Domination and Power

Peter Miller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000704860
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

First published in 1987. Our understanding of the nature of power in western societies is currently undergoing a major reassessment. The significance of this reassessment emerges forcefully through comparing the writings of the principal exponents of Critical Theory - Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas - with those of Michel Foucault. Peter Miller suggests that these two traditions embody fundamentally distinct philosophical and sociological principles. He grounds his analysis in the concepts of domination (Critical Theory) and power (Foucault).

Miller identifies the notion of subjectivity as central to a differentiation of the respective approaches of Critical Theory and Foucault. For Critical Theory it is the repression of subjectivity which provides the evidence of domination and the rationale for its critique, while for Foucault subjectivity in western societies is fabricated through power and linked to the deployment of specific knowledges. Miller shows that despite the achievements of Critical Theory in bringing to light the repressive nature of advanced industrial societies, its thinking is inadequate as a basis for future analysis and critique. He argues that Foucault's genealogy of the modern subject, which highlights the role of the human sciences in its fabrication, is a more fruitful basis for charting and investigating the mode of operation of contemporary forms of power.

The book includes a survey of all published works by Foucault, up to the time of his death in 1984, and commentaries on the writings of Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas.

PART 1

CRITICAL THEORY

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CHAPTER 1

MAX HORKHEIMER AND CULTURAL CRITIQUE

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A classic statement of the initial project of critical theory is provided by Max Horkheimer in his article ‘Traditional and critical theory’ which appeared in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung in 1937.¹ This paper provides a useful point of departure here through the relation it identifies between the Cartesian and Kantian categories of ego and subjectivity, and the domination of individuals which it posits as the defining characteristic of twentieth century capitalism. With this starting point Horkheimer inscribes the issue of subjectivity at the heart of critical theory’s concern with domination.

Traditional theory, Horkheimer argues, is represented in different ways by the works of Kant and Descartes. Kant’s philosophy is held to mirror a society whose ‘senseless wretchedness’ appears as ‘an unchangeable force of nature, a fate beyond man’s control’.² Conversely, the philosophy of Descartes is depicted as ‘ideology in the strict sense, for in it the limited freedom of the bourgeois individual puts on the illusory form of perfect freedom and autonomy.’³

Against both Kant and Descartes, Horkheimer argues that critical theory requires a philosophical account of subjectivity which is both materialist as well as ‘critical’. Traditional theory, he suggests, is based on a form of scientific activity carried on within the division of labour at an advanced stage of development. It ‘speaks not of what theory means in human life, but only of what it means in the isolated sphere in which for historical reasons it comes into existence.’⁴ Critical theory, however, directs itself not at the scientist in an attempt to better equip him to carry out his task. Instead it addresses ‘the knowing individual as such’.⁵

But it is not simply the epistemological conception of the subject in traditional philosophy which Horkheimer considers to be at fault. More importantly what is held to be required is a restructuring of the bifurcation in which the individual is considered to exist vis-à-vis bourgeois society. Society, Horkheimer argues, is an ‘active subject’, although as an unconscious one it is a subject only in an improper sense. In relation to society the ‘individual sees himself as passive and dependent’.⁶ Horkheimer attributes this difference in the existence of man and society to ‘the cleavage which has up to now affected the historical forms of social life.’⁷ Society, he argues, has never been the result of ‘conscious spontaneity on the part of free individuals’.⁸ However this separation between the individual and society is not absolute. Bourgeois society is seen to be characterised by the blindness of its activity, whereas that of individuals is held to possess a conscious and purposive element. But to the extent that social action entails knowledge and its application, Horkheimer argues that one must admit the existence of a restricted rationality, even in bourgeois society. Subject and object, man and nature cannot be regarded as entirely separate. The ‘world of objects’ does not confront the individual as entirely alien, but is ‘in large measure produced by an activity that is itself determined by the very ideas which help the individual to recognise that world and to grasp it conceptually’.⁹

This distinction between an individual and a supra-individual level of social existence, Horkheimer argues, is expressed in an idealist form in Kant’s separation of passive sensation and active understanding. This distinction is held to give rise to Kant’s question of ‘whence the understanding derives its assured expectation that the manifold given in sensation will always obey the rules of the understanding’.¹⁰ Kant’s reply, witnessing for Horkheimer both his idealism and the depth and honesty of his thinking, is to posit a ‘supra-individual activity, of which the individual is unaware’, but to do so ‘in the idealist form of a consciousness-in-itself, that is a purely intellectual source’.¹¹ It is the ‘theoretical vision available in his day’ that is held to have prevented Kant from comprehending the real nature of the relation between the actions of individuals and the existence of society. Horkheimer argues that the limits imposed by idealism prevented Kant from grasping the process through which, in bourgeois society, the product of man’s activity is separated from him. But Kant’s philosophy is none the less held to contain a ‘kernel of truth’ in the contradictions which it establishes. Horkheimer argues that these mirror the contradictions of bourgeois society: ‘The unresolved problem of the relation between activity and passivity, a priori and sense data, philosophy and psychology, is therefore not due to purely subjective insufficiency but is objectively necessary.’¹² The objectivity of bourgeois society and its ‘reflection’ in Kant’s philosophy is seen to make the latter more than an ideology.

Central to Horkheimer’s critical theory is a concern to provide a ‘materialist’ formulation to this question of the separation of the individual and society. The aim of his critical theory is to ‘relativise’ this separation, to relate the societal context in which men live to its origin in human action. This is held to give rise to the possibility of subjecting human action to ‘planful decision and rational determination of goals’.¹³

The opposition of critical theory to traditional theory proposed by Horkheimer derives ‘from a difference not so much of objects as of subjects’.¹⁴ Critical thought starts from the assumption that the ‘objective realities given in perception … should be under human control and, in the future at least, will in fact come under it’.¹⁵ Horkheimer posits here the notion of a ‘tension’ which he argues is central to life in bourgeois society, a tension between ‘the individual’s purposefulness, spontaneity, and rationality, and those work-process relationships on which society is built’.¹⁶ Critical theory entails ‘a concept of man as in conflict with himself until this opposition is removed.’¹⁷ To the extent that activity governed by reason is held to be proper to man, bourgeois society, for Horkheimer, is the negation of man’s humanity.

Horkheimer’s critical theory thus places a philosophy of the subject, albeit a putatively materialist one, at its heart. But the subject of critical theory is not the isolated autonomous individual. It is rather ‘a definite individual in his real relation to other individuals and groups, in his conflict with a particular class, and, finally, in the resultant web of relationships with the social totality and with nature’.¹⁸ The subject of critical thought is embedded in a ‘concrete historical’ process. And the unity of subject and object to which critical thinking aspires is located in the future. It is dependent on a transformation of the social structure itself. The ‘subject’ of critical theory is thus also the subject of this historical transformation. In Horkheimer’s words, the activity of the subject ‘is the construction of the social present’.¹⁹

Horkheimer’s 1937 essay not only locates critical theory in relation to the Kantian and Cartesian notions of subjectivity. Avowedly Marxist at this point, although not perhaps to the extent that his explicit statements might suggest,²⁰ Horkheimer seeks to link this concern with subjectivity with the historical materialist principle of exchange value. In itself this general mechanism is not seen to be adequate as an account of contemporary capitalism. It is considered to provide simply a starting point for critical theory, from which it ‘moves further, using all knowledge available and taking suitable material from the research of others as well as from specialized research’.²¹

The introduction of Marxist economic categories does not, however, indicate a separate set of concerns to those of the loss of the individual’s subjectivity. They are seen rather as necessarily linked in that an economy dominated by exchange value is one in which the self-determination of the individual is denied. The fundamentally historical nature of Marx’s analysis is taken as demonstration that this situation is not an eternal condition. But for the transition to a rational society actually to be achieved what is required is that mankind be capable of positing itself as a purposive subject. Such a shift, Horkheimer argues, requires ‘an exercise of will power, in the knowing subject’.²² Critical theory is directed toward the future, but this future can be installed only by the activity of a subject whose emergence is self-generating.

Critical theory is further differentiated from traditional theory by Horkheimer through the notion of ‘necessity’. Critical theory, he suggests, begins with the postulate that the present era is dominated by the exchange relationship, and that this ‘must necessarily lead to a heightening of those social tensions which in the present historical era lead in turn to wars and revolutions’.²³ But the concept of necessity as a part of critical theory must, Horkheimer argues, be distinguished from the notion of necessity within traditional theory. The latter refers, he argues, to the question of logical necessity alone, the deduction of real relations from universal concepts, a notion of necessity shared by critical and traditional theory.

There is, however, ‘a decisive difference when it comes to the relation of subject and object and therefore to the necessity of the event being judged.’²⁴ For the scientific specialist, Horkheimer argues, either everything is necessary or nothing is necessary. The object of science, he suggests, is entirely separate from both the observer and his theory: ‘The objective occurrence is independent of the theory, and this independence is part of its necessity: the observer as such can effect no change in the object.’²⁵ Critical theory, however, is itself an important component in the transformation of society, in the transformation of the object of critical theory. To understand the course of history as following necessarily from a particular economic mechanism is, Horkheimer argues, to imply a critique of that process. The critique is generated by that social order against which it is directed:

A consciously critical attitude, however, is part of the development of society: the construing of the course of history as the necessary product of an economic mechanism simultaneously contains both a protest against this order of things, a protest generated by the order itself, and the idea of self-determination for the human race, that is the idea of a state of affairs in which man’s actions no longer flow from a mechanism but from his own decision. The judgement passed on the necessity inherent in the previous course of events implies here a struggle to change it from a blind to a meaningful necessity. If we think of the object of the theory in separation from the theory, we falsify it and fall into quietism or confirmism. Every part of the theory presupposes the critique of the existing order and the struggle against it along lines determined by the theory itself.²⁶

Horkheimer’s usage of the notion of necessity here is confusing. It refers to the emergence of critical theory itself at a particular historical moment. It refers also to the injunction which critical theory contains for mankind to become ‘a conscious subject and actively determine its own way of life’.²⁷ The concept of necessity in critical theory is, Horkheimer argues, ‘itself a critical concept; it presupposes freedom, even if a not yet existent freedom.’²⁸ Cartesian dualism is seen to be unable to encapsulate such a concept of necessity. For the dualist, Horkheimer argues, necessity refers ‘only to events which he anticipates as probable’.²⁹ The ‘idea of a theory which becomes a genuine force [is] beyond the grasp of a mentality typified by such a dualism.’³⁰ The traditional concept of necessity is fundamentally limited in that it is unable to take account of ‘the unity of theory and practice’,³¹ the notion that there is a form of causality which is dependent on the subjectivity of mankind. It is, ultimately, to this subjectivity that critical theory addresses itself.

It may be useful to distinguish at this point the notion of subjectivity on which Horkheimer’s project of critical theory is based from the principle embodied in Lukács’ notion of a class-subject,³² and from Lenin’s adherence to the notion of a vanguard party as bearer of a new social order.³³ Horkheimer appeals to a subjectivity, immanent, yet susceptible to the activity of the critical intellectual. The subjectivity which is to bring about this new social order does not emerge from the dialectic of history itself (Lukács), or from a scientific perception (Lenin) which endows an elite with the right to direct th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Half Title
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Subjectivity and power
• Part 1 Critical Theory
• Part 2 Michel Foucault: Genealogies of the Subject
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected bibliography
• Index