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Unit 11: Karl Marx: His Life and Works, Materialism and Dialectical Materialism

discoverable laws. This led to determinism and totalitarianism. He insisted that philosophy Notes
had to be humble. It could not offer a set of principles or a theory that would solve all the
dilemmas of moral and political life, nor could it straighten the “crooked timber of humanity”,
a favourite phrase with him, which he borrowed from Kant. He was opposed to philosophy
proposing radical social reforms, which explained his hostility towards Marxism. For Berlin,
totalitarian ideologies and politics—Fascism, Nazism and Communism— did have different
goals between them to pursue, but they shared certain common traits. They viewed the state
as being superior to the individual, giving it an overarching role over society and individuals.
It directed every aspect of the individual’s life, suggesting homogeneity and regarding any
deviation as sacrilegious.
• Habermas (1991) rejected specifically the nostalgic, romantic and Utopian vision of Socialism,
though he remained a committed socialist. He was clear that Socialism would not rise again,
but that it was still alive, as a critique. He considered Socialism as a “discourse in exile”. He
examined Marx’s theory of history by focusing on the relationship between crisis and critique,
and then on the concepts of reification and alienation. First, Habermas raised doubts about
Marx’s Hegelian-inspired concept of labour as a human being’s self-creative activity.
Individuals learnt to control the natural world and acquire technical knowledge, but it was
social interaction that established human capacity, namely the development of moral cognitive
abilities. This, according to Habermas, could not be explained by the increase in productive
forces, implying that class conflict was no longer a motive in history. By focusing on
production, Marx failed to see the possibilities for freedom in the realm of social interaction.
He mistook command of the external nature of human freedom, and ignored social repression
of internal nature. Second, Habermas pointed out that societies were totalities, whose parts
were in the end determined by the level of development of their productive forces. He
distinguished between life-world and system, which in turn were divided into the private
and public spheres. The life-world was the realm of moral-practical knowledge or relations
that existed within the families and workplaces (the private), and political actions and opinions
(the public). It was coordinated through communicative actions, namely actions involving
the self and those of others. In comparison, political (states) and economic (markets) systems
were coordinated through the modicum of power and money. Habermas argued that Marx
failed to see these distinctions, which was why he could not foresee the stability of capitalism
or the bankruptcy of Socialism. Third, Marx defined history as progress, rather than the
development of universal principles of morality and justice. Though these did not represent
the unfolding of reason in history, “Historicizing the knowledge of an essence ... only replaces
the teleology of Being with that of History. The secretly normative presuppositions of theories
of history are naturalized in the form of evolutionary concepts of progress”.
• Habermas pointed out that moral cognitive developments logically created a space for new
forms of social organizations, and that fundamental changes occurred when society
demonstrated the capacity to adapt and grow. These changes indicated the meaning of
freedom, and were defined by the participants themselves. Only with a convergence of
knowing and doing, and the self-conscious creation of a socialist society could put an end to
human exile. The specific function of critical theory was to identify the formal conditions
that made this emancipation possible. Habermas maintained that by visualizing humans as
producers, societies as totalities, and history as progress, Marx went back to a Hegelian-
inspired theology and anthropology.
• According to Habermas, state socialism became bankrupt, but Socialism still nurtured “the
hope that humanity can emancipate itself from self-imposed tutelage”. It remained a “doctrine
in exile”, for it nourished the possibility, according to Fischman, that “people can be more
human than their society permits”.

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