Consider notions of progress in the work of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault

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1 University of Aberdeen CU 3006: Approaches to Culture Session 2003/2004 Course Co-ordinator: Phil Withington Assessed Essay Consider notions of progress in the work of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault Andreas Möllenkamp SOCRATES/ERASMUS-Student 85A Burnett House Hillhead Halls, Don Street Old Aberdeen AB24 1WU ID I understand the department s guidelines on plagiarism (including the use of material from the internet) and have abided by them in the preparation of this work. Contents Consider notions of progress in the work of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault Bibliography. 5

2 Consider notions of progress in the work of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault 2 Although the publication dates of most books and articles, stated in the bibliography, might suggest that the notion of progress nowadays isn t very relevant, controversial or interesting, I will try to show that the idea of progress at least for cultural historians is an interesting topic, because it is a central concept of human history and cultural development. At the same time it is a difficult subject, because it contains a set of strong values, beliefs and emotions, that tends to be expressed rather implicitly than explicitly. Therefore it is even more important to look at the context in which ideas of progress are expressed and try to examine their (deep) meaning and contents. Although the idea of progress can already be found in classical Greek and Roman thought, I will focus in this essay on modern cultural theories; a time in which social development increasingly becomes subject of interest and at the same time the idea of progress problematic. I will try to answer which concepts of progress Karl Marx, Max Weber, Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault developed and how they differ. We will see that the used concept of progress depends on the historical cultural context and the relation of the author towards this context, as well as his intention of writing. Before examining these concepts more closely, I will have to define in which sense progress is understood here. In the book Progress and History, the editor F. S. Marvin (1916: 7) starts his contribution with this description: One Sunday afternoon he [Marvin] happened to be walking with two friends in Oxford, one a professor of philosophy, the other a lady. The professor of philosophy declared that to him human progress must always mean primarily the increase of knowledge; the editor urged the increase of power as its most characteristic feature, but the lady added at once that to her progress had always meant, and could only mean, increase in our appreciation of the humanity of others. The first two thoughts, harmonized and directed by the third, may be taken to cover the whole field. I found this worth quoting, because it illustrates two basic characteristics of progress: First of all, a definition would have to state, what is about (its subject or content). In the quotation knowledge, power and humanity are mentioned. Similar to knowledge one could also state science and technology; equivalent to power could be politics (or the economy). The lady s statement finally could be interpreted as a more general (ethical) claim covering the society or even the whole mankind.

3 Secondly, the notion of progress always contains a notion of development (a process). The example states increase, which simply means more of (growth), but this is mostly meant in a sense of improvement. As it requires an (ethical) judgement to call something improved or better, it is important to examine its (or the author s) underlying value. As this essay is concentrating on modern cultural theorists that are interested in social development as a whole and understand progress in this context, I will try to describe which place notions of progress have in their concept of history and culture. We will see that they all are influenced by, rely on and review the Enlightenment concept of progress. Engaging the writings of Kant ( ), the history of the Enlightenment is viewed as humanity's passage to its adult status, a way out of mankind's status of immaturity, through the vehicle of reason. This journey (or its promise) towards selfrealisation, the maturation of humanity through reason and the labour towards freedom build the core of its historical concept. 3 In reviewing this concept of history, Karl Marx ( ) became very influential, because he attacked the dominant German scientific and philosophic idealist tradition with his observations of the German, French and English economy (industrialisation) and the emergence of the working-class. He inverted the Hegelian model of the dialectic historical development of the Geist (the spiritual perfection of a person and whole society) by claiming that it is not the consciousness (or Geist) that determines the real world, but the base (means of production, labour) that forms the superstructure (state, politics, way of thinking). According to Marx, man creates and contemplates himself through the process of labour, and comes to know not only himself but also his social characteristics in relation to other men. However, man's relationship to his labour, and therefore his relationship to himself, nature, and other men, has been disrupted through the development of the division of labour (as a more efficient means of production) which subsequently led to man's alienation from his own labour. This alienation is exacerbated further by the development of the capitalist mode of production, in which the worker is further estranged from his productive labour through the capitalists' ownership of the means of production. Thus, man's progress toward self-realisation has been obstructed by the development of capitalism, a system of economic relations that exploits man's labour in the name of profit and alienates man from himself and each other, most prominently through the conflict between the bourgeois and proletarian classes. But in Marx's model of history, the development of the bourgeois class and the capitalist mode of production is a necessary step towards the type of society where man can once again obtain the basis for his self-realisation:

4 communism. The necessity of the bourgeoisie and capitalism lies in its drive for industrialisation and technological advances, which it furthers in the maximisation of profit. These developments of the forces of production, a building of man's "capacity", finds its limits in the relationship of power, the contradiction of domination. Thus Marx qualifies the Enlightenment belief of self-realisation through his analysis of class conflict, embedded within the social and economic structure of capitalism. Inasmuch as the maintenance of this relationship of exploitation requires the complicity of the workers, Marx develops a notion of "false consciousness" by which a class is unable to recognise in what direction its true interests (for well-being, freedom from exploitation, and self-realisation) lie. However, through another illustration of the Enlightenment value on human reason, Marx posits a way out of these conditions of exploitation and alienation. Through the development of the proletarian's class consciousness, the use of human reason in grasping the nature and source of exploitation as private ownership of the means of production in capitalist society, the workers can lead a revolutionary movement to abolish the capitalist relations of production and initiate the transition to a classless society. It is the oppressed s use of reason, connected with Marx's philosophy of material practice, that can lead to the freedom of humankind. Thus the exercise and application of human reason as opposed to, for instance, faith in religious salvation, can be the means for humans to transform their material social conditions and commence the return to the Enlightenment promise of freedom, which in Marx's view has been hampered and qualified by the conditions of alienation and exploitation manifest in the capitalist society. 4 Max Weber ( ), although also concerned with dilemmas arising from the sociocultural and political situation (in Germany), criticised a purely materialist concept of historical explanations. In his best known work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber instead presents a (more plausible than throughout empirical) explanation that the emergence of Western capitalism owed much to the Calvinist pattern of religious motivation among business owners of that period. In Calvinism and the Capitalist Spirit (1983: 83), Gianfranco Poggi summarises the argument: No capitalist development without an entrepreneurial class; no entrepreneurial class without a moral charter; no moral charter without religious premises. As the Calvinists believed that god s wisdom was unfathomable to human minds, salvation could not confidently be anticipated as a reward for one s intrinsic merits. In this insecurity, Calvinist preachers could only offer the suggestion that proficiency in one s earthly calling might be assumed to be a mark of divine favour. Their resulting pattern of hard work, systematical planning and reinvesting profits then led to business success and economic

5 growth. Ironically, this unintended consequence of Calvinist theology had in its turn the effect of making religious motives unnecessary for the subsequent rationalisation of productive activity. In all Weber s cultural history writings the predominant theme is that of rationalisation, the long-term trend in Western societies towards rendering every sphere of social activity more amenable to calculation. In his increasing desire for mastery over nature to meet human needs - through the maximisation of control, efficiency, and predictability - man drives the process of rationalisation. Weber points out, that rationalisation does not proceed identically and concurrently in every sphere of society, rather each sphere is rationalised in its own unique direction. In the religious sphere, rationalisation proceeds in demystification and the elimination of magic through the reasoned development and rational characteristics of Protestantism, in particular, ascetic material behaviours. In the economic sphere, rationalisation finds itself in the development of modern bourgeois capitalism, the use of reason in calculation for the pursuit of profit. In the political (administrative sphere), it has led to the rise of the bureaucratic form of organisation, guided by reason, objectivity, and efficiency. In the intellectual sphere, rationalisation has proved itself through the use of scientific methods, experimentation, and empirical data gathering as theories derived through scientific reason supplant those previously attributed to magical causes. This Enlightenment belief of reason and self-realisation, however, is qualified by Weber through the very process of rationalisation itself. While greater efficiency, consistency, control, predictability and objectivity may be positive aspects of rationalisation that lead to increased capacity, the paradox of the relations of capacity and power develops through the negative results of rationalisation: the iron cage and the tensions between substantive and formal rationality. Asceticism in a formally rationalised religious sphere can lead to an abundance of wealth and the possibilities of temptation and abuse of power associated by that wealth, especially with the power relations created by the greater capacity afforded to greater wealth. Rationalisation in the economic sphere as evidenced in the Western capitalism has been characterised by Weber as having reasoned out any "irrational" sentiments that impede the accumulation and calculation of profit, sentiments such as trust, compassion, camaraderie, and concern. Rationalisation in the administrative sphere through bureaucracy has led to dehumanised relationships among personnel bound by objective rules and codes of conduct that maximise efficiency, minimise subjectivity, and produce consistent, predictable results. Rationalisation in the political sphere, through the introduction of bureaucracy as the most efficient organisation for executive implementation of policy, leads to a conflict with human participation in the form of democracy, as bureaucratic apparatuses are designed to be highly 5

6 resistant to outside influences and external forces, undermining the voice of the demos that constitutes the people's reign in a democracy. Weber paints a bleak picture of dehumanised relationships, where love, empathy, and human connection are weeded out in rationalised relations that maximise consistency, objectivity, and efficiency. With this Weber offers a critique to the Enlightenment appeal to progress and reason, demonstrating not only the positive effects of rationalisation, but its dark side as well. 6 Opposed to Weber s claim that science should not contain (ethical or political) judgements, the Frankfurt School explicitly allied itself with certain values, claiming that neutral positions have political implications as well (like positivism becoming a close ally of the powerful in society). Walter Benjamin ( ), as an associated member of the Frankfurt School, wrote especially his later works under the impression of the 2 nd World War. Participating in the approach of Critical Theory of the Institute of Social Research, Benjamin as well as Max Horkheimer ( ) and Theodor W. Adorno ( ) especially examined the drawback of the social and technological progress, trying to penetrate the essence of the society. In their book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1992 [1944]), Horkheimer and Adorno look at fascism and modern mass-culture to present their critical view on the reigning of reason (leading to its mystification) and the subjugation of nature under humans purposes. As leftwing intellectuals they experienced a very turbulent time during the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazi Party in the 1930s. Seeing the working-class turn towards fascism in Germany and being kept in line under the control of Stalin s dictatorial regime in the Soviet Union, the Frankfurt School thinkers faced the problem to understand why such a social and political disaster had occurred. Facing the need of a new kind of Marxist theory, their central claim was that there were very intimate connections between the rise of totalitarian regimes (both Fascist and Communist) and the development of mass culture (Inglis 2003: 40). Especially the mass media appeared to them as powerful agencies of social control, resulting in increasingly regulated, controlled and stupefied individuals. The underlying values of Critical Theory involve what Adorno and Horkheimer saw as the human desire for happiness, which they understood to be the desire for a society free of domination (a classless society). Critical Theory thus is meant as a liberatory way of thinking, based on the hope for freedom from oppression (Inglis 2003: 42). In his writings On the Concept of history (2003: 392) Benjamin expresses this in a metaphorical way: There is a picture by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned

7 toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows toward the sky. What we call progress is this storm. 7 In this critical tradition, Michel Foucault ( ) seems to add another level of abstraction by rejecting a scientific discussion about actual progress and what it possibly could mean. In his works, he rather proposes to treat every topic in the human sciences as a discourse-object, because discourses are the place where the social construction of these topics take place. He sees all sciences as modes of inquiry that are based on basic (but in fact spatially and temporally specific) assumptions of universality and (human) nature. As Foucault explains in his work on discourse, he was not interested in determining the underlying causes of discursive formations, but rather in seeing historically how truth-effects are produced inside discourses which are not in themselves either true or false (quoted in Poster 1982: 128). Thus Foucault judges all topics of the human sciences (like man, madness, sexuality and like progress as well) as products of historically contingent discursive formations. Doing so, he shares the Frankfurt School s view to see the intrinsic impurity of Kantian reason its embeddedness in society and culture, its entanglement with power and interest, the historical variability of its categories and criteria, the embodied, sensuous, and practically engaged character of its bearers (McCarthy 1990: 437). This desublimation of reason then goes hand in hand with the decentering of the rational subject. If knowledge is itself understood as a social product, the traditional opposition between theory and practice, fact and value begin to break down, for there are practical, normative presuppositions to any social activity, theorising included. It is in recognising the peculiarly reflexive relation of thinking about society to what is being thought about that leads Foucault to characterise his genealogy as history of the present. Adopting Nietzsche s genealogy, Foucault s way of creating distance from the practices we live is not that of an objectivating ousider s perspective, but to display their lowly origins in contingent historical circumstances by treating them as the outcome of multiple relations to force. Foucault is interested in the relations of power as a productive network, that runs through every social body. According to Foucault (1977:114), power produces reality, it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. Due to his generalisation

8 of the concept of power, he sees no sense in Utopianism of a better (classless) society or in a belief in progress, because this will just change the way of domination. 8 To conclude this selective history of modern cultural theorists, we see commonly a critical examination of the Enlightenment s belief in self-realisation through reason. The attitude of modernity, not only as possibility for full self-realisation, but also as radical discontinuity figures itself in the work of each author. For Marx, it is in the development of society and the economic modes of production which dialectically lead to its revolutionary overthrow and a reconstituting of society, a radical rupture from pre-existing historical forms. For Weber, the break is in traditional forms of activity and organisation through their rationalisation, i.e. from mystical/magical salvation to worldly asceticism, from non-capitalist forms of economic activity to highly rationalised forms of calculation and profit-making. While this progress has led to the increase in human capacity, individual and collectively, it has also resulted in a conflict with power relationships that developed interdependently with human capacity. Therefore, the Enlightenment belief in progress and reason was not a continuous, teleological development as another Enlightenment figure, Auguste Comte, might portray. Rather, humankind's development to a state of maturity, in Marx's view necessitated revolutionary conflict and structural change, while in Weber's view, embodied a growing tension between rational values of efficiency and impersonal relations versus irrational values of human love, trust, and compassion. This process of rationalisation then continues to be a critically assessed theme in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and in the works of Michel Foucault. While the Frankfurt School thinkers (including Benjamin) try to continue the Marxist tradition in searching for a better (classless) society by their critique of modern mass-culture, Michel Foucault breaks in his genealogy with any Utopianism, because all social practices (however they try to hide their entanglement with power) just change the way of domination.

9 9 Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W. and Max Horkheimer (1992 [1944]): Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso. Almond, Gabriel A., Marvin Chodorow and Roy Harvey Pearce (1977): Progress and its Discontents. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Aron, Raymond (1968): Progress and Disillusion. The Dialectics of Modern Society. London: Pall Mall. Benjamin, Walter (1970 [1936]): The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In: Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt (eds.): Illuminations. London: Cape. Benjamin, Walter (2003): On the Concept of History. In: Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings: Walter Benjamin. Selected Writings. Volume 4. Pp Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Bossard, James H. S. (1931): The Concept of Progress. Social Forces 10/1: Bowler, Peter J. (1975): The Changing Meaning of Evolution. Journal of the History of Ideas 36: Bowler, Peter J. (1984): Evolution: The History of an Idea. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bowler, Peter J. (1989): The Invention of Progress. The Victorians and the Past. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell Bronk, Richard (1998): Progress and the Invisible Hand. The Philosophy and Economics of Human Advance. London: Warner Books. Burgess, Ivonne (1996): The Myth of Progress. Glasgow: Wild Goose. Burrow, J. W. (1966): Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burry, J. B. (1955 [1932]): The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Growth and Origins. New York: Dover. Casson, Stanley (1937): Progress and Catastrophe. An Anatomy of Human Adventure. London: Hamish Hamilton. Chamberlin, J. Edward and Sander L. Gilman (eds.) (1985): Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress. New York: Columbia University Press. Chambers, Clarke A. (1958): The Belief in Progress in Twentieth-Century America. Journal of the History of Ideas 19/2: Foucault, Michel (1970): The Order of Things. London: Tavistock. Foucault, Michel (1972): The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock. Foucault, Michel (1973): The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of medical perception. London: Tavistock. Foucault, Michel (1977): Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Lane. Foucault, Michel (1979): The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction. London: Lane.

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