3.7 - lohmann, georg - marx' «capital» and the question of normative standards (en)

7/30/2019 3.7 - Lohmann, Georg - Marx' Capital and the Question of Normative Standards (EN)

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Marx' Capital and the Question of Normative Standards

Marx' Capital and the Question of Normative Standards

by Georg Lohmann

Source:

PRAXIS International (PRAXIS International), issue: 3 / 1986, pages: 353-372, on www.ceeol.com.
http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.dibido.eu/bookdetails.aspx?bookID=0a3d3f96-8ad3-4089-b110-89e4753b2d5chttp://www.ceeol.com/


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Praxis InternationalVol 6 3 A Philsophical Journal October 1986

redigitized by Central and Eastern European Online Library - www.ceeol.com

MARXS CAPITAL AND THE QUESTION OF

NORMATIVE STANDARDS

Georg Lohmann

Jrgen Habermas has called the Marxian critique of political economy atheory of capitalist development1 which ts into historical materialism as a

subtheory.Historical materialism is conceived by him primarily as a theory ofsocial evolution and delimited from other competing interpretations, which

view it as a philosophy of history or as the narrative presentation of historywith systematic intent. Habermass classication makes certain assumptionsabout the possible relation between the two theories: in particular it makes adecision about the critical claim of Marxian theory. This is the concern of the

present study. Can a theory of social evolution still fulll the critical intentionsof Marxs Capitalif it incorporates the latter as a subtheory?

As far as I can see, Habermas has two main reasons for divertingtheoretical-reconstructive efforts away from critique toward the frame ofreference of historical materialism. First he considers an immanent critique of

bourgeois society to be futile due to the cynicism of the legitimatingvalue-system in these societies.2 Second, Habermas considers an evolutionaryspecication of the object of critique to be a necessary precondition for its

work, if the evolutionarily-oriented analysis of the present does not wish toproceed dogmatically, and dene the adaptation and stabilization potentials ofits object pre-critically.3 These reasons remain, even after the followingcomments, strong grounds that could orient a reconstruction of Marxiantheory in the direction suggested by Habermas. Moreover, with thisinterpretation Habermas can more readily assert continuity between hisefforts and those common to the reception-history of Marxian theory. For inthis history historical materialism has generally been understood as a universaltheory of evolution, presupposed to provide the material framework for thecritique of political economy, grounding or ensuring the autodynamicdialectic of history and its revolutionary certainty.

Nonetheless, in the present article a different starting point for thereconstruction of Marxian theory will be chosen, for it has not yet beendecided which system the critique of political economy follows, what itscritical intention is, and whether (and how) it extends into historicalmaterialism. In contrast to Habermas, for the purpose of this investigation theimplication-relationship is reversed: the critique of political economy leadsinto historical materialism which is not a presupposed framework but whichrst can be developed through critique and remains within the horizon ofcritique. Only by losing its critical intention can historical materialism beestablished as a separate universal theory of evolution. Furthermore, onlyafter the difculties of an historical diagnosis of society that stays within the


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354 Praxis International

bounds of crit ique have become clear can the merits of the variousreconstruction strategies be judged. The following comments therefore willattempt to reconstruct the basic features of the critique of political economy. Inconclusion I return to the relation between these two strategies ofreconstruction.

Let me rst state two programmatic theses on the systematic structure ofMarxs Capital: My rst interpretive thesis reads: The systematic structure ofCapital follows entirely the program of an immanent critique of the Lockeannatural right based self-understanding of bourgeois society. The second thesisreads: In the execution of the task another critique is developed whichtranscends the natural-right framework and whose normative standard isimplicit in the historiographie passages of Capital.4 Only the specic relation

between these two types of critique denes the systematic complex of the

critique of political economy. Accordingly this is critique through andthrough, i.e. any interpretation which seeks to derive from it a positivetheory (e.g. descriptive economics) or understands it as such, is bound to bewrong.

After briefly recalling Marxs methodological approach of a criticalexposition (Darstellung) I would like to explain these two theses from a

perspective internal to Marx. I then reconstruct them more extensively withthe aid of post-Marxian concepts, using terms such as system andlifeworld and social- and system-integration developed in contemporarysocial theory.

I. Immanent and Transcendent Critiof a Critical Presentation (Darstellung)

With his methodical program of exposing the system of bourgeois economy,which seeks at the same time to be a critique of what it describes, Marx baseshimself on Hegels procedure in The Science of Logic.5 However, comparedwith Hegel he changes the point of departure: exposition and critique focus onthe same object, which they both evaluate negatively. During the immanentcritique Marx succeeds in forging the programmatic unity of critique andexposition, whereas transcendent critique breaks this unity apart. Thus, inthe following I will distinguish the following aspects of critique andexposition.

1. The object of the immanent exposition is the constitutive context ofthe capitalist mode of production, namely the production and exchange of

commodities. Commodity production can be correlated with the geneticaspect, and commodity exchange with the integrative aspect of constitution.This description is immanent because and insofar as its conceptual grasp ofthe object is guided by the perspective of the prevailing self-conception of

bourgeois society. Marx sees this expressed in theories of classical politicaleconomy, whose essential features he believes to be exemplarily stated alreadyin the natural right thinking of John Locke, especially in his conception of thestate of nature. Lockes influence on the Scottish moral philosophers,especially Adam Smith, and on classical political economy, is interpreted by


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Praxis International 355

Marx in such a way that Lockes philosophy . . . served as the basis for allsubsequent conceptions of British economics.6

These theorists view the natural law construction of a state of nature notjust as a methodical normative model for legitimizing a just social order, but realistically interpreted and harmonistically diffused (invisible hand) as the description of an economic and market-like functional context which iscalled bourgeois society. This natural society (Habermas), however,retains that pre-political constitution, peculiar to the Lockean state of nature,which is guaranteed in its legal and property structure by a state standingoutside society. The specic constitution of the social context is conceived, asin Locke, prototypically to result from the process of self-preservation oftotally independent, individual private persons. As these secure theirindividual self-preservation by (increasing) appropriation of private property,

acquired legally either as the result of their own work or through contractuallyregulated exchange of goods, the general social context is constituted throughthe pursuit of private interests. Locke is also the originator of thethought-construct that natural objects are made into rightful private propertythrough mixing with them ones own labor this is also one motif of theMarxian concept of objectification. Additional Lockean characteristicscould be named, but I want to stress just one more: according to thisconception, the appropriation of property through ones work unfolds in the

private sphere and/or in the prehistory of bourgeois society, so that theexchange of commodities alone appears to be the constitutive sphere of

bourgeois society.Marx thus uses a strictly immanent procedure when he begins with the

commodity-world, the individual commodity, and the exchange of commodi-ties, and describes all further constitutive relations of bourgeois society, whichare at the same time always appropriation-relations, from this perspective.From this immanent perspective the capitalist mode of production is seen tolead to functional crises and with the tendential fall in the rate of prot, to astructural self-contradiction. In the end, according to Marx, immanentdescription shows that bourgeois society is a functionally self-contradictory(i.e. a negative) whole.

2. Immanent critique measures capitalist society by its own normativeself-conception and judges the extent to which this is realized. Its specicallycritical task is to distinguish between apparently and truly realized claims,whereby truly critical critique comes to clarify the genesis of theseself-contradictions. This is not a matter of just any normative value

conceptions but precisely of those normative claims which are functionallynecessary for the constitutive togetherness of capitalist society. According tothe immanent exposition these are the legal and moral principles which arefollowed by contractually regulated commodity-exchange, namely thatrelationship between freedom, equality and private property, which is

prototypically formulated in Lockes construction of the state of nature, andwhich Marx, via Hegels theory of abstract right, adopts for his critique ofcapital.7 The formal principles of the universal freedom and equality ofabstract legal persons are assumed to be reciprocally fullled in the exchange


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relations between private owners; the realization of arbitrary private interestsby means of the exchange of equivalents is considered at the same time toresult in the common good. The assumption that private property can beacquired rightfully and uncoercively, apart from exchange, only through onesown work., principally goes back to Locke.

In the immanent exposition of the overall context, namely the totality of thecapitalist mode of production, and particularly in the section on reproduction,while developing his immanent critique, Marx also discredits these naturalright principles;8 their universal claims will be unmasked as merely

particularistic. The principle of equivalence is only an apparent fulllment ofthe claim to justice; in fact it presupposes a class society, i.e. injustice. At this

point, however, the limits of immanent critique also become evident: The fullimplication and scope of the judgement that the normative claim and the

realization process do not match depends in turn on these immanent standardsproving to be, in part, reasonable and justiable.3. This is where transcendent critique begins. Its normative standard goes

critically beyond the claim to justice of natural right theories that linkfreedom, equality, and private property. Within a broader normative horizonit shows, on the one hand, the limitedness but also the particular truth of theimmanent standard, while on the other hand examining the totality ofcapitalist society in light of it.

In determining the criteria for this transcendent critique the Marxiantheory is not clear. Four competing versions can be distinguished:

(a) The resourceful objectivism of the Marxian philosophy of history,whether as the history of class struggles or as the history of the development of

the productive forces and relations of production, overlooks the specicallymoral question of grounding critique, and implicitly assumes a concept ofprogress. On account of these hypostatizations the adequacy of historicalmaterialism to serve as the general framework for the critique of capitalismhas been called into question.9

(b) A productivist interpretation of the standard of transcendent critiquemakes work the dominant general principle, so that all concrete relationsare considered only from this point of view. Under the heading of thereduction of interaction to work, this version has been critized especially byHabermas.10

(c) From the few textural passages in which Marx sketches a postcapitalistsociety as an association of free men, a Rousseauian interpretation of thestandard of transcendent critique can be extrapolated. But this also involves a

Rousseauian simplication: Individuals are already qualitatively so developedthat they can be harnessed to the rational common welfare without any

problems. Thus the stubborn central problem of the mediation betweenindividuals and community is inadequately solved, and Marx resorts tovarious auxiliary constructions: Anthropological assumptions, idealizationsof social relations or of the historical agent; moreover, an unmediated dualism

between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom leads to that gap inMarxian theory which has been criticized more than once in recent years.11

(d) One version of transcendent critique, which I see as no less problematic


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but nonetheless as extremely productive in its point of departure, can befound in the structure and function of the historiographic passages ofCapitalIn the following, therefore, I will attempt to reconstruct this historically

situated transcendent critique.At rst sight these passages appear to be historical illustrations clarifying

various economic categories. In that case they would have no theoreticalweight of their own. This is contradicted in the Preface to the rst edition byMarxs emphatic praise of the social statistics from which the material of thehistoriographic passages is mainly taken. This science of social statistics has

been carried out in England by expert, impartial, and unrelenting men forthe investigation of truth (A X): It presents a truth which lifts its veil, sothat bourgeois society will be horried at its own condition. This unveilingfunction of the historiographic passages points to their critical role.

In their general form these passages show the historically described effectsof the development of capital on the fate of men, especially of the workingclass. They show the subsuming of precapitalist modes of work and life underthe hegemony of capital, the workers acts of resistance, and struggles for a lifein accord with their rights, but also the formation of their life-process andconditions. The immediate objects of description are, in general terms,historical life conditions. In them history is thematized in a twofold fashion:On the one hand, these present the internal history of the development orconstitution of capital-formation; on the other hand they sketch a universalhistory, within whose horizon the historicity of the capitalist mode of

production is revealed.My thesis is that the structure and function of the historical reections12

imply a normative standardwhich also transcends the standard of immanentcritique. To elaborate this normative content, however, a reconstruction ofthe critique of capital from a new vantage point is needed, and I would like toundertake it with the conceptual tools of contemporary social theory.

II. System and Lifeworld as Interpretative Categories in Capital

1. The pair of concepts, social- and system-integration have beendeveloped in modern social theory in order to conceptualize total socialcontexts. They can in turn be interpreted in terms of the paradigmaticconcepts system and lifeworld (Lebenswelt). Here I restrict myself to ashort sketch of these concepts as needed only for interpretative purposes, and

based mainly on J. Habermass approach.13

As opposed to the theory tradition of Husserl and Schutz, centered on theparadigm of consciousness, Habermas has introduced the concept of thelifeworld as complementary to that of communicative action. It designates

primarily the commonly shared, horizonlike situations presupposed by thecommunicative acts of at least two agents.14 In the case of purelycommunicative action, this denition of the common situation, whichHabermas differentiates into the components of culture, society, and

personality, can be reconstructed ideal-typically as the result of processes ofinterpersonal communication. The understanding achieved thereby can be


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based on the justiable redemption of criticizable validity-claims. In thisideal-typical case the symbolic unity of the lifeworld would be a purelycommunicative one achieved through arguments, i.e. rationally. Opposed tothis is the insight that social action contexts are inuenced by processes ofsocial-systems which cannot be comprehended as processes of communi-cation.

A system is dened as a state in which several elements are so interrelatedthat they are preserved through an inner/outer differentiation compared witha complex environment (Umwelt), thus producing a characteristic achieve-ment of order which can be reproduced in stable states.15

Social action contexts can be examined from the point of view both of thepreservation of the lifeworld and of the preservation of the social system. Inthe everyday context of historically concrete, social action I will call the whole

of intersubjectively shared action situations the historico-social lifeworld.16They always exist in the plural, their respective unities are not purecommunication units and they are as a rule represented in the form ofnarratives. In narratives the effects of systematic processes on lifeworlds can

be expressed without their being denable solely narratively; furthermore,individual and collective life-stories and the respectively relevant culturalknowledge are also reproduced in narratives. The narratively representableunity of claims (ansprchliche Einheit) of historico-social lifeworlds isinterpreted from the perspective of the participants in relation to theirconceptions of the good life. Under conditions of modernity otherconstructions come to replace that of the good life. In their respectivenormative content these unities of claims are understandable only in

relation to the interpretations of the respective participants.We can now distinguish the concepts of social- and system-integration inthe light of the mode of coordination of actions.17

We speak of social integration when the behavioral orientations of agentscoordinate their actions via a system of social norms. Thus (a) legitimate socialrelations between agents are made possible; (b) the systemic ordering as awhole can be legitimated; and (c) the required social roles can be learned(socialization), perceived successfully (role-specic motivation), and stabi-lized (assurance of social identity). This normative coordination of behavior is

based on the recognized validity of norms which establish a social obligationthrough a claim of justice, and which is assured by sanctions. By contrast, wespeak of systemic integration when, independently of the actual, normative

behavioral orientations, actions are coordinated by the accumulation of their

achievements (behavioral effects, consequences, products). Thus (a)interdependencies of social subsytems are assured; (b) the persistence of thissystem can be asserted versus an external and internal environment, and (c)

partial system-specic structures, e.g. organizations, can be preserved. Thiscoordination of behavioral achievements presupposes that the respectiveachievement in respectively particular ways, is indifferent to action and to therespective lifeworld situation of action.18

2. These brief explanations of the concepts of system- and social-integration and of historico-social lifeworlds can now be specified more


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closely to apply to constitution processes characteristic of capitalism, but insuch a way that they can at the same time be given a critical turn asdistinguished from the constrictions of the Marxian approach.

We had already shown how the integrating aspect of capital-specicconstitution dominates. Commodity exchange processes appear as the solemode of integration which can now be differentiated into processes of system-and social-integration. I will call System-integrative all those objectied(versachlichte) exchange processes. Social-integrative will be named all

processes which make exchange possible through the normative integration ofindividuals via relations of right and will (B 99); i.e. by means of the normsof formal freedom and equality among abstract legal persons.

The systematic character of capital formation is explained by Marxabstractly in the formula M-G-M, which transforms value into an automatic,

internally self-processing subject (A 115) that determines its identity withitself in the form of money (B 169), thus producing its specic inner/outerdelimitation (i.e. systematic achievement of order) in an accumulativesystematicity (self-valorization). The systematic character of processes ofaccumulation and reproduction, in which capitalism creates its own precon-ditions, that is the capital relation between the capitalists and wage-workers, (B 591 ff) is analyzed in its totality. Marx explains the indifferent(i.e. general) character of action which makes possible the systematicintegration of the consequences of action, in the light of indifferent(gleichgltig) traits of abstract labor. Abstract labor is indifferent to thenatural material object of use and to the need that is satised thereby; it isindifferent to the particular kind of activity and to the working individual and

his social situation. These traits of indifference are expressed in thecharacteristics of labor, generating exchange-value. Such labor is called thesame, undifferentiated, unindividuated, abtract, general, humanlabor.19 These features are further perpetrated via the indifferent relation of

private producers, culminating in the relation to themselves of those who ownlabor-power, and manifesting themselves in the formation of action-contextsin the lifeworld. This morphology of indifference relations, described byMarx with such extraordinary subtlety, cannot be treated in detail here. Sinceat the end of this critique Marx unmasks the capitalist system as a whole to bea coercive domination-context, these indifference-relations are describable asforms of concealed domination. Because of their indifference they are not to

be dened as manifest, but rather as forms of structural domination.The explanation of the morphology of the indifferent features of action

presupposes a certain concept of action. The one-sided and constrictivedenition of action as socially productive, objective activity, given to it byMarx, has been criticized.20 Our reinterpretation allows us to point out afurther consequence of this inadequate denition. All that is left of a more

broadly conceived, though one-sidedly-dened concept of action (as object-related activity)., is the arid substratum abstract work, with its underlying,minimal quasi-natural features of purposive-rationality, that is the distinction

between means and object (cf. B 193); this fact merely characterizes thetotality of those indifferences, which come to constrain a highly differentiated


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concept of action. The one-sided understanding of the fundamental concept ofaction, which views it only as productive-objective activity, is bought at thecost of neglecting the extent of indifference, which is created in the course ofits reduction to abstract labor. Marx is thus categorically too innocuous in hisdenition of the action-indifferences required for system-integration, and thatalso means, in his characterization of the domination relations of the capitalistsystem.

Marx did, however, see one essential problem which such a conception ofsystem-integration poses, and tried to solve it within the framework of hisconcepts: namely, how the indifference of consequences of action itself ingeneral arises and can be stabilized. Consequences of action are, for Marx,

products of action. According to the conception of immanent critique, thesocietal starting-situation of the integrating constitution is that between

isolated private producers. Their societal relation to one another (which wouldhave to be claried via a more fundamental concept of action), is representedvia the value-characteristics of their exchange products. Via the concept ofvalue objectivity Marx tries to grasp conceptually the implicit identicationof social relations with the objective qualities of things. This identication iscalled reication, and the hypostasized independence of things determinesreication all the way to fetishism. The specically capitalist origin of thoseindifference features of action are explained thereby.

This reection leads Marx from the rst denition of the objective form ofvalue to the equivalence form and then to the denition of money, becausemoney brings this mode of indifference to full evidence (with money one hasthe social connexion in ones pocket), and money can be socially

differentiated out and stabilized through a medium of its own.Marx shows that such system-integration remains unstable as long asappropriation based on work, i.e. the genetic dimension of constitution, also

proceeds under the form of commodity exchange and for this human labormust be exchangeable as the commodity of labor-power. Thus further

phenomena of indifference come into the focus of the analysis; these affect therelation to others and the self-relation of the workers. The self-relation of theowners of labor-power, characterized by indifference, and expressing theself-objectivation of personal and communal life, produces furtherindifference-phenomena, which through transformations in the world ofwork come to affect the lifeworld of individuals in general.

For Marx the aboliton of this indifference [which he conceives of as thereturn of action achievements (products) to the doer], is not seen in light of

a Hegelianizing and idealistic concept of activity, but in light of an analysis ofthe effects of system-integrating action consequences upon the socio-historicallifeworlds.

3. Capital-specific social integration is achieved via the normative, legal,and voluntary relations accompanying commodity exchange. Marx analyzesthrough them the ideas of freedom and equality of Lockes state of nature andadopts, in part word for word, their recapitulation in Hegels theory ofabstract right.

The introduction of this abstract right of persons occurs in two stages.


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First, the concepts, person and private owner, are specified withreference to exchange processes (cf. B 99). This then defines the socialidentity (role) whereby individuals are integrated into the system. Points ofreference of social integration are persons, not individuals in their qualitativeidentity. Individuality, rather, stands in a relation of relative indifference to

person, as its carrier. Only the second stage (purchase and sale of laborpower, B 181 ff.) deals with the link between the relationship to other personsand the typical self-relation under capitalism. The self-relation between

person and individual, between mask and character, just as interpersonalrelations, becomes a pure relation of ownership and property. Ultimately it isonly this self-relation which reifies individuality that also makes self-

preservation possible for the wage-laborer and that characterizes the typicalrelation between persons. Just as the reifying self-relation is based on

indifference to oneself, so too, relations among persons are indifferent to theirrespective individuality.

This graduated inner structure of private owners to one another and to theirrespective selves is based on the mediation of all their relations through

property. It is this domination of mediating property that specically restrictsthe integrating norms of freedom and equality. These are formal and universalin their claim but are in fact internally related to private property. They arehence abstract norms of freedom and equality, valid only because indifferentto ones own individuality and that of others. A reconstruction of thefulllment of their validity claims would therefore have to make these limitsexplicit and this would be the task of transcendent critique.

The integrative social relations of exchange of equivalents are thus

considered legitimate, insofar as the validity claim of the norms of freedomand equality is normatively restricted. Even the social identity of the personor private owner can be successfully perceived and preserved because itappears merely as the result of the satisfaction of legitimate interests of theindividual,21 The behavioral orientation to private interests, which is also a

basis of motivation, is considered legitimate because the formal norms offreedom and equality presuppose and regulate arbitrary actions of privateindividuals. Likewise, the legitimacy of the whole system of order is alsoassumed since it is thought that precisely the pursuit of private interests is to

produce the common good, and that in this process only the formal norms offreedom and equality are followed. Thus the assumption of a self-regulating,harmonious totality, which Marx ironically describes as standing under theauspices of the ever-so-clever providence becomes possible.

4. Marx reaches the level of the historico-social lifeworlds by specifyingfurther the reifying self-relation of the owners of labor-power. In positiveterms he places at the basis of his analysis an Aristotelian-Hegelian concept oflife which he however only indirectly elucidates as when he describes themodes in which the systematic patterns of integration subsume andoverdetermine life. In this, he pursues his program of immanent exposition.The wage-worker must relate to the totality of his life-possibilities byabstracting a part of them so reductively that they are defined as hislabor-capacity, and this in turn is so redefined that it becomes alienable as a


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reied force.22 By owning and alienating his labor power, the laborer enters aspecically graduated, practical self-relation which is indifferent to the totalityof his life-possibilities. Formally the alienation is determined by the sale oflabor-power; in actuality by its real alienation in the work process. Life, as thetotality of his possibilities of action, constitutes the outer framework for hisself-formation as a person, i.e. as the private owner of himself. Inaccordance with the atomistic fiction of natural right theories, in thisself-relation the relation to others appears only as the negative relation among

property-owners. The unity of life shaped by system integration is thusgrasped as a successful property relation.

Thus life is no longer lived for its own sake but the entire life-process isused to implement a certain type of activity, namely the alienation of labor

power. What was posited by capitalist integration in the purchase and sale

as labor-power only as a possibility, namely the gradual reduction of allpossibilities of life to a work capacity, and its abstraction of labor-power, isrealized so-to-speak retroactively in the development of the capitalist

production process. First, only the doubly reduced realization of labor-powerin which the actualization of the natural capacity dominates that of the mentalfaculty, is considered (B 192 ff.; on the division between intellectual andmanual work, see note 20). Then in the 4th section (cooperation, manufactur-ing, big industry) the reshaping of the universally human labor-power, whichfor Marx is a generic species capacity, into forms of realization which areadequate to this dominant type of behavior (alienation of labor-power) areanalyzed. In this process communal work is replaced by capitalist coop-eration; the skilled craftsmans self-conrmation in the product of his work is

regulated by abnormally specied partial task, which compulsively promoteskill in detail while repressing a world of productive drives and capacities (B381); and instead of a socially controlled scientic production, a scientized bigindustry results whose aim is to control and discipline the wage workers. Insum, we can call these processes of the formation of the work-capacity, theformation of the work-world. The world of work can be understood as asector of the historico-social lifeworld. The formation of human work capacityor of the world of work, however, encroaches upon the unity of life

possibilities or of the historico-social lifeworlds.The practical self-relation of the owner of labor-power constitutes the

immanent entry into the sphere of the historico-social lifeworlds. Theirsystem-integrative formation, parallel to and by means of the formation of theworld of work, is analyzed by Marx according to the requirements of an

immanent description. Marx formulates it sublimely: Labor power existsonly as the natural capacity of the living individual. Its production thus

presupposes his existence. Given the exis tence of the individual, theproduction of labor-power consists in his own reproduction or preservation.For his preservation the living individual needs a certain means of life. (B185) From here on means of life is the heading under which thehistorico-social lifeworld becomes directly thematized in the course of theimmanent exposition. Its peculiarities are of interest only insofar as they enterinto the value-determination of necessary means of life. Over and beyond


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the provision of means of life, however, the capitalist system also transformsthe content of the historico-social lifeworld subsumed under it.23 Within theframework of his immanent description Marx is satisfied with a coarse sketchof everything that is meant by means of life from the system perspective.This includes the collective cultural and historical self-interpretation of modesof life, which have been formed under the conditions of the habits andlife-claims of the class of free laborers (B 185). Marx, as is well known, sumsup as follows: The value-determination of work (contains) an historical andmoral element. (Ibid.) In the same mode of immanent description Marxconcretizes these elements by alluding to family, socialization and education(cf. B 175f). These cultural phenomena of collective self-interpretaion,customs, socialization, education, traditional forms of life, and the like, whichare after all only realizable via normative-symbolic action-contexts, can be

named the claim to unity of the historico-social lifeworld. The normscoordinating this unity, however, are not primarily socio-integrative ones.The domination of freedom, equality, private property and Bentham (B139), which assures social integration, is continued in the formation of thehistorico-social lifeworld in such a way that only the implementation of thesenorms can guarantee a secondary assurance of the processes of socialintegration.

At this point the lack of an adequate conceptual denition of the structureof the various historico-social lifeworlds becomes critical for Marx. For fromthe point of view of the subsumed elements he can have only an inadequateconceptual grasp of those processes of subsumption for which he, from the

perspective of the system, has developed the concepts of formal and real

subsumption24

of the world of labor and the historico-social lifeworld.Marxs proof of the absolute limits to the formation of the world of work(length of the work day, cf. B 323) and of particular restrictions like the

particular modes of production, which give rise to system-dysfunctionaldevelopments in cooperation, manufacturing and big industry, remainsambivalent, locked in on the one hand and on the other type summaries(e.g. B 430). If the formation of the world of labor is conceptually analyzednonetheless, this occurs precisely because an Aristotelean-Hegelian notion ofwork and life are presupposed as a normative yardstick. The formation ofhistorico-social lifeworlds, however, remains conceptually underdened,since Marx is excessively oriented to the conceptual tools of immanentdescription. Therefore, in the course of immanent description he slidesconceptually into the ction which the capitalist system also assumes, namely

that the historico-social lifeworld offers no conceptually identiable, andhence principled resistance to its own subsumption under capital.

Only a change of perspective in exposition and critique enable Marx, atleast in his historical observations, to describe the peculiarities of thosespheres and their resistance potential. Therefore, transcendent critique uses amode of description of its own, which is no longer restricted to atheoretico-conceptual comprehension of its object, but which uses theargumentative-narrative presentation of the historical material as obtainedthrough observation. The explication of the content of these historical


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observations, as descriptions of historico-social lifeworlds, necessarily,therefore, goes beyond Marxs conceptual framework.

III. Immanent and Transcendent Critique Reinterpreted

1. First the systematic construction of Capital can be reformulated. Theimmanent exposition at the beginning develops the abstract forms of capitalistsystem- and social-integration (Section 1 ofCapital, B 49-191); in section 2 (B161-191) their specic relationship is formally shown, and the realization ofthe systematic modes of integration through an analysis of the processes offormal (production of absolute surplus value) and real subsumption (produc-tion of relative surplus value) is demonstrated; through the transformation ofthe world of labor, moreover, the historico-social lifeworlds are also subsumed

(Sections 3 and 4, B 192-530). Sections 5 and 6 (B 581-588) then describe thedeveloped system- and social-integration, while section 7 deals with thetotality of the system, and the end of the immanent critique also signals theend of the criticized object.

The structure of immanent critique has already been explained in part Iabove. The critique transcending it focuses on the historico-social lifeworldstructures, which are reshaped and assimilated in the constitution of capitalvia system- and social-integrative processes. This critique contrasts thedevelopment of system-constitutive processes with the history of theirconsequences for the historico-social lifeworld. The relationship between thetwo critical programs and the standard of transcendent critique therefore rstcome fully into view only when we elaborate these historical moments and thehistorico-philosophical intentions of Marxian critique. Until now we havetreated these intentions cursorily, because of their paradoxically underempha-sized character in Capital. Since in the systematic construction of his critique,Marx undertakes a mimetic recapitulation of capitalism in order to achieve aunity of critique and exposition, he must also bear the cost: the capitalistsystem portrays itself as an eternal, unhistorical formation of society, withcontingent beginnings and unsurpassable rationality, to which there is nofuture historical alternative. Thus there once was a history, but there nolonger is. (B 96) This conclusion, which Marx at the very beginning of hiscritique, ings at the faces of bourgeois economists as an unmasking dictum,forces itself upon him at the end of the critique: the astonishingly thin chapteron the Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation, where it would allhave to unfold, itself operates with the make-shift category of the negation of

negation; in the second edition the category of the free laborer as a creationof the creation of the capitalist era is eliminated (cf. A 745 and B 791), and the1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party is cited. Again Marx is competing withthe systematic intentions of his own critique, by presenting political andevolutionary considerations which approach the problem from the outside. Byconstrast, reflection on the immanent style of Marxs critique as a whole,

permits an elaboration of history which takes these unfullled intentions intoaccount. The dominance of system-integrative over social-integrative

processes and the concomitant distortions and restrict ions of the world of


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work and of the historico-social lifeworld which accompany it, consistessentially of an abstraction from, and disregard for, their historical moments.In order to bring these into view, we must make more precise our sketch ofthe systematic structure ofCapitalpresented above.

We began implicitly with the thesis that immanent exposition structuresCapitalas a whole. Yet the end of immanent exposition does not coincide withthe end of the book; about one fourth of the book is yet to come (Chapters 23to 25). This particular circumstance must be explained. At the end ofimmanent exposition the object is considered in its totality, as thereproduction process of capital. Marx explains this to be the reproduction ofthe capital-specic precondition, namely the separation of capitalists fromwage-laborers, (cf. B 604) Capital has become its own precondition, and nolonger bothers with historical preconditions that are alien to it. History is

swallowed up. At the same time, however, immanent critique shows thatlegitimation via the exchange of equivalents is inadequate to the wholecontext, and that it collapses. According to the Lockean principle of naturalright the only possibility for the non-coercive appropriation of goods andwealth besides exchange is ones own work. Thus, after legitimation accordingto the exchange model fails, there still remains the apologetics of depictingcapital to be the result of the work of the capitalists. But insofar as what ismeant by this are the productivity of capital and of the capitalists during thereproduction process, these have been already exposed by immanent critiqueas phenomena of capital fetishism, (cf. B 538 and 633f.) The critique of theexchange of equivalents shows this to be a mere appearance. Thus only thecapitalists own original work is left to serve as a justication of his property.

By its own systematic legitimation, capital is forced to go beyond its ownhighly private circularity: It must describe its historical origin. At the pointwhere all history is apparently extinguished in the capitalist system it emergesagain with reference to the whole system. Immanent critique, as it were, hasits object just where it wants it. It must depict itself as an object that hasoriginated historically, after its normative self-contradictoriness has previous-ly indicated it to be a self-abolishing object. Marx has precisely this state ofthings in mind when he stresses that our method shows the point wherehistorical observation must enter in. (Ibid.) This suggests that now theconcept of immanent critique is being abandoned.25

2. The transition to historical observation is, of course, oriented byquestions which immanent critique has elaborated; to this extent the latterretains its priority for the structure of the book. But what follows is no longer

an immanent exposition of the object. The intentional correlate of the critiqueis no longer the constitution of capital, but history and historical developmentinsofar as they stand under the influence of capital. This is wheretranscendent critique begins by taking up its leading questions fromimmanent critique. Two aspects of these historical observations can bedistinguished.

(a) The chapter on the original accumulation unmasks the last refuge ofthe immanent legitimation of capital: Not the peaceful work of an industriousand thrifty elite, (B 741) but the violent process of excluding the producers


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from the means of production is the historical truth about the origin of capital.This is the violent abolition of private property based on ones own labor (B789): the direct contradiction of the legitimizing self-depiction of natural righttheories.

But this is no longer an immanent self-contradiction, but expressedemphatically and a bit loosely here prior history contradicts capital.Therefore capital must be regarded under the perspective of its historicity, i.e.it must be thematized against the horizon of its historical genesis, mutability,and abolition. Transcendent critique develops no systematic conceptualframework for this and gives no explicit standard. It would have to be calledhistorical materialism, though without thereby establishing its theoreticalstatus. We have already pointed out Marxs inadequate means in dening this.These deciences consist, in my opinion, in the fact that they project reason

into history, but against the background of an objectivistic theory ofevolution. Their main defect is not caused by the fact that they seek tounderstand processes of development, but by the fact that they underdenethe relation to historical agents by hypostasizing them as subjective carriersof development, whose subjectivity is then only interpreted within theframework of stategic or purposive-rational behavior, (cf. B 791) whiletreating them moreover as a collective singular.26

(b) The second aspect of these historical observations, which should make itpossible to correct the above-described objectivism of the Marxian conceptionof history internally, concerns the pursuit of transcendent critique throughoutCapital, As an aspect of immanent exposition this occurs through thecontrasting historiographic passages which nally lead to a separate chapter

namely Chapter 23. We have interpreted these passages as descriptions of theformation processes of historico-social lifeworlds through the constitution ofcapital. Chapter 23 treats expressly their inuence ... on the fate of theworking-class. (B 640) What is subsumed here and in the contrasting

passages of Capital are historically pre-existing forms of life. These, as wehave shown, cannot be separated from the life-claims of the class of freeworkers, which are an historical product, and which depend on thecultural stage of a country (B 185). We summed up these historical andmoral elements as the unitary claims of historico-social lifeworlds, but havenot explained it further conceptually. A theoretical extrapolation of thenormative standard used by transcendent critique must refer back to thishistorico-moral self-interpretation of the participants of the historico-sociallifeworlds.

VI. Perspectives

1. The two aspects of the historical observations of transcendent critique,whose systematic relation to immanent critique still needs elaboration, can becharacterized in light of their content: they call capitalist development toaccount for its history (see above). The prior history of the victor, capital,is unmasked as the history of unrelenting vandalism ... carried out underthe drive of the most infamous, lthiest, most pettily hateful passions. (B


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790) The internal development and eventual establishment of the history of thevictor is reproached for being the history of barbarity and the history of therepressed and exploited.27 The stabilizing mechanism of capital, circularintegration, has as consequence that its prior, historical, and violent barbarismis now repeated as a factor and consequence of the internal cycle (see B 604). Butthis in no longer depictable via the immanent concept of the systematics ofcapital. This latter is based, in its indifferent system-integration, on theexploitation of the alien labor of others which is, however, formallyequivalent. (B 790) Since the categories of capital are formal concepts, theycan thematize the content only from their perspective, namely that ofsubsumption by the victor. Hence, in order to bring this content underdiscussion, a different perspective must be chosen, that of the defeated.

Therefore, the mode of the historical descriptions is, as we have shown, a

particular one: It is not simply the narration of the effects of historicaldevelopment spanned within the immanent, categorical framework, but it is anargumentative-narrative history-writing from changing perspectives. It doesnot simply describe the effect of events, but it tells the history of the normativeclaims of the participants of historico-social lifeworlds with respect to specicevents. By retrospectively describing the struggle of conicting claims from the

perspective of the self-interpretation of the participants, both of the capitalistsand the workers communicated partly through contemporary documents this method develops reasons for a condemnation of capitalism, which arediscoverable only factually and historically. The normative standard oftranscendent critique is implicit here.

In sketching the historico-social concept of lifeworlds we had already pointed

out a peculiarity of its narrative form. Narratives suggest, so to speak, thection that everything which is mediated through social action contexts isnarratable. Accordingly, everything would be in principle comprehensible.Under this ction the boundaries between historico-social lifeworlds andsocietal ordering systems would vanish: society becomes identical with thelifeworld.28 We have tried to show, however, that systemic integration consists

precisely in a coordination of action effects that is indifferent from the claims ofthe lifeworld. These system-integrative processes originate from historico-social lifeworlds, and act back upon them, but their logic is not that ofnarratives nor communication processes. The situation in which they and their

back effects originate are of course narratable, but they constitute guratively speaking alien components in narratives. In their unnarratabi-lity they cannot be made knowable through narratives. At the latest since the

development of self-regulated market-contexts in societies, the prototypes ofsuch action-systems have infected historico-social lifeworlds.29

Hence the judgments and arguments presented in narratives, or thedetermination of a successful unity of the lifeworld are not justied merely

because they are narratable. Narratives, and the units of historico-sociallifeworlds presented in them comprise, so to speak, merely the medium inwhich the claims of system-rationality and communicatively orientedaction-rationality meet each other.

In order, therefore, to distill out of the argumentative-narrative presentation


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of the historiographic passages a normative standard for the adequacy orinadequacy, for the rightness or unjustiability, of the systemic formation

processes of historico-social lifeworlds, a theoretically explicit consideration oftheir normative content that goes beyond the narrative structures must beundertaken. This can, in my opinion, be done by means of three kindsof theories: In the theory of a formal pragmatics the structures ofcommunicatively oriented social action can be analyzed; in the theory ofego-identity formation, the structures of successful qualitative identities;and in the theory of communicative ethics, the structures of rational, moral

justication processes.30 Because these are very complicated and stilldeveloping elds of research, I consciously want to avoid the appearance oftaking any denitive stands here. But the previous considerations do placedemands on a theoretical explication of normative content. I would like to

suggest this in a further reection on the historicity of the normative standardof transcendent critique.

2. If the normative content of historico-social lifeworlds is explained onlyvia a reconstruction of competencies, its historicity, so to speak, vanishes.Habermas, who from a reconstructive perspective, projects the content ofhistorico-social lifeworlds onto the various theoretical strands of the theory ofevolution, universal pragmatics, and ego-identity development, thus tearsapart precisely the context which determines a historico-social lifeworld ashistorical. It is, however, the case that, contrary to the opinion of many of hiscritics, he sees and addresses this problem very well himself. By means of anew version of the relation between reconstruction and self-reection hetries to bring history into play again as a process of enlightenment of all

participants.31

Whether that will succeed, can be judged only by the eventualpracticality of the normative content or by a successful social life-context.Habermas thereby appeals, however, to a mode of rational moral groundingwhich is based on a practical discourse between concerned persons.32

Precisely this, however, is the immediate form of the standard oftranscendent critique, as well as of its theoretically explicable content. Thiscan be checked specically against the natural right norms of freedom andequality, which transcendent critique examines. Its rst critical step consistsin proving that the bourgeois norms of freedom and equality are not formalenough, because they are restricted by the content of private property. Buttranscendent critique would have to raise objections even to the formallyclean version of universal principles of freedom and equality. For quaformally universal principles these cannot be universal in the sense that they

also indicate factually historical situations in which the self-interpretations ofthe participants of historico-social lifeworlds rst produce generalizablenormative claims.33

Examples of such processes can be found in the extension of the ideas offreedom and equality by the working class in the 19th century to new domainsof application or in the demands of the womens movement and the ecologicalmovement.34 These are phenomena of a similar kind to the ones reected inthe historical observations of transcendent critique. But this historicity of thenormative standard of transcendent critique should not be introduced into the


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theoretical reconstruction, just at the end of a communicative ethic, and witha view to its practical realization. Historical conditionedness and rationalmodes of justication are two equally important moments of a communicativeethic, which would have to be grasped as the normative standard oftranscendent critique.

This would be a systematic reason for arriving at the normative content oftranscendent critique through an historical analysis of the normative ideas ofsocial movements, among them also some which Marx neglected to consider.The theory of communicative ethics and the historically applied analysis ofreal movements belong together on an equal footing. For research purposes,their connection could be conceived as follows: The historical analyses extractthe content of the normative ideas of social movements, which can be checkedretrospectively with regard to their justiability by means of a theory of

communicative ethics. This itself, however, remains dependent on thecontent of the moral ideas of historical movements for the grounding of itsrational justification procedures.

This connection of historicity and normative reason can be examinedfurther in light of another peculiarity of the Habermasian theory ofcommunicative ethics. As H. Peukert has shown, its normative ideal aims atan unlimited communication community, which would have to extend inanamnetic solidarity even to past generations.35 The paradox of thisanamnetic solidarity, however, in my opinion calls for a combination ofconsciousness-raising and redemptive critique.36 The quarrel betweenHorkheimer and Benjamin over the finishedness or unfinishedness of the

past37 was already predecided by Marx in his Critique of the Political Economy

in favor of Benjamin. The standard of transcendent critique requires asolidarity with the oppressed of the past. It is a redemptive critique not onlyin the sense of a semantic preservation of tradition, but also in the sense of theredemption of the living claims which an historico-social lifeworld, notsubsumed under capital, could have realized.38 And it is a critique thatsituates itself within the framework of a consciousness-raising critique. Itunderstands present society, critically by forming a concept of it and statingthe truth about it. Its standard is one that exists and develops historically,and that deals with the context even of the contingent self-interpretations ofacting human beings and that at the same time does not renounce the quest forreason in history.

3. In conclusion, let me discuss the farewell from critique as a theoreticalactivity as Marx tries to explain this in Capital under the topic of the

Abolition of Critique by a Practical Turn.Marx gives a paradigmatic version of this in a passage of Capitalwhere the

whole of capital-formation is not yet thematic. He changes from theretrospective stance of a describer and narrator into the present voice ofdramaturgy,39 in which the voice of the worker, which had fallen silent inthe storm and stress of the production process, suddenly is raised. (B 247f.) The worker makes his claims and argues for them on the basis of priordevelopment. He is thus still ignorant of the exchange of equivalents, so thathis argumentation still shares its limitations and one-sidedness: But it is a


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practical turn of critique that leads thus to a struggle for the limitation of theworkday. (B 249 f) Marx probably thought that such a practical applicationof consciousness-raising theoretical critique should take place on the basisof knowledge of the whole. That is the goal of the practico-political orientationof his critique which begins immanently and leads to transcendent critique.

Such a critique of present society is still lacking. If we project thecharacteristic moments of a Marxian version of critique onto the tracks ofuniversal theories of ethics., social action, and social evolution, we lose theirspecically historical tone and historical dependence. Whether they can beregained at the end of the theoretical project in the course of a self-enlighten-ment leading to self-reection, or can be introduced into communicativeethics on an equal footing is a matter of discussion and needs to be treatedmore at length than is possible here. In any case, a theory of historical

materialism which takes the Marxist intentions seriously, as they are stated inhis Critique of the Political Economy, cannot be established as a frameworktheory. It would rather have to accept itself as falling within the horizon ofcritique under the heading of the abolition of critique.

Hence even Marxs political theses on the expropriation of a fewexpropriators by the popular masses (B 791) could appear in a different light,namely as interference in the sense of the practical application of critique. Butthat would probably be too benevolent, since the certainty of this insight isdue to the wheel (Rad) of history, not to its advice (Rat).

NOTES

1 J. Habermas,Zur Rekonstruktion des historischen Materialismus (Frankfurt, 1976), p. 144;English trans. by T. McCarthy, Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism,Communication and Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979); see also p. 41, whereDas Kapi tal is called a component (Teilstck) of historical materialism.

2 Habermas, Historical Materialism and the Development of Normative Structures, in:Communication and the Evolution of Society,p. 97.

3 Ibid.,p. 127 .4 K. Korsch distinguished three forms of revolutionary critique in Das Kapi tal: a) as

immanent critique,Das Kapital is a rather consistent treatment of economic categories,their generalization up to the limits of the economic; b) as transcendent critique,DasKapitalexceeds the framework of economic theory itself, and proceeds to a historical andsociological description of the development of the bourgeois mode of production all theway to the struggle of social classes; c) as transcendental critique, which is the normaland typical one inDas Kapital, the form of economic knowledge ... is restricted totally

to its particular historical and social limits, K. Korsch,Karl Marx (Frankfurt, 1967), p.220f. Our distinction differs from Korschs very stimulating ideas since it is explicated in adifferent (non-Kantian) frame of reference and seeks especially to clarify the relationbetween these types of crit ique, which is lef t completely in the dark by Korsch.

5 Cf. Marx/Engels, Briefe ber Das Kapi tal (Berlin, 1954), p. 80 ff . The concept ofcritical exposition (kritische Darstellung) was clarified especially by M. Theunissen,Sein und Schein (Frankfurt, 1978), esp. pp. 13-91.

6 K. Marx, Theorien ber den Mehrwert, I, MEW, p. 331.7 A. Wellmer has elaborated such a point of departure of Marxian critique; his ideas coincide

on important points with those presented here, see A. Wellmer Praktische Philosophie


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und Theorie der Gesellschaft, in Normen und Geschichte, ed. by W. Oelmller

(Paderborn: UTB, 1979), p. 154 ff. Cf. also Seyla Benhabib, The Marxian Method ofCritique: Normative Presuppositions, Praxis International, vol. 4. No. 3 (October 1984),pp. 284-299.

8 I am quoting abridgedly: A refers to, K. Marx,Das KapitalI, 1st ed. (Hamburg, 1867);unchanged photomechanical reprint (Tokyo, 1959); B, to K. Marx,Das Kapi tal I, 2ndand following editions, MEW (Berlin, 1968); here see B 609 ff.

9 Thus already K. Korsch, in Marxismus und Phi losophie (Frankfurt, 1969); A. Schmidt,Geschichte und Struktur(Munich, 1971); J. Habermas,Zur Rekonstruktion des historischenMaterialismus; for an engaged leftist-Marxist attempt at transformation, cf. Andreas Wildt,Produktivkrfte and soziale Umwlzung, in U. Jaeggi and A. Honneth, eds., Theoriendes historischen Materialismus (Frankfurt, 1977), p. 106 ff.

10 J. Habermas,Erkenntnis und Interesse (Frankfurt, 1968), p. 36 ff.11 J. Habermas, Theorie und Praxis (Frankfurt, 1978), p. 117; A. Wellmer, Kri tis che

Gesellschaftstheorie und Positivismus (Frankfurt, 1969); D. Bhler,Metakritik der MarxschenIdeologiekritik(Frankfurt, 1971); T. Meyer,Der Zwiespalt in der Marxschen Emanzipations-theorie (Kronberg/Ts., 1973).

12 K. Marx. Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen konomie (East Berlin, 1953) p. 36 f; quotedin text as Gr. plus page number.

13 J. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt, 1981) 2 vols; Engl. transl.by T. A. McCarthy, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983).Abbreviated in the following as TkH. On a few points I deviate from Habermasdefinitions of these terms.

14 Cf. Habermas TkH, II, p. 182 ff.15 Cf. Ibid., p. 338 ff.16 Habermas speaks of the socio-cultural lifeworld, Ibid., p. 207 ff. There is also an

objective link between historico-social lifeworlds and what Habermas calls forms oflife. (cf. p. 165 ff.)

17 The following are very concise working denitions of terms which were rst formulatedby D. Lockwood, Social Integration and System Integration, in Zollschan and Hirsch,eds.,Explorations in Social Change (London, 1964). Cf. also Habermas, TkH, II,p. 179 ff.and 275 ff.

18 This systemic coordination of behavior can be intensified or stabilized via media likemoney or power. Cf. on this point, Habermas, TkH, II, p. 167 ff. and 384 ff.

19 Cf. the original and most differentiated definitions of the traits of value-forming work inK. Marx,Zur Kritik der politischen konomie (Berlin, 1970), pp. 23 ff.

20 Most recently, E. M. Lange, Das Prinzip Arbeit (Frankfurt, 1973); cf. also C.B.Macpherson,Die politische Theorie des Besitz-Individualismus: (Frankfurt, 1967), esp. p. 295ff; Engl. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1964).

21 Cf. H. Neuendorf, Der Begrif f des Interesses (Frankfurt, 1973).

22 For the Aristotelian Marx, labor capacity is a composite capacity: the mental facultyacquired through learning and education dominates the realization of the quasi-givennatural capacity. In the formative denition of labor-power typical of capitalism, thedependency is reversed: as the realization of labor-power, the mental faculty (reduced toattention) follows the natural process of the realization of the natural capacity. On Marxsadoption of Aristotelian terms, cf. Ursula Wolf, Mgl ichkei t und Notwendgke it be iAr istotelesund heute (Munich, 1979).

23 Cf. the seminal study by Wolfgang Pohrt, Theorie des Gebrauchswerts (Frankfurt, 1976); cf.also the attack on consumer society, in: P.P. Pasolini, Freibeuterschriften (Berlin, 1978); cf.also H. Marcuse,Kontrarevolution und Revolte (Frankfurt, 1973).


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24 Cf. B 533 f. and K. Marx Resultate des unmittelbaren Produkt ionsprozesses (Frankfurt,

1969), p. 45 ff.25 This is what does not allow history, historical evolution, and universal history to become

thematic as an independent framework theory of capitalist development, but only bymeans of the critique of the constitution of capital. In the framework of his studies on thedialectical contradiction, M. Theunissen comes to a similar thesis; cf. Krise der Macht,inHegel-Jahrbuch 1974 (Cologne, 1975), p. 325.

26 Cf. J. Habermas, ber das Subjekt der Geschichte, recently in: Ku ltur und Krit ik(Frankfurt, 1973), p. 389 ff.

27 Cf. Walter Benjamin, ber den Begriff der Geschichte, in Gesammelte Werke, Vols. Iand II (Frankfurt, 1974), esp. p. 696 f.

28 Cf. A. Wellmer, Kommunikation und Emanzipation, in Jaeggi and Honneth, eds.,Theorien des historischen Materialismus (Frankfurt, 1977).

29 Cf. also M. Theunissen, Sein und Schein,p. 84 f.

30 Cf. programmatically, J. Habermas, Introduction, Historischer Materialismus und dieEntwicklung normativer Strukturen, inZur Rekonstruktion, p. 9 ff.31 Cf. J. Habermas, Introduction to the new edition of Theorie und Praxis; cf. also M.

Theunissen, Gesellschaft und Geschichte (Berlin, 1969), p. 35 f. and Habermas reply in theafterword toErkenntnis und Interesse (Frankfurt, 1973) p. 415 ff; alsoZur Rekonstruktion,p. 244 ff.

32 Cf. J. Habermas, Moralentwicklung und Ich-Identitt, in:Zur Rekons truktion, esp. p.81 ff.; Eng. trans. as Moral Development and Ego-Identity in: Communication and theEvolution of Society, trans. by T. A. McCarthy. In the project proposal, Die Entwicklungvon Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen und Begrndungsverfahren im modernen Recht als soziologischesProblem (Ms. Starnberg, 1978), K. Eder, G. Frankenberg, U. Rdel and E. Tugendhatdevelop the concept of a real discourse among participants, which as a corrective to aexible principle of justice, constitutes the last stage in the sequence of moral groundingprocedures. The following reflections on the normat ive cr iter ion for transcendental

critique would need to be specified in light of the theses of this project.33 Cf. A. Wellmer, Praktische Philosophie. Wellmer treats in more detail this argument for

transcendent critique that starts with Marxs critique of natural right theories.34 They generally occur in the form of new ideas about the contentof justice and the good

life(or its modern surrogates). To what extent such ideas can be reflected in the moralgrounding processes is a separate problem connected with the historicity of acommunicative ethics.

35 H. Peukert, Wissenschaftstheorie, Handlungstheorie,

Fundamentaltheologie (Frankfurt, 1978)esp. p. 300ff.; Eng. trans. by James Bohmann, Science, Action and Fundamental Theology(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984).

36 On these concepts, see J. Habermas, Bewutmachende oder rettende Kritik dieAktualitt Walter Benjamins in S. Unseld, ed., Zur Aktual itt Walter Benjamins(Frankfurt, 1972), p. 173 ff.; Eng. trans. by F. Lawrence, On the Actuality of Walter

Benjamin: Consciousness-Raising or Rescuing Critique, in: Habermas, Philosophical-Political Proles (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983).

37 Peukert, Op. cit.,p. 305 f.38 In this regard, these ideas on the concept of critique in Marx coincide with Pasolinis

vehement protest against the coercive abolition of traditional Italian forms of life. See note23 above.

39 As the note in B 249 seeks to show, this is not a fictive dramaturgy. It is, incidentally, inMarxs view, the dramaturgy of all union struggles, because it presupposes the recognitionof the exchange of equivalents in its legitimating-ideological function; cf. K. Marx,Resultate, p. 119 f .

3.7 - lohmann, georg - marx' «capital» and the question of normative standards (en)

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