weber between marx and heidegger - living spirit and dead machine

8/12/2019 Weber Between Marx and Heidegger - Living Spirit and Dead Machine

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4

Webers Political Conclusions

Assuming that precisely this possibility were to be an inescapable fate whocould help smiling at the anxiety of our litterateurs lest future social and politicaldevelopments might bestow on us too much 'individualism' or democracy' orthe like or that 'true freedom would not emerge until the presentanarchy' in our economic production and the party machinations'in our parliaments had been eliminated in favour of social order andan organic structure - which means in favor of the pacism ofsocial impotence under the wing of the one quite denitely inescapablepower that of the bureaucracy in the state and the economy!"#$%&

The laughable incomprehension of the nature of the matter by theliterati, the

decadentliberal intelligentsia(an orientation that persists to the present day!), is tobelieve that the capitalist economy is anarchical and that parliamentary politics

is Machiavellian that the problem that besets society is too much

individualism or democracy, and that only social order will restore true

freedom. Yet it is precisely this yearning for a lost paradise of true freedom

the SchumpeterianIndividualitatof the entrepreneurial spirit (Freedom)

reconciled with the scientific rationality of Economics (Truth) -, this

unwillingness to grapple with the anarchy of capitalism and the

machinations of politics that constitutes the pacifism of socialimpotence (the

NietzscheanOhn-Macht); it is the unwillingness to tackle the inescapable fate ofconflict that will condemn us to one definitely inescapable power, that of the

bureaucracy in the state and the economy!

Weber gives ample proof in this passage of how well he has understood

Nietzsches pitiless De-struktion of theVollendung, the com-pletion of

Western values in science, philosophy and morality. Schumpeters vain attempt to

reconcile theIndividualitatof theUnternehmergeistwith the scientificity of the

Economics is definitely overcome. Not only is it not possible to retain any

scientific analysis of the Economy that can quantify its conflict and reduceit to the rational individual choice of the market; not only can there be no

development of the capitalist economy due to the subjectivity of the

entrepreneur because development originates from a system of needs and

wants that curtails andconditionsany subjectivity; but it is also the very

conflict over the provision for needs and wants liberated by capitalism with the

formation of free labor organized as a class that now finallysubsumesscientific


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activityitselfto that conflict by means of the rational organization of free

labor.

In other words, far from being the outcome of the unstoppable expansion of the sphere of

empirical science to the realm of social life and of the Economics in particular, the

Rationalisierungtheorized by Nietzsche (philosophically) and Weber (sociologically)

engenders the subsumption of the scientific process to the explosive, uncontainable

conflict and antagonismbetween the system of needs and wants aimed at the care for

external goods (the iron cage) and the ability of the capitalist mode of production to

guide and govern it through a program of development and growth that preserves

and reproduces theexisting capitalist social relations of production. Anyrational

evaluation of capitalism in the sense of empirical science as understood by Schumpeter

in theTheorieand by the Economics is therefore quite impossible! Scientific rationality

itself is now subsumed to the conflict that capitalism generates as a motor of its own

development.

It is this triptych of the relationship between social conflict from the

democratization of labor, its rational and scientific organization in the direction

of capitalist development, and the political governance needed to mediate

the effects of growth-through-crisis that concerns Weber in the all-important

period between 1917 and 1919 and that covers the lectures onPolitik als Berufand

Wissenschaft als Berufand then the series of papers onParlament und Regierung.

A lifeless machine is congealed [crystallized] spirit geronnener (eist)*+t is only this fact that gives the machine the power to force men to serve

it and thus to rule and determine their daily working lives as in fact happensin factories* ,his same congealed spirit is however also embodied in thatlivingmachine which is represented by bureaucratic organisation with itsspecialisation of trained technical work its delimitation of areas ofresponsibility its regulations and its graduated hierarchy of relationsof obedience* ombined with the dead machine it is in the processof manufacturing the housing of that future serfdom to which perhapsmen may have to submit powerlessly .ust like the slaves in theancient state of /gypt if they consider that the ultimate and only valueby which the conduct of their aairs is to be decided is good administrationand provision for their needs by ocials (that is good in the pure' technicalsense of rational administration! 0ureaucracy achieves this after allincomparably better than any other structure of rule* "#12&

It is the very freedom of labor that allows workers to organizeas a classand

that permits therefore the organization of conflict in a rational manner by

the living machine of private capitalist and state bureaucracy, that is to say,

under the regular discipline of the factory, - of the factory as lifeless machine


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with its congealed spirit of the system of wants and needs! The lifeless

machine of capitalist production possesses a congealed spirit, and the

machinery of bureaucracy is a living machine that stands in the closest

relation to both capitalist enterprise and state administration. No

rationality is possiblewithoutthe free expression of social antagonism overthe wage relation. The reality of Western economy and society against

Schumpeters misunderstanding of WebersRationalisierungas empirical

science replacing the teleological rationality of metaphysics,againstWerner

Sombarts interpretation of modern capitalism as economic rationality, soon

to be repudiated by Weber in theVorbermerkungenof 1920 is that capitalism is

therationalorganization of freelabor!

Indeed, it would not even be possible to speak of true freedom, of

Individualitat, of individualism and democracy and the Rights of Man without

the imponent push of the conflict that capitalism has organized under the

regular discipline of the factory. It is a piece of cruel self-deception to think

that even the most conservative amongst us, even those of us most opposed to

freedom and democracy, could carry on living at all today without these

achievements from the age of the Rights of Man, that is, the American and

French Revolutions and the Enlightenment, which have led through the

liberation of labor, through free labor and its autonomous market

demand, to the kind of rational organization of free labor, of social conflict

and antagonismembodiedby the all-powerful trend toward bureaucratization

that is to say, the provision of the most basic needs and wants of social life, to

the socialization that is the necessary pre-condition of bureaucracy.

It is vital to discern how Weber traces a strict link between freedom and

democracy, and therefore theDemokratisierung, through to the liberation of

labor, its constitution as a class that can press its autonomous market

demands in terms of the care for external goods, of its needs and wants

all the way to theVergesellschaftung, the socialization of these conflicting needs

and wants as a result of the need for capital rationally to organize this free

labor in the pursuit of rationally calculable profit (inoppositionto the romanticGemeinschafttheorized by Tonnies as an echo to Kants ungesellige Geselligkeit)

that is, of its own private form of bureaucratizationin opposition to, and therefore

separate from, the State bureaucracy to which it is yet most closely related. As

we will soon see in section 6, here Weber, because of his reified notion of

labor, falls back into and retraces the conceptualSchematismusof the Neo-

Kantian sociological Forms theorized by Simmel, distinct from their content


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not in terms of historical-materialist experience but only in terms of

durability (the Forms being Kantian concepts or categories that have

epistemological and scientific validity whilst their content is purely variable

and historically contingent oraleatory). The same distinction applies to the

Rationalisierungand to bureaucratization. Not until theVorbermerkungenwillWeber seek to deal explicitly and coherently with these matters.

+n view of the fundamental fact that the advance of bureaucratisationis unstoppable there is only one possible set of questions to beasked about future forms of political organisation3 "#& how is it at allpossible to salvage any remnants of 'individual' freedom of movementin any sense given this all-powerful trend towards bureaucratisation!+t is after all a piece of cruel self-deception to think that even themost conservative amongst us could carry on living at all today withoutthese achievements from the age of the '4ights of 5an'* 6owever

let us put this question to one side for now for there is anotherwhich is directly relevant to our present concerns3 "7& +n view of thegrowing indispensability and hence increasing power of state o8cialdomwhich is our concern here how can there be any guaranteethat forces exist which can impose limits on the enormous crushingpower of this constantly growing stratum of society and control ite9ectively! 6ow is democracy even in this restricted sense to be at all possible!"#$%&

Therefore, in view of the growingindispensabilityand hence increasing power of

stateofficialdom[bureaucracy] that has been brought about by this growingsocialization, the second question is what limits can be imposed on this

enormous, crushing power so as to be able and this is the first question - to

salvage any remnants of individual freedom of movementin any sense at all! These

two questions have to do crucially with the future forms ofpolitical organization.

The attempt to control growth in such a manner that the explosive push of the

system of needs and wants and its ineluctable conflict can be mustered and

then channeled into the preservation and reproduction of existing capitalist

social relations of production the profit motive engenders an increasing

power of State bureaucracy, a growth of control, that becomes inexorably

more indispensable in terms of gauging and monitoring the rationally

calculable functioning of the system both the needs and wants and the

profit motive -, but at the same time grows ever less capable to decide

legitimately the direction of the system! The control of growth required

for the preservation of existing relations of production the rational conduct of

capitalist business - engenders a growth of control designed to maintain


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these relations of production that tends to stifle and smother the very conflict

that the system of needs and wants rationally organized as free labor with an

autonomous market demand inevitably and irrepressibly generates. The result

is exactly the same as Weber had apprehended for rational Socialism. The

living machinecannot exorcise the congealed spirit of thelifelessmachine: - onlythe leading Spirit can guide and govern it.

:et this too is not the only question of concern to ushere for there is ";& a third question the most important of all whicharises from any consideration of what is not performed by bureaucracyas such* +t is clear that its e9ectiveness has strict internal limitsboth in the management of public political a9airs and in the privateeconomic sphere* ,he leading spirit the entrepreneur in the onecase the politician in the other is something di9erent from an

o8cial*


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This is where the effectiveness [of bureaucracy, state and capitalist] has strict internal limits,

both in the management of public, political affairs and in the private economic sphere in that

there are things that arenotperformed by bureaucracy!The bureaucracy can only

measure and monitor and perhaps even repair the existing system. But it

cannot determine either the modalities of its own growth nor those of thesystem whose operation it is supposed to measure and monitor: its growing

power grows the more oppressive and repressive the more it requires the

responsibility of the leitender Geist. Theleitender Geistcan only become the

ultimate safety-valve of the system by assuming the responsibility for the

decisions that must be made to guide and govern and direct the system. The

leader is the expression of a particular, specific, historical institutional

expression of the conflict and antagonism of the capitalist rational organization

of free labor under the regular discipline of the factory. The leader is the

culmination of social antagonism and its ultimate legitimation.

This shows yet again how deficient was Schumpeters attempt to explain the

phenomenon of capitalist development purely in terms of the subjective

Individualitatof the entrepreneur able to trans-form the wants and provisions

of capitalist society, rather than in terms of the conflict intrinsic to these wants

and provisions and its rational organization! Theleaderis not different or

separate from the bureaucratic machine: the leader represents merely the

moment of decision, the function of responsibility for the entire system. But

the concentration of legitimacy in the figure of the leader serves merely to

display disastrously, catastrophically the inability of the living machine ofbureaucracy to live up to its indispensability. As the legitimacy of theleitender

Geistdeclines so does the effectuality of the State administration and so does

the systemic risk of the entire system grow.

TheParlamentarisierungis supposed to facilitate and allow the control of the

controllers (Ciceros paradox quis custodiet ipsos custodes?) so as to

preserve the autonomy of market demand and the remnants of individual

freedom of expression in any sense at all. But this presupposes that (a) theconflict inherent to the iron cage is itself inescapable a fate; (b) that the

growth of control is occasioned blindly and irrationally by the system of needs

and wants that there are no other reasons outside of the iron cage for the

socialization of production and the increasing power of bureaucracy; and (c)

that the very possibility of governance under capitalism through the

Parlamentarisierungdoes not itself allow for an alternative form of governance


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that, apart from the leitender Geist and its responsibility for decisions, cannot

resolve the conflict between wants and provision a conflict that, far from being

an inescapable fate, Weber himself had traced back to its historical origins!

The question ofthe alternativemust then be posed.

In other words, is there not an inter esse that is finally expressed, however

distortedly, by the growth of control engendered by the need to control

growth? Is the growth of control not itself the pro-duct of that need to control

growth within the bounds set by the capitalist rationality of profitability?

And does this rationality, this profitability not rest on the rational

organization of free laborunder the regular discipline of the factory and not on

autonomous market demand? Clearly the problem here is that Webers iron

cage itself needs to be reviewed, its inescapability questioned, its creation

and maintenance by the spirit of capitalism traced to its historical origins. The

verypossibilityof conducting capitalist business forrational and systematic

profitability, through the rational organization of free labor under the regular

discipline of the factory needs to be examined. Only then will we be able to

assess realistically Webers plans for Parlamentarisierung und

Demokratisierung, that is to say, for the successful and lasting integration of

free labor organizedas a class within themachineof State and private capitalist

bureaucracy under the legitimate and legal parliamentary oversight of the

leitender Geistas the ultimate expression of thepolitical willof theHerrenvolk.

5

Thebellum civiumfrom Marx to Weber or, the Ghost of Needs in the

Machine of Labor

But the question still remains of what modern industrial labour means and of

how it leads necessarily inescapably to concentration, to socialization

and thence to what this last inevitably means, namely, bureaucratization.This is an all-important chain of historical and theoretical transitions or passages

that must be traced carefully. Even as late asParlament und Regierung, however,

Weber fails to do this, preferring instead to leave the whole chain of historical

connections entirely open.


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The ultimate foundation of social life is the system of needs and wants. The

ultimate aim and purpose of society is to satisfy these needs and wants that are

ineluctably individual. Not only is the individual and self-interest the

foundation of human society, not only is the satisfaction of needs and wants

their provision the essential aim of social life. But also the efficientsatisfaction of these needs and wants depends on the rational and systematic

organization of free labor. And this free labor is understood as operari, as

mere, sheer labor power or force ahomogeneous and measurablequantity

that does not itself create anything, pro-duce any goods, but rather

consumes and utilizes the external world so as to satisfy and provide for

its wants wants that are deemed to be as insatiable as the Schopenhauerian

Will. In Schopenhauer, theDing an sichis still present in the entity of the Will

whose objectification is the body. Therefore the external world exists as well,

though only as representation that can be com-prehendedscientificallyby the

Understanding (Verstand) in accordance with the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

In the Schopenhauerian version of the negatives Denken the world is still a

Wirk-lichkeit, a work-likeness, an actu-ality in which the human operari is

conditioned by scientific logico-mathematical laws just as it was in Kant,

whose greatest merit for Schopenhauer consisted precisely in this separation of

thing-in-itself from phenomena.

Except that Schopenhauer effects a re-versal (Um-kehrung) of Kants

metaphysics: the external world therefore is not an inscrutable Ob-ject, an

unknowable reality of noumena op-posed (Gegen-stand, ob-ject) to the Will,

of which we can only register phenomena. But because it is now the subjective

side, the Will, that is the thing-in-itself from which the phenomena, the

objectifications originate, the scientificity of experimental observations, of

phenomena, is guaranteed by theunityof their re-presentation (Vorstellung) as

subject-object in the Will a unity that overcomes the infamous Kantian

antinomies of thought due to inscrutability of the ob-jective (gegen-standliche)

thing-in-itself. In thisWelt-anschauung,esse est percipi to be is to be perceived,

the representations (Vorstellungen) are reality (Wirklichkeit) itself and no

longermere phenomena(blosse Erscheinungen). In this sense, Lukacss critique ofKants formalism, of the antinomies of bourgeois thought, and his

theorization of the proletariat as the individualsubject-objectof history is fully

comprehensibleonlythrough the screen of Schopenhauers reversal of Kant.

The separation of noumenon and phenomenon also disappears in Machism;

but this time it is the thing-in-itself that is entirely eliminated in favour of the


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simplemathematical con-nectionbetween phenomena or sensations

(Empfindungen) in anexperimentalrelationship that is predictable and regular.

Like Neo-Kantism, Machs phenomenology, theEmpfindungenor sensations,

effectively instrumentalise science reducing it to the state of a mere tool, to

its success or, in the phrase of one of the founders of the marginalist revolution,Stanley Jevons, to a set of predictions and regularities. (Cf. for this, the

opening chapters ofErkenntnis und Irrtum.) There is here a virulent and total

rejection of any reality or substance that may lie behind phenomena, of

any meta-physics. Science is sheer certainty achieved in the simplest

relations capable of being described and calculated with mathematical precision.

+n connection with the discussion about the admissibility orpossibility of introducing psychological factors into economicsthere stood the question of a standard of value* ,his question becameessential as soon as the theorists saw the excellent ob.ective

measure of labour vanish* /ven before @mith people had discussedthe question of a standard of exchange value and it had been recogniedthat there could be no standard that was unchangeable initself* All the classical writers taught this while the old supportersof the theory of value in use as e*g* @ay insisted on equating theexchange value of a commodity simply with the quantity of goodswhich it was possible to obtain for it in the market* +t was howeversimply considered impossible to measure the value in usealthough in practice everybody denitely compares values of commoditieswith each other* ,he psychological theory of value nowseemed to demand such a standard of value in use also in economictheory* Against this doubts were raised whether it was substantially

possible to measure 'quantities of intensity' and in particular whethervaluations of di9erent people could actually be compared*Yet# f* 0Bhm0awerk'/xkurs' +C in the third edition of the "ositive #heory6+@,D4+AE @6DDE A


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the old antinomy of values the opposition between utility andvalue. This had already been done. The distinctions between categoriesof want and the incitement of want between the total valueof a store and the value of partial quantities of which the store heldby the economic individual is composed help to overcome thisopposition. n this lies the importance of the conception of )marginal

utility).$,hus all facts relating to the determination of pricescould be explained with the help of the basic principle* +t is truehowever that there never had been any doubt that those facts onwhich the 'demand side' of the problem of price is based couldbe explained with its help and this had usually been considered asself-evident* 0ut it was only the theory of marginal utility whichbased the 'supply side' of the problem on it and conceived costs asphenomena of value* +n this respect the decisive achievementImostly overlooked by the criticsIlay in the proof that the esti-!#* +,--/, 0-,T1+ &0 /+T2-0mation of commodities according to their costs which is so predominantin economic life is merely an expedient abbreviation ofthe real correlation that this correlation is explained with the helpof the element of value in use that the calculations of the entrepreneurare merely the reJection of valuations on the part of theconsumers and that in cases in which somebody estimates acommodity according to the value in use of commodities which hecan obtain for it in the market3sub4ective e5change value3the)e5changeability) and with it the sub4ective e5change value isbased on alternative estimates of the value in use. This led to auniform explanation of all occurrencesin the e5change economywith the help of one single principle and in particular also to aclassi'cation of the relation between costs and prices.#

"@chumpeter $conomic %octrines and &ethodology&

For Weber as for Nietzsche, there cannot be any separation (Trennung) in the

Marxian sense between labor and the means of production becausethere was

never anyunion between them!The humanoperariis entirely instrumental to its

goal the provision for want. There is and there can be noGattungswesen, no

species-conscious being, no original union of workers with tools because, if

anything and quite to the contrary, the nature of human wants and the scarcity

of their provision ensure that there is conflict between and among workers, let

alone between workers and capitalists! Human beings are irreducibly and

ontologically things-in-themselves; they are Wills or, as Nietzsche describesthem, instincts of freedom that can co-operate or col-laborate to the extent

that their needs, their iron necessities and their wants are provided for

and satisfied.

This is the Hobbesianstatus naturae, thebellum omnium contra omnes, the state of

nature in whichhomo homini lupusobtains and that Schopenhauerpostulatesin


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Book Four ofDie Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,afterhis pitiless critique of Kantian

ethics in theGrundprobleme der Ethik, of the moral theology of the Categorical

Imperative. In thenegatives Denkeninitiated by Schopenhauer in response to the

Hegelian dialectic,the instrumental operari, theArbeit, the labor itself does

not have utility because it is the objectification of the Will to Life with itsunfathomable Wants, with its evanescent World. Onlythe Worldis wealth;

onlyconsumption goods have utilityfor the Will. They and they alone

ultimately measure or value or price the marginal utility of the means of

production not in an objective or substantive sense, but merely from the

viewpoint (Gesichtspunkt), from the per-spective of the individual choice.

Utility is an entirely subjective and inscrutable entity that can be measured as

Value, that can be given social significance or a social Form that can be

reified only through the social osmosis of the market pricing mechanism

where individual Wills clash or com-pete for the same scarce consumer

goods. TheAskesis, Webers ascetic renunciation of the world orEntsagung, is

emphatically not attainedthrough the pursuit of labor as an end in itself, but

rather through the deferral of consumption and the application of theArbeitto

the construction of tools (means of production, or capital) that are more

roundabout and therefore increase the productivity of labor by saving it.

And the higher Value derived from producing with more roundabout methods

of production can be calculated not just in an instantaneous or timeless

analytical dimension but even in a temporal one, in terms of time preference,

even as a projection toward the future!

In this view (Anschauung), in this perspective (Welt-anschauung), labor

can have no utility because it has no intrinsic value. Instead, labor is

effort (Kampf), it is the objectification of the Will, it is the operari, it is

Pain (Leid) without Pleasure (Lust): labor is dis-utility! And the

marginal utility of the consumption goods produced to provide for the

workers wants the wage - must be equivalent to the marginal dis-utility of

labor if the production of consumption goods is to be optimal!Neoclassical

theory from Gossen onwards begins with the notion that human living activity is

toil, it is effort, it is pain and want (Bedarf) in search of provision(Deckung), as Bohm-Bawerk styles them in thePositive Theorie. It follows from this

perspective that human living activity is conceptually separated from its

object, from its environment which supplies it (human operari) with the

means of production. And consequently human living labour is seen from the

outset as pure and utter destitution, as poverty, as want. Accordingly, all

means of production cannot serve as means for the expression or objectification


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of human living labour but rather as labour-saving devices! We should note the

difference between Jeremy Benthams Utilitarian or hedonistic calculus of

pleasure and pain and the strict nexus established by Schopenhauer between

operari as Arbeit (labor) and A-skesis as release from Pain, as

renunciation of the World and therefore the identification of labor withwant and pain. This nexus is entirely missing in Bentham just as it is in JS Mill

who espoused the Labor Theory of Value as the last great representative of

Classical Political Economy. But it is this Schopenhauerian nexus that isvitalto

the early development of the theory of marginal utility.

What this means is that human living labour itself is already considered, for one,

as a tool, as an instrument whose productivity can be measured in terms of

units of output per unit of time. And for another, it is seen as an activity or a

labourpower that, just like Schopenhauers Will to Life and its objectification,

the Body, ispurely abstract, mere potentiality, utter possibility, sheer pro-

jectnot bound to a particular, specific mode of expression or activity. In

practice, it is the latter view of living labor the assumption that living labor is

only mere potentiality - that serves as the premise that leads inexorably to the

former conclusion that is, that living labor is only a tool, a homogeneous

force, Marxs abstract labor! Weber's entire understanding of "free labour",

discussed here earlier, is the sociological equivalent of this decadence and

nihilism of European thought not,paceLukacs or Marcuse, a destruction of

Reason, because , as Nietzsche showed quite conclusively, Reason itself is the

summum bonum of Western metaphysics thatculminatesin nihilism. In this

perspective, this abstract labour is sheer, naked, destitute poverty, barren

misery potential that can only become actual if, and only to the extent and

manner that, it isallowedby the laws of supply and demand to come into

contactas a toolwith the means of production that are the endowment and

possession of the capitalist. For the Neoclassics, then, labour and workers are

by definitionthe factor of production that is in want or need, thatsuffers

toil and pain and dis-utility and that needs capital (the means of

production as labour-saving tools) in order to satisfy its wants that are made

immediate, urgent in contrast with the capitalist owner who can deferconsumption by the very fact that it does not now have provisions for its

subsistence and reproduction and survival!

Theculminationof this blatant nihilism implicit in theWeltanschauungof the

negatives Denkencan be found in the principal theoretical works of the most

prestigious member of the early Austrian School, none other than the bourgeois


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Marx himself Eugen Bohm-Bawerk. Here is how his greatest pupil, Joseph

Schumpeter, summarises his work in a manner that needs little commentary from

us to be placed in the context of our discussion and that in connection with

interest, that is the most fundamental aspect of profit as the most

unabashedly natural claim by the bourgeoisie over social wealth (in the form ofwhat Marx called fructiferous capital):

+n #22K there appeared 0Bhm-0awerk's critical workwhich established not only the untenable but also thesupercial character of the existing explanations ofinterest and opened a new era for the theory ofinterest* ,his book and the one entitled "ositive#heorie which followed four years later trainednumerous theorists of interest and hardly a single oneremained una9ected by them* Df all the works on the

theory of marginal utility these two volumes had thedeepest and widest e9ect* Le nd the traces of theirinJuence in the way in which almost all theorists ofinterest phrased their questions and proceeded toanswer them*

,here are signs of this inJuence even in those writerswho re.ected the concrete solution of the problem ofinterest as o9ered by 0Bhm-0awerk* ,his solution isbased on the fundamental idea that the phenomenon ofinterest can be explained by a discrepancy between thevalues of present and future consumer goods* ,hisdiscrepancy rests on three facts3 rst on the di9erencebetween the present and the future level of suppliesavailable for the members of the economy secondlyon the fact that a future satisfaction of wants standsmuch less vividly before people's eyes than an equalbut present satisfaction* +n consequence economicactivity reacts less strongly to the prospect of futuresatisfaction than to that of present en.oyment and theindividual members of the economy are in certaincircumstances willing to buy present en.oyment withone that is greater in itself but lies in the future* Thediscrepancy between present and future valuesis thirdly based on the fact that the possessionof goods ready to be en4oyed makes it

unnecessary for the economic individuals toprovide for their subsistence by6+@,D4+AE @6DDE A


14/46

time6consuming: the possession of goods ready tobe enjoyed inthe present guarantees, as it were, the possessionof more suchgoods in the future.+n this 'third reason' for the phenomenon of interest there

arecontained two elements3 Mirst the establishment of atechnical factwhich so far had been unknown to the theorists namelythat theprolongation of the period of production the adoption of'detours'of production makes it possible to obtain a greater returnwhichis more than proportionate to the time employed*@econdly thethesis that this technical fact is also an independent causeof anincrease in value of consumption goods which are inexistence atany given time*nterest as form of income then originates in theprice strugglebetween the capitalists on the one side who mustbe consideredas merchants who oer goods which are ready forconsumptionand landlords and workers on the other. 7ecause thelatter valuepresent goods more highly and because the possible

use of presentstocks of consumer goods for a more pro'tablee5tension of theperiod of production is practically unlimited theprice struggle isalways decided in favour of the capitalists.nconsequence landlordsand workers receive their future product only with adeductionas it were with a discount for the present.

,he achievement which this formulation contains wasepoch-makingand a great deal of the theoretical work of the last twentyyears has been devoted to a discussion of it and to itscriticism*

"@chumpeter $conomic %octrines and &ethodology*&

The blunt brutality of Schumpeters illations conclusions drawn from utterly

ludicrous premises need not detain us long here. But we should draw attention

to two features that will be relevant to our discussion of Webers theory of the


15/46

origins of capitalism in Part Two. The first is that Bohm-Bawerks theory of the

greater productivity of moreroundabout methods of production (a feat of

metaphysical fantasy unequalled in the sorry history of the Economics a

bedtime story to make children laugh) is yet another version of the

Schopenhauerian renunciation (Entsagung), the refusal of the pain (Leid)of the Will to Life in its abulic, incessant and insatiable search for pleasure

(Lust) that can never be satis-fied, least of all at the moment of its ful-filment

(Schopenhauer)! Bohm-Bawerk is clearly intimating under the pretence of

economic theory that the capitalist is rewarded with higher productivity of

the tools (capital) hepossessesby virtue of his ascetic renunciation or deferral

of immediate consumption in order to devote his labor and existing capital to

the construction of more roundabout methods of production that will yield

higher productivity and therefore profit when they are utilized. As we will see

in Part Two, Weber argues in theEthikthat it is the Protestant calling (Beruf) of

labor as an end in itself that makes up the spirit of capitalism and constitutes

a specifically bourgeois economic ethic. We can see already from the quotation

above that in fact it is Neoclassical Theory that provides such a specifically

bourgeois economic ethic because it lays emphasis of the source of Value on the

renunciation of immediate consumption by the capitalist through the

preference of more roundabout means of production (capital) rather than

Webers devotion to or calling for labor as an end in itself which, of

course, is much closer to the Labor Theory of Value of Classical Political

Economy.

The second point follows practically from the first, and that is that once again, as

we argued earlier and as Weber realized, the entire concept of interest or profit

is evidently founded in Neoclassical Theory on the idea of a price struggle

between capitalists and workers that, given the premises of this theory, is

always decided in favour of the capitalists.

************

Webers inexorable separation (inexorable because for him there is no

existential basis whatsoever for conceiving of a union of the worker with the

means of production except on the basis of individual ownership of the latter) -

the inescapability of bureaucratic rule over modern industrial labour

anticipates fatidically the philosophical synthesis operated by Heidegger only

eight years later in 1927 with the publication of his epoch-makingSein und Zeit.


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Heideggers ontology of human Da-sein, of human being as possibility, is a

philosophical reflection of the politically-enforced separation (Trennung) that

Weber deems inescapable and that Heidegger will misconstruephilosophischfor

phenomenological inauthenticity (Un-eigentlichkeit) or averageness or

quotidianity (Alltaglichkeit) and existential estrangement (Verfall).Pathetic(like Schopenhauers sym-pathy derided by Nietzsche as the perspective of

the herd, like Romain Rollands oceanic feeling refuted by Freud inDie

Unbehagen der Kultur) will be Lukacss plaintive longing for the enchantment of

totality, his late-romantic vision of the proletariat as the individual subject-

object of history and quasi-religious invocation of class consciousness just as

equallypatheticwill remain Heideggers appeals to authenticity in the face of

theVorhandenheit(instrumentality) ofTechnik.

(The proximity of the two thinkers is reviewed by L. Goldmann inLukacs et

Heidegger. It may be enlightening to quote fully here Webers avuncular chiding

of Lukacs for his exuberant Marxist concepts of totality and class

consciousness, not less than that of individual subject-object of history. Weber

decries [Economy and Society, at p.930]

that kind of pseudo-scientic operation with the conceptsof class and class interests which is so frequent these days and which hasfound its most classic expression in the assertion (ehauptung of atalented author that the individual may be in error about his interests

but that the class is infallible.)

For theNietzscheanWeber, these literati with their romantic fantasies fail to

grasp the irreducible and overridingirreconcilabilityof human individual needs

and wants, the total absence of any social syn-thesis, the complete lack of any

inter essein human Da-sein. Life is conflict; it is struggle; it is Will to Power.

This much Weber has learned from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche combined. But

this ineluctable, physio-logical human conflict can and does allow for human co-

operation in a purelyinstrumentalsense, to achieve practical purposes that satisfy

individual needs and wants. Social institutions, both symbolic and political,

can lead to the socialization of the instincts through compromises that

channel human instincts of freedom toward the construction of an ontogeny of

thought that stretches from the notions of consciousness and ego-ity (Ich-

heit), to those of logic and mathematics, and then to science, individuality,

society and the State.


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This ontogeny of thought is what allows Weber to reconcile Nietzsches true

perspectivism and phenomenalism with Neo-Kantian epistemology and

Machian philosophy of science. Kants transcendental idealism remained

fundamentally subjective. The ontological universality of Pure Reason is

implicitly questioned in theCritique of Judgement(as Arendt argues inLectures onKants Political Philosophy, though not,paceHeidegger, in the First Critique even if

the limitations of Pure Reason are already apparent there)and madeto retreatto

the Leibnizian sphere of intuition and aesthetics, as Heidegger would argue later

in theKantbuch.(A useful discussion of this point is in H-G GadamersLes

Chemins de Heidegger, p.64, essay on Kant et le tournant hermeneutique.)Neo-

Kantism is theunwillingavowal of this retreat of Reason, of the definitive

abandonment of the summum bonum of German Idealism of unifying

metaphysics with epistemology a surrender presaged already by Kant in the

Opus Postumumand the subject of the dramatic clash at Davos between

Heidegger and Cassirer. In the Neo-KantianLebensphilosophie, the Formrescues

the content of knowledge, Practical Reasonsavesexperience, and the Norm

justifiesthe conduct. TheNatur-wissenschaftenand theGeistes-wissenschaftenwill

never be united again: the irretrievable separation of the Subject from the

Object is finally conceded. The social sciences must turn to theUnicumof the

Soul which can ex-press and externalize its spirit through the

Schematismus, through the symbolic and socialforms. This is the essence of

socialization that mani-fests itself in all areas of human life even to the extent

that these Forms acquire a life of their own, until they become a crystallized

Spirit (geronnener Geist the phrase is Simmels, inPhilosophische Kultur, before

Weber adopted it) that dominates the lives of individual souls. The intellectual

path of Lukacs fromDie Seele und die Formen(adopting Simmels schema of

Soul and Forms from thePhilosophische Kultur) to the elaboration of the

concept of reification out of the Marxian fetishism of commodities in

Geschichte und Klassenbewusstseindescribesfaithfullyandfatefullythis flirtation

of Marxism with theVollendungof German Idealism:

At the time then it was 5arx the sociologist that attracted me and + saw himthrough spectacles tinged by @immel and 5ax Leber* + resumed my studies of5arx during Lorld Lar + but this time + was led to do so by my generalphilosophical interests and under the inJuence of 6egel rather than anycontemporary thinkers* "from #%$= Hreface p*ix&

Indeed, Marx himself acknowledged this flirtation with Hegel (in the Preface

toKapital) and then coined the phrase crystallizedlabor-time [blosse Gerinnung

von Arbeitszeit, Vol.1,Kapital] to indicate the sociallynecessarylabor time that


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is embodied in the means of production used by living labor to valorize

commodities in the process of production. Marx sought thereby to circumvent

the obvious inconsistency that it is impossible for market prices, which are

subjectively allocated according to demand, to determine what is socially

necessary labor-time. It is something with which the most discerning Marxistshave struggled since the publication of Volume Three ofDas Kapital. The finest

among them have sought to reconcile the inconsistency by appealing precisely to

this crystallization of labor-time through the reification of human living

labor that the fetishism of commodities engenders through the market

mechanism. (See especially Lukacss chapter on Reification inGeschichteand

the final chapter on Marxism: Scienza o Rivoluzione? in L. CollettisIdeologia e

Societa.) The insuperable objection to this version of Marxs critique is that if

value is sheer mystification and fetishism, then it is absolutely impossible

for it to determine the quantitative allocation of social resources for production!

Nor is it possible for us to discern a way to evade this fetishism! Lukacs himself

confesses to the overriding subjectivism of this framework (p.xviii) and indeed

to itsaffinitywith Webers own brand of Neo-Kantian rationalization (as we

will see later) and Heideggers phenomenological account of inauthenticity

and totality inSein und Zeit(p.xxii).

It is not an accident then if Karl Lowith focused on the convergence of the

concepts of rationalization in Weber and of alienation in Marx in his

appositely titled early work onMax Weber and Karl Marx. This complex web of

sociological formscharacterizesalsoWebers entire methodology from the ideal

type (Simmels Form) as a sociological form to the hermeneuticVerstehenof

social phenomena (clearly drawn from Dilthey) that allows theliberationof

social science from its normative content (wert-frei, value-free science).

Indeed, we will argue that Webers entire sociology and Wissenschaftslehre is

founded on these Simmelian sociological Forms that allow him as they do

Schumpeter in theTheorieand the Austrian School generally, especially von Mises

who had links with Weber to conceive of theRationalisierungin terms of its

instrumental purpose (Zweck-rationalitat what we may call mathesis) and

therefore scientificity that can be distinguished from its Norm or Value(Wert-rationalitat). (The distinction betweencausa efficiensandcausa finalisactually

belongs to the great German jurist Rudolf von Jhering and pertains to political

theory and the sociology of law [see hisDer Zweck im Recht, trans. asLaw as a

Means to an End]. Weber seems to have adopted it without apparent

acknowledgement. Similarly, Webers theory of the State as a monopoly on the


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use of physical force is derived from Jherings jurisprudence. We will discuss

these themes in Part Three.)

Once more, we are back full circle to Simmels Neo-Kantian dualism of Soul

(value, norm) and Forms (instrumental purpose). But in pursuingthisschema,Weber moves very far from Nietzsches much more consistent and sophisticated

philosophical Entwurf and original version of theRationalisierung.Weber is more

ecumenical than Nietzsche in highlighting the irrational elements of Kultur

in whichRatioand iron cage are crystallizations or Forms of the Spirit or

Soul. Such a neat, formalistic KantianSchematismus would have seemed

absurd to Nietzsche part of that moral theology of German Idealism and of

the German Historical School of Law, of theHistorismusthat he vehemently

denounced, and indeed part of the emanationism that Weber himself had

rebuffed when reviewing the older German Historical School in hisRoscher

und Knies, - but one into which he was forced by his espousal of the

methodological individualism of the Austrian School and the judicial

positivism of Kelsen and the Marburg School.

In this specific and important regard, insufficient attention has been paid to the

actual practical convergence of the Austrian School and the German Historical

School that seemed so bitterly divided over theMethodenstreitin the final decades

of the twentieth century with the famous diatribe between Karl Menger and

Gustav Schmoller. In reality, notwithstanding the apparent unbridgeable divide

between the quest for scientific laws expressible even in mathematical form of

the Austrian School and the resolute opposition to such generalities from the

Historical School, the fact remains that both Schools had a common aim: - and

that is the practicaleffectuality of scientific research! If one takes a closer look

at the Welt-anschauung of the Schools, one will notice immediately that the

Machism of the Austrian School was aimed at establishing the simplest

mathematical relationships between events even at microeconomic level

(regarding the price behavior of firms and individuals, for instance) that could

serve as guidance for overall government policy and, not least, as essential

strategic ideological tools in the fight against the spreading socialist ideologies.Despite Machs insistence on the dis-interestedness of scientific research in

Erkenntnis und Irrtum, the fact remains that Machism looks at phenomena as

sensations that is to say, as the be all and end all of cosmic reality thereby

abolishingthis reality, this meta-physics, in such a way that the regular and

predictable relationships (Jevons) that can be found between sense-

impressions (Empfindungen) are taken to exhaust the entire uni-verse of


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science. It follows from this that Machism would regard the present social

relations of production (capitalist ones) as the only truly scientific ones! Any

deviation of social behavior from the scientific laws based on the present

social relations imposed by capital would be seen as aberrant and erroneous

(hence the title to Machs main work Knowledge andError)! (The bestepistemological account of the methodology of the Austrian School remains

Friedrich HayeksThe Counter-Revolution of Science.)

Seen from the standpoint of the German Historical School, the practical outcome

of its theoretical and methodological position would be absolutely identical, in

the sense that its exclusive focus on historical research (Dilthey), on the close

concentration on individual events (Geschehen) in Thucydidean fashion

(Marx satirises Thukydides-Roscher in chapter 9 ofKapital, Volume 1) would

be concerned with identifying current practices that could be put to practical

effective use on the part of German industry! The practical industrial activities

and membership of the leaders of the School chief among them, Gustav

Schmoller himself with his influentialVerein fur Sozialpolitik testify to this

supporting role of the German Historical School in the sociological service of

German industry. Here it is the interestedness of the Historismus of the

German School that converges with the apparent Machian dis-interestedness

of the Austrian School which, in effect, amounts to the affirmation of the status

quo and indeed to its elevation toepistemological and ontological status!

It is most important to note at this juncture that the Austrian and German

Schools, however heated their controversy over the methodology of the

social sciences in the Methodenstreit, constituted powerful forces in the

concerted effortby capitalist bourgeois interests across Europe to counter the

emergence of socialist parties and their ideologies in the name of an overall

methodological subjectivism that displaced the entire focus of Political

Economy from Labour to individual Utility and therefore from the dramatic

transformation and concentration of the labour process (Taylorism and Fordism),

of the composition of the working class (from the skilled [Gelernte] to the mass

worker), and that of capital (the rise of large cartels and corporations verticallyand horizontally integrated) in what has been generally described as the Second

Industrial Revolution (see Alfred Chandler JnrsThe Visible Hand),to a vision of

the liberal free and competitive market that championed thePlanlosigkeit

(spontaneous plan-lessness, anarchical freedom) of bourgeois civil society

(Fergusons and Hegelsburgerliche Gesellschaft) against the regimentation of the

planned, organized economy advanced by theSozialismus. It is the


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abandonment of all metaphysical illusions the better to conceal the greater

illusion of marginal utility - that will allow the conceptual fusion by the

German ruling elites in the period to World War Two and beyond of the German

Historical Schools focus on individual,specificinterventionist projectsof German

industrial domination in Europe, on one hand, and of the Austrian Schoolselevation of individual consumer choices in theliberalistfree market

mechanism on the other. (Not for nothing the Austrians were dubbed in

Germany Manchester mercantilists! [cf. Schumpeters last chapter inEconomic

Doctrines.]) In this context, Nietzsches own philosophical Entwurf, together with

the spread of Machism in science that subtended both the Austrian (Menger,

Bohm-Bawerk, Mises and Schumpeter, then Hayek) and the Lausanne (Walras

and Pareto) Schools, must be seen as one co-ordinated and massive intellectual

counter-attack by capital against the emergent working class whose political

expression will culminate with the overarching intellectual vision of Max Weber.

(For an initial outline of these arguments, see M. Cacciaris Sul Problema

dellOrganizzazione inPensiero Negativo e Razionalizzazione.)

It is a fact beyond doubt that Webers own overriding concern with the political

effectuality of theParlamentarisierungwas never dictated by a genuine concern

for the correspondingDemokratisierungof German politics, but rather by the need

to smoothe and invigorate the political and economic Staatsmacht of the

German capitalist Nationaloekonomie. Webers scornful jibes at the literati and

their romantic fantasies can be retorted with some justice against his own

petty-bourgeois nostalgic lamentations about the steel-hard casing of the

care forexternal goods, at his ethereal conceptions ofacrystallised Spirit of

modern industrial work (to be examined below), and the Ent-seelung (out-

souling, desecration) of political life through the massification of political

parties (inPolitik als Beruf), and the Ent-zauberung (dis-enchantment) of

human experience through its instrumental rationalization. Above all, as we

will see, it is that central notion of free labor that contains in its denotation of

autonomous market demand guiding and determining the profitability that

is the benchmark of the rational conduct of capitalist business it is this notion

of freelabor that hides Webers ultimate allegiance to theSpontaneitatof humanneeds and wants intended as the autonomous consumerist market demand

that we discussed earlier and the optimistic liberal understanding of market

competition that is the centerpiece of bourgeois liberalism.

Here Weber jettisons the initial Nietzschean Resolve (the notion ofGewissenor

conscience or responsibility expounded and championed against its opposite


22/46

schlechte Gewissen[bad conscience or bad faith, later to mimetise into

HeideggersUn-eigentlichkeitand Sartresmauvaise foi] - by Nietzsche at length in

theGenealogie) that he had espoused and proclaimed in his Inaugural Lecture at

Freiburg in the attempt to bridge the divide between the revolutionary and

technocratic appeal of Austrian Machian empiricism, whichsanctionsthe validityof scientific methods in the study of social life, and the staid conservatism of

German Historical School historicism that seeks to preserve theauraof

subjectivity, of Hegelian Ver-geist-igung (embodiment of spirit, or divine

emanation), for human existence. (The most explicit elaboration of this

methodological individualism is in Friedrich HayeksThe Counter-revolution of

Scienceand in SchumpetersEconomic Doctrine and Method.)

It is the machinery of the congealed spirit, whether lifeless (the care for

external goods, the wants and needsembodiedin the labor process), or living

(rational bureaucratic rule) that Weber seeksto balance(the opposition he

vehemently emphasizes) with theDezisionismus, the responsibility (Gewiss,

Verantwortung categories expounded by Nietzsche in his mature works), of the

leitender Geist. Even as late as 1918, Weber can still believe in the value-

neutrality of his parliamentary framework. But as we shall see, already in 1919

political developments inside Germany had shaken the self-assuredness of his

social-scientific analysis and proposals. Two short years after his death, in 1922,

Carl Schmitt will publish hisPolitische Theologiein a direct challenge to Webers

philosophical and scientific assumptions surrounding theVerfassungsfrageof the

Weimar Republic, and in 1927, HeideggersSein und Zeitwill serve as the epitaph

to Wilhelmine Zivilisation and to the Kultur of Weimar. The Nazi Catastrophe

was just around the corner, presaging the imminent obscuring of the world.

(The phrase obscurcissement du monde is taken from the French translation of

Heideggers lectures delivered in Paris in 1935, published originally as

Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik.)

********************

What in fact happens in factories is that the daily working lives of men are

determined by the congealed spirit of the lifeless machine. The means of

production are the lifeless machine: as such, they cannot have a will of their

own. Nevertheless, their function, shape and form - their technological

attributes are determined by the material needs and wants of the men who


23/46

in their operari, in the objectification of their needs and wants must utilize the

lifeless machine that thereforeonly appearsto have the power to force them to

serve it, but in reality possesses this power only (!) because it is the resultant

objectification operated by the living machine of rational and systematic

bureaucratic rule of private capitalists or state administration - of their conflicting, opposed and irreconcilable self-interests as these are filtered scientifically and

optimized, for the present and for the foreseeable future, by the market

mechanism! Only in this sense can a lifeless machine become a congealed

spirit or a crystallised spirit [geronnener Geist] (also translated as objectified

mind by Gerth and Mills inFrom Max Weber).

Weber borrows this expression from Marx [Kapital] and Simmel [Philosophische

Kultur],but infuses it with Nietzschean meaning. Marx had intended (inThe

German Ideologyand in theGrundrisse, for instance) that machines embody the

social relations of production of a particular society; but in Weber machines

objectify the need-necessity of human instincts inconflictwith one another.

Whereas in Marx technology re-produces (reflects and preserves) the existing

power relations between producers in a process that can be resolved or be super-

seded dialectically through the growing socialization (again, Simmels

notion, understoodphilosophischhere by Weber) of human needs and the

spreading inter-dependence of social labour, for Weber instead this

socialisation reflects only the rationally calculable and efficient provision for

the antagonistic needs of workers and capitalists both within and across the class

divide.

In Marx the means of production embody the political command of the capitalist

who seeks to divide the ineluctable interdependent interaction theinter

esse of social labor into the false homogeneity of individual labors

remunerated in accordance with an extrinsic quantitative metre (dead

objectified labor) in the form of the wage. The capitalist exploits politically the

ineluctable sociality of the labor process in the attempt to reproduce its

artificial separation both from the means of production and from laborinteraction. The mystique of capitalism is the legitimation of this act of violence

the reduction of living labor to mere abstraction both collectively from the

means of production and individually from the sociality of human labor. For

Marx therefore the congealment, the crystallization of labor-time consists

precisely in the political continuity of this capitalist design, this project of

domination over living labor through dead labor or crystallized labor. For


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25/46


26/46

Marx needed this notion of crystallized labor-time to serve a dual purpose: -

first, to enable him to claim that he had successfully quantifiedvalueand

therefore to establish his labor theory of value on a scientific footing; but,

second, he needed it also to be able to retain the political and socialfoundations of capitalist social relations of production ashistorical phenomena

that were not immutable (sub specie aeternitatis) but subject to humanaction. The

seeming oxymoronof historical materialism encapsulates this constant search

by Marx for a way to reconcile science and politics or history. Given that this is

equivalent to squaring a circle, it is not surprising that Marx failed in the

attempt.

Marx was certainly sufficiently intelligent and competent in economic theory to

realize that the quantity of things produced in the capitalist process of

production has nothing to do with the value of that production which is

determined instead by the extent to which that production is done by employing

socially necessary labor-time. (Contrast this with how Lukacs instead is clearly

all at sea when dealing with matters that are not immediately philosophical as

is evinced by the remarkable difference between the clearly incompetent

discussions in Reification of economic matters [especially Marginal Utility

Theory] as against the sure mastery of his philosophical critique in the section on

The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought.) Nor can it be doubted seriously that

Marx was aware of the impossibility of reducing objectively, physically,

heterogeneous labor to a homogeneous substance: indeed, he counted this, the

discovery of theDoppelcharakterof the commodity labor power (its being at

once living labor that valorizes capital and labor power that is exchanged on

the market), as perhaps his greatest achievement.

It is just as certain, as Colletti has noted, that for Marx value was a social

hieroglyph that, like God or the soul, has no material existence and yet is

objective in that it conditions and guides human action. But, and here is the

crux, this theory of value is inconsistent with the notion of market competition.

One of two things: -eithermarket competition is regarded by Marx as anautonomous and spontaneous sphere of activity notenforced politicallyby one

class against another, in which case it is anaporeticconcept because

competition invariably ends up destroying competition (!);or elsemarket

competition is a sphere of activity thatispolitically enforced, in which case,eo

ipso, there can benocompetition as a realitya se stante(that can stand on its own)

and that allows value to be determinedindependently of politically-enforced rules!


27/46


28/46

to be preferred as the exposition of Marxs overall theory of capitalism.

Incredibly, in Natural Law and Revolution, now inTheory and Practice,

Habermas argues that it was Marxs finding of the theft of labor time in the

pure exchange categories of bourgeois law that discredit[ed] so enduringly for

Marxism both the idea of legality and the intention of Natural Law as such thatever since the link between Natural Law and revolution has been dissolved!

Habermas, who is almost entirelyinnocentof economic theoretical training,

cannot see that indeed it is that side of Marxs theory and of Socialism that

believes in the fable of the theft of labor time that then must necessarilybelieve,

vi rerum[by force of things!], in the legitimacy of legal categories that draw

Habermass analysis backinto the orbitof Arendts liberalist and jusnaturalist

rendition of the historical reality of revolutions! Habermas manages therewith

to undo the valid critique of ArendtsOn Revolutionthat he had expounded in his

essayDie Geschichte von den zwei Revolutionen. See also Part Four discussion of

these themes.)

Given the necessary failure of this critique of capitalism to prove in

quantitative terms in terms of value as a quantity, of surplus value as

theft of labor time the existence of exploitation, it is evident that Marx and

Lukacs must then turn to the political analysis of capitalist social relations of

production: but here, ironically, because they are forced to move on the same

conceptual grounds as bourgeois political economy, they can offer no greater

objection to capitalism than the fact that it extends Weberian rationalization to

every aspect of social life even if this is only founded on an illusion!

0ut this implies that the principle of rational mechanisation and calculabilitymust embrace every aspect of life* onsumer articles no longer appear as theproducts of an organic process within a community "as for example in a villagecommunity&*,hey now appear on the one hand as abstract members of aspecies identical by denition with its other members and on the other hand asisolated ob.ects the possession or non-possession of which depends on rationalcalculations* Dnly when the whole life of society is thus fragmented into theisolatedacts of commodity exchange can the 'free' worker come into beingN at the sametimehis fate becomes the typical fate of the whole society?* Df course this isolationandfragmentation is only apparent? 6owever if this atomisation is only an illusion itisa necessary one* "Eukacs )eschichtepp*%#-7&

Neither Marx nor Lukacs understand the powerlessness (Ohnmacht) of a

critique that describes capitalism as a necessary illusion! If an illusion is


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necessary, then it cannot bedispelledexcept by changing the conditions that

make it necessary. But Marx and Lukacs are clearly arguing here that it is the

illusion of commodity fetishism,and not the violence of capitalist command over

living labor, that constitutes the necessity the freezing, congealment, or

crystallization of labor-time into value of capitalist production! Thisexplains why Lukacs in theGeschichtecomes so close to sharing Webers analysis

of capitalism almost word for word! (See pp.95ff where Lukacs quotes Weber at

length fromParlament und Regierung, without hint of criticism!)

Lukacss incomprehension of the utterlyreactionarypathos of his artisanal

nostalgia the village community! - against specialization is quite breath-

taking. In this regard, Webers contemptuous dismissal of the socialist charge

of separation against capitalist rationalization and mechanization is entirely

understandable and condivisible. Amidst the mystique surrounding this late-

romantic Lukacsian notion of reification (which has spawned lamentably an

entire industry of uselessphilosophes), Lukacs himself does have time to perceive

the necessity ofcrisisin capitalism. Yet he interprets ituncriticallyas merely a

moment in which the anarchy of capitalist production leads to the collapse

of the system: it is an echo of the infamousZusammenbruchstheorie the theory

of final collapse that will preoccupy and distract the political strategy of the

Linkskommunismusat the turn of the last century. Lukacs therefore completely

misunderstands the strategic importance of Webers own analysis of the

Rationalisierungin the precise context of drawing up a specific political project of

trans-formation of bourgeois political institutions around theVerfassungsfrage, the

new Constitution of the Weimar Republic. (And so does Hannah Arendt, whose

On Revolutionis a paean to the revolutionarySpontaneitatof the

Linkskommunismuspromulgated by the heroine of her youth, Rosa Luxemburg.)

Despite his fallacious belief in a homogeneous entity called labor, Weber

understood, having learned from Schumpeter, what Lukacs totally ignored: the

inevitability ofcrisisas a decisivemoment of the utilization of class conflict in

theEntwicklung creative destruction, trans-crescence, growth-through-

crisis of capitalist industry and society. (The etymological nexus betweencrisis and critique and decision is drawn in fn. 155 of R. KosellecksKritik

und Krisis.)

The chief result of our study of Webers theory of rationalization so far is that it

is not and cannot be scientific because its unit of measurement relies on the

homogeneity of labor. Weber ignores the fact that living labor is not and cannot


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be homogeneous for at least three reasons: the first is that it is impossible to

divide social labor into individual labors; the second is that themaker of a pro-

ductshould never be mistaken with the product itself - nor indeed, as Nietzsche

argued inBGE, with itsownership! And the third reason is that, in any case, even

if individual labor ismeasured in terms of output by means of sheerviolence, as in the capitalist labor process, that output is not homogeneous

across product industries (as even the greatest bourgeois economic theoreticians

concede see Chamberlin and Robinson and Sraffa on imperfect competition)

so that it cannot serve as a "measure" on which this output can be "priced" for

market exchange! It is for this reason that both Weber and Marx rely ultimately

on the fiction of the self-regulating market (the law of supply and demand) to

determine the exchange value (the prices) of output and to provide the social

synthesis, or the co-ordination necessary for the reproduction of the society

of capital. (Hayeks entire lifework was dedicated to this conundrum of how a

mass of atomized individuals can reproduce a society through the market.

That the paramount and insurmountableproblem, theimpasse, of the Economics is

precisely the co-ordination of economic activity is also cleverly perceived,

acknowledged and intelligently discussed by Brian Loasby inEquilibrium and

Evolution. Our own discussion of these matters will be the subject of a

forthcoming study calledCatallaxy: The Bourgeois Utopia of Equilibrium.)

Marxs inability to determine value and prices independently of the market

mechanism induced him to seek the objectification of value in the fetishism

of commodities which served the same purpose as Webers rationalization

that of measuring the social synthesis, which is what Lukacs translated into the

concept of reification. Just as with Webers rationalization, the Marxian

concept of commodity fetishism or the Lukacsian equivalent of reification

simply cannot account for the social synthesis. Marx and Lukacs understand

that if this social synthesis isobjectively valid if, in other words, it is possible

to measure value independently of political institutions, of violence -, then

capitalism would be made scientifically legitimate and the only objection to

it would rest with its efficiency as a mode of production of social wealth. If, on

the contrary, this social synthesis is achieved through a necessary illusion(fetishism of commodities, reification, formalism), then we have a contradiction

because no illusion, let alone a necessary fiction, which is an oxymoron! -

can keep a social system in reproduction! (We dealt before with Lukacss

description of necessary illusion which is an oxymoron because illusions

cannot be necessary and necessity cannot be illusory.)


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Weberian rationalization because of his erroneous acceptance of market

competition) cannot be dispelled by a mythical class consciousness! By so

doing, Habermas demonstrates how little he has understood where the actual

problem with the wage relation and with Lukacss concept of reification (and

Marxs fetishism) really lies: - that is to say, in theimpossibilityof reificationor fetishism as a necessary illusion! Certainlynotin Lukacss residual

Hegelian idealistic objectivism!

The oxymoron of necessary illusion to describe the fetishism of the

commodity and reification is the mirror-image of the Marxian notion of

historical materialism: on one side the phenomenon of value is an illusion,

that is, it is a subjective product of human history, whilst on the other side it is

necessary because it exemplifies theobjectiveandmaterialeconomic laws of

motion of society. Because Habermas accepts the scientific basis of historial

materialism based on the mistakendistinctionhe draws between instrumental

action and interaction or reflection, he can then accept this oxymoron as

indicating the historical necessity of the commodity form at a given stage of

the natural history of society! Here is the proof in his own words:

5arx did not adopt an epistemological perspective in developing his conceptionof the history of the species as something that has to be comprehendedmaterialistically*


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physical and psychic natureN but it nds its limit in the formal character of its ownrationalityT* 6 p*#>#)

,he burden of proof that 5arx wanted to discharge in politico-economic termswith a theory of crisis now falls upon a demonstration of the immanent limits torationaliation a demonstration that has to be carried out in philosophicaltermsT "6abermas ,A Uol# p*;$#&*

Again, Habermas is wrong because the context in which Lukacs discusses this

limit to rationalization is precisely that of Marxs theory ofcapitalist crisis

inducedbothbyantagonismin the labor processandby inter-capitalist

competitionin the market! As a matter of fact, on p.102, very shortly after the

passage cited by Habermas, Lukacs goes on to cite Marx on this very point!

Fivision of labor within the workshop implies the undisputed authority of thecapitalist over men who are but parts of a mechanism that belongs to him* ,hedivision of labor within society brings into contact independent commodityproducers who acknowledge no other authority than that of competition of thecoercion e*erted by the pressure of their mutual interestsT "5arx apital +++quoted in Eukacs 6 p*#>7*&

Of course, neither Marx nor Lukacs will ever succeed in showing how the

market mechanism can function, how competition between capitalists can

everprovide the social synthesis for the reproduction of capitalist society in any

form whatsoever, least of all that of value! For this reason, they rely on the

notions of fetishism and reification, respectively, to provide the foundation

for that comprehensive irrationality constituted by the capitalist wage relation

which is why Lukacs can then fall prey to and swallow wholesale the formal

rationality of a Weber, albeit to denounce its formal limits! It is much simpler

for us, instead, to attribute the social synthesis of the society of capital to the

sheer violence of the wage relation, imposed through a network of capitalist

political and social institutions all of which answer ultimately to the stability of

money-wages and the price and monetary system. But this does not mean that

Habermas has identifiedthisreal apory in Marxs and Lukacss theories the

aporetic notion of labor value as the foundation of the social synthesis of

capitalist reproduction through market competition! And this failure, we argue,

is a direct result of Habermass persistent wrong focus on the philosophical,

idealistic and Neo-Kantian theorization of the wholequaestioof reason and

rationalization as a discrepancy (Missverhaltnis) between laws of nature or

epistemology and laws of society or social theory, rather than on thepolitical

antagonism of the wage relation!


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Habermas is entirely right to chide Lukacss idealistic reconciliation of theory

and practice in the class consciousness of the individual subject-object of

history, namely the proletariat (p.364).But he completely misses the pointthat the

contra-diction in capitalist social relations is not predominantly one that

concerns communicative action or competence! Instead, it is one that isintrinsic to thepoliticsof the wage relation itself! Perhaps the worst that can be

said of Habermass meta-critique of Marx and Lukacs is that his own notion of

communicative action remains trapped in thevoluntarismof consciousness,

of morality and aestheticism:

+t is characteristic of the pattern of rationaliation in capitalist societies that thecomplex of cognitive-instrumental rationality establishes itself at the cost ofpractical rationalityN communicative relations are reied* ,hus it makes sense toask whether the critique of the incomplete character of the rationaliation thatappears as reication does not suggest taking a complementary relation between

cognitive-instrumental rationality on the one hand and moral-practical andaesthetic-practical rationality on the other as a standard that is inherent in theunabridged concept of practice that is to say in communicative p*;$K) actionitselfT ",A Uol*# pp*;$;-K&*

It must be stressed that capitalism in its guise as social capital becomes as

much a mode of consumption as it is a mode of production. This is intuited

by Weber and then theorized by Keynes in terms of the money-wage as the

fundamental unit of measurement in capitalist industry. Capital must impose not

just its mode of production through the labor process and technologies used in

the production process; it must also impose and define the mode ofconsumption for workers so that their living labor may be rationally

calculable according to the law of value and the equalization of the rate of

profit! But careful! The mode of consumption closes the circle of the circulation

of capital, of valorization, - which does not mean that the foundation of

capitalism is not the wage relation, that is, the process of production first and

foremost, the regular discipline of the factory. Consumption simply allows that

osmosis that makes antagonism measurableafter the event, as realization of

what had preceded as valorization of capital, as profit and provides that

sphere of autonomy to workers (Webers free labor) through the marketand thewelfare stateorSozialstaat that supplies the unit of measurement, the

money-wage acting as a social wage that ensures the reproduction of the

wage relation.

This solves the conundrum of the affluent society, the seeming integration of

workers in the society of capital that Habermas correctly identifies as the


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overriding theoretical concern of Western Marxism since Lukacs. This is the

apparent paradox (apparent even to Tocqueville [Democratie en Amerique, Livre IV,

chpts. 6 to 10] and Arendt [discussion in Negri, Insurgencies, ch on

Pol.Eman.inAm.Const., who does not see the point] to Marcuse and Baran and

Sweezy) of the apathy of workers in the face of material (consumption)affluence the welfare state orSozialstaatfully implemented under the New

Deal. Those who accept un-critically the notion of integration (see especially

MarcusesOne-Dimensional Manor even the cultural pages in Baran and

SweezysMonopoly Capital) have effectively forgotten Schumpeters great

discovery (adopted wholesale from Marx) that capitalismiscrisis, that it is

based on antagonism. Crisis does not just mean a dysfunction in the

production of value or profit, as if these were quantities rather than social

relations that need special political intervention (regulation) to avoid crises.

Crisis is not something that happens occasionally or accidentally or

exogenously or by mistake because of failure to apply the correct economic

measures or policies. Crisis is instead theperennial, fundamentalimpossibilityof

measuring social antagonism in monetary terms, which is due to the

incongruence between production and consumption derived from the

corresponding impossibility of making value in production equal value in

consumption. The problem is not that there is not enough profit

(overproduction) or not enough demand (underconsumption): the problem is

that profit and value can no longer be measured monetarily whenever the

political equilibria (the only equilibria that are possible) explode in afull-

blown crisis. (See below, quote from p.312.) That is why Joan Robinson, with

characteristic genial intuition, preferred to speak of tranquility rather than

equilibrium as a category of economic analysis (inThe Accumulation of Capital).

The apathy and integration of workers is a direct result of the division of

social labor into individual labors remunerated or rewarded with individual

money-wages and the corresponding concentration of monetary social

resources in the central government which then uses the existing structure of

government administration to impose its constituted power. This is achievedthrough various strategies that include various degrees of political violence,

from physical all the way to cultural and propagandistic violence. Thus, the

Sozialisierung that Weber considered to be a result of rationalization simply

cannot be explained unless we penetrate and enucleate explode this notion by

removing it from the field of science and by re-interpreting the entire notion of

mathesis, ofKalkulation, of profit. Webers account (for it cannot be called a


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theory) of theRationalisierungyields, as we have seen, a notion of freedom

that is confined to rational-technicalinstrumentsconnecting available means to

proposed ends that far from being scientifically indicated by axiomatic

disciplines based on ideal types, fail to specify the conditions under which the

means are available and the ends are proposed. Ultimately, Weber has topostulate the purposive rationality of human free will that arises not from its

idealistic universality (as in German Idealism and in jusnaturalism) but rather

from the very conflict, as the resultant of the clash of wills that he (like

Nietzsche) sees as a universal condition.

**********

We saw in theNietzschebuchhow Nietzsche unleashes in theGoetzes-Dammerunga

pitiless tirade against the dialecticians Socrates and Plato who are guilty in his

eyes of seeking to suppress the self-interested speculation of the Sophists

against their championing of the purity of the philosophers quest for the dis-

interested and dis-passionateTruth. In the earliest clear statement of his own

novel quest for a thoroughgoingcritique(Nietzsche saw himself as a fearless

critic) of the Will to Truth, Nietzsche describes inUber den Wahrheit und Luge

how human beings abandon the Hobbesianbellum omniumof the state of nature

to form thestatus civilisand by so doing are prompted by con-venience by the

social con-ventum or social contract to enter into, precisely, con-ventions that

by their very symbolic conventionality in fact exclude the physio-logical

reality of individual needs by equalizing the unequal, by comparing the

incomparable. The Will to Truth consists just in this crystallization of human

reality into symbols such as language, logic and mathematics that

consequently come to replace and mask the intuitive reality of the

individuals representation (Vorstellung, also dissimulation) of his own

self-interest in the original state of nature. The merit of the Sophists for

Nietzsche is that their rhetorical pursuit of self-interest is a more genuine

expression of human reality than the pretended dis-interested dialectical

philosophical efforts of Socrates and his disciples. The Sophists know that the

Truth is a mere perspective and that what matters are the interests ofhuman beings of the body. Socrates and Plato instead absurdly believe in

the real world and thereby render it into a fable, into another world soper-

fectas to be unreal and una

weber between marx and heidegger - living spirit and dead machine

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