Critical Theory and Libertarian Socialism

Realizing the Political Potential of Critical Social Theory

Charles Masquelier

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781441175700
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

This volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society series examines the role critical theory plays in today's political, social, and economic crises, showing how it can help to both diagnose and remedy such problems.
Critical social theory is first revisited by exposing the affinity between Marx's critique of political economy, the critique of instrumental reason elaborated by the first generation of the Frankfurt School, and the libertarian socialism of G.D.H. Cole. This is followed by a proposal for a radical reorganization of economic and political life and the corresponding development of emancipatory practices presupposing the reconciliation of humanity and nature. Lastly, the contemporary relevance of these institutions and practices are discussed, along with cases of contemporary forms of resistance, such as the Occupy Movement and alter-globalisation.
By bringing together the concerns of critical theory and libertarian socialism, this volume not only illustrates the practical side of critical theory, but also highlights its contemporary relevance. Researchers in political theory, social theory and political philosophy will find this an engaging work that will stimulate debates about new alternatives to existing problems.

1

Human emancipation and labour as self-realization

Marx’s critique of political economy was chiefly formulated as a critical examination of the various economic and socio-political institutions unfolding the industrial or liberal stage of capitalist development, based on a reformulation of the dialectical frame of reference elaborated by Hegel. According to Adorno (1997), however, Marx failed to problematize sufficiently the form of autonomy advocated by idealism and, as such, fell short of calling into question the logic of domination underpinning this strand of philosophical thought and Bourgeois values. Marx’s approach to autonomous practice has therefore been charged by the same member of the Frankfurt School for promoting humanity’s mastery of both internal and external forces of nature. In this chapter, I shall nevertheless seek to demonstrate that, unlike his (idealist) predecessors, Marx (a) understood autonomy as a form of human emancipation and (b) provided a basis upon which the practice of such emancipation could manifest itself as the mediated non-identity of humanity and nature through labour. As such, he not only anticipated the approach to emancipation as the reconciliation of humanity and nature embodied in the works of first-generation critical theorists but also conceptualized the practical conditions required for its realization beyond capitalist economic and socio-political institutions.

Idealism, autonomy and the mediated unity of humanity and nature

Kant’s most explicit formulation of the conditions for autonomous practice can be found in his essay entitled What Is Enlightenment? (1991). In it, he describes enlightenment as a condition whereby one is able ‘to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another’ (Kant 1991a, 54). Individuals, he argued, can only expect to realize their freedom once they have developed the capacity to ‘think for themselves’ (Kant 1991a, 55). The development of such a capacity, he insisted, depends on humanity’s success in freeing the self from the fetters of nature and irrational impulses. As the ‘freedom to make public use of one’s reason’ (Kant 1991a, 55), the use of cognitive faculties is to the realization of autonomy. Despite such a heavy emphasis on reason, however, Kant wished to demonstrate that neither the purpose of his task nor his conclusions could be compared to the rationalist tradition of epistemology.

Central to Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’ was the demonstration that epistemology should cease to seek the origins of knowledge in either humanity or nature, and move beyond the antagonism between pure rational thinking and sensory perception.1 Epistemology could no longer limit itself to the task of investigating the origins of knowledge per se. In order to satisfy the demands of autonomous practice, epistemology had to re-align its goals to include within its scope concerns regarding the conditions under which knowledge becomes possible. Such a re-alignment, Kant believed, should begin with the recognition of the fact that humanity is both part of and distinct from nature. Rather than dismissing the realm of sensory experience as unworthy participant in knowledge, the Kantian conception of autonomous thinking accepts the existence of contradictory – ‘sensible’ and ‘intelligible’ – forces in the constitution of knowledge and provides a potential avenue for their mediation. However, the transcendental subject, in possession of a transhistorical rational faculty seeking to master the chaotic impulses of sense-perception, cannot claim to know the ‘things in themselves’ (noumena). It must accept that any attempt to ‘think for oneself’ is limited to the knowledge of things as they appear (phenomena). In order to present themselves to the ‘twelve categories of the understanding’ and thus acquire validity in the constitution of knowledge, the sensuous objects, that is, nature in its human and non-human form, must be subjected to the rule of reason, whose function is to prepare such objects for their synthesis with the understanding, and eventually turn them into reliable representations, that is, the actual substance of rational experience. Failure to do so would deny knowledge its contradictory character and cause a fall into the relativism of empirical experience, thereby reducing humanity to nature. Kant’s investigation of the conditions under which knowledge is possible could therefore be treated as a re-assessment of the relationship between concepts and senses, or between distinctively human attributes and their distinctively natural counterpart. He found that rather than acting as two distinct sources of representation, they in fact belonged to a single epistemological foundation, but in order to hold the chaotic nature of subjective phantasy in check and convert the raw energy of sense-perception into a constructive component of autonomy, senses had to be brought under the control of reason. Thus, according to Kant, the prospects of autonomous thinking rest on reason’s capacity to mediate the forces of humanity and nature.

The realization of such a form of autonomy in practice does nevertheless depend upon further conditions. As was mentioned above, one must be capable of making public use of one’s reason. For Kant, this refers to ‘that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning addressing the entire reading public’ (Kant 1991a, 55). Conditions must be such that all enlightened individuals have the opportunity to comment on the public affairs of a given society and political community. In order to become a member of the ‘public sphere’,2 and be in a position to question and eventually subvert the power in place, however, one must first develop one’s own conception of the common good. This, Kant argued, can be achieved only by fulfilling one’s ‘duty’ as a public person. Under this ‘absolute law of reason’ (Kant 1991b, 67), the potentially chaotic spontaneity of the will would be held in check. One would indeed be encouraged to act according to clearly defined motivations, be inclined to subsume individual happiness under motives of a universal nature, thus equipping citizens with a constant capacity to make decisions in line with the common good and ultimately providing the conditions required for the universal exercise of autonomous practice. The presence of a public sphere, in other words, ensures that the principle whereby the freedom of each can co-exist with the freedom of all others (Kant 1991c, 191) enshrined in laws governs the actions of individuals and, as such, serves as a key condition for the practice of autonomous thinking. By allowing sense-experience to be legislated by reason, Kant’s mediation of humanity and nature also favours the satiation of those faculties capable of protecting the former against its dependence on the latter’s forces,3 thereby treating sensations and other ‘natural’ inclinations as potential obstacles to autonomous thinking.4 Autonomy, as a result, becomes synonymous with the rational mastery of forces of internal and external nature, a condition of existence equated with a liberation through cognition, entailing a transhistorical conception of reason.

According to Hegel, however, such a state of affairs could only emerge as the culmination of a historical process of self-creation. Whilst Hegel maintained that knowledge is constituted through the interplay of contradictory forces, and presented rational will as the fundamental component of ‘self-determination’, he made several key adjustments to the Kantian concept of enlightenment. With Hegelian idealism, rational thinking no longer stands as a fixed faculty of the mind freeing individuals from the fetters of tutelage whilst securing the peaceful coexistence of autonomous wills through self-imposed limitations (duty). Instead, ‘absolute knowledge’5 emerges as the culmination of the historical unfolding of ‘spirit’ (Geist), which, following a process of externalization and re-appropriation between individuals’ determinate existence and their essence, eventually finds refuge in the rational laws of the state as the moment of ‘absolute freedom’. The individual, now acquiring his or her freedom through the recognition of the fact that ‘the real is rational, [and] the rational is real’, can expect to engage in autonomous practice only when reason ‘transforms thought into an existent thought, or being into a thought-constituted being’ (Hegel 1961, 283). Hegel’s liberation in thought, therefore, may only be possible under particular conditions of existence, but echoes Kant’s emphasis on reason as the mediating agent of humanity and nature, only this time by assuming the form of objective substance embodied in historically specific socio-political institutions. In his work Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel famously claimed that self-determination would be most effectively secured by a political institution like the modern state. The state is the ‘ethical idea’, the objective substance of reason as spirit, and the moment of identity between the self-conscious subject and its re-appropriated essence. As such, the state is the embodiment of the subject’s will and the so-called rational character of its laws serves to secure the free, competitive, yet harmonious, self-interested satisfaction of needs taking place in the sphere of civil society.6 Its abstraction from, and protection of, civil society and the family allows it to create the most favourable conditions for the self-conscious determination and realization of particular ends within society at large. The laws of the state, in this sense, not only embody the concept of absolute freedom, they are also the conditions for its actualization.

A key concern for the idealist thinker – one that is echoed in the works of his predecessor Kant – revolved around the resolution of the riddle emanating from the coexistence of particular and potentially conflicting wills. The two German philosophers were aware that both the determination and the realization of an individual’s particular ends could not be taking place in isolation from other individuals. Whereas for Kant such a problem is resolved by the limitation that one imposes on one’s will (duty) in one’s role as a public person (citizen), for Hegel the solution lies in the particular individual’s recognition of the ‘welfare of others’ as a precondition of the realization of his or her own ends.7 For the latter philosopher, individuals seeking to realize their ends as members of civil society must therefore treat the will of others as a constitutive part of their own.8 Only this way can the universal content of the will be expressed and serve as a basis for the formulation and realization of the common good. Such conditions cannot be met, however, by merely calling onto the subjectivity of the will. Doing so would indeed mean leaving the realization of particular ends to the arbitrary and chaotic rule of phantasy, and undermining the possibilities for a peaceful coexistence of individual wills. The orderly satisfaction of needs would instead be secured by the objective-universal moment of the will, which Hegel thought to be embodied within the laws of the state. As spirit, reason would, as in the case of Kant, mediate the actions of individuals. In the Hegelian system, however, the manifestation of reason does not limit itself to the channelling of the raw energy of sensory experience through the isolated action of an individual but crucially depends upon the recognition of other individuals’ will as a precondition for one’s own and is facilitated by ‘rational’ socio-political institutions.

According to Hegel, individuals may be in a position to determine their own ends – as the subjective moment of freedom – but can only expect to realize these ends as beings fully conscious of their role...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Human emancipation and labour as self-realization
• 2. Towards the reconciliation of humanity and nature
• 3. Realizing the transformative potential of critical theory
• 4. The premises of institutionalized emancipatory practice
• 5. Human emancipation and communication
• 6. Drawing the contours of institutionalized emancipatory practice
• 7. Critical theory, libertarian socialism and reconciliation
• 8. Conclusion: Critical theory, libertarian socialism and contemporary Western capitalist societies
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint