When Marcuse turned 70, his old Frankfurt School pal, Habermas, gave him an unusual present: an essay reworking the former’s notion of technology and science as “ideologyâ€. I’m sure it was just what Marcuse always wanted.
Anyway. The article, creatively titled “Technology and science as ‘ideology’†unfolds after Habermas’ painfully dense fashion (what is with these German theoreticians!?). But after pecking away at it for awhile, I finally got into its groove. What he wants to say – and does so repeatedly – is that the so-called rationalization of society is intimately connected to the institutionalization of scientific and technical development. And this has dire implications for human liberation (or our continuing unfreedom). You’re thinking, yeah, whatever, what’s the newsflash? I’ll tell you:
Rationalization, following Weber, is the “disenchantment†of the world, the secularization of traditional worldviews. Sounds good so far. But the formal concept of rationality derives from purposive-rational action – that of the capitalist entrepreneur, the industrial wage earner, the modern bureaucrat. As such, it is not really “rationality†but a masked or unacknowledged political domination (says Marcuse). The structure of this rationality is oriented to technical control through subjugation of man and nature; the “rationalization†of the conditions of life is therefore equated to the institutionalization of a type of domination whose political nature is unrecognizable. Rationality is technical reason.
This kind of reason – oriented to control and domination and leading to unfreedom – is accepted by the masses, made palatable, due to the bourgeois ideologies of reciprocity and equality in the arena of economic exchange. In this bourgeois dream society, all are emancipated from domination and power is neutralized. But Marx’s labour theory of value destroyed the illusion of freedom and the root ideology of just exchange. It revealed that, in fact, the free labour contract obscured the relations of social force that underpinned the wage-labour relationship.
Habermas sets out to reformulate Weber’s concept of rationalization in order to discuss Marcuse’s critique of Weber, as well as his notion of the “double function†of scientific-technical progress – as both productive force and as ideology. What Weber tried to do with his concept of rationalization was understand how subsystems of purposive-rational action (the economy, the state) extended into societal institutions, and with what effect. Habermas proposes a new categorical framework to comprehend this phenomenon: the fundamental distinction b/w work (purposive-rational action) and interaction (communicative action). Purposive-rational action comprises both instrumental action (based on technical rules) and rational choice (governed by strategies based on analytic knowledge). Communicative action is symbolic interaction, and it’s governed by binding consensual norms.
We can distinguish social systems based on the type of action (or reason) that predominates. “The institutional framework of a society consists of norms that guide symbolic interaction. But there are subsystems… in which primarily sets of purposive-rational action are institutionalized†(93). In other (Habermasian) words, the lifeworld and the system confront one another in an ongoing struggle for supremacy. The passage from traditional society to modernity is marked by the continuous development of the productive forces, which causes the permanent encroachment of subsystems into the lifeworld of communicative action and interaction. The institutional framework of society thus adapts to the developing systems of purposive-rational action
The depoliticization of the masses must be achieved in order to legitimate this new society (where state intervention now compensates for the dysfunctions of the market). Marcuse says this will occur by having science and technology take on the role of an ideology; that is, by institutionalizing scientific-technical progress, causing people to lose consciousness of the dualism of work and interaction. Insidiously, it becomes a background ideology, penetrating into the consciousness of the depoliticized masses. “it is a singular achievement of this ideology to detach society’s self-understanding from the frame of reference of communicative action and from the concepts of symbolic interaction and replace it with a scientific model (105).
After a lot of writing, Habermas tells us that two concepts of rationalization must be distinguished. Rationalization at the level of subsystems of purposive-rational action, where scientific-technical progress can only be a liberatory force if it doesn’t replace rationalization at the level of the institutional framework. This kind of rationalization can occur only via symbolic interaction, by removing restrictions on communication. It must be public, unrestricted discussion, free from domination etc. etc. (You are thinking, correctly, of the public sphere and the theory of communicative action, two major Habermasian themes).
“The question is not whether we completely utilize an available or creatable potential, but whether we choose what we want for the purpose of the pacification and gratification of existence†(119).
Amen.