Critical theory is of central importance to this thesis. Unlike Weber, the work of critical theorists is explicitly concerned with critiquing domination with an orientation towards praxis focused against domination.

If there is one central concept running throughout the literature of critical theory, it is domination. Because this thesis is focused on domination, it is logical to devote considerable space to a theoretical tradition which makes a major issue of domination. Moreover, the ways in which individual theorists have grappled with domination highlight important strengths and weaknesses in the ways in which critical theorists have brought their critiques to bear on aspects of domination, most specifically on issues of praxis, morality, and agency. Critical theory is also oriented towards helping people understand why they are dominated, and then empowering people to do something to ameliorate their misery.

This chapter disentangles some aspects of the treatment of domination in the work of Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas. In critical theory there is no orthodoxy as to what constitutes domination except in the most general terms. Each critical theorist develops their own approach to domination and its critique. Critical theorists use the concept of domination (Herrschaft) very rarely. Where they do, their definition of it is often so vague as to be next to meaningless, leaving the impression that domination might be associated with almost anything in contemporary society which they find objectionable. Indeed, in the main, critical theorists tend to argue that specific phenomena in modern society are indicative of social dynamics bound up with the domination of some people by other people. On their view, what has changed about contemporary domination is its increasing impersonality and ubiquity, these aspects tending to escalate as rationalization proceeds throughout society. As their critique proceeds, however, domination tends to retreat to the background.

Critical theorists agree in trying to problematise domination. The general view common throughout critical theory is that relations of domination are antithetical to an assumed general human interest in emancipation, particularly in the context of Western modernity. Theodor Adorno, for example, constantly emphasised that "... the domination of men over men [remains] the basic fact" (in Held, 1980: 71). In the main, a key feature of modernity is typified by escalating intrusions of a peculiar kind of formal rationality or, as some describe it, ‘instrumental reason’ (e.g., Horkheimer, 1974a) or ‘technocratic consciousness’ (e.g., Habermas, 1971: 81 — 122), into areas of social life hitherto informed by categories of rationality akin to traditional ethics which ought to guide human actions towards emancipation. The alleged Enlightenment tenet that the point of human social development was an increase in individual freedom was being fundamentally contradicted by the ever—expanding effects of rationalization, institutionalising relations of domination through economic, administrative, legal, and cultural spheres. In general, critical theory is strongest when it highlights aspects of contemporary rationalised domination, and couples its insights with a general commitment to critique.

But critical theorists are theoretically weak for a number of reasons bound up with themes central to their theory. Indeed, their attempts to develop a universally applicable and comprehensive critical theory of domination with the practical intent of assisting people to challenge relations of domination in which they are caught are seriously flawed. In critical theory attempts to link theory with practice led to premature and readily falsifiable claims. Often claims to universal applicability of theory overlooked specific, regional, cultural, and social differences which contributed to specific forms of domination and resistance to those forms by the dominated. Critical theorists until very recently have also virtually ignored nonviolence. Indeed, Marcuse dismissed it as a species of ‘bourgeois ideology’ (Marcuse, 1969).

This chapter commences with a brief review of how Hegel and Marx dealt with domination. A major methodological tool of critical theory, immanent critique, is examined in the context of a broader discussion of how critical theorists sought to develop critical social theory beyond Weber. A central issue in critical theory, the question of praxis, then is examined to show how critical theorists both advocated and faltered on the issue of how their theory could or ought be actualised in struggle for emancipation from domination. At this point, the work of Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and some aspects of the more recent work of Jürgen Habermas will be considered.

Modern critical theory began from an essentially Marxist perspective, focusing on relations of production, class struggle, and similar central Marxist categories. But very early in the life of the Frankfurt School, most especially in the work of Max Horkheimer and then in the work of Herbert Marcuse, critical theory increasingly took up many of Max Weber’s categories, but with a major difference (Jay, 1973: 259; Held, 1980: 65). This difference may be summarised by saying that where Weber capitulated to rationalization and thence to domination, the critical theorists remained opposed to rationalization and domination.

The origins of critical theoretical discussions of domination can be traced back to Hegel's discussion of the ‘Master and Slave’ relationship in The Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel, 1977). In some respects, the 'Master and Slave' discussion can be interpreted as a metaphor for the opportunities and difficulties presented when individuals strive to authenticate themselves in the world. Hegel outlines how consciousness cannot develop to truly authentic self—consciousness without recognition of the other, and yet self—consciousness remains uncertain as it apprehends others who also attempt to embody self—consciousness. There are a number of ways to resolve the dilemmas in this situation, and one way Hegel says this can be done is for the two consciousnesses to enter into a mutually self—authenticating relationship. Dramatically, Hegel describes the tensions in such recognition as a life and death struggle:

The other way of attempting to authenticate self—consciousness is through the relationship of domination, in which the Master seeks for absolute self—consciousness at the complete expense of the Slave, whom they totally dominate:

But Hegel goes on to argue that something very important takes place as the Master exerts domination over the Slave:

By seeking to achieve authentic self—consciousness at the expense of the Slave, the Master actually becomes thrall to the Slave because the Master is dependent upon the Slave for the labour needed to achieve authenticity. Through their labour (which is to say their mediation with the world on behalf of the Master) the Slave comes to understand themselves as beings acting in the world: " precisely in labour, where there seemed to be merely some outsider's mind and ideas involved, the bondsman becomes aware, through this re—discovery of himself by himself, of having and being a ‘mind of his own’" (Hegel, 1976: 49). The Master remains only dependent on the Slave. Hegel is careful not to overlook the remaining bondage of the Slave. The Slave remains under the physical control of the Master, and as such their self—consciousness remains that of the Slave: "... it is still inherently a determinate mode of being; having a ‘mind of its own’ (der eigene Sinn) is simply stubbornness (Eigensinn), a type of freedom which does not get beyond the attitude of bondage" (Hegel, 1976: 50).

The relationship of Master and Slave can be understood to contain three elements. Firstly, the possibility of a mutually self—authenticating relationship between people recognising their interdependence, their need for each other, with all the risks which trusting others entails. Such trust negates the second element, metaphorically typified by the central theme in this section of the Phenomenology, the Master and Slave relationship. But in this element lies the apotheosis of the relation of absolute domination in which the Master, the dominator, becomes so dependent on the Slave that it becomes the Slave who glimpses, even if only dimly, the possibility of gaining self—consciousness, while the Master still strives for self—consciousness. They must relinquish their domination of the Slave if they are to achieve their goal. The third, and tragic, element lies in the mimetic atrophy of the Slave's self—consciousness. They might glimpse their self—consciousness, but, still physically dominated by the Master, their expression of that self—consciousness is limited to stubbornness, a limited resistance to the Master. Their physical release from domination is what is required to truly set them on the road to freedom.

Hegel's discussion of domination is significantly grounded and expanded by Marx in the wider social context, particularly with respect to society's relations of production, and the effects of those relations on human beings and their struggles for freedom and authentic being:

Connerton's summary of Marx's approach to domination leaves out important details of Marx’s theoretical edifice. For Marx, domination was never a central category, but what concerned him were the causes and effects of domination, specifically in emerging capitalist society. His early discussion of alienated labour, for example, can be interpreted as a discussion of the effects of domination specific to particular social relations, and located the causes of domination in this context in the institution of private property:

But this discussion is not about Marx, but about some of the heirs to the tradition he helped found. Marcuse, a major heir to the Marxian legacy, noted the explicit link between Hegel's 'Master and Slave' discourse and Marx's early development upon it in the alienated labour discussion in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and wrote that Hegel's insight on the centrality of labour to the development of human self—consciousness disclosed to Marx

To a significant degree, ‘... the history of Frankfurt social theory from the 1930s to the 1950s and 1960s is marked by a shift in theoretical orientation away from Marx to Weber’ (Held, 1980: 65). The shift was never total. ‘Second generation’ critical theory still grappled with Marx and Marxism, and critical theory never fully lost its initial stress upon the requirement that critical theoretical insights be validated in historical praxis. As Max Horkheimer put it in his programmatic essay ‘Traditional and Critical Theory,’ the goal of critical theory is the emancipation of humanity from slavery (Horkheimer, 1976). In general, Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse were in agreement with Weber on the central importance of rationalization in the modern epoch. They parted with Weber because they refused to agree that individuals had to accommodate themselves to the dynamics of modern rationalised domination if identity and ‘the good life’ were to be secured.

As was discussed in chapter two, Weber’s theory of domination was essentially an ‘elite—oriented’ theory and he never discussed domination from the perspective of society’s dominated members. He did briefly mention reasons why people could be expected to obey commands issued by their dominators. These reasons could be described as ‘proto—psychological’ because they tend to go into the mental processes whereby people decide to obey orders, thence acceding to routine domination. When Weber was working, psychology and psychoanalysis were in their infancy, as was sociology which tended to focus on individual interactions rather than structural aspects of society, drawing on psychology and psychoanalysis. Further, Weber placed personal stress upon a split between an ‘heroic ethic’ and an ‘ethic of the mean’, which was partly explicated in ‘Politics as a Vocation’ with his argument for an ‘ethic of responsibility’ as appropriate for those with a calling to politics (Weber, 1970; 1978: 385 — 388). Weber, in arguing for the rejection of a paper submitted for publication in a journal of which he was an editorial adviser, did not dismiss Freud’s theories out of hand, but neither did he accept them because he felt they had not yet reached a sufficiently developed stage to assist sociological investigation (Weber, 1978: 383 — 384). What later work on social psychology and psychoanalysis tended to highlight were the interior formations of the individual’s social psyche and the relationships between the individual’s psyche and the society.

If, as both Weber and the critical theorists generally held, rationalization facilitated the stabilisation of relations of domination, then it appears highly likely that domination in the modern context affects the psyches of individuals in society irrespective of how ubiquitous or anonymous it appears. This was indeed the general thrust of critical theoretical work which sought to link aspects of psychoanalysis to the overall theory (Held, 1980: 110 — 147). Marcuse, at his most Freudian in Eros and Civilization, for example, pointed to some of these effects:

This issue is important because a more holistic theory of domination requires that attention to given to multiple aspects of domination from structural through to existential. As was argued earlier, a one—sided structural approach, as epitomised by Weber, has some strengths including highlighting the connections between domination, action, and rationalization as a world—historical process. But this approach neglects the lived experience of being dominated. Such lived experience is what critical theory, especially in its more psychological moments, tends to emphasise, while reconstructing its own structural approach. Critical theory’s attention to the lived experience of being dominated also helps shed light on the problem of resistance from those who otherwise might be expected to struggle for liberation from domination, a problem of crucial importance if a theory is to retain its practical intent, applicability, and relevance for social struggles.

An important issue is why critical theorists are vague when it comes to defining domination. Adorno and Horkheimer, for example, in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) did not define domination at all, though it is clearly the central concept in their various discussions on classical Greek mythology, the Reformation, atheism, the culture industry, and the authoritarian state (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1973). Domination is equally central to Marcuse's critiques of contemporary society. But he, too, did not define it with Weber's precision. Rather, in the main, critical theory's definition of domination is situational, the definition of domination being determined by the wider context of a given theorist's discussion, be it a psychoanalysis of the individual's relations with the society, the alleged effects of the mass media or the culture industry on the society and the individual, or theoretical discussions on how contemporary post—industrial society warps reason while appearing to be the embodiment of reason. Minimal critical theoretical definitions of domination can be generally inferred from specific writings and essentially amount to this somewhat tautological summation: Domination refers to socially unnecessary constraints on human freedom (after Schroyer, 1975: 15). Thus Marcuse wrote towards the end of his life that:

Echoing Marx's three components of alienation — alienation of the individual from nature, from others in society, and from the products of work — Marcuse held that domination could affect individuals and how they conceived of themselves. He then referred to the domination of labour as a disciplined and controlled process central to the individual's experience, and the outward domination of nature through science and technology (Marcuse, 1970: 12; c.f. Horkheimer & Adorno, 1973: 3 — 80). Granted that linking individual and structural aspects of domination together strengthens the overall critique, the vagueness definition suggests that critical theorists may have lacked an analytically adequate social ontology.

The decisive methodological weapon of critical theory is immanent critique. In 1947, Max Horkheimer wrote of critical theory's approach that:

Immanent critique is also understood as a ‘remembering’ of the human project of emancipation, not as an antediluvian idea of a Rousseauesque 'primitive savage,' or a lost, almost mythical, historical period of peace and plenty, but rather links into critical theory's basic claim that reason involves engagement with and maximisation of emancipation. To forget this is to deny the vital, dialectical aspect of the Enlightenment project of emancipation through reason. In critical theory in general anamnesis has a major part to play in immanent critique.

Horkheimer and Adorno, for example, assert in Dialectic of Enlightenment that, as humanity strives to dominate nature, and, as at least a partial consequence of attempting to dominate nature humanity attempts to dominate itself, nevertheless ‘... dominant practice and its inescapable alternatives are not threatened by nature, which tends rather to coincide with them, but by the fact that nature is remembered’ (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1973: 255). No matter how technologically advanced human capacities become at distancing human affairs and projects from nature, humanity's psychic and practical links with nature cannot be severed, so nature haunts humanity as a permanent memory. Marcuse also stresses this point about memory, both in Eros and Civilization (e.g., Marcuse, 1969: 34 — 35; 101 — 105; 185 — 187) and in One—Dimensional Man:

Habermas also argues along these lines in the essays on psychoanalysis in Knowledge and Human Interests (Habermas, 1971: 214 — 300).

The problem is that while anybody can claim to ‘remember’ in the privacy of their own mind, for critical theorists remembering had to be a political act leading to radical or revolutionary consequences because what was remembered was the assumed human interest in freedom from domination which was being distorted or frustrated by existing social conditions and practices. John O'Neill summarises the importance of remembrance by asserting that it is "... the bodily infrastructure of political knowledge and action. It holds injustice to account and sustains the utopian hope that underlies the will to freedom and equality" (O'Neill, 1977: 4).

Three central issues arise at this point. The first is the need for a way of establishing convincingly that emancipation from domination is more rational, sensible, or better than the acceptance of domination as wholly inevitable, even necessary, for sustainable social existence particularly in contemporary Western society. Secondly, the theoretical development of the relationship between theory and practice needs to be clarified to indicate how opposition to domination might arise, mobilise, and challenge relations of domination in ways which might not just exchange one form of domination for another but lead to a more sustainable, enlightened, and emancipated society. A third issue permanently accompanies the former two, and indeed arguably precedes them. This issue, which is the impact of modernity, will now be explored.

A central feature of modernity involves the overtaking of formerly crucial normative inputs into the consideration of possible alternative courses of action which enabled judgements and choices to be justified and made, and their replacement by allegedly amoral, ‘scientific’, and value—neutral techniques guided by efficiency and efficacy. The ‘ends versus means’ debate is reduced to a debate about means, which determine the ends to be sought (e.g., Horkheimer, 1974a: 3 — 57). To a significant extent, notions associated with phronesis such as prudence, wisdom, or judgement, are supplanted by exigencies of Technique understood in its instrumental forms (Ferrara, 1987).

In general, it can be ascribed to the impact of scientific insights on the workings of the cosmos which, in and of themselves, indicate that the cosmos is wholly indifferent to human concerns. Extra—human sources of ethical and moral guidance, such as God, can therefore no longer claim purchase over the human mind applied to acting in the world. With no generally convincing ethical criteria available to guide or ground judgements between alternative possible actions, anything becomes possible. Taken to its limits, this approach leads to nihilism, of a sort: if anything is possible, then anything becomes necessary, with no final ethical barriers standing between the array of possible actions and the realisation of any one of those actions. In the world, ethical systems find their practical outworkings through masses of people believing in them, and using them as guides for their own dynamic reflection and action. If masses of people are essentially ethically illiterate, especially with respect to possible connections between a privately—held ethical system and macro—scale corporate, political, and bureaucratic ethically—informed actions, then barriers between private and public corruption effectively cease to exist.

One extreme position, which holds that there are no effective ethical systems any more because of the extent of rationalization, has been presented by Alistair MacIntyre (MacIntyre, 1981; Bousfield, 1981). It is one thing to live a private life guided by an ethical system. It is quite another to seek to actualise the implications of that system in the context of one's public activity in the corporation, the bureaucracy, or the military. It appears futile to attempt to condemn the action of a government agency or a large corporation on the basis of ethical objections because there no longer appears any convincingly or generally valid standard against which that action can be judged and found wanting. The opposite of this position, that there are no standards available against which actions can be judged and found praiseworthy or laudable, does not quite hold, because the standards for the system involve calculations of efficiency or efficacy with respect to the specific goals sought. The original standards of behaviour which so deeply informed the West, admittedly honoured more in the breach than in the observance — the so—called ‘Just War’ doctrine being only one of many (e.g., Walzer, 1980) — remain ipso facto valid, but the basis upon which they held considerable influence over the Western mind has been discredited. Thence they too have been discredited, though lip service may often be given to them without their tenets governing specific actions.

Given that praxis is central for critical theory, there is negligible evidence to show that any significant social movement took up aspects of critical theory and sought to actualise it in historical struggle, with the possible exception of some radical students in the New Left. Even this relationship between the New Left and especially Herbert Marcuse, but also Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas, was a difficult one (e.g., Young, 1977: 324 — 346; Jay, 1973: 278 — 280). Jay vividly describes Adorno's humiliation at the hands of some militant students who invaded one of his lectures in April 1969 (Jay, 1984: 55). Habermas's critical comments about the student protests in West Germany also indicate his antipathy to their activities (Habermas, 1971: 13 — 49). Rather, tendencies and sometimes inchoate intuitions among some social movements connect with general tenets of critical theory's critique of advanced industrial civilisation. Some of these movements and groups seek to actualise emancipatory potential in the midst of a society in which the potential for such actualisation might otherwise appear slim. It is a moot point as to whether or not the relationship between critical theory and these movements is explicit and intentional or only coincidental at best.

A central problem for critical theory was the fact that historical subjects who could act to end domination became more difficult to identify. The Marxist proletariat had been co—opted into the mainstream of capitalism and had been acknowledged by all but the most doctrinaire Marxists to have lost revolutionary potential. Other change agents, such as women, ethnic minorities, hippies, and students, although when mobilised in sufficient numbers able to cause problems, were peripheral to the central functions of industry and government. As Marcuse argued in Repressive Tolerance, they could be tolerated, and in being so tolerated, have their critiques and actions marginalised, even ridiculed by a generally compliant mass media, and elements of their criticisms incorporated into the mainstream and reproduced by the system in barely recognisable forms minus their central, critical tenets (Marcuse, 1969).

The problem of the relationship between theory and praxis, and the testing of theory's validity in historical struggles for emancipation from domination, was always a rhetorical theme in critical theory. If the criterion for assessing whether or not critical theory is valid lies solely in its actualisation by historical subjects in struggle then critical theory has failed. There is no evidence of any historical movement explicitly taking up critical theory as a guide for action in the sense that, for example, fairly disciplined Marxist parties, albeit with specific nationalist ideological components, have asserted themselves in revolutionary struggles. There are theoretical and historical reasons for this.

Theoretically, critical theory's general analysis of society became decidedly pessimistic, and moved still deeper into pessimism and even despair as fascism, totalitarian socialism, and co—optation or repression of Marxian revolutionary classes took place in the so—called developed world, while revolutions erupted in the so—called developing world, all leading to profound doubts about the efficacy and adequacy of Marxism, especially in its predictive moments. Horkheimer, and especially Adorno, stressed the need to ‘negate the negation’, to constantly and ever more radically uncover the yawning contradictions between society's theory and its practice in all areas. At the same time, potentials for actualising even some components in the theory in social change struggles were objectively receding. The attempted totalising of the theory certainly illuminated many aspects of a society undergoing profound crisis when set against many of its own tenets of human purposes being bound up with achieving greater freedom and autonomy. But the very attempted totality led to the fairly obvious conclusion that there was effectively no way out. All that was left was more of the same approach to theorising increasingly removed from the lived experiences of people, even those dissatisfied with their society and looking for other ways of understanding and changing it.

Horkheimer summarised the situation in an essay entitled ‘Means and Ends’ first published in 1947 in Eclipse of Reason:

Acknowledging this crisis, much of critical theory's project, especially that of Habermas, appears to revolve around the attempted establishment of a new, or at least a different, set of criteria for the guidance or assessment of human action in the world which does not rely upon ethical or political dogmas or scientism in its various forms for its validation. This set of criteria has to be as universally applicable as possible so that it is not dependent on specific historical or social circumstances for its validity and is thence limited to those contexts alone, and, given critical theory's obsession with emancipation from domination as the point of human existence, eschew political dogmatism without holding forth specific promises of success to delude those who might take up the theory as a guide to determinate struggles for freedom. Habermas's recent work on communicative action theory is consistent with this reading (Habermas, 1984 & 1988).

Together with a general shift into increasing theoretical despair, lie themes in critical theory which add to its impotence in energising the practical side of the theory and practice nexus that its main proponents sought to address. This leads to the complex question of praxis. The personal biographies of the leading critical theorists are partly relevant to help explain their decided ambivalence to the mechanics of praxis. While it is too much to expect any theorist to develop a detailed revolutionary plan for overturning an oppressive society and reconstruct it along more egalitarian and emancipatory lines, in principle, if a theorist is going to argue for revolutionary change, then some thought ought to be given to how to achieve it. To claim for a theory the kind of predictive accuracy which could lead political actors to engage in dangerous struggle on the basis of that theory’s predictions is usually rejected as pretentious, as well as claiming for a theory a kind of comprehensiveness of explanation of which no theory or theorist is capable (e.g., Hill, 1988: 233 — 234). But it seems appropriate to ask of a theorist that they set out some sort of general guiding principles for action indicated by their theory, hedged about with caveats though these principles may be.

Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse are virtually silent on this question, and where they are not silent, the combination of personal biography and theoretical paucity plays a crucial role. Adorno and Horkheimer never had any explicit links to any revolutionary party at any time in their lives, and Marcuse was only briefly a member of the German Socialist Party in the late 1920s. Adorno and especially Horkheimer were essentially bourgeois German—Jewish intellectuals who gained their educations, and retained their academic positions during the German crises subsequent to the catastrophe of 1918, the Weimar period, and the traumatic economic depression which helped pave the way for the rise of Nazism. Horkheimer especially never entirely renounced the prophetic and messianic components inherent in his Jewish background, and never grappled with some of the more practical, and, for somebody with his bourgeois sensitivities, unpleasant aspects of revolutionary change. Even Marcuse, arguably the critical theorist who least compromised his Marxism and radicalism during the shifts from Germany, to Switzerland, and then the United States, never maintained any links with any left party, or even elements of the labour movement. In terms of the relationships between intellectuals and mass revolutionary movements, it might be fair to expect that some of the writings of these critical theorists should have been pitched at a level at which theoretical rigour was retained while accessibility by at least some unionists or party cadres was enhanced. But Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung articles evidenced nothing approaching a debate with elements of the proletariat about society, potentials for change, and resistance to growing oppression and fascism (Jay, 1973; Tar, 1977; Slater, 1980: 54 — 93).

There is considerable evidence to show that critical theorists were well aware of competing left—wing analyses of capitalist society and what should be done to overturn capitalism. In general, none of the alternatives then being debated or even attempted in Europe during the inter—war period appeared to satisfy various critical theorists' conceptions of either convincing theoretical analysis or appropriate action for change in the light of the theory. From a more orthodox Marxist perspective, Phil Slater, while praising many of critical theory's insights and its general stress upon the need for theoretical validation through praxis, repeatedly highlights the practical limits of the theory, and its main authors' failures to usefully link theory to action. Neither orthodox communist, or social—democrat, or reformist, or libertarian socialist, critical theory's praxis, even in its radical Marcusian form, seemed to devolve into a spontaneity theory of revolutionary change in which some radical group, by virtue of historical circumstance, accurate theoretical analysis, and relevant practice, was able to take a leadership role in a revolutionary movement for change. Such a theory, writes Slater, ‘... is conveniently freed from the necessity of formulating organisational categories, but any such theory can hardly claim to be the revolutionary "truth"’ (Slater, 1980: 82).

A major problem for critical theory's treatment of praxis lies in its effective reification of violence as virtually an ‘independent variable’ in the calculus of social change. If theory is to assist in enlightening its audience about why they ought to struggle for freedom from domination, then it also ought to at least give some indications about how that struggle might be conducted in ways which hold some promise of not replacing one form of domination with another. In practical terms, revolutionary change must encounter violence, if not in the reactionary violence of agents of the status quo, then in the actions of those struggling for their freedom. Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse barely mention violence in their discussions of revolutionary change, especially at a theoretical level. The assumption has to be made that they generally accepted the Marxian position on praxis and violence, which holds that, given the violence of repression and exploitation inherent in the routine workings of capitalist society, revolutionaries can expect violent means to be used against them. They, by virtue of their emancipatory goals, are morally justified in responding violently, if not also all but required to do so to survive and defend themselves. Violence, especially for more orthodox Marxists, is also seen as purgative or cathartic, a metaphorical and even an actual cleansing of the body politic and the society of the malformed cancers of domination, repression, and capitalism (e.g., Vazquez, 1977: 305 — 303). The specific situational difficulties associated with revolutionary change, and concomitant ethical dilemmas occasioned with practical struggle against opponents using violence at need to retain their control over the society cannot be overlooked, but it is quite another thing to theoretically reify a crucial phenomenon like violence and leave it to the activists to figure out how to conduct their struggle. Some sort of theoretical guidance ought to be expected from theorists seeking validation of their theory through the practical action of people struggling for liberation. Theorists making such claims have a responsibility to at least address the matter even if they cannot be expected to map out a tactical programme of action specific to each historical instance of struggle (Fay, 1987: 142 — 164).

One reason why Horkheimer and Adorno never even attempted to set out their visions or ideas for a possible better society lay in their Jewish origins. In Judaism, from Biblical times to the present, it is forbidden to name God, hence the almost unpronounceable Hebrew word for God, anglicised as YHWH, which is variously translated as God, Jehovah, Yehweh, or the Lord. To look forward to, even to agonise for, a glorious future as described by some of the Biblical prophets is one thing. For a writer actually to attempt to describe it is almost blasphemous because that is God's business, and only God can know what the future may be. Despite their allegedly agnostic, even atheistic Marxist commitments, Jay suggests that Adorno and Horkheimer's hands were stayed, at least in part, out of concern for the consequences of daring to describe a future emancipated society, less from any fear of bringing down divine wrath than because of the subterranean influence of Jewish theological thought on critical theory's materialism (Jay, 1973: 56; 1984: 19 — 20; Davis, 1980: 136). To be sure, to spell out what a future emancipated society might resemble is necessarily to limit that society and theoretically circumscribe the possibilities for emancipation that people struggling for their freedom might themselves envision. This is very much the practical dilemma which critical theorists have set for themselves because ethically they cannot dictate to their audience what ‘is’ or ‘might be’ the ‘theoretically correct path’ towards ‘freedom’ or ‘enlightenment’. Their critical methodology eschewed dogmatism in any form, and retained an "... essentially open—ended, probing, and unfinished quality" (Jay, 1973: 41) in line with the essentially unfinished nature of history itself.

Adorno was repelled by the violence of students in Germany in the late 1960s, saying that "... I could not have guessed that people would try to realize" the theoretical model of critical theory "... with Molotov cocktails" (in Jay, 1973: 279). At this point, it should be noted that critical theory had not attracted adherents in the way that communists are attracted to some sort of organised party. Rather, critical theory’s general diagnosis of Western civilisation had many affinities with criticisms advanced by elements the New Left, at least sufficient for a general identification with the student protesters to be made by central critical theorists such as Marcuse (e.g., Young, 1977). As Young makes clear, New Left ideology was also characterised by significant radical eclecticism (Young, 1977: 130 — 143). But social action for change always contains the inherent risk of violence, even if only in the random violence of the mob. A number of commentators have noted Adorno's capitulation to despair (e.g, Jay, 1973; Davis, 1980) and even he himself described his ‘negative dialectics’ as being a "... consistent sense of nonidentity. It does not begin by taking a standpoint. My thought is driven to it by its own inevitable insufficiency, by my guilt of what I am thinking" (Adorno, 1973: 5).

While Horkheimer and Adorno were repelled by violence, Marcuse's explicit endorsement of revolutionary violence in Repressive Tolerance (1969) and Five Lectures (1970) reflects an almost romantic glorification of revolutionary violence, and ignorance about the subtleties of nonviolence. From the perspective of somebody widely recognised as a theoretical mentor of the New Left, that glorification was tactically maladroit, especially in the context of Western democracies with their hypocritical positions on violence, as evidenced by support for violence against liberation struggles overseas and criticism of domestic, revolutionary violence. A clear line of argument on this point can be traced from Georges Sorel, through Frantz Fanon and Jean—Paul Sartre, to Marcuse (Sorel, 1967; Fanon, 1967; Sartre, 1967; Marcuse, 1969; Arendt, 1970: 65 — 87). Hannah Arendt points to the similarities between Sorel and Fanon by arguing that they, and Sartre in his ‘Preface’ to Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth as well which Marcuse favourably quotes in Repressive Tolerance (Marcuse, 1969: 117; Sartre, 1967: 21)

On the one hand, it is difficult to disagree with Marcuse on an ethical level when he argues that preaching abstention from violence to the oppressed who are opposing the violence of the oppressors weakens the resistance. There is a significant, and transparent, hypocrisy in calling on the oppressed to renounce violence when they are threatened with, or indeed are experiencing, the violence of oppression. On the other hand, it is not adequate to justify violence on the grounds that because the oppressed are struggling for the positive goal of liberation, their actions, however violent, are ethically justified. Marcuse also implies that because history is not made in accordance with ethical standards, violence ought to become the arbiter of conflict. Marcuse's dismissal of nonviolence is very revealing (Marcuse, 1969: 116 — 117). All that Marcuse could finally, and rather lamely, call for was that:

Another aspect of the failure of critical theorist's to adequately deal with the problem of praxis lay in precisely the implications of the failure of social movements to take up the theory as a guide for their own struggles for emancipation from domination. A key implication of this failure is the dilemma critical theorists created for themselves by explicitly eschewing any claims to having access to any revolutionary ‘truths’ and arguing instead that any such ‘truths’ would be uncovered or discerned through the struggles of people for their own freedom. In essence, there would come a point beyond which theory itself could not go, and action for emancipatory change became the crucible from which might emerge a self—understanding of ‘truth’ or authenticity within the revolutionary actors themselves. While theory could serve as a guide, action would offer the proving ground for the theory, and action would develop theory through the reflexive links between theory and practice. The point is that there were limits beyond which theory itself could not go, and, in the main, leading critical theorists themselves baulked at going beyond those limits. They were also fearful of turning theory into propaganda, instrumentalizing theory and turning it into a rigid, ideologically loaded revolutionary programme, or having theory sublate into a nostalgic yearning for an idealised "state of nature" (Jay, 1973: 266 — 267).

At this point, it is useful to briefly trace aspects of Max Horkheimer's approach to critical theory because he, of all the leading critical theorists, evidences the influence of biography, contemporary circumstances, and theoretical inclinations on the development and failure of critical theory.

Horkheimer is also important because, of all the critical theorists, he continued to grapple with some of the theological implications of critical theory, in significant contrast to the atheism of Marcuse and Adorno. That theology has been influenced by critical theory is of intellectual interest because, on the face of it, atheistic Marxism and nihilistic tending Weberian analysis both would appear to bracket theology out of their philosophically informed theoretical discussions, though theorists would acknowledge the sociological significance of theologically legitimated political action. Marxists such as Ernst Bloch, who was on the edge of the Frankfurt School, have certainly influenced theologians such as Metz and Moltmann (Davis, 1980: 30). These theologians, among the most influential German political theologians, repeatedly acknowledge their debts to Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas, and often interweave their theology with social critiques almost indistinguishable from those advanced by critical theorists. Charles Davis uses the phrase ‘critical theology’ which, he writes,

This matter will be discussed at length in the next chapter where some of the connections between critical theory and recent political and Liberation theologies will be examined, though Horkheimer’s theological views will be discussed here as well. Horkheimer is also relevant at this point because he was the most attentive reader of Weber among the major critical theorists.

In his programmatic essay ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, Max Horkheimer, the second and most influential director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research prior to the diaspora occasioned by the Nazis coming to power in Germany in 1933, contrasts the approaches of traditional and critical theory and in so doing, indicates some of the reasons why critical theory would embrace aspects of Weber's work. Horkheimer discusses how traditional theory handles the explanation of historical events by examining the controversy between Eduard Meyer and Max Weber. Meyer argued that speculation about whether or not certain wars would have occurred irrespective of specific decisions made by specific historical personages was idle and unanswerable. Weber argued that if Meyer was correct, then all historical explanation was impossible. Against Meyer, Weber argued that historical explanations rest on the establishment of connections between key elements or facts in an historical continuity, and further argued logically that explanation could be made scientifically along lines dictated by the traditional scientific method (c.f. Roth, 1987: 79 — 80). For Horkheimer, this is indicative of traditional theoretical method, identical to the method used to develop modern scientific and technical society.

Methodologically, Horkheimer argued that critical theory had to take account of all relevant concepts, methods, definitions, and information. The methodological stance adopted by Frankfurt School theorists was generally an interdisciplinary one. This methodological point is relevant to the discussion of peace research in Chapter Six, insofar as peace research is also methodologically highly trans— and inter—disciplinary. David Held summarises the interdisciplinary character of Horkheimian critical theory's methodology by pointing to two connected research processes, ‘representation’ or ‘presentation’ (Darstellungsweise) and ‘research’ (Forschung).

By pursuing this interdisciplinary approach, critical thinking, Horkheimer maintained, was driven by the indefatigable effort to push beyond the limits imposed upon the individual and their rationality by relations of domination imposed by work arrangements in society.

Horkheimer was still enough of a Marxist at this stage of the development of critical theory in 1937 to argue that Marx's critique of political economy represented the paradigm for renewed critical theory. Yet it became quite clear that even at this stage, critical theory was moving away from a strict Marxist approach to critique and tending to embrace more Weberian categories of analysis, though it refused to follow Weber into accommodation with or even capitulation to the status quo.

In his history of the Frankfurt School, Martin Jay notes that Horkheimer was always an interested reader of Weber and took Weber's Protestant Ethic as almost a paradigm of analysis in one of his unpublished essays, 'Reason and Self Preservation,' written in 1942. For Horkheimer, not only did Protestantism give significant impetus to capitalism, it gave rise to reified, 'cunning technocratic reason as well' (Jay, 1973: 259). Critical theorists in Germany in the 1930s had to contend with the Russian Revolution and the subsequent rise of a totalitarian, bureaucratic state, the rise of European fascism, especially German Nazism, and profound changes in industrial capitalism, all of which necessitated changes in Marxist critique to explain and criticise. The revolutionary potential of a particular social grouping or class, the Marxist's proletariat, had never been actualised successfully anywhere in industrialised society and in the 1930s, the potential for left—wing activity in Europe was all but eradicated by fascism.

Faced with this historical situation, Horkheimer, and Adorno as well, nevertheless kept developing and refining their visions of critical theory as a means of theoretically criticising existing society through the method of immanent critique. Horkheimer's essays immediately prior to, during, and after World War Two, particularly 'The End of Reason', first published in 1941, the lectures at Columbia University in 1944 collected in Eclipse of Reason (Horkheimer, 1974a) and the essays from the late 1950s and into the 1960s collected in Critique of Instrumental Reason (Horkheimer, 1974b), all reflect both his continuing criticism of what he argued were the many malformations of reason operative in modern civilisation, and his steadily widening shift in emphasis away from his earlier, and often explicit, Marxist arguments towards explicitly theological arguments. In one of his last essays, ‘Threats to Freedom’, written in 1967, Horkheimer concluded by drawing together themes common throughout his work, including the decline of the autonomous individual, the rise and effects of instrumental reason over against the decline of a putatively dialectical reason, with his later theological concerns:

The context of this essay indicates that Horkheimer was probably writing for a Christian, or at least a theologically informed, audience. The implications of a critical theory of religion, and a critical theology, will be discussed in greater depth in the next chapter. The point about ‘forgetfulness’, the general antithesis of remembrance noted earlier, as a threat to fidelity to the ideals of the Enlightenment, particularly its stress on individual freedom or autonomy, is linked to the continued existence of Christianity requiring the continuance of the admittedly problematic freedom of the individual. When read in the context of Horkheimer's life—long critique of allegedly deformed reason, the subtle references to the decline of the individual as a result of what others might interpret as tendencies leading to the continued ascendancy of the individual, coupled with his analysis of these tendencies as ‘Threats to Freedom’, this late essay reflects both a thematic and analytical consistency in Horkheimer's work.

Horkheimer's interest in religion and specifically Christianity derived, in part, from his bourgeois Jewish intellectual background, and more importantly, from his recognition that Christianity had played a crucial role in the history and development of the West, though not necessarily an entirely positive role, and that, especially subsequent to World War Two, the German people were searching for something to replace their shattered faith in Nazism and might grasp at an ideological form of Christianity devoid of what Horkheimer recognised were the radical implications of Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy (Siebert, 1976). Horkheimer's views on theology, and interestingly on the relationship between faith, Christianity, and critical theory near the end of his life were expounded in a long interview which, when published, was titled Die Sehnsucht nach dem ganz Anderen (The Longing for the Wholly Other). Horkheimer had asserted in a 1935 essay ‘On Religion’ that "Mankind loses religion as it moves through history, but the loss leaves its mark behind", (Horkheimer, 1972: 131) implying first, in line with a persistent Enlightenment theme, that greater enlightenment leads to autonomy and maturity and thence necessarily an abandonment of traditional religious beliefs shown to be illusions, and second, that such an abandonment without the replacement of religious beliefs by critical reason leaves a hole in human meaning systems. Almost fifty years later, Horkheimer said that

Charles Davis, writing on the implications of critical theory for Christian political theology, argued that Horkheimer's later and explicit embracing of theology as something of a last refuge from the assaults of instrumental reason effectively represents the final renunciation of any sense of praxis by Horkheimer. But Siebert maintains that embracing theology represented a continuation of Hegel's theory of religion in Horkheimer's work:

Horkheimer's approach to critical theory, exhibited theoretical—critical consistencies insofar as he was permanently obsessed (and this appears not to be too strong an adjective to use in relation to Horkheimer's critique of instrumental reason) with the tragedy of Enlightenment (Connerton's apt phrase). But, late in his life, he took up some theological themes which bear some similarities to Marxist critique, though, and this must be emphasised, without embracing any Christian orthodoxy (Connerton, 1980). The ambivalence to, perhaps even a rejection of, any dogma, which is a constant feature of critical theory, is captured in the following aphorism, from the posthumous collection of vignettes by Horkheimer entitled, significantly, Dawn and Decline:

Horkheimer's shift from the general orthodoxy of Marxism towards theological categories of critique, coupled with his constant stress, albeit often implied, on interdisciplinary methodology, can be interpreted as something of an heroic intellectual effort to stand against what he saw as the trends in Western civilisation towards the denial of the Enlightenment ideal of individual authenticity or freedom. By taking account of Weber, but in striving to get past him, Horkheimer recognised both Weber’s capitulation to rationalization, and sought to respond to rationalization with a revised form of critical Marxism. The fact is that, especially in terms of his neglect of explicit praxis, or the practical political implications of his thought, Horkheimer remained silent, offering no suggestions to his readers on how he thought the critique might be actualised in practice.

In contrast to Horkheimer’s neglect of praxis, Herbert Marcuse remained the closest to critical theory's original stress on the linking of theory and practice leading to radical critique and action against domination, as well as to its Marxist origins. Like Horkheimer, Marcuse, was a close reader of Weber, recognising the strengths and weaknesses in Weber but appropriating many of Weber’s categories for his own critiques of modern civilisation. If Horkheimer was very much a pure theorist, then Marcuse was the critical theorist who most explicitly drew attention to the underlying dynamics of ‘technological rationality’ which he generally held legitimated and propelled modern forms of domination.

In Reason and Revolution, Marcuse summarised the role of theory and practice for critical theory, certainly in its more Marxist form:

Like Horkheimer, Marcuse's critique embraced immanent critique, a method he applied, for example, in his analysis of Soviet Marxism in 1958 (Marcuse, 1971), and which can be detected throughout his work. As he summarised the method in the ‘Introduction’ to Soviet Marxism:

While the subject matter for the critique will vary, the basic approach remains essentially constant. Philosophically, the basis of immanent critique was elucidated in Herbert Marcuse's 1936 essay ‘The Concept of Essence’ in which he traces the dialectic of essence and appearance through classical, medieval and modern forms. He begins by showing that Plato and Aristotle held that essence was basically potentiality locked in an uneasy relationship with appearance or actuality. Essence would struggle to achieve its potential, shown albeit dimly in its own sense of the possibility of authentic being. In Aquinas and Medieval philosophy generally, the dialectic of essence and existence tends to close so that existence always contains essence.

The negation of radical or emancipatory possibility embedded in the concept of essence repudiates the possibility of emancipation and necessarily reproduces the status quo. If the concept of essence is grounded in a materialist conception of history, however, its essential critical dimension can be recovered. Hegel understood essence as a process of mediated being overcoming unmediated being. Thus essence has a history, though in Hegel, this history did not have a subject. Once the idea of an historical subject — people acting in history — is added to this concept of essence,

Three elements emerge in this critical dialectical notion of essence. Firstly, the transcendence leading from facts to essence is historical. Secondly, through historical transcendence, given facts are understood as appearances whose essence can be comprehended only in the context of particular historical tendencies aiming at a different form of reality. 'The theory's historical interest enters constitutively into its conceptual scheme and makes the transcendence of ‘facts’ toward their essence critical and problematical' (Marcuse, 1972: 71). Critical theory, as Marcuse understands it in this essay, links both the concrete descriptive process of revealing ‘what is’ (appearance or existence) together with what ‘could be’ (essence). Thirdly, the truth—claims of this theory would lie in concrete struggle of humans to actualise their potentials for emancipation over against the distorted or only partially realised potentials for emancipation, no longer requiring the individual to conceive of themselves as disembodied in pure thought in order to conceive of pure being or essence.

The result is that relations which otherwise might appear necessary become problematic and can be apprehended as unnecessary to the realisation of essence and human potentials. Relations of domination or servitude are not necessary for people in history to realise their potential. What is required is to show that other or better ways of being human and doing human society which do not require relations of domination are possible, and that there exists a potentiality for those other ways of being and doing embedded in the appearance. Then the task of critical theory becomes the identification and critique of the obstacles to the realisation of this emancipatory potential in concrete material and ideological terms. By grounding the concept of essence once more in this tension between that which is and that which could be, Marcuse shows how a critical theory could assist the practical critique of socially unnecessary constraints on human freedom and the realisation of human potentials for emancipation. Commenting on this essay, David Held writes that:

The verification of the theory can only finally be found or assessed in the light of subsequent events: in general, did the theory assist a movement or group to achieve greater emancipation and to what extent can this be demonstrated? In this sense, then, the limits of theory arise when individuals or groups in society understand the theory and attempt to use it as at least an initial guide for their own actions for emancipatory change, and necessarily their reflection on the theory changes as they act and reflect upon their action in the dynamic process summarised by the concept of praxis.

In critical theory's use of Weber's general conception of rationalization the notion of instrumental reason or Zweckrational (purposive—rational) action is central. The following analysis shows how critical theorists, and especially Marcuse, have applied their method of immanent critique to criticise how reason has been deformed through the dynamically developing intrusion of instrumental reason into areas of human experience formerly informed by other categories of reason. What is also important to note is the widening of critical theory's focus for critique from capitalist society to industrial civilisation as a whole.

The approach to be followed here is to trace Marcuse's critique of Weber through two essays, ‘Some Social Implications of Modern Technology’ (1941) and ‘Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber’ (1964) and then take up Jürgen Habermas's critique of Marcuse four years later, specifically in ‘Technology and Science as "Ideology"'‘ (1968). This exercise serves a useful analytical purpose as well as partially satisfying Robert J. Antonio's requirements for the survival of critical theory:

The point of discussing these essays is to show how Marcuse developed his immanent critical theory of contemporary society to criticise domination where, at least according to more optimistic accounts, individuals had more material abundance than at any previous time. The ‘historically concrete’ aspects of the theory, for which Antonio calls, will be developed in the later chapters of this thesis. From Marcuse's perspective, domination had just changed parts of its operations and in so doing had lulled human beings into a dangerously false complacency. Worse still, the modern forms of domination had reached into the very psyches of people in society to seek to ensure that the everyday experience of being dominated was perceived as normal, natural, and inevitable by reference to allegedly scientific bases of legitimacy. At the same time, modern technologies of social control have been developed to deal with more vigorous dissent (e.g., Ackroyd, et.al. 1980).

Marcuse's essay ‘Some Social Implications of Modern Technology’, written in 1941, also has to be understood, at least partially, in the context of critical theory's critique of Nazism as an especially advanced manifestation of dynamics generally operative in the West: advanced purposive—rationality giving rise to equally advanced irrationality and barbarism. The arguments presented and developed in this essay also bear many parallels with those developed in greater length in One—Dimensional Man (1964).

National Socialism is a striking example of the ways in which a highly rationalised and mechanised economy can operate in the interest of totalitarian oppression and continued scarcity. The Third Reich is a form of ‘technocracy’: the technical considerations of imperialistic efficiency and rationality supersede the traditional standards of profitability and general welfare. (Marcuse, 1978: 139).

Marcuse is not arguing for some kind of autonomous technical determinism in which the machine overtakes civil society and imposes its mechanical standards upon humans in a deterministic manner. Rather, the Weltanschauung which prefigures and infuses technological production reproduces itself through the imposition and insinuation of itself into wider areas of production, a dynamic process rather than a deterministic process. While bourgeois liberalism stressed the role of the individual in the rational pursuit of economic advantage and production, the competitive exigencies of the market coupled with increasing technical innovation necessarily meant that to compete successfully, the producer of commodities was virtually forced to take up technical developments to survive. Amplify and escalate this process throughout Western economies and the result, albeit unintended and unplanned, was a shift from individualistic rationality towards technologically—informed rationality stressing greater automated, mechanised, and allegedly more efficient production, at least according to the accounting criteria developed and applied to measure efficiency. Associated with the actual mechanical developments arose associated non—mechanical developments in the organisation of businesses and business practices, necessarily affecting non—business relations as well, the cumulative effect of which is the intrusion of this purposive—rationality outward into wider social spheres.

This cannot be understood as a complete process eventually to overtake the entire society. But in areas where effective power and thus domination really have their locus, the process is exceptionally pervasive, including the economic sphere, increasingly the state sphere, and areas of the lives of individuals where they intersect with these spheres. The military—industrial sphere of the state reveals this process vividly, particularly where the state and major corporations integrate themselves so thoroughly around the production of weapons systems that they are virtually indistinguishable to the point where they defeat even the legitimate legal—rational domination of administrations to oppose them.

Critical reflection on the implications for individuals purportedly seeking their emancipation from domination is closed out of the discussion of ends over against means because, in order to get ahead and be successful, the individual is socialised into this work environment, and all but forced to capitulate, indeed eagerly surrender, to the requirements of the instrumentally rational world view. The horizon of reflection or critical perception is closed down to immediate issues necessary for effective and successful accomplishment of tasks, all this occurring under the aegis of reason itself because the demands of capitulation appear so eminently reasonable and rational. The reproduction and extension of this process appears reasonable and rational as well. To get along, to advance one’s career, one must go along. Innovation and experimentation become thrall to the process, always being applied to making the process even more efficient, more rational, less wasteful of time and energy. What also occurs is that traditional legitimations or justifications for actions formerly rooted in ethical and moral systems are supplanted to the exigencies by the moment. Where ‘what is’ appears as wholly rational, ‘what ought to be’ or ‘what could be’ appear as irrational wish—fulfilment or fantasy, losing political purchase through disengagement from the centres of human social action and reflection. This, then, is the basis of Marcuse's ‘one—dimensionality’ thesis developed in One—Dimensional Man (Marcuse, 1964).

In the area of industrial relations, tenets of behavioural psychology merge with management to produce ‘scientific management’ and instrumentalist industrial relations strategies. While this activity might result in superficial changes in areas such as industrial democracy and production routine changes away from large production lines towards task or work teams, the underlying rationality of the process remains unchanged.

Truth claims in this context are established by reference to self—set standards of truth guided by efficiency, efficacy and rationality within the technological system. The means used to establish the validity of a truth—claim will be technological means, necessarily resulting in such validity so established as accommodated to technical reason. A normative gap is closed between technical questions bound up with applied knowledge and capability to achieve results and wider questions bound up with the societal value, worth, or quality of the questions set, results likely to be achieved, and the ultimate goals sought. If the human project is finally bound up with emancipation, as critical theory generally holds, then the standards of assessment to be applied to techniques and results turn around the degree to which genuine emancipatory potential is realisable through given applications of techniques.

Horkheimer's distinction between traditional and critical theory, is echoed in Marcuse's distinction between technological and critical rationality, the latter corresponding to rationality oriented towards genuine emancipation:

Notions of justice or liberal conceptions of human rights become things to be administered or dispensed according to standards of technical rationality or social utility within a technical scheme over against intrinsic and non—negotiable categories done as routine in a genuinely rational society (c.f., Horkheimer, 1974a: 23 — 4).

What also occurs is that oppositional movements and nascent or potential opposition to this increasing expansion of technical categories take on characteristics of the technical rationality to which they might otherwise be vigorously opposed. The almost obligatory organisation of opposition into mass parties replete with their own bureaucracies infused by technological reason, and many of the political practices influenced by it, tend to be reproduced even by the opposition to it. Attention to operationalised techniques of persuasion, such as public opinion polling and modern, psychologically—informed political advertising, indicate how technocratic reason has insinuated itself into politics. To be effective, which is to say to position itself to maximise its potential for achieving real change, the opposition has to take up many of the categories of technical reason and practice virtually identical to those it opposes. If opposition becomes violent or disorganised opposition achieves mass momentum sufficient to threaten the orderly operations of the system, advanced technologies of political control are available to deal efficiently and rationally with such opposition (e.g., Ackroyd, et.al., 1980).

It might be assumed that with the development of technical capacity in the workplace as the major determinant of control over productive processes would come a reduction in the operations of hierarchy between executives and workers. There is some potential for democratisation brought about through greater vocational training opportunities for more people resulting in executives or even company owners deferring to technical experts. A division of power remains, however, such that the owners or managers retain final decision—making control and can reject the advice of their experts. It would be a brave manager who rejected the expensive advice of their technical experts; to do so might be construed as irrational. More to the point, the general standards of technical rationality bring about some democratisation but only to the extent that more people can be expected to think and behave along technical—rational lines than not

Bureaucracy, as Weber noted at length, becomes the major organisational form of a society undergoing rationalization in both public and corporate spheres. Thus bureaucratic forms of organisation, increasingly penetrated by technical rationality, will tend to facilitate efficient interaction between corporate and public spheres, the latter also serving to mediate between specific interests manifest in corporate bureaucratic activity and general interests manifest in the public or state sphere, provided these general interests can be effectively articulated through mainstream political processes. If opposition to increasingly technocratic intrusion into individual private life—worlds is mirroring central categories of that which it is opposing, then the articulation of demands and interests in this context will itself tend to be in technocratic forms of discourse. The result of this process is the negation of almost everything which bourgeois liberalism’s stress on individuality and individual rationality sought to actualise. The complex apparatus of increasingly technologically rationalised society:

In conclusion, Marcuse quotes Henry James, writing in 1852, that the constraints upon humanity imposed by what James seems to imply is a repression of humanity's appetite for freedom give rise to socially pathological responses such as criminal activity. But remove those constraints and humanity will tend towards conservatism rather than destruction. This connects with points by Knights and Willmott when they note that people appear to prefer known domination to the uncertainties of emancipation at least in part because their self—identity as a society and as individuals is bound up so closely with relations of domination (Knights & Willmott, 1983). The point is also made by Brian Fay who notes that resistance to the enlightened theory from its putative followers is one of the more depressing phenomena with which a theory must contend (Fay, 1975: 89 — 91; 1987: 98 — 108).

In Marcuse, an angry resignation to the situation he describes is also detectable. For example, he comments on the capacity of technical rationality to enable a society dominated by its categories to effectively turn opposition to itself into an echo of itself, thus reproducing or even replacing one species of technical domination by another form of technical domination if oppositional movements were successful. These pessimistic arguments appear again in his 1965 essay, Repressive Tolerance (Marcuse, 1969). The pessimism of this general ‘technocratic/ instrumentally rational society’ thesis has been pointed out by many commentators on critical theory:

Marcuse's 1964 essay 'Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber' reiterates many of the points made in his earlier essay on modern technology, but focuses them in a critique of Weber's conception of reason as such.

Marcuse's most important point in this essay is his contention that technical reason — the application of technology and technology itself — is ideological because it serves domination; it is about dominating nature and humanity precisely because of its stress on categories such as management, calculation and control. Domination is built into technology itself.

But Marcuse concedes that technology can also be liberating. He asserted in his 1967 essay ‘Liberation from the Affluent Society, "...the technical and material resources for the realisation of freedom are available" (Marcuse, 1968: 182). What is important is the ‘mind—set’ which prefigures and infuses the context in which technology is used, and which even affects the technologies which may be developed or neglected. If the genuine purpose and goal of developing or technology using was explicitly oriented towards liberation, then one would tend to expect libratory technology to be developed or used, or at least a social and political context to operate which enabled technologies to be developed and deployed which explicitly enhanced humanity’s freedom and authentic existence. But because much technology is deployed in a context in which rationalised instrumental rationality is so widespread and pervasive, technology is necessarily developed or used according to criteria which reify, reproduce, and reinforce the domination of humanity over nature and some people over others to the point to which virtually no alternative courses of action can be apprehended as rational and reasonable. In this sense, Marcuse maintains that modern technocratic reason is ideologically loaded in favour of domination and thus violates its own claims to ideological neutrality or so—called scientific categories of legitimation, a point repeatedly made by commentators who emphasise the cultural, political and economic conditions which give rise to different technological outcomes (e.g., Hill, 1988).

This is the negative side of Marcuse's critique of technology and, more specifically, the ideology of instrumental reason which leads to the development and deployment of certain kinds of technology, such as nuclear power plants, instead of facilitating the development of various alternative energy technologies with less negative, environmentally dubious consequences and social effects. There is, to be sure, a positive side of Marcuse's theory, but it is not found in the essays being considered here. Glimpses appear at the end of One—Dimensional Man, for example, where Marcuse proposes the concept of aesthetic reduction (Marcuse, 1964: 239 — 246) in which "... aesthetics plays a fundamental role, both in constructing the forms and types of technology (the merger of art and technology) and in the goals in which technology and social reconstruction are to serve (the aesthetic reduction, aiming at the pacification of existence)" (Kellner, 1984: 337). While Marcuse himself is silent on the details of what kinds of technology would satisfy his criteria for aesthetic reduction, so—called ‘soft’ or alternative technologies with minimal environmental impacts and maximal control and input from their users would appear to fulfil his criteria (e.g., Dickson, 1974), as would Illich's standards of ‘conviviality’ (Illich, 1975). Examples of these technologies would include solar power panels, methane gas systems using biological wastes from homes or farms, and small—scale hydro—electricity systems using reliable water supplies to produce sufficient energy for local communities.

A major point to be drawn from Marcuse on domination, together with noting the risks inherent in attempting to draw a totalistic critique, is his stress upon technological domination. He does not reject technology and the social processes associated with technology, but limits the struggle for freedom to goals achievable within existing and reasonably foreseeable technical capabilities. This point actually goes to the core of Marcuse’s most succinct definition of domination in Five Lectures, a point which Marcuse makes while in his critical Freudian mode:

The key phrase in the above quote is "the means provided," indicating that the freedom available in a society is at least in part dependent on available technical means, but the overall content of the quote ought not be overlooked. Clearly, it is initially futile to impute to a society with limited technological capacities the same capacities for the meeting of needs as technologically advanced societies. But ours is a global society, with awesome disparities between rich and poor countries, and even within countries, many of these disparities being artificially created and maintained because of the ways in which national economies, and the global economy, are currently run. .

Marcuse’s arguments on technology can be applied to nuclear weapons because these would seem to exemplify the linkages between domination, specific technological processes possible only with the large—scale organisational and scientific capabilities of an advanced society well down the rationalization path. In Marcusian terms, all available means will be used by agents of technological civilisation to ensure that their domination remains secure and is extended, through using subtle but quite effective means of persuasion and manipulation to enrol the masses in support of their projects, by producing goods and services in abundance to raise the standard of living of the majority of the population, by co—opting and repressively tolerating any opposition, or through more directly violent means of social control, capable of escalating levels of violence, which can be used either within or without a society. Max Weber could not have conceived of the means available today to secure and extend modern rationalised, technologized domination.

This section of the chapter focuses on some of Jürgen Habermas's earlier work because of the thematic continuities and discontinuity's which it shares with aspects of both Weber's and Marcuse's discussions of rationalization and domination.

Habermas is a critical theorist who has recognised some of the weaknesses of earlier critical theory. He stands between Marcuse, who remained optimistic, and Horkheimer and Adorno, who were pessimistic, with respect to his assessments of the possibilities for radical social change agents. A major thrust of, especially, his more recent work has been to develop a justification for critical theory. Overall, I read Habermas as continuing the project of critical theory, the critique of domination with a practical intent, though he does so in ways which still require significant grounding. His later work has evidenced a moving away from this attempted practicality, thus distancing himself from an explicit and focused critique of domination.

The earlier views of Habermas are important even when he has abandoned them because they show ways in which a theory of domination cannot be theorised.

Habermas's discussion of Marcuse's essay on Weber takes up the potential for a notion of, an emancipatory science and technology. In ‘Technology and Science as "Ideology"’ (1971), Habermas argues that the problem with Marcuse's conception of the political content of technical reason is that he obscures what the connection between Weber's conception of rationalization, especially the social spheres into which it most directly penetrates, and the wider social life—world actually means. Neither Weber or Marcuse had successfully accounted for the process. The real problem for Habermas is not technical reason as such but its capacity to expand its ambit ever more widely throughout society as a whole, replacing traditional or alternative conceptions of reason with the exclusive validity claims of scientific and technological, or instrumental, reason. Habermas is not prepared to reject instrumental reason as such, but rather locate it in a wider reconstructed scheme of rationality (McCarthy, 1978: 22). He proceeds to do this by distinguishing between work and interaction: the former he calls ‘purposive—rational action’ and the latter ‘communicative action’:

Like Weber, Habermas makes a distinction between the institutional framework of society in which normative categories guide symbolic interaction between actors in society and social subsystems such as the state or the economy in which purposive—rational categories are institutionalised. The issue thus becomes one of working out how and why categories from the latter sphere expand into the former sphere.

Using this distinction enables Habermas to reformulate Weber's notion of rationalization. With the rise of mature capitalist society comes the permanent intrusion of purposive—rational action categories into the institutional sphere of society. Rather than restricted to a task—oriented or goal—oriented intrusion limited to and ended by the completion of the particular task or the achievement of a specific goal, or limited to their sub—system role, these action categories become permanent features of political, bureaucratic, and economic activity. They also provide self—referencing legitimation for their permanent intrusion and for the wider system of which they are a crucial part. For Habermas, such legitimation is as important as the capacity of capitalism to actually 'deliver the goods'.

The rationalization process occurs simultaneously from above and from below, in the sense that purposive—rational action spreading throughout institutionalised subsystems below increasingly demands reciprocal, predictable action criteria to operate in normative spheres above. Traditional categories of legitimation remain and retain their validity but only to the extent to which they ideologically protect the changed relations of domination from analysis and critique. As the state increasingly referees the economic process and intervenes in the market to stabilise and regulate its excesses and gross fluctuations, it necessarily takes on board the general categories of purposive—rationality. The state acts as a referee in the economic process by regulating business activity through macro— and micro—economic policy implementation. It also acts as a player, this process most clearly visible in what amounts to massive state subsidies to weapons manufacturers, subsidising research and development of weapons systems and guaranteeing markets for weapon manufacturer’s products. As a consequence, normative (pracktisch or practical) or symbolic interactional categories are increasingly bracketed out of political discourse, which increasingly becomes discourse about the solution of technical problems. Politics becomes increasingly scientised (e.g., Habermas, 1971: 62 — 80).

All this leads to what Habermas describes as the ‘non—ideology ideology’ of technocratic consciousness differing from earlier ideological formations because it does not simply obscure or stabilise or legitimate relations of domination (Geuss, 1981: 31) but "... affects the human race's emancipatory interest as such" (Habermas, 1971: 111). Technocratic consciousness:

Hinting at work to do with his theory of communicative competence and universal pragmatics, Habermas indicates that technocratic consciousness violates the prefigurative interest in human emancipation he claims lies behind human communication (Habermas, 1979). This communication has to be understood as language and speech acts as such, as well as peculiar modes of socialisation which encourage wider general acceptance of technocratic categories.

Rather than enhancing emancipation, technocratic consciousness enhances human domination by intruding into this communicative sphere and stressing categories of control, and one group's power and control over others. What Habermas calls for is a critique which goes beyond any particular class's interests in emancipation as such and strikes out to disclose humanity's general interests in emancipation. Technocratic consciousness understands the problem of history as a technical problem, to which technical solutions or 'fixes' can be found. Technocrats deeply imbued with this ideology want to bring society under control in the same way as nature by reconstructing it according to the pattern of self—regulated systems of purposive—rational action and adaptive behaviour. "Only the technocratic consciousness obscures the fact that this reconstruction could be achieved at no less a cost than closing off the only dimension that is essential, because it is susceptible to humanization, as a structure of interactions mediated by ordinary language" (Habermas, 1971: 117).

What is important is that two levels of rationalization are operative. Technocratic consciousness has significantly intruded into spheres of purposive—rational action to cause the reorganisation of important formal institutions along instrumentally—rational lines. But at the level of human social interaction, rationalization, according to Habermas, has significant libratory potential. This is a central thesis in his work: on the one hand, at the level of formal institutions, rationalization, particularly infused with technocratic consciousness, serves the general interests of domination; on the other, rationalization in the public sphere — "a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed ...a sphere which mediates between society and the state" (Habermas, 1974) — can lead to unrestricted, undistorted, and emancipated communication. Signs that this latter emancipatory rationalization of the public sphere is underway would include:

Habermas's links to earlier critical theorists are indicated at least on the point of refusing to establish ‘truth claims’ of a theory in advance when, soon after the quote immediately above, he writes that what is important is the capacity to intentionally choose between different alternatives rather than use what is actually or potentially available simply because it is there:

To a significant degree, Habermas's social critiques, formulated in the late 1960s, echo those of his predecessors in the development of critical theory, albeit with more explicit consciousness of the difficulties of proposing a critical theory in an increasingly rationalised world. Yet there remains a central core in Habermas which transcends the complex shifts in his position over the years: the belief that humanity has a general interest in emancipation from domination.

This much more recent assertion by Habermas indicates how profoundly rooted in human nature and experience he believes is the interest, as he would put it, humans have in emancipation from domination. Much of his recent work has been directed to establish the rational ground for, and then the implications of, the inference of such an interest without recourse to metaphysical categories which have been largely discredited by reference to contemporary scientific discoveries. He has attempted to do this in large measure by exploring the philosophy of language and what he labels ‘communicative action’ in which is embedded the interest of human beings in emancipation and freedom. As he writes in The Theory of Communicative Action:

Much of the protest against instrumental reason or technocratic consciousness in critical theory is an ethical protest against the malformations of reason and practice allegedly caused by the separation of communicative categories of reason and action from social spheres where instrumental rationality and action hold sway. Communicative or, more specifically, ethical categories needed to make and justify choices between various alternative courses of action are not so much eradicated or discredited as squeezed out of areas of human experience where they used to help inform and justify the making of assessments between alternative courses of action.

Max Horkheimer addressed the issue of the relationships between critical theory and morality in a 1933 Zeitschrift essay entitled ‘Materialism and Morality’ which has recently been translated (Horkheimer, 1986). Horkheimer argued in this essay that materialism offered a way of making moral judgements which did not rely on outmoded or discredited metaphysics. Bourgeois morality, crystallised in the ideals of the French revolution, and morality grounded in Christianity had been discredited, the former in the brutal exigencies of attempting to administer society and in the practice of capitalism, and the latter as a result of the Renaissance and modern philosophy and science. However, Horkheimer maintained that

Horkheimer appears to be arguing that materialism offers an historical and social analysis rooted in what Marxism holds to be the all but inevitable passage of history towards a genuinely rational society, and that those social forces engaged in assisting that passage to occur and conscious of its alleged inevitability have access to an almost intrinsic source of moral insight rooted in their struggles. He acknowledges that the morality which arises from materialism can lay claim to no absolute sources or verifications, but is rather developed in the struggle itself, and through universal solidarity with those who struggle whatever their historical or geographical location, because of their consciousness of their world—historical mission. This hardly seems a sound basis on which to make ethical judgements.

Marcuse all but assumes that emancipatory action is morally superior to reactionary action and that positive moral justifications all but automatically adhere to emancipatory action over against the action of reaction. The means employed by the oppressed are secondary to the very fact of their resistance, with which flows moral rectitude (e.g., Marcuse, 1969). Emancipatory action can be identified by way of establishing who is struggling against whom. The immediate context of Marcuse’s writings in the latter 1960s indicates that he associated emancipatory action with student protests, struggles against colonialism or imperialism, and cultural disaffiliation from consumerist society as represented by hippies. Reactionary action would be associated with police repression against students and hippies, and military intervention to support regimes aligned with the major imperialist governments. In short, reactionary action is action aimed at maintaining or extending domination.

To be sure, a series of permanent issues in critical theory all but explicitly indicates that the theory is, in the main, profoundly morally informed. To baldly summarise critical theory's moral thesis on domination, domination is bad for people in society, they ought to understand why it is bad for them, and they ought to do something about it to improve their circumstances. In more erudite terms, rationalization and the expanding intrusion of instrumental reason into human affairs has all but completely squeezed out older ethical and moral categories to the point where morally—informed or grounded opposition gains, at best, minimal purchase over the consideration of political actions and the justification of competing choices of action. The self—defeating totality of this argument, especially where it tends to overlook ‘windows of opportunity’ for morally—informed action to successfully contend with instrumentally—informed action, has already been noted, though this is often a tactical, rather than a theoretical, matter. This is not to claim that tactics ought not to inform theory construction, and vice versa, for it can be the case that urgent tactical exigencies later inform theoretical reflection, and those same exigencies overwhelm the most convincing and erudite theory.

Given the controversial claim that moral and ethical categories, and the essentially metaphysical, strictly irrational, sources of those categories, have been empirically discredited by developments in the natural sciences, there nevertheless remains the necessity to develop a means whereby judgements can be made, priorities ordered, goals selected and others rejected, and actions guided if an alternative or a corrective to the ideologically loaded standards of action associated with the system sphere of society are to be convincingly proposed. In many crucial respects, this is the project which has all but obsessed Habermas for most of his career, most explicitly in his more recent work. The key question seems to be: ‘Is there a way of guiding human action for emancipation which does not rely upon outmoded metaphysics?’ Habermas has yet to produce a convincing answer, though he has pointed to some promising directions, and his proposals require some attention here.

To reiterate, Habermas wrote in ‘Technology and Science as "Ideology"’ that technocratic consciousness does not discredit ethics as such, but squeezes ethical categories out of spheres of human experience where they formerly provided standards for judging and choosing between alternatives:

Technocratic consciousness reflects not the sundering of an ethical situation but the repression of "ethics" as such as a category of life (Habermas, 1971: 112).

These proposals are important for the wider purposes of this thesis because they could point towards the basis of standards useful for distinguishing between domination, and other expressions of power, whether or not domination deserves moral condemnation, and how that condemnation might be articulated.

As Habermas asserted in his well—known Inaugural Address at Frankfurt, "What raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we can know: language. Through its structure, autonomy and responsibility are posited for us. Our first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus" (Habermas, 1971: 314). From this assertion emerged Habermas's attempted development of, firstly, a theory of what he called the ‘ideal speech situation’ (Habermas, 1970; 1979) and then a communicative ethic which he labeled ‘universal pragmatics’, both of which led towards an attempted reconstructed critical theory being developed in the two volumes of The Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas, 1984 & 1987). Habermas maintains that embedded in every human communicative act lies the potential for communication free of domination, and thence the possibility of the creation of a supposedly more rational society. The key components in the hypothesised ‘ideal speech situation’ are:

To be sure, the actualisation of an ‘ideal speech situation’ depends on the existence of a rational society, or at least a fairly radically democratic society, in which the ‘recognised normative background’ is sufficiently robust to sustain the operations of the other components of the hypothesised situation (Heller, 1987: 156 — 158). The ‘ideal speech situation’ also does not cover relatively trivial conversations, but discourses which bear upon human purposes and understandings of self and the world oriented to improving the human condition, though a political linkage might be forged between two people, a group, or even a social movement attempting to discourse along lines indicated by the 'ideal speech situation' and the power of people talking about their concerns. Gouldner, while objecting to many of the implications of Habermas's then still developing linguistic turn in critical theory, pointed out that, if public opinion formation research were accurate, public opinion about issues of importance is formed or changed far more at the level of interpersonal communication than through alleged effects of the mass media in changing or reinforcing opinion, then critical theory might gain some purchase through encouraging more people to take up some practical outworkings of the theory's implications: "... how can persons speak to one another so as to strengthen their capacity for