of this move for a critical social theory in terms of the critique

of reification. In what follows I shall assume that the reader is reasonably familiar

with the basics of Habermasian and M arxist theory.

Habermasian Ideology Critique in Late Capitalism

With the term “ideology” Habermas refers to the way in which lifeworlds are struc-

tured so that domination cannot appear as class determined or even as dom ination as

such. Premodern forms of ideology constrain the lifeworld to a “structural violence”

(Habermas 1987b, 187) that immunizes from rational criticism certain core under-

standings characteristic of the sac red. Class domination cannot com e to light as con-

tingent under these structural conditions of com munication. In antiquity, when rea-

4. I do not claim to present the definitive theory of reification or theory of value here, since alterna-tive views of the notions of reification and value are possible within a Marxist framework. For ex -

ample, see Am ariglio and C allari (1989), who em ploy a post-Althusserian concept of overdetermina-tion in order t o argue against economic determinism in the Marxist analysis of commodity fetishismand ideology; Garnett (1995), wh o seek s to rescue com modity fetishism and value theory a s anti-human ist and antiessentialist for a postmodern M arxism that balances Marx ’s modern and postmodernmoments; and Spivak (1988). who finds a textualization of the chain of value in late capitalism inwhich the Marxist eco nomic can neither be an instance of the last resort nor erased from cultural

politics.

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30 Morris

son first becom es politically important in explicit ways (acquiring a higher value than

the depth of belief in myth or the fear of naked power), generalizable interests aresuppressed at the sam e time that a hierarchy of pa rticular interests defines the good

of the w hole in the form of rationalizations of pow er tied to metaphysical and reli-

gious world-views.

This structural limitation erodes under the conditions of modem society because

the very form in which understanding in society is achieved itself changes. Th e spe-

cifically modern form of understanding develops through the rationalized lifeworld,

which for Habermas means a differentiation of the lifeworld spheres of science, mo-

rality, and art, hat previously were closeIy intertwined within religious-metaphysical

world-views. As this occurs, the capacity of the former, structurally limited ideo-logical interpretations to maintain a foothold in everyday life becomes more and m ore

tenuous because reaching an understanding relies more and more on rationally re-

deemable claims to validity. Modem understanding means at root that knowledge

and belief are opened up to rational criticism. Hence, modernity does not simply

produce a loss of meaning (as for Weber), but rather, meaning and understanding

develop new forms based on communicatively achieved understanding in language.

There is an increase in the potential of rationality because shared lifeworld contexts

lose the unquestioned givenness of traditional authority and becom e more and m ore

subject to the interpretive efforts of participants. In short, for Habermas there is agrowing interpretive need in modernity-a need that depends on valid reasons be-

ing given for beliefs (or the assum ption that such reasons could, in principle, be given ),

where this “validity” can be intersubjectively recognized through discursive m eans.

In principle, the modem understanding cannot permit the “immunization” of any

belief from such rational criticism and discussion.

Th e problem for a critical theory, then, is to comprehend why explicit relations of

domination remain obscured in the mo dem (capitalist) period-a period in which,

as Marx so mem orably put it, “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of an-

cient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away” (M arx and Engels 1978,476). This is the task Marx sets for himself in comprehending the new form of m ys-

tification characteristic of capitalist society. Marx’s analysis of commodity fetish-

ism in Capital, using the theory of value, is aimed a t showing how class domination

continues in capitalist society despite there being no explicit institutional or ideo-

logical embodiment of such relations.

Habermas addresses the question how relations of dom ination remain hidden in

capitalist socie ty with the thesis of the internal colonization of the lifeworld by sys-

temic intrusion. This thesis also explains for Habermas why the potential for free and

undistorted self-formation inherent in modernity is systematically denied and sup-pressed under conditions of capitalist development. Internal colonization of the lifeworld

by the system is conceived as naming the equivalent kinds of relationships Marx at-

tempted to get at through his critical account of the relations betw eenBasis and Uberbau.

Habermas claims a great advance over Marx, however, in that he succeeds in

conceiving the intersubjectivity of the lifeworld in a qualitatively different way from

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Habermas and Reifcation 31

the relations of purposive-rational action. According to Habermas, Marx was lim-

ited by his conception of human society as structured fundamentally by laboringactivity. Habermas’s concept of the modem lifeworld names in part those processes

and elements of action coordination that depend on communicativeaction--consensus

formation in language-in order to succeed. Systems media, by contrast, refer to the

media of money and power, media that coordinate action through calculation or in-

strumental goals (i.e., via purposive-rational action). One of Habermas’s most cen-

tral social-theoretic heses is that the essential spheres of communicativelystructured

symbolic reproduction cannot be replaced successfully by such systems media with-

out pathological side effects. When such phenomena occur, communicative action

is made subject to the dictates of systems media and “themediatizution of the lifeworldassumes the form of a colonization” (Habermas 1987b, 196; emphasis in ~ r iginal) .~

What occurs is not necessarily a destruction but rather a transformationor assimila-

tion of lifeworld processes into the employ of system needs. Habermas offers an

account of the “juridification” of modem welfare-state capitalist societies as an em-

pirically verifiable interpretation of the concept of internal colonization.6 Systemintegration is secured relatively well through such colonization, but it is paid for by

increasing instability within the assimilated lifeworld contexts in which the coloni-

zation is experienced in the forms of cultural, social, or personality crises. Moreover,

the communicative perspectives themselves become degraded and limited in theirpossible scope, hence unable to grasp the real origin of their own domination.

Habermas contends that through internal colonization, systemic domination of thelifeworld can remain hidden from direct view, even in a differentiated and rational-

ized lifeworld. In his view, a critical consciousness of reification for the most part

remains out of reach in mass society by virtue of the cultural impoverishment and

fragmented consciousness that is produced by it. “Cultural impoverishment” refers

to processes that diminish and disempower the interpretive capacities of everyday

consciousness, a prominent example being the dominance of “expertism” n all forms

of cultural knowledge. Expert cultures attached to the three broad spheres of formalinquiry become less and less able to contribute to the enrichment of everyday life

5. I will explain this important distinction between mediatization and colonization in detail below.6. Juridification (Verrechtlichung) refers in general to the tendency toward an increase i n positive lawin m odem society (Habermas 1987a, 357). This process is understood not only a s a result of the his-torical cementing of bou rgeois ideology in institutional form , but also represents the increasing needfor capitalist social integration to be secu red via lifewo rld resources and hen ce to comp ensate for theinherent instability of capitalist systemic development. Juridification occurs via the functional needfor systems media to be anchored in the lifeworld. The more steering functions need to be stabilized,the more demands must be placed upon their institutional anchors in the lifeworld. Positive law ex-pands further and further into new domains of the lifeworld as a correlation of the needs of system

reproduction, development, and stability. Yet the more this occurs, the less it is possible for consensu-ally regulated comm unicative action to succeed in new ly juridified c ontexts. Hence, the n egative ef-fects of the latest “wave” of juridification a re felt,for exampIe, in the disempowering and commodifyingform of welfare-state compensations to the “clients” of the state, and in the disaffection and cynicismof citizens unable to derive a satisfactory political identity, because a suppressed and limited demo-cratic process compensates fo r the lack of dem ocratic participation by instead bolstering the citizen’srole as “consumer.”

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32 Morris

(less able than they once were, arguably). The differentiated and specialized spheres

of the rational lifeworld become increasingly split off from the everyday. Conscious-ness becomes “fragmented” and unable to apply the modem standards of validity in

a unified manner: “In place of the positive task of meeting a certain need for inter-

pretation by ideological means, we have the negative requirement of preventing

holistic interpretations from coming into existence . . . Everyday consciousness is

robbed of its power to synthesize; it becomesfragmented . .. n place of ‘false con-

sciousness’ we today have ‘fragmented consciousness’ that blocks enlightenment by

the mechanism of reification” (Habermas 1987b, 355; emphasis in original). To a

large extent repeating Weber’s and LukAcs’s critiques of reification, Habermas argues

that the potentials of everyday communication are thus atrophied and systematicallylimited.

But it is important for Habermas to establish that systemic colonization of the

lifeworld is not inherent to a modern, rationalized lifeworld, for otherwise a fate-ful dialectic would again threaten the reason he wishes to preserve from reification.

Since reification does not represent the congealed form of alienated human labor

turned back upon itself and working through the capitalist class relation, it can in

principle be overcome without necessarily finding an alternative mode to instru-

mental relations with nature or to instrumental relations among actors acting within

the relatively autonomous systemic spheres. But reification cannot be overcome atall unless a strict distinction is drawn between mediatization and colonization, cor-responding to rationalization and reification respectively. Using Habermas’s bilevel

social theory, the class-unspecific effects of reification on the lifeworld can be theo-

rized without the need for a theory of (class) consciousness. In part it is the useful-

ness of this distinction between mediatization and colonization that I would like to

challenge.

Indeed reification, according to Habermas, describes the expression and experi-

ence of class domination only insofar as a largely unbridled capitalism still domi-

nates the character of system imperatives. The operation of the system according togeneralized media and differentiated subsystems is a theoretically neutral affair for

Habermas, since such operation has a rational core appropriate to an emancipated

modernity. What is unnecessary and contingent is the capitalist appropriation of the

essential resources of the lifeworld through domination of the system. The resources

of a rationalized lifeworld, which constitute the meaning and total stock of knowl-

edge available to social participants, are essential for everyday interaction and for

the general reproduction of the particular elements of the lifeworld itself. These com-

municative resources can be drawn upon via systemic colonization in order to ex-

tend the steering capacities of modem societies but cannot, because of their commu-nicative nature, contribute to the success of such steering functions without in turn

producing pathological side effects. Turning over communicative structures to steer-

ing media disturbs and deforms these structures in ways that can only be called patho-

logical. Emancipation and the rational society thus demand a liberation of the lifeworld

and the system from capitalist domination.

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Habermas and Reijkat ion 33

Let me turn next to the specific relationship between system and lifeworld on which

Habermas’s concept of systemic colonization depends.

The Dialectics of System and Lifeworld

For Habermas, the system is an objectification of the lifeworld necessitated by the

need for survival. The lifeworld requires substantive reproduction at the level of its

material substratum, and this is secured only through purposive-rational action in re-

lation to nature. Domination and control of nature according to instrumental and stra-

tegic reason are, along with the interpretive need for reaching understanding, univer-sal characteristics of human society in Habermas’s view. The universal form that

domination and control of nature take for Habermas is that which the term “system”

describes. The coordination of instrumental and strategic activity cannot, in his read-

ing, be represented as a consciously cooperative effort-as collective intentional

embodiment-precisely because Habermas understands these processes as “survival

imperatives” along the lines of biological system imperatives. The necessity of such

survival-and the sets of relations it embodies as a functionally integrated set of

actions+onstrain the possible form the lifeworld can take. “Survival imperatives

require a functional integration of the lifeworld, which reaches right through the sym-bolic structures of the lifeworld” (Habermas 1987b,232). Large-scale, integrated eco-

nomic activity simply cannot be coordinated in the rational way that action oriented

toward mutual understanding is coordinated via the achievement of consensus.

The issue of the “system” can really only come up, from the Habermasian view-

point, with the transition to modem society and its “uncoupling” from lifeworld con-

texts. This is not to say that systems of purposive-rational action were unimportant

in premodern societies. Rather, these systems could not be accurately identified asautonomous subsystems separate from the dominant order and imperatives of the

cultural and political formations within which they were situated (see Habermas1987a,356-73).7 Other structural features of premodern societies such as institution-

alized class stratification and relations are, it is clear, also determinate in the subor-

dination of these spheres of purposive-rational action. It is not that the “system” did

not exist before modernity, but that “society” was formally undifferentiated.

Thus, the differentiation of modem society can be viewed from the systems per-

spective as an unmitigated advance, since its increased complexity leads to greatly

increased steering capacities for the system as a whole. In this way, differentiation

also can be understood as rationalization in a progressive sense. Yet, the complex

relation of the differentiated lifeworld and system must be kept in view, according tothe Habermasian reading, since what cannot be counted as an advance in reason is

systemic rationalization brought about at the expense of the lifeworld. This is why

7. For exam ple, se e Aristotle’s (1976, bk. 5 ) strict subordination of trade and barter to the ethical goalsof the polis.

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34 Morris

perhaps Habermas’s most serious criticism of systems theory is its inability to con-

ceive of increases in complexity achieved through the sacrifice of a rationalizedlifeworld a s costs (1987b, 186). At best, pathologies and crises related to rational-

ization are seen by systems theory as the normal disequilibria of self-regulatingsys-

tems that must constantly adapt to complex, changing environments (292). In con-

trast, for Habermas, pathology and social crisis must be understood critically. The

idea of a social crisis is central, for if systemic disequilibria are viewed as somehow

necessary to a system’s health, then these phenomena cannot really be said to indi-

cate crisis in an emphatic sense. For such a concept of crisis one must have recourse

to the lifeworld, which represents the sphere of life in which crisis is experienced as

disruptive, distorted, disturbed. For Habermas, the internal relationship betweensystem and lifeworld provides the key for comprehending rationalization crises

critically.

As a result of the higher demands placed upon the processes of reaching mutual

understanding in language, there is heightened potential for disagreement and con-

flict in modem society. At the same time, this heightened risk of “instability” in the

communicative medium is offset in modem society by the development of systemic

steering media. Steering media that are differentiated from lifeworld locationscorn-

pensare for these increased demands and risks of disagreement and conflict by re-

placing language as a mode of coordinating action in certain contexts. They canreplace language because they are “delinguistified” media: money and power attain

symbolic forms that do not require a hermeneutic attitude toward their meaning. By

replacing language with a generalizable code according to which actors can make

calculations with respect to future, empirically measurable conditions, actors are

thereby relieved of responsibility for their communications. That is, these increas-

ingly complex webs of communication do not require actors who must back up theirclaims with rationally defensible reasons (Habermas 1987b, 263). The switchover

to these delinguistified media of money and power, which describe the emergence

of spheres of economic interaction governed solely by the exchange of money andof power relations directed through the formation of bureaucracies and the state, al-

lows actors to gain new and greatly improved degrees of freedom of action oriented

toward success (264). These are the processes of nediatization, which are thus dis-

tinguished from colonization in which irreplaceable elements of the lifeworld are

subjected to systemic requirements. Mediatization allows the creation of expanded

spheres of action whereas colonization limits and distorts essential spheres that al-

ready exist.

In the modem period, the comparatively rapid development of the forces of pro-

duction (the division of labor, labor-power, and the technical organization of rela-tions with nature) is permitted by the uncoupling of systemic spheres from lifeworld

contexts. But according to Habermas, such productive development is, significantly,

alsoonly permitted by a corresponding development in the lifeworld institutions which

“anchor” the differentiated subsystems back into the lifeworld. The primacy of the

lifeworld is such that spheres of purposive-rational action cannot simply exist and

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Habermas and Re 8ca tion 35

operate on their own as a matter of course. Although these spheres are delinguistified,

the media through which they function invo lve generalizable symbolic (and there-fore social) meanings that must be stabilized. Since the media themselves are not

simply equivalent to their action contexts (“value” is not an inherent property of

money, and power does not simply res ide in the existence of hierarchy or the agency

of the state), the system spheres themselves cann ot provide this fundam ental stabili-

zation. According to Habermas, the character and value of money in modem capi-

talist society is established rather by the formal institutions of bourgeois civil law

(such as laws of property and contract) and secured by rese rves (such as gold). By

itself, the monetary m edium does no t “arouse adequate ‘confidence in the system’

merely by virtue of its functioning” (266);hence, the confidence required to securethe system of the circulation of money is supplied by the medium of consensus for-

mation in language (which is only ava ilable in lifeworld institutions). Likew ise, the

modem state requires legitimation for its exercise of power, which is a more demand-

ing and distinct form of consensus. Essentially, both power and money are media

that require consensua lly oriented anchors in lifeworld institutions.

Habermas contends, however, that as system s of purposive-rational action replace

spheres of the lifeworld that were coordinated comm unicatively, certain sacrifices,

pain, and costs are necessarily also experienced. This is in spite of the “relief mecha-

nisms” of the independent subsystem s. New freedoms for purposive-rational actionare gained on ly at the cost of the devaluation of the lifeworld for coordinating ac-

tion. Sym bolic elements of the lifeworld lo se their pow er to contribute to the repro-

duction of culture, society, and person since they are reduced to aspects of an “envi-

ronment” for purposive-rational action. This development is what Habermas calls

the “technicizing of the lifeworld” (183) (which should be distinguished from the

admittedly ambivalent technologies of comm unication that enable the development

of a “public sphere” in which the responsibility of the read erhearer is greatly devel-

oped and enhanced).

We are now ready to begin our critical discussion of Habermas’s social theoryand notion of reification, which can proceed via som e reflections on Marx’s critical

theory.

Capitalism, Social Crisis, and Critique

In the H abermasian view, there are implicit in Marx’s view of social crisis two

views of “systemic” and “lived” crisis, which refer respectively to the spheres of

system and lifeworld.8 The first takes the point of view of the observer-thinker andanalyzes the systemic crises of the capitalist mode of production as a whole (crises

such as stagflation and the tendency of the falling rate of profit). The second takes

8. Both Benhabib (1986, 123-33) and Habermas (1987a. 338) make use of this distinction betweenthe tw o views of crisis, which is derived from Lohmann (1980).

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36 Morris

the point of view of the participant in a crisis (as found in the historical chapters of

Capital) and documents experiences such as alienation, suffering from mental andphysical illness and from deprivation of the necessities of life, resentment, aggres-

sion, and struggle against capitalist development and domination. While these two

perspectives of systemic and lived crisis are said to run through M arx’s analysis, the

theoretical problem of linking them is left unresolved-nam ely, the prec ise rela-

tionship “between ac tion contexts out of which lived crises emerge and objective-

functional interconnec tions among action co nsequences that lead to systemic mal-

functioning” (Benhabib 1986, 128). Indeed, for m any the question of this link is a

central problem for a critical social theory.

According to Habermas, Marx attempts to solve the question of translating theo-retical or observational statements abou t the “economic subsystem ” into theoretical

or observational statements about the “workers’ lifeworld” with the theory of value

(Haberm as 1987b, 336-7). Yet, the theory of value-the aim of which is to com pre-

hend what Marx calls “real abstraction”-relies, according to Habermas, on a dia-

lectical logic that ultimately refers to an a priori ethical conception of laboring activ-

ity in order to explain deformations in intersubjective contents. This ethical a priori

is assumed rather than demonstrated because M arx does not doubt that the model of

purposive rationality based on the subject/object relation is fundamental for social

action. The formal abstractions of “abstract labor,” “capital,” the “state,” or the “com-modity” are condemned by M arx to pass aw ay once the mystical autonomy of the

process of capitalist accumulation is revealed as a fetish rooted in alienated labor.

According to Habermas, “Marx is convinced a priori that in capital he has before

him nothing more than the mystified form of a class relation” (339; emphasis in origi-

nal). Of course for Habermas, Marx’s view automatically denies the evolutionary

value of the differentiation of state and economy which, while historically associ-

ated with the rise of capitalist society, are nevertheless system ic developments free

of class-specific identity and hence worth preserving in undistorted form. Because

Habermas sees M arx holding to an unexamined notion of a ruptured ethical total-ity-from which Marx is said to derive his lifeworld concepts such as objective class

interest-he interprets the Marxist idea of the future socialist society as involving a

dedifferentiation issuing from the en lightened and unifying power of reason, a con -

ception that can be dismissed from a systems theory perspective as just more idealist

illusion (1987a , 67) .

W here M arx sees the “irrational” operation of the capitalist system a s a contra-

dictory totality conceived as a social on tology, Habermas does not rely directly on

an ontology at all but refers to the concept of rationality from which the two dis-

tinct and potentially conflictual modes of social interaction are derived. Yet, a“quasi-ontological” distinction is drawn by Habermas between the spheres of

lifeworld and system themselves. H e aims to explain reification not as real abstrac-

tion conceived in terms of the totality of exchange society, but as the effect

of specific overextensions of systemic objectification (which can take the form

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Habermas and Reification 37

of either monetarization or bureaucratization) into public and private contexts

of life.The social system is “irrational,” or rather “arational,” only in the sense that it is

functionally integrated (it “reaches right through the structures of the lifeworld”) and

hence cannot accord with a concept of intentional order. As a social system, how-

ever, it has its own functions and imperatives at a level beyond the reach of the ratio-

nal intent of its human “parts.” Therefore, there is a rationality to the system as a

whole beyond the intentionality of its social subjects.

One of the obvious imp lications of Haberm as’s view is that the system of produc-

tion cannot be coordinated successfully by a bureaucracy without significant distor-

tions in its operation. Hence Marx’s c all for the apportionment of labor-time in ac-cordance with a definite social plan, which wou ld also be coordinated with the needs

of the community (1954, 83), appears from Habermas’s systemic point of view to

hark back to a premodern ideal of system coordination subjugated to lifeworld dic-

tates (while at the same time looking forward to a society based on social rather than

alienated labor). The assump tion of system s theory in this context-that the hy-

percomplex conditions of m odem life cannot simply be overcome short of an act

of will on the magnitude of extrem e totalitarianism-is an assumption that fits neatly

with Habermas’s general view of the achievements of modernity. (In this respect,

Habermas’s liberal sociology meets his nonessentialist, pluralist, democratic politi-cal theory.) For Habermas, the uncoupling of system spheres-an achievem ent of

bourgeois freedom-is an advance understood to be immanent to freedom itself and

must be preserved in some form in a “postcapitalist” s ~ c i e t y . ~

With reference to the bureaucratic coordination of social production, it is also

possible to speak empirically of pathologies in the operation of the system that are

due to constraints imposed by an uncoupled 1ifeworld.IO One might regard part of

the failure of the centralized direction of production in the former Sov iet Union as

docum enting the results of such bureaucratic constraints on functional integration.

In the Habermasian view, the market ought not be so suppressed as a coordination

9. In this sense, Hab ermas sides with Hegel against Ma rx with respect to Heg el’s view of the neces-sary connection between the concepts of freedom and (bourgeois) civil society.10. Such constraints on the system by institutions of the lifeworld, which reverse the direction ofHabermas’s idea of systemic colonization, are only possible in this form once the lifeworld has beenuncoupled from the system. Hence the kind of constraints placed upon systemic development i n tradi-tional societies+ onstrain ts that may , on Habermas’s accoun t, lead to crisis and evolutionary advance-cannot be of the same order. With respect to such evolutionary social advance, Habermas maintainsthat systemic steering problem s are only resolved when th e endoge nou s learning mechanism in the sphereof mo ral-practical consciousness (decisive for structures of commun icative interaction) introduces a

new level of so cial integration. This in turn m akes it possible to implem ent available but suppressedtechnically useful knowledge-that is, it mak es poss ible an increase in prod uctive forces and systemcomplexity that solves the existing systemic blockages (Habermas 1979, 147-8, 160).Th e develop-ment of modern bureaucratization and the technicizing of politics are hence not progressive evolu-tionary developments for they do not institutionalize the latent communicative rationality structuresof modernity but rather, circumvent them.

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38 Morris

mechanism for the sake of the health of functional integration. Complex societies,

according to Habermas, “are unable to reproduce themselves if they do not leave thelogic of an economy that regulates itself through the market intact” (1991,40).” On

the other hand, the modem bureaucratic state in Western capitalist societies, in con-

trast to its communist alternative, faces many limits to its raison d’gtre of administra-

tive control and organization of capitalist markets (although there are of course limits

that both forms of state face in varying proportions, such as the effects of the interna-

tionalization of capital and production). However, the welfare/warfare state of the

present period of late capitalism (the “welfare” side of which is currently in decline)

finds itself burdened with different crises resulting from the way its steering functions

relate to capitalist society. For Habermas and his followers, the crises of the statein late capitalism do not indicate fundamental contradictions or problems with the

state and its function themselves, but rather indicate the way that capitalist contradic-

tions and crisis are displaced onto the state through the state’s steering capacity.12The system encroaches on this institution of the lifeworld in very observable ways.

Hence, for Habermas the formation and structure of the modem social system and

the corresponding institutions of the lifeworld are mediated by the historical devel-

opment of capitalism. Yet, they are not whollydetermined by capitalism. From a his-

torical perspective, the development of society toward a genuine modem and enlight-

ened form can be said to have been skewed and atrophied by specifically capitalistdevelopment. The present capitalist-formed social totality is “irrational” because ofwhat it denies to its members: a rational and more stable life largely free of specific

“reification effects,” which could, in principle, be provided.

Yet it is difficult to see how Habermas could maintain a critical idea of irrational

capitalism in this sense, especially given his view that the functional integration of

systems of purposive-rational action are an unavoidable fact of human society. Con-

ceding the functional need for a “free market” and differentiated social complexity(in the systems theory sense) is no small concession to the status quo of capitalist

society itself. The major task here would be to demonstrate a clear and unequivocaldistinction between capitalism and the ideal type of modem differentiated society.

Habermas’s “radical reformism” demands a rationalized capitalism alongside a life-

world emancipated from the domination of the system. This entails accepting capi-

talist social organization in some form, while ensuring that capitalist imperatives do

not dominate the institutions of the lifeworld and the state on which they rely.

1 1 . However, contra Habermas, there continue to emerge Marxist-inspired visions of the possibilityof a cla ssle ss society without capitalist markets, which instead rethink distribution and consumption in

democratic way s and provide a lternative models to the “coordinator” class societies of the former So -viet Union as w ell as to Habermas’s liberal-democratic reformism. See , for example, A lbert and Hahnel(1991).12. Habermas’s first major work in this area is Legitimation Crisis (1976); see also “LegitimationProblems in the Modem S tate” in Communicationand the Evolution ofsociety (1979). Claus Offe (1984)has pursued a Habermasian line in his studies of crisis in the state. In Habermas’s very recent work(199 6). he returns to the questions o f the state and legitimate power.

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Habermas and Reifcation 39

It now becomes clear that in order for capitalism to be distinguished from ideal-

typical modem society, “capitalism” must be downgraded from the Marxist idea ofa class society, in which the principle of exchange and the phenomenon of reification

are realized most completely, to a kind of abstract economic activity, albeit an eco-

nomic activity that is institutionally embodied in the lifeworld. In other words, the

economy becomes a system, in the systems theory sense, that is functional and, as an

organization, autonomousfrom the normative, communicativelystructured lifeworld,

despite its necessary institutional anchoring in the latter. Indeed, it is only in this way

that the economy organized through capitalist markets can be distinguished as a “piece

of norm-free sociality” (Habermas 1987a,349) that comes into competition with the

“noneconomic” (or rather, nonreifiable) rational needs of the lifeworld. Reification,I would insist, goes deeper and is more primal than capitalist class society, althoughit is under capitalism that reification finds its most extensive and highly developed

form. If reification is a phenomenon of simple commodity production prior to capi-

talist society, then the pathologies identified by Habermas cannot be removed sim-

ply by placing limits upon or removing specifically capitalist class activity.

Since Marx, to speak of the “capitalist economy” abstracted from social relations

of domination has been suspect as the kind of false or faulty abstraction of which

classical political economy is guilty. Despite the tendency in Marxism itself to fall

into an economism that usually hypostatizes Marx’s distinction between the levelsof Basis and Uberbau, the crucial dialectical standpoint from which such concepts

are developed, and which negates all economism or determinism, is that of the so-

cial totality. Capitalism, from the Marxist perspective, must always be understood in

the last analysis at this level, as capitalist society , which is conceived in terms of the

concept of the mode ofprodu ction. A common mistake in reading Marx is to equate

his use of the concept of production with that of the economy. Now Habermas iswell aware of this; where he directs his attack is against what he sees as the assump-

tions behind Marx’s concept of the social totality, which he reads as limited to an

expressivist notion based on the philosophy of the subject. The Marxist concept ofthe social totality, in Habermas’s reading, is severely constrained because of its

subjectlobject dialectic and cannot finally account for intersubjective relations be-

yond the instrumental relation. Marx’s concept of the social totality is translated by

Habermas into a radically differentiated notion in which a methodological gestalt

shift allows the switch between lifeworld and system perspectives without losing sight

of “society” itself. This is intended to resolve the problem of the overextension of

the basic concept of purposive rationality which constrains Marx (and Weber and

Frankfurt theory) to instrumentality, and it is intended to comprehend reification in

its specificity.Yet Marx’s concept of labor cannot be reduced to a form of purposive-rational

action; indeed, it is just such a reduction of labor in modem political economy and

the parallel capitalist reduction of the worker of labor to instrumental action that Marx

is out to criticize. Habermas begs the question of Marx’s concept of labor by his pre-

vious step of theoretically limiting labor to a sphere of purposive rationality solely

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40 Morris

concerned with the material reproduction of society and distinct from the reproduc-

tion of inner or “socialized” nature. The distinction between goal rationality and in-strumental rationality is essential for Marx, for it is through this distinction that he

can abstract the capitalist system as a reifying system independent of actors’ inten-

tions and needs. Heller (1982,35) draws attention to this and suggests that undistorted

goal rationality and undistorted communication are equally aspects of freedom, which

demands socialization of inner nature without repression, in both communication and

the creative activity of labor.

Following this, and with respect to the core structure of Habermas’s social theory,

there is no sense in which the differentiated form of a functionally integrated social

system related to a socially integrated lifeworld ought to be transcended itselfin orderto bring about freedom. Indeed, such a prospect would contradict the whole point ofconceiving society unavoidably as a bilevel and functionally complex totality. It would

contradict the sociological core of the theory of communicative action. Yet something

as radical as this is what Marx has in mind when he describes postcapitalist society.

This is despite the fact that Marx did distinguish what he called the “realm of neces-

sity” from the “realm of freedom,” and indicated that the former will always exist while

the latter could only truly begin with “socialized man”-with the “association of pro-

ducers” that will constitutepostcapitalistsociety (1959, 820).13For Habermas, the realms

of necessity and freedom are metaphors in Marx for system and lifeworld, and Marx’scritique is said to lead to the triumph of the lifeworld over the system of deworldedlabor-power (1987b, 340). Marx makes the mistake, in the Habermasian view,of think-

ing that the rational direction of production through the abolition of classes (private

property) is equivalent to the emancipationof man from the dominion of class-based

production. By “dialectically clamping together system and lifeworld,” Marx “does

not allow for a sufficiently sharp separation between the levelof system dzfferentiation

attained in the modern period and the class-specific forms in which it has been institu-tionalized” (340; emphasis in original). For Habermas, a society largely free from

reification and the pathologies associated with systemic colonization could exist in thehere and now without the need for a revolutionary AuJhebung of modem differentia-

tion. Progress toward this is not achieved via a further rationalization of the system

of production, in the sense of a socialization of labor, but rather by the further rational-

ization of the lifeworld which, being prior in principle if not in fact, will allow a paci-

fication of the agitated demands currently made by capitalism. The necessity of a revo-

lutionary overthrow of the fundamental conditions at the source of alienation and

domination is, of course, the view that must be abandoned if one is to take seriously

the social-theoretic “advance” Habermas proposes. Under the Habermasian schema,

the hope for a radically emancipated and dedifferentiated condition of society is sim-ply a false hope (McCarthy 1985).

I contend that alienation and fetishism cannot be neatly isolated as the products

of such an “economic sphere” because the abstraction of the modem economy is it-

13. For Marx’s suggestion of a life free from fetish ism, see Capital (1954, 82-4).

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self part of the phenomena of alienation and fetishism. Likewise, the broader con-

cept of reification does not simply designate an effect or pathology of a social wholethat turns back on itself in crisis, but rather designates a condition for the operation

of that very same system that is said, on Habermas’s reading, itself to produce reifi-

cation effects. Alienation and fetishism are aspects of the whole of “capitalist social

production,” not of its parts or of any one moment that comes to dominate the oth-

ers. This is the main reason Marx, and following him, Frankfurt critical theorists

(among others) refuse to see the fundamental distinction that Habermas maintains

between lifeworld and system. For the former, what Habermas calls the system is

always already reproduced in what is named the lifeworld and vice versa; the lifeworld

is always already elemental in the system.It is not that lifeworld and system are thus “dialectically clamped together” but

that to view these two spheres as constituted by distinct and exclusive rationalities is

ultimately a false (ideological) abstraction. One practical consequence of such false

abstraction is that the social basis of production-that is, the relationship between

need and social integration-is lost from view.

In a parallel to his reduction of capitalism to an aspect of the system, Habermas

must also hold to a circumscribed concept of purposive rationality to which he re-

duces concepts such as Marx’s “laboring activity.” Crucial to Habermas’s concept

of purposive rationality are the delinguistified media of money and power throughwhich purposive-rational calculations are made. The idea of the delinguistified

media-those that constitute a complementary advance to the rationalization of the

lifeworld by relieving communicative action of some burden for reaching mutual

understanding-is again an extension of Habermas’s view of purposive-rationalactivity as a neutral affair: these media do not in their systemic context produce

reification because for Habermas, of course, instrumental reason only becomes

reification as a phenomenon of the lifeworld, which is distinct in terms of the level

of its communicative experiences. Hence “money,” for example, is not a representa-

tion of the reified exchange relation, but rather constitutes a generalizable code thatallows an increase in purposive-rational freedom. Money, in the Habermasian read-

ing, does not require a hermeneutic relation because it is a delinguistified medium of

communication, an aspect of “norm-free sociality.” But this begs the question of the

Marxist approach because such a critical-hermeneutic relation is just what the latter

claims is required: that “money” (as a unique representation of universal commodified

value) needs to be deciphered from just this appearance as a generalizable code and

revealed as a sign for the reification of value, the alienation of labor.

It might help here to recall that Marx’s theory of value is not concerned with de-

termining what the “true” or “real” values of products are-it is not out to provide atheory that justifies the equivalence of exchange (for this is just what liberal political

economy hopes to do). Neither is it simply concerned with showing the institutional

and therefore historical basis of money (in the gold standard or in state reserves) or

property (in bourgeois civil law). Marx’s theory of value is directed at root to the

basic question of why there is “value” a t all instead of an absence of value. Value

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42 Morris

itself is to be revealed as a social relation which, precisely because of its social and

historical character, has no “basis” and in fact is rent with the contradiction of class.Marxist analysis turns us toward not just “production” but the question of value in a

much more emphatic sense than is commonly a~knowledged.’~ut it is here that

Habermas’s systems theory is supposed to pick up the slack in his social theory by

isolating the material reproduction of the lifeworld objectified in the system. Only

by his recourse to a systems theory conception of delinguistified media that colonize

lifeworld contexts can Habermas replace that contradictory relation-which in Marx

is expressed through the theory of value-without blurring his own distinction be-

tween communicative and purposive rationality.

It is thus, in my opinion, very important to draw a clear distinction between sys-tems theory as systems functionalism (as in Parsons and Luhmann) and the Marxist

theory of the capitalist system. Habermas recognizes this difference but tends to

present it only in terms of his own synthesis of lifeworld and system (see, for exam-ple, Habermas 1987b,339-40). That is, the two methodological strategies Habermas

associates with the lifeworld and system perspectives are viewed as the disjecta

membra of the Hegelian Marxist tradition which, he contends, can be recovered ade-

quately only via the theory of communicative action. This distinction is important

when discussing the thesis of internal colonization since it is capitalism as a func-

tional system and not (as I take the Marxist conception to be) a dialectical, contra-dictory system that in part (along with the process of bureaucratization) “distorts”

the lifeworld.Habermas faces a very difficult task in satisfactorily redefining reification after

so transforming4r more accurately, rejecting-the critical idea of capitalist total-

ity developed in the Marxist tradition.

Real Abstraction and Ideology

In this next tack of my argument I will reexamine the central Marxist concept of

“real abstraction” in some detail. This will be revealing because Habermas himself

believes he has contributed to a new understanding of real abstraction without the

need to rely on Marx’s theory of value (1987b, 374). I should like to deepen the

preceding critical discussion of Habermas’s abstraction of the system by exploring

the “socialness” of exchange in the Marxist acco~nt . ’~

The Marxist theory of real abstraction is supposed to explode the latter’s power

over thought-that is, it exposes certain entities as abstractions and not as what

14. Spivak’s (1988) considerations on this point are illuminating for her attem pt to recover value inthe context of cultural theory.15. My discussion of real abstraction, which follows Sohn-Rethel’s (1978) account most closely, isnot identical to Marx’s account of abstraction in the introduction to the Grundrisse (1973). However,I do regard it as a compa tible elaboration and dev elopment of a comparable idea drawn from the theoryof commodity fetishism.

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they appear to be: natural “things.” But this is a theory of ideology that is not merely

an unmasking, after which only an enlightened view of practice in capitalist soci-ety is possible. Marx’s ideology critique is not merely theoretical disenchantment,

and those who continue to hold ideological beliefs in the face of critique are not

merely chauvinistic or irrational but systematically deluded. It is rather a theory of

why unmasking-or enlightenment-is not enough to overcome illusion.

The real abstraction of exchange society analyzed by Marx via the concept of

commodity fetishism, and as described in Sohn-Rethel’s (1978) account, is abstrac-

tion unlike the intellectual abstraction by which thoughts take their form. “Abstrac-

tion” is, according to the philosophical tradition, an exclusively mental act, desig-

nating the way in whichform s recognized by the mind. For Marx, abstraction is anact whereby we “abstract” (think) and it also refers to the concepts-“abstractions”-

which we use to think, some of which are the ideological products of alienated society

(Ollman 1993,26). This kind of intellectual abstraction is contrasted by Sohn-Rethel

with the real abstraction Marx identifies in the act of exchange (also distinguished

here from the use of the exchanged items themselves), which he sees as the basis of

“civilized” society. The “reality” of the exchange abstraction is precisely found in

its independence from and obscurity to the minds of those exchanging.

Thus in speaking of the abstractness of exchange w e must be careful not to apply theterm to the consciousness o f the exchanging agents. They are supposed to be occupiedwith the use o f the commodities they see, but occupied in their imaginations only. It isthe action of exchange, and the action alone, that is abstract. The consciousness and theaction of the people part company in exchange and g o different ways. We have to tracetheir ways separately, and also their interconnection . . .One could say that the abstract-ness of their action is beyond realization by the actors because their very consciousnessstands in their way. W ere the abstractness to catch their minds their action would ceaseto be exchange and the abstraction would not arise. (Sohn-Rethel 1978, 26-7)

Hence the reality of the exchange abstraction derives from its social nature, butthis very existence depends on actors repressing the consciousness of the socialness

of their act. The “social nature” of exchange means that its reality exists only inso-far as human society exists, and by virtue of it. For this reason the real abstraction

or abstract “objectivity” of society (“second nature”) is different from the concrete,

material objectivity of the natural world (“first nature”), which would, in principle,

continue to exist without human beings to conceive of it. Real abstraction is Marx’s

attempt to get at the heart of the question of society, of the “social synthesis”: that

which simultaneously produces alienation (here individuation, difference) and iden-

tity or social cohesion. “The abstract and purely social physicality of exchangehas no existence other than in the human mind, but it does not spring from the

mind. It springs from the activity of exchange and from the necessity for it which

arises owing to the disruption of communal production into private production

carried on by separate individuals independently of each other” (Sohn-Rethel 1978,

26-7).

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44 Morris

The real abstraction of exchange is the condition for the formal abstractions of

the theoretical consciousness. Thus the commodity form, for example, is just that: aform, whose universality is not directly a product of the mind (as in an intellectual

abstraction) but rather owes its existence to a dialectical but repressed relation to the

real abstraction of exchange. That the commodityform is a formal abstraction means

that the “commodity” can appear to the mind as a thing, independent from labor and

exchange.

There is thus a necessity to the “false” consciousness of social being in exchange

society. It is demanded by the act of exchange. Exchange rests on a “social postu-

late” in which the use of commodities must be suspended until after the completion

of the exchange, in which they are assumed to be of commensurable “value” when“factually” they are not, in which they exist only in terms of exchangeability (Sohn-

Rethel 1978,68). The ability to make such formal abstractions regarding commodi-

ties is possible only by virtue of theparticular logic of the “abstract intellect,” which

emerges because it is cut off from its social origin (68, emphasis added). This neces-

sity includes.but is more than the pragmatic need for disseminating ideology that is

intended to perpetuate class rule. It is also a fault of the historical order of social

existence, causing it to be false (197-8). This is why one may regard the Marxian

concept of ideology as “symptomatic.”

It is therefore possible to read Marx psychoanalytically, as is done in pioneeringfashion by Frankfurt critical theory. 6 Moreover, according to Lacan, Marx thus “in-

vented the symptom,” a reading elaborated admirably by Zizek (1989, 1 1-55). For

Zizek, the social postulate identified by Sohn-Rethel functions as a certain “as if”

that is implied by exchange.

[Tlhe illusion is not on the side of know ledge, it is already on the side of reality itself,of what the people are doin g. What they do not know is that their social reality itself,their activity, is guided by an illusion, by fetishistic inversion. What they overlook,what they misrecognize, is not the reality but the illusion w hich is structuring their

reality, their social activity. They know very well how things really are, but they arestill doing it as if they did not know. The illusion is therefore double: it consists inoverlooking the illusion which is structuring our real, effective relationshipto reality.(1989, 18)

As he adds, “The fundamental level of ideology, however, is not an illusion masking

the real state of things but that of an (unconscious) fantasy structuring our social reality

itself’ (32-3).

Such a reading of real abstraction posits a symbolic level “below” or “beyond”

the abstract consciousness, which remains unconscious but on which such conscious-

ness nevertheless dialectically depends. By definition such real abstraction cannot

be brought to consciousness, as abstraction, for the abstraction is “real,” not formal.

Its reality is the condition of the exchanging actors’ consciousness such that its “ide-

16. While never actually mentioning Marx by name, the first major interpretation of Marx via Freud

is Marcuse (1955).

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a1ity”-its representation-is prevented: “their very consciousness stands in their

way.” Its reality is the object, nevertheless, of a critical theory.What I would like to emphasize for our purposes in this discussion is the way of

thinking that is required by Marx to conceive of abstractions adequately. In stark

contrast and opposition to the philosophy of the subject and consciousness philoso-

phy, Marx’s dialectical mode of thinking conceives of abstractions themselves as

relations, the elements of which are internally related. The fundamental element of

thinking is therefore not an abstraction (concept), but a relation. Ollman describes

Marx’s way of thinking as follows.

[I]t is the philosophy of internal relations that gi ve s Marx both license and opportunityto abstract as freely as he does, to decide how far into its internal relations any particu-lar will extend. Making him aware of the need to abstract-since boundaries are nevergiven and when established never absolute-it also allow s and even encourages re-abstraction, makes a variety of abstractionpossible, and helps develop the mental skills

and flexibility in making abstractions. (1993, 36)17

If we extend this conception to the discussion above, then we can recognize that

the real abstraction of exchange-the social act-is a fetishized relation established

among actors who must take up a peculiar, particular, objectifying, and instrumen-

talizing relation to each other in order for the abstraction to exist: “Nothing that asingle commodity-owner might undertake on his own could give rise to this abstrac-tion, no more than a hammock could play its part when attached to one pole only”

(Sohn-Rethel 1978, 69). But real abstraction appears not as the fetishization of the

actors themselves (for they appear as individual egos, calculating their self-interest

and striking up relations with other such egos), but rather as the commodity form.

Hence, Marx speaks of the “language of commodities” brought to life, so to speak,

in fetishism: “Could commodities themselves speak, they would say: Our use value

may be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as objects. What, however, does

belong to us as objects, is our value. Our natural intercourse as commodities provesit. In the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchange values” (1954, 87).

Zizek argues that the point of Marx’s analysis of the commodity form is that be-

lief, rather than being an inner matter, is externalized in the activity of people-which

we may understand as involving their suppressed internal relations-such that “the

things (com mo dities)believe in their plac e, instead of the subjects: it is as if all their

beliefs, superstitions and metaphysical mystifications, supposedly surmounted by the

rational, utilitarian personality, are embodied in the ‘social relations between things.’

They no longer believe, but the things themselves believe f o r them” (Zizek 1989,34;

emphasis in original).At this point, let us return to the issueof the analysis of real abstraction in Habermas.

The essence of Habermas’s reference to real abstractions turns on the argument that

17. Ollman identifies three modes of abstraction in Marx’s method: the abstraction of extension, levelof generality, and vantage point (199 3, 39-78).

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46 Morris

they can be analyzed as “an object domain for empirical inquiry” without using the

theory of value or some such “translation tool” (1987b, 375). Indeed, a central com-plaint of Habermas against Frankfurt critical theory is that for such theory, only in-

strumental reason found embodiment while “everything that existed was transformed

into a real abstraction” that “escaped the grasp of empirical inquiry” (382). Leaving

aside the question whether this is true of Frankfurt theory, from our discussion of

real abstraction above it is clear that it is impossible for “everything existing” to be

transformed into real abstraction. The real abstraction of exchange society is notidentical with reification because it lies at a third level, as it were, distinct from the

levels of formal abstraction and reification. The great expansion of the commodity

form that occurs in late capitalist society extends reification into spheres of life pre-viously unsubjected to capitalist exploitation or rationalization. But the real abstrac-

tion is mystified through reified relations and itself becomes part of fantasized life,

which we may also see as expanding in the above process. Habermas confuses two

senses of abstraction that I maintain must be distinguished because he sees real where

formal abstraction is the mode. (Such a confusion is also indicated philologically by

the fact that Habermas never mentions real abstraction’s opposite-formal abstrac-

tion-in his relevant discussions.)But Habermas is correct in his view that the real abstraction does not lend itself to

positive empirical study, despite its designation as “real.” This, however, is not anindication of the concept’s theoretical deficiency but a crucial sense of its meaning. If

it were open to direct empirical study, it would cease to be real abstraction and would

not exist or would become something else: “Were the abstractness to catch [actors’]

minds their action would cease to be exchange and the abstraction would not arise”

(Sohn-Rethel 1978,267). Hence the necessity of the theory of value or something

like it. Habermas is aware of this need and, as we saw above, he cites the ability of the

theory of value to explain the translation rules that govern movement from herme-

neutic, lifeworld descriptions to objectivating, systemic descriptions as one of the

theory’s strengths (1987b, 336-7). This immediately brings to mind the connectionpreviously mentioned between systemic crisis and lived crisis, which Habermas views

as so important to a critical theory (Benhabib 1986, 123-33). Yet we may see that

such an interpretationof translation rules already assumes that theproblem tobe solved

is how to render what is understood as real abstraction empirically serviceable. In my

view, the point of the theory of value and of real abstraction is to identify why such

abstraction is not available to empirical investigation and even presents an extraordi-

nary ideological deception to theory. But the recognition of real abstraction is not

thereby permanently mystified: theoretical analysis uncovers it by way of the theory

of reification and the theory of value. To attempt to render this level (merely) empiri-cally available is not only to abandon the theory of value but to become blind to the

level of society that the concept of real abstraction attempts to name.

Marx recognized this in the primacy of the production of value by social labor,

for which the conditions of labor are themselves alienated and unrecognized by those

involved. The following passage is worth quoting in full.

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Habennas and Reijication 47

The emphasis com es to be placed not on the state of being objectified, but on the stateof being alienated, dispossessed , sold [Der Ton wird gelegt nicht auf das Vergegen-standlichtsein, sondern das Enrfremdet-,Entaussert-, Veraussertsein]; on the conditionthat the monstrous objective power which social labor itself erected opposite itself asone of its mom ents belongs not to the worker, but to the personified conditions of pro-duction, i.e., to capital. To the extent that .. . this process of objectification in factappears as a process o f dispossession from the standpoint of labor or as an appropria-tion of alien labor from the standpoint of capital-to that extent, this twisting and in-version [Verdrehung und Verkehrung] is a real [phenomenon],not a merely supposedone existing merely in the imagination of the workers and the capitalists. (Marx 1973,831; emphasis in original)

M a n continues that this is a historical necessity associated with capitalist develop-ment, not with production in an absolute way. His major point is that the (historical)

mode of production and distribution itself conditions or “posits” the mystified ob-

jective and subjective reality in which individuals think and act. Changing this expe-rience depends on changing the foundation of production.

Reification, in Habermas’s schema, is the “paradoxical” condition in which “sys-

temic relief mechanisms . .. urn around and overburden the communicative infra-

structure of the lifeworld” (1987b, 378). For this reason, it is useful to describe

reification as the condition of “surplus” rationalization over and above a historical

stage of universal development in which a level of “basic” rationalization may beidentified (the terms “basic” and “surplus” are not Habermas’s own but may beapplied to him) (Horowitz 1994, 197, 217 n. 8). However, reification conceived

merely as systemic colonization removes the link between class domination and

reification and replaces it with the “paradoxical” expression of a “social” rational-

ization that undermines its own achievements. The resultant appreciation of the

“class-unspecific” effects of rationalization is, of course, a virtue of the theory of

communicative action, according to Habermas. But with this theoretical “success,”

reification becomes at root an experience of the anonymous effects of the generaliz-

able codes of power and money rather than being at root an experience and productof domination, class or otherwise. This is another reason why it is important not to

abstract the system from the lifeworld in the way that Habermas does. Not only does

he not in fact have an adequate concept of capitalist society, but by extension he

cannot have an adequate concept of society itself.

In the tradition of critical theory, rationalization is inherently linked to reification

historically, and no amount of reflection at the level of concepts can overcome it in

the sense that Habermas claims is possible. This is why Marx placed so much em-

phasis on praxis for transformative critique (in theory, the corresponding emphasis

was on the material). But ultimately, no transformation is possible without the tran-sition to a classless society which negates the basis of domination and, with it,

reification. That which the concepts of surplus and basic rationalization name needs

to be placed back in this context in order for these concepts to retain their critical

sense. “Paradox” is most definitely an important aspect of the phenomenon of ratio-

nalization, but as a dialectically inspired concept it must be capable of reaching to a

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48 Morris

level inaccessible to Habermas’s social theory. (I may mention in passing that the

ways in which the Frankfurt theorists such as Adorno conceive of society are in facthelpful in this respect, but such a discussion would digress too far from my present

critical focus.)

By way of the above discussion, and in order to add to it, I should like to make a

final criticism of Benhabib’s Habermasian conception of “defetishizing critique.” For

Benhabib, defetishizing critique is a procedure by which “the given is shown to be not

a natural fact but a socially and historically constituted, and thus changeable, reality”

(1986,47).This may be what it is for Hegel, but it most definitely is not a full descrip-

tion of the critique of fetish for Marx.Mam describes the “definite social relation”

between human beings that “assumes, in their eyes, the phantasmagoric[phantastische]form of a relation between things” (1954,77; translation altered). Benhabib’s interpre-

tation of this passage indicates merely that social relations assume the appearance of

natural or objectified forms. The point, however, is that they assume phantasmagoricform and that it is from this form that the product of social labor appears as a thing,

reified.This is also whyMarx finds an analogy in the mystificationsofreligious thought.

The “peculiar social character” of the labor that produces commodities produces their

fetishism because the “mutual relations of the producers . . . ake the form of a social

relation between the products” (77; emphasis added). It is this phantasmagoric form

that assumes the social character of capitalist society; it does not thereby become reifieditself, but rather mystifies through reification the real social relations of production (andhence of domination) in society. This is the sense in whichMarx can say that the pro-

ducers’ “own social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the pro-

ducers instead of being ruled by them” (79). This would seem to me also to provide an

adequate explanation of Marx’s peculiar reference in this section of Capital to the

“grotesque ideas” of the commodified table’s “wooden brain” and to the “language”

that commodities would speak if they could (76,87).

ConcludingRemarks

Dispensing with the need for a theory of class consciousness at the practical level

is bound to cast doubt on the thesis that Habermas continues a Marxist project of

emancipation under (even further) changed circumstances or, more accurately, with

different theoretical means. The theory of class consciousness has, following Luk6cs

(1971), tended to elevate the proletariat to the heady heights of a Hegelian subject-

object of history that would operate as the demiurge of the revolution. But it also

was aimed at combatting reification by theorizing the “conditions of possibility” fora new thinking that turned on the class-specific experience of reification-effects

opening onto their origins (see the insightful discussion of LukBcs’s project by

Jameson[19881). Without a theory of class consciousness-no matter how repressed

this consciousness may be at present-the idea of reification itself is diminished as

a critical concept.

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Hab enna s and Reification 49

In Habermas, reification comes to mean the colonization or domination of sub-

jects’ capacities to communicate freely and authentically (capacities that include thestructural resources of communication), where communication is understood in the

intersubjective, discursive sense. Freedom from reification means freedom in a very

bourgeois sense for Habermas (which cannot come as too much of a surprise, since

he explicitly conceives of his critical theory as a recovery of the potentials of bour-

geois Enlightenment). It would seem that Habermas turns reification into a critical

category for a bourgeois utopia itself abstracted from the historical process, which

thereby halts the historical dialectic prematurely (Horowitz 1994,2 14).

What Marx’s critique requires is a new way of thinking about production that is

dialectically related to thought’s own material conditions of existence. This allowsnew thinking about what is produced as well as the internal relations among social

actors who produce and exchange.A “historical” and “materialist” conception of pro-

duction focuses on the critique of the capitalist experience of alienation and its alter-nativeform, commodity fetishism, as aspects of the social totality, a totality in which

the socialness of its form-exchange society-is repressed yet necessarily present

in ideology. The political response is not to call fo r the act of exchange to be abol-

ished (since we already have nonreified relations of exchange in, for example, the

act of gift giving), but rather to call for its mystifications to be done away with-

mystifications that are bound up with the domination of the many by the few but thatoperate to dominate all.

The author would like to thank Rob ert Albritton, Antonio Callari, Michael Ha rdt,

Asher Horow itz, and the anonymous reviewer f o r RETHINKING MARXISMfor their com -

ments and criticism s on ear lier drafts and elements of this e ssa y. An e arlier version

was presented at the conference, Politics and Languages of Contemporary Marx-

ism, held 5-8 December 1996 at the University of Massachusetts a t Amherst.

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Martin Morris - The Critique of Reification in Habermas

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