Review: Paradoxes of Reflexive SociologyAuthor(s): Paul PicconeSource: New German Critique, No. 8 (Spring, 1976), pp. 171-179Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/487728 .Accessed: 30/03/2011 17:49

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Paradoxes of Reflexive Sociology

by Paul Piccone

Alvin W. Gouldner, The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology: The Origins, Grammar and Future of Ideology. Seabury Press (New York, 1976); 304 plus xvi pp. $14.95.

Charged with having spent far too much time and effort in analyzing sociology as a

discipline in his two most recent works, For Sociology and The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, Gouldner has now returned to more substantive issues recalling topics dealt with in his earlier works: wild-cat strikes, factory and trade-union organization, bureaucracies, etc. Yet, there are no major ruptures in a sustained theoretical reflection that spans almost three decades. This new book extends and elaborates previous argu- ments to their logical consequences. To be sure, there are new departures such as the appropriation of certain key socio-linguistic notions, which both provides exciting new

perspectives while also imposing some serious limitations. The main features, however, remain fundamentally unaltered: the critique of objectivism, the elaboration of reflexive sociology (whose character is still largely programmatic), and the rapprochement - through a double-barrelled de-mystification--of both academic sociology and Marxism. Gouldner's primary aim here is to elaborate a series of existing contradictions while emphasizing what has, for various reasons, remained hidden and therefore unexamined.1

By treating ideology historically as the intellectual counterpart of property in the development of bourgeois society, Gouldner readily shows the objectivistic and scientistic pretenses of both academic sociology and Marxism to be premature univer- salizations of partial perspectives whose one-sidedness could not be critically dealt with without at the same time threatening their very ideological function, i.e., the mobilization of support for specific projects of social reconstruction. In fact, as Gouldner shows, both academic sociology's commitment to the retention of existing power relations, as well as the Marxist-Leninist leadership's monopoly of knowledge and power could fulfill their ideological function only as long as they remained unexamined and hidden from scrutiny, thus camouflaging their partiality within a

pseudo- universal cloak. Yet, unlike Western or Critical Marxism (with which Gouldner

1. Thus, it is no accident that the book is dedicated to Henry Demuth. For those lacking a good memory for names, on p. 104, Gouldner identifies him as Marx's bastard son "who knew something of the dark side of the dialectic": his very existence has been a closely-guarded secret in the Marxist movement.

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constantly flirts by labelling himself a "Marxist outlaw" without, however, really ever

entering into a firmer commitment), his socio-linguistic approach fails to heed its own

critique of ideology in order to devise a non-objectivistic approach to that developing contradictory whole whose dynamics would explain all otherwise separate and

seemingly autonomous phenomena. Thus, while Critical Marxism focuses on the

genesis of a qualitatively new collective subjectivity as the fulfillment of this millenarian process of self-becoming in a context where the result of the process is

already presupposed in the various steps leading to it so that the goal itself provides the

interpretational key to all social phenomena, the socio-linguistic account limits its attention to the genesis of a market-like public sphere where everyone would have the

competence as well as access to adequate means of expression--and thus to political power. But the logic of this massive didactic social process remains hidden within that

space socially allotted to the development of linguistically competent speakers, with the result that the analysis stops at the level of a multiplicity of penetrating empirical generalizations which do not ultimately coalesce into a rigorous explanatory scheme. In a nutshell, Gouldner's linguistic strategy falls victim to the kind of critique of intellectualism which he himself has elsewhere developed in his preliminary analysis of

revolutionary intellectuals: the emphasis on linguistics "implies an overestimation of mind, of words, of consciousness, of theory."2 And since the whole, contrary to Hegel's wishes, is not reducible to its own self-consciousness but remains largely non-

conceptual, any theory that limits itself solely to the conceptual (or linguistic) component not only remains necessarily partial and not fully reflexive, but also tends to fall back into objectivism.

Ultimately, then, what is missing in Gouldner is a phenomenology of labor as praxis where labor is not reduced merely to the robotized routine typical of contemporary wage-labor, but is broadly understood to include all teleological and creative human

activity wherein all may participate and which is not limited, as a kind of class

privilege, to the industrial proletariat.3 Since Gouldner's characterization of the key

2. Cf. Alvin W. Gouldner, "Prologue to a Theory of Revolutionary Intellectuals," in Telos, 26 (Winter 1975-76), 36.

3. The dialectic of labor and praxis is crucial here. The Marxist tradition has uncritically assumed that the first necessarily turns into the second in the collective recapturing of alienated being in both its objective moment as capital and its subjective moment as consciousness with the rise--in Lukics' formulation-of the subject-object identity on the ruins of capitalist economic crises. Since, however, praxis presupposes labor and it is only the working class that allegedly labors, the proletariat inherits the revolutionary potentials of Western civilization. But this has not been historically the case. One of the merits of Gouldner's book is to have shown how consumerism and the media can, and have, prevented this necessary qualitative transformation of labor into praxis and how, as a result, intellectuals who (unlike the intelligentsia, which Gouldner describes without using these terms, as that part of the intellectuals whose labor does not tend toward praxis) at least subjectively can partly overcome alienation in their theoretical labor and thereby have a glimpse at praxis, end up substituting themselves for that very revolutionary class postulated by their still ungrounded theories (Leninism). The crucial problem of intellectuals and the logic of their predicament whereby they inherit revolutionary consciousness by default is promised as the theme of Gouldner's next book. For a preview, see Gouldner, "Prologue...," op. cit.

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socio-linguistic notion of "elaborated code" refers to what could be characterized as the intellectual means of production, any exclusion from ownership of this code cuts off non-owners not only from rational political discourse, but also from any meaningful subjectivity. Gouldner's emphasis on intellectuals as that group owning the intellectual means of production who therefore have access to revolutionary consciousness, provides him with a solid theoretical handle on the history of revolutions during the past two centuries. But his silence- to use his own terminology -concerning the process of that production and the living pre-conceptual reality of which rational discourse is but a moment misleads him into identifying the hopes of humanity merely with the genesis of a universally-shared rational discourse.

Although Gouldner is well aware of the intrinsic limitations of intellectuals' "elaborated code" as a formal mode of discourse (in fact, he is highly critical of it), his

critique of intellectualism, surprisingly enough, finds no resonance in his own theoretical approach so that the result is an intellectualistic critique of intellectualism. And here is what may be considered one of the main paradoxes of his reflexive

sociology: his analytical results do not significantly alter the structure of his theory which consequently remains traditional--at least in the sense that it continues to

presuppose the possibility of objectively apprehending social being without dialectically translating the onesidedness of the apprehension (its grounding) into the theory so that theorizing itself becomes a political act. This objectivistic remnant exacts as its political price a need to shift the burden of history from human will embodied in flesh and blood to the dynamics of the existing social framework. Thus, for a theoretical perspective to generate a politics, it must intervene in this dynamic: external intervention has the upper hand over the self-revolutionizing process. This is

why the main question of human emancipation becomes one of whether the present thrust of bourgeois society is broadening or blocking the universalization of rational discourse-and, notwithstanding his scathing critique, Gouldner suggests that it is

moving in the right emancipatory direction. This is also why some of his sharpest attacks are reserved for that segment of the second generation of critical theorists who

postulate the disappearance of the public sphere in monopoly capitalism. Where they fantasize about a qualitatively new mode of collective subjectivity not tied to present property relations and existing forms of domination-something which, because of its very nature, remains essentially an unelaborated projection--Gouldner sees only Stalinist results and intensified bureaucratic manipulation as the upshot of the theory of the decline of the public sphere. Consequently, not only does he reject it as

empirically untenable, but he also denounces it as politically suicidal. In this respect, the critique of Habermas is devastating. Gouldner readily shows how

the means to bring about the communicative competence that Habermas requires for rational discourse presuppose precisely the centralization and strengthening of that state apparatus which increasingly tends to stifle rather than facilitate the universali- zation of the rational, uninhibited discourse necessary for any democratic society. Thus, Habermas' theory remains caught in a dilemma which prevents its translation into a concrete political project. To further argue not only for the decline but for the

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non-existence of any viable public sphere, as some of Habermas' brighter students do, is even more problematic since it unwittingly plays into the hands of the Marxist- Leninist statist perspective whereby the "sham" public sphere of bourgeois democracy is unmasked in favor of an "honest" totalitarian dictatorship whose only advantage would consist in openly admitting what allegedly is already the case - under a different management.

Having already convincingly shown the twin nature of Marxism and sociology, Gouldner merely extends his analysis to cover bourgeois democracy and proletarian dictatorship. Confronted with a choice between the two bourgeois and socialist alternatives, however, he unambiguously opts for the former as the one most likely to allow the development of a public sphere of rational discourse. Since what is important is the development of linguistically competent subjects, the nationalization of the means of production is no solution to the problem: in fact, to the extent that a state-controlled system would prevent contradictions from surfacing, the private ownership offers distinct advantages over public ownership. What counts most of all is that, according to Gouldner, the contradictions of late capitalism further rather than stifle the growth of ideology and of the maturation of the preconditions for rational discourse.

It is here especially that the framing of his argument along socio-linguistic lines allows Gouldner to generate a whole series of original analyses. In one of the most

explosive chapters of the book, he draws the political consequences of the present predicament in which only intellectuals have access to the "elaborated code," i.e., ideological discourse, while the masses are relegated to a restricted code that prevents them from actively participating in a rational, political discussion and which

consequently makes them victim to new and more subtle modes of manipulation and

repression. Extended to the mass media, these observations yield a penetrating account of the consciousness industry and the cultural apparatus which explains how these new revolutionary technological developments reinforce restricted codes and thus do not extend rational discourse to those exposed to them. As long as the system is able to provide an adequate amount of socially sanctioned satisfaction through consumerism, the masses will remain vulnerable to manipulation at the paleo- symbolic level and, inasmuch as they fail therefore to appropriate elaborated codes, will remain at best on the periphery of rational political discourse. Once again, the emphasis shifts from the masses to the intellectuals as that critical segment of the

population with whom the hopes for emancipation must rest. But, again, Gouldner's positive analysis of the intellectuals is counter-balanced by

the exposure of their own faults. Thus, Gouldner is far from espousing any "end of

ideology" thesis which legitimates this exclusion of the masses from public rational discourse by virtue of the technocrats' ability to scientifically manage the economy and culture, insuring a steady flow of commodities and hence increasingly reinforcing an institutionalized, depoliticizing consumerism. In fact, Gouldner explodes a whole new series of contradictions, providing the most devastating critique yet of this technocratic ideology. Since the capitalist economy is still fundamentally profit-

REVIEWESSAYS 175

oriented, the recent shift whereby ownership and control no longer coincide does not mean the rationalization of the system but merely a refinement of the old contradictions. Given the nature of contemporary capitalism, Gouldner shows how two major problems point toward the increasing need for justificatory ideologies. First of all, the rise of the technocrats within the enterprise creates sharp conflicts between the bureaucracy based on authority and the uncritical following of rules, and the technocrats whose position is based on competence and rational self-justification. Second, the successful continuation of consumerism is predicated on the stability of the system and a continual flow of goods whose interruption in times of cyclic economic crises or war, promptly de-legitimates the system, necessitating new

ideological justification or ideological mobilization for alternatives. In both cases, ideology turns out to be an indispensable second line of legitimation.

These arguments for the ineliminability of ideology, combined with Gouldner's contention that there has been and will continue to be an absolute increase in elaborated code users as a result of the astronomic growth of universities to meet the need for technologically and scientifically trained personnel, ultimately salvage an

Enlightenment perspective whereby society is still progressing toward human

emancipation. Furthermore, they clearly provide concrete indications for political action--at least on the part of intellectuals who, as already indicated, comprise for Gouldner the crucial social group. On the one hand, the technocracy increasingly comes to challenge the irrationalities of the system by merely extending its self-

justifying scientific rationality into public discussion and politics, while on the other hand intellectuals engaged in the cultural apparatus increasingly challenge along similar lines the consciousness industry within which they come to play a central role. This is indeed an appealing political scenario. The problem, however, is that it may be too optimistic.

In the crucial eighth chapter on "Ideology and the University Revolt," Gouldner locates the university as the center of "ideologically rational, political discourse." Its

growth is definitely viewed as a positive sign. Although any examination of the growth of American universities during the past century certainly bears out Gouldner's thesis, a closer look at the problem in relation to the universities' changing social role in

entrepreneurial and monopoly capitalism (and the transitional period from the first to the second) may explain this growth in terms of the system's new functional needs rather than as a genuine expansion of the public sphere. At any rate, more recent

developments in the structure of American higher education-.e.g., over the last 15

years--indicate that the rapid growth of universities has by no means contributed

considerably to an increase of linguistically competent speakers. First of all, the largest increase has taken place in community colleges. Only euphemistically can one describe what occurs there as "education." Generally, they are glorified vocational schools

teaching minimal skills which were earlier provided either by high schools before they deteriorated to their present sad status as day-care centers for adolescents, or by industry, through privately-financed training programs. Community colleges thus socialize costs previously incurred by industry while functioning as remedial centers to

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maintain a minimal level of education necessary for those entering the work force even at the very bottom. Secondly, the next greatest expansion- that of state universities- has been countered by the rapid decline of private universities from centers of alleged intellectual freedom to expensive feeders for professional post-graduate schools. In fact, only by guaranteeing or at least increasing the chances to enter privileged professions can these private institutions justify their high costs vis-k-vis competing state universities offering roughly similar services but now downgraded to the training of the large numbers of personnel needed by modern bureaucracies. Thus, although there has been an improvement in the latter sector, it is largely offset by the deterio- ration of private liberal arts institutions. Thirdly, elite universities have also grown, but nowhere as rapidly as the other two levels, so that the unrestricted rational discourse taking place there remains generally isolated and inextricably intertwined with the highest levels of business and government. The need for accurate information

upon which to base decisions and critical evaluation of plans and programs requires that truly uninhibited discourse occur there. Yet, this discourse remains privatized within intellectual elites completely cut off from any kind of public sphere.

What this state of affairs seems to indicate is that if the public sphere is not declining, neither is it growing as Gouldner would suggest. In fact, the opening of some important critical space during the past decade in universities could be due more to the system's need to dismantle an unnecessarily repressive apparatus no longer needed in the age of dftente where all internal as well as external opposition has been checkmated, than to a genuine spontaneous growth of the public sphere. In retro- spect, the kind of one-dimensionality popularized by Marcuse in the 1960s but fully theorized by the Frankfurt School in exile during the Second World War, was not a German version of 1984 or Brave New World, but a passing phase in the transition from entrepreneurial to monopoly capitalism.4 Once the transition has been nearly completed, it is no longer necessary to annihilate specificity and otherness. Whatever specificity and otherness might spontaneously develop cannot yield meaningful alternatives in such a situation, but can only be instrumentalized by a socio-economic system which lacks internal control mechanisms and which desperately needs critical ex- ternal subsidies of this type to remain viable. While regulating the system, however, this artificially created free space also allows the elaboration of radical alternatives which may eventually seriously challenge existing power relations. Although this prospect is clearly within the framework of Gouldner's projection, it is by no means so optimistic.

The question of technocracy is similarly problematic. Its making a successful challenge to bureaucratic domination is far from being a mere issue of competence against authority. As Kovanda suggests in his account of the Czech experience, the technocratic challenge is possible only within bureaucratically sanctioned confines and, barring any unforeseen political developments, remains fully within its ascribed

4. For a fuller elaboration of this periodization of the history of capitalism, see Paul Piccone, "From Tragedy to Farce: The Return of Critical Theory," New German Critique, 7 (Winter 1976), 91-104.

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limits.5 The technocratic challenge launched in the USSR and Czechoslovakia in the 1960s was the result of the bureaucracy's realization that a radical overhaul of the socio-economic apparatus was necessary to overcome the kind of stagnation typical of socialist countries in the late 1950s. As soon as the political liberalization advocated by Liberman in the USSR and by the Richta Commission in Czechoslovakia spelled trouble for the bureaucracy, it was readily smashed with the technocrats immediately falling in line. The reason why the Prague Spring came about was not that the techno- crats resisted the bureaucracy but, rather, that before the bureaucracy could re- establish law and order, the intellectuals and the radical democrats seized the

opportunity to overthrow the old guard within the Party. That the 1968 events were not spearheaded by the technocrats in Czechoslovakia can be further confirmed by the fact that, after the restoration of the status quo ante following the Russian invasion, the overwhelming majority of the technocrats, led by Richta himself, gradually fell back into place to provide their "value-free" services to the new system which did not hesitate to instrumentalize them for the ideological "normalization" of the 1970s.

Ironically enough, the long since discredited claims of human emancipation in the Soviet bloc have recently been replaced by a technocratic objectivistic justification emphasizing efficiency within a bureaucratic domination regarded as "neutral."6 Of course, the slap on the wrists of the Czechs was also felt by enterprising Russian and East European technocrats who, predictably enough, also fell back into the newly and

sharply defined lines.

Although this example is from a "socialist" country, the situation is not significantly different--even if immensely more subtle--in the U.S. The technocratic challenge here has been almost entirely sponsored and financed by government and corporate interests. The immediate nuisances that it has created in its most visible examples, e.g., ecology, are clearly meant to remedy long-range problems for the production and reproduction of social capital. Furthermore, in a situation of monopoly capitalism, the price that it entails is readily socialized either through governmental subsidies or by passing costs on to consumers. Without insinuating any disrespect for brilliant scientists such as Barry Commoner (whom Gouldner approvingly mentions), whose impact on the ecological movement has been decisive, it remains the case that without government and philanthropic sponsorship, his high-powered research center could hardly exist. And even when he openly indicts the profit motive and capitalism in general as thefons et origo malorum, its radical impact is eventually cushioned by the fact that there is no oppositional force able to ideologically mobilize around such

5. For a fuller account of the Czech experience and the struggle between technocrats and bureaucrats, see Karel Kovanda, "Czech Workers' Councils 1968-1969," forthcoming in Telos, 28 (Summer 1976).

6. For an analysis of this state of affairs, see Guido Neri, "Egualitarianismo Livellatore e Socialismo Stratificato: Riflessioni sull'Ideologia e sulla Prassi del Socialismo Cecoslovacco," in Aut Aut, 140 (March-April 1974), 3-18; and Guido Neri, "Variazioni Ideologiche del Socialismo Realizzato: L'Umanismo Scientifico-Tecnologico," in Aut Aut, 145-146 (January-April 1975), 51-72.

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provocative theses so that its only meaningful short-range outcome is corporate ideological re-organization and re-armament.7 At any rate, Commoner is by no means a typical technocrat. The more popular garden variety tends to rapidly internalize the values of whatever organization he or she may work for and to readily capitulate to the bureaucracy in cases of overt conflicts.8

What these two accounts of the growth of critical space within universities and the function of technocracy indicate is that what is happening in both spheres remains within the present logic of domination much more than Gouldner and other

progressive intellectuals may wish. What is most important in Gouldner's account is the location of explosive contradictions which may allow for concrete political intervention. In fact, one of the most unpardonable theoretical sins for Gouldner consists precisely in arbitrarily reconciling contradictions. This is why he argues with Althusser and against Geras in the last chapter: Geras' call for the removal of ideology presupposes conditions which do not yet exist so that Althusser, who argues for the

present ineliminability of ideology, turns out to be the more honest and realistic of the two. Geras' denial of the necessity of ideology is seen as at least as ideological as Althusser's apology for its inevitability precisely because it obscures the fact that there is presently no chance whatsoever for its elimination in the Soviet bloc. But this is a curious argument which ultimately presupposes the infamous reflection theory. Without engaging in a defense of Geras' dubious position, it is important to further examine Gouldner's strange defense of what could be called an "honest Stalinism" since it is precisely the logic underlying the apparent oddity here that is used to

circumnavigate the rocky problem of part and whole to reach a reflexive critical theory, while falling prey to the sirens of objectivism.

Reminescent of Adorno's vindication of the lacerated character of the whole that must be captured by any meaningful sociological analysis, 9 Gouldner opts for Althusser's honest appraisal of lacerated Soviet reality against Geras' false recon- ciliation. But both Adorno and Gouldner ultimately do not avoid the problem of an

adequate subject to conceptually grasp the social object--even if its lacerated nature is

7. Cf. Barry Commoner, The Poverty of Power (New York, 1976), especially the final chapter in which Commoner attempts to recycle the law of the falling rate of profit as the funeral of capitalism--which explains why the ideological watchdogs who edit The New Yorker chose to omit this chapter when they serialized the book in January and February, 1976. But, as has been repeatedly pointed out, the functioning of this law is not only conditioned by all sorts of counter-tendencies which make its outcome utterly unpredictable, but its decisive element is precisely revolutionary subjectivity - the political factor - in the absence of which there is no way capitalism will quietly lay down and breathe its last profits. For excellent discussions of the law of the falling rate of profit and capitalist crises, see Russell Jacoby, "Politics of the Crisis Theory: Towards a Critique of Automatic Marxism II," in Telos, 23 (Spring 1975), 3-52; and Giacomo Marramao, "Political Economy and Critical Theory," Telos, 24 (Summer 1975), 56-80.

8. For an excellent case study of a specialized group of technocrats which bears the above negative evaluation, see Robert Boguslaw, The New Utopians: A Study of System Design and Social Change (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965).

9. Cf. the opening essay in Theodor W. Adorno et al., The Positivist Debate in German Sociology (London, 1975).

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safeguarded. A lacerated world is necessarily inhabited by lacerated subjects who, unfortunately, can only come up with lacerated conceptualizations. Unless we abandon critical theory's fundamental tenets, which neither Adorno nor Gouldner seems inclined to do, the retention of the laceration in the theory still presupposes a mythical collective subjectivity. In a situation in which collective subjectivity remains, at best, a desirable goal (unless one accepts the substitutionism of orthodox Communist Parties whereby collective subjectivity is automatically ascribed to the

Party--or its central committee) an adequate theory cannot be produced merely through the honest capturing of the laceration, but only by re-dimensioning social theory itself. The recognition of the absence of the collective subject shakes the status of the theory: from a faithful conceptual apprehension of being, theory comes down to the level of a constituted construct thus fully exhibiting rather than dismissing its ineliminable onesided groundings. To the extent that the theory is therefore an historically contingent mediation and never merely an objective reflection, its primary commitment is always to the goal, which subsequently allows the specification of the categories according to which reality is to be grasped. This does not mean that we see what we want to see, but that we become conscious of how we are to grasp a reality which, as such, can be grasped in many different ways--all equally objectively valid but presupposing different mediations and teleologies.

If the mere rejection of the falsely reconciled reality does not avoid the problem of the mythical collective subject, then it is equally useless to praise any kind of "honest Stalinism" for successfully salvaging the objective laceration in the theory: what is needed is a more healthy distrust of the theoretical dimension. It always must be constituted and involves risk and commitment, while providing no guarantee or salvation. The theoretical totality is thus ultimately an historical construction which in terms of Gouldner's own precepts must not hide behind an objectivistic clothing but must place its own cards on the table and relate more openly to its own ineliminable onesidedness. In terms of the project of a reflexive sociology, it would have to focus on the process of theoretical constitution: the intellectual labor which generates this analytical and theoretical framework. After this nominalistic demotion, theory can now be raised to the level of the constituted logic of the essence understood as that search for human emancipation practically presupposed by all of Western civilization from the Greeks on. This would also allow the application of Gouldner's analysis of ideology to himself, thus providing a more self-reflexive account.

As the first of three projected volumes, this book raises a number of crucial issues, confrontation with which will inevitably enhance even the critics. Gouldner's own

position is still in the process of formation and, as such, still internally unresolved- especially concerning the problem of how to be scientific in a critical sense without falling into objectivism. In this last book he seems to have done more of the former and less of the latter. When all is said and done, however, this book will doubtless stand out as one of the best and most provocative contributions of the 1970s.