Fortunes of Feminism (9 page)

Let me conclude this discussion of the six theses by restating the most important critical points. First, Habermas's account fails to theorize the patriarchal, norm-mediated character of late-capitalist official-economic and administrative systems. Likewise, it fails to theorize the systemic, money- and power-mediated character of male dominance in the domestic sphere of the late-capitalist lifeworld. Consequently, his colonization thesis fails to grasp that the channels of influence between system and lifeworld institutions are multidirectional. And it tends to replicate, rather than to problematize, a major institutional support of women's subordination in late capitalism, namely, the gender-based separation of the state-regulated economy of sex-segmented paid work and social welfare, and the male-dominated public sphere, from privatized female childrearing. Thus, while Habermas wants to be critical of male dominance, his diagnostic categories deflect attention elsewhere, to the allegedly overriding problem of gender-neutral reification. As a result, his programmatic conception of decolonization bypasses key feminist questions; it fails to address the issue of how to restructure the relation of childrearing to paid work and citizenship. Finally, Habermas's categories tend to misrepresent the causes and underestimate the scope of the feminist challenge to welfare-state capitalism. In short, the struggles and wishes of contemporary women are not adequately clarified by a theory that draws the basic battle line between system and lifeworld institutions. From a feminist perspective, there is a more basic battle line between the forms of male dominance linking “system” to “lifeworld” and us.

CONCLUSION

In general, then, the principal blind spots of Habermas's theory with respect to gender are traceable to his categorial opposition between system and lifeworld institutions, and to the two more elementary oppositions from which it is compounded: the one concerning reproduction functions and the one concerning types of action integration. Or, rather, the blind spots are traceable to the way in which these oppositions, ideologically and androcentrically interpreted, tend to override and eclipse other, potentially more critical elements of Habermas's framework—elements like the distinction between normatively secured and communicatively achieved action contexts, and like the four-term model of public-private relations.

Habermas's blind spots are instructive, I think. They permit us to conclude something about what the categorial framework of a socialist-feminist critical theory of welfare-state capitalism should look like. One crucial requirement is that this framework not be such as to put the male-headed, nuclear family and the state-regulated official economy on two opposite sides of the major categorial divide. We require, rather, a framework sensitive to the similarities between them, one which puts them on the same side of the line as institutions which, albeit in different ways, enforce women's subordination, since both family and official economy appropriate our labor, short-circuit our participation in the interpretation of our needs, and shield normatively secured need interpretations from political contestation. A second crucial requirement is that this framework contain no a priori assumptions about the unidirectionality of social motion and causal influence, that it be sensitive to the ways in which allegedly disappearing institutions and norms persist in structuring social reality. A third crucial requirement, and the last I shall mention here, is that this framework not be such as to posit the evil of welfare-state capitalism exclusively or primarily as the evil of reification. It must also be capable of foregrounding the evil of dominance and subordination.
⁴⁴

^*
I am grateful to John Brenkman, Thomas McCarthy, Carole Pateman and Martin Schwab for helpful comments and criticism; to Dee Marquez and Marina Rosiene for crackerjack word processing; and to the Stanford Humanities Center for research support.

1
Karl Marx, “Letter to A. Ruge, September 1843,” in
Karl Marx: Early Writings
, trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, New York: Vintage Books, 1975, 209.

2
Jürgen Habermas,
The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society
, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. Hereafter, TCA I. Jürgen Habermas,
Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Vol. II: Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft
, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981. Hereafter TCA II. I shall also draw on some other writings by Habermas, especially
Legitimation Crisis
, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press, 1975; “Introduction,” in
Observations on “The Spiritual Situation of the Age”: Contemporary German Perspectives
, ed. Jürgen Habermas, trans. Andrew Buchwalter, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984; and “A Reply to my Critics,” in
Habermas: Critical Debates
, ed. David Held and John B. Thompson, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. I shall draw likewise on two helpful overviews of this material: Thomas McCarthy, “Translator's Introduction,” in Habermas, TCA I, v–xxxvii; and John B. Thompson, “Rationality and Social Rationalisation: An Assessment of Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action,”
Sociology
17:2, 1983, 278–94.

3
TCA II, 214, 217, 348–9;
Legitimation Crisis
, 8–9; “A Reply to my Critics,” 268, 278–9. McCarthy, “Translator's Introduction,” xxv–xxvii; Thompson, “Rationality,” 285.

4
TCA II, 208; “A Reply to my Critics,” 223–5; McCarthy, “Translator's Introduction,” xxiv–xxv.

5
I am indebted to Martin Schwab for the expression “dual-aspect activity.”

6
It might be argued that Habermas's categorial distinction between “social labor” and “socialization” helps overcome the androcentrism of orthodox Marxism. Orthodox Marxism allowed for only one kind of historically significant activity: “production,” or “social labor.” Moreover, it understood that category androcentrically and thereby excluded women's unpaid childrearing from history. By contrast, Habermas allows for two kinds of historically significant activity: “social labor” and the “symbolic” activities that include, among other things, childrearing. Thus, he manages to include women's unpaid activity in history. While this is an improvement, it does not suffice to remedy matters. At best, it leads to what has come to be known as “dual systems theory,” an approach which posits two distinct “systems” of human activity and, correspondingly, two distinct “systems” of oppression: capitalism and male dominance. But this is misleading. These are not, in fact, two distinct systems but, rather, two thoroughly interfused dimensions of a single social formation. In order to understand that social formation, a critical theory requires a single set of categories and concepts which integrate internally both gender and political economy (perhaps also race). For a classic statement of dual systems theory, see Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Toward a More Progressive Union,” in
Women and Revolution
, ed. Lydia Sargent, Boston: South End Press, 1981. For a critique of dual systems theory, see Iris Young, “Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A Critique of Dual Systems Theory,” in
Women and Revolution
, ed. Sargent; and “Socialist Feminism and the Limits of Dual Systems Theory,”
Socialist Review
50–51, 1980, 169–80. In sections two and three of this essay, I develop arguments and lines of analysis that rely on concepts and categories that internally integrate gender and political economy (see note 30 below). This might be considered a “single system” approach. However, I find that label misleading because I do not consider my approach primarily or exclusively a “systems” approach in the first place. Rather, like Habermas, I am trying to link structural (in the sense of objectivating) and interpretive approaches to the study of societies. Unlike him, however, I do not do this by dividing society into two components, “system” and “lifeworld.” See this section below and especially note 14.

7
TCA I, 85, 87–8, 101, 342, 357–60; TCA II, 179;
Legitimation Crisis
, 4–5; “A Reply to my Critics,” 234, 237, 264–5; McCarthy, “Translator's Introduction,” ix, xvix–xxx. In presenting the distinction between system-integrated and socially-integrated action contexts, I am relying on the terminology of
Legitimation Crisis
and modifying the terminology of
The Theory of Communicative Action
. Or, rather, I am selecting one of the several various usages deployed in the latter work. There, Habermas often speaks of what I have called “socially integrated action” as “communicative action.” But this gives rise to confusion. For he also uses this latter expression in another, stronger sense, namely, for actions in which coordination occurs by explicit, dialogically achieved consensus only (see below, this section). In order to avoid repeating Habermas's equivocation on “communicative action,” I adopt the following terminology: I reserve the expression “communicatively achieved action” for actions coordinated by explicit, reflective, dialogically achieved consensus. I contrast such action, in the first instance, with “normatively secured action,” or actions coordinated by tacit, pre-reflective, pre-given consensus (see below, this section). I take “communicatively achieved” and “normatively secured” actions, so defined, to be subspecies of what I here call “socially integrated action,” or actions coordinated by any form of normed consensus whatsoever. This last category, in turn, contrasts with “system integrated action” or actions coordinated by the functional interlacing of unintended consequences, determined by egocentric calculations in the media of money and power, and involving little or no normed consensus of any sort. These terminological commitments do not so much represent a departure from Habermas's usage—he does in fact frequently use these terms in the senses I have specified. They represent, rather, a stabilization or rendering consistent of his usage.

8
TCA I, 341, 357–59; TCA II, 256, 266; McCarthy, “Translator's Introduction,” xxx.

9
Here I follow the arguments of Thomas McCarthy. He contended, in “Complexity and Democracy, or the Seducements of Systems Theory,”
New German Critique
35, Spring/Summer 1985, 27–55, that state administrative bureaucracies cannot be distinguished from participatory democratic political associations on the basis of functionality, intentionality, and linguisticality since all three of these features are found in both contexts. For McCarthy, functionality, intentionality, and linguisticality are not mutually exclusive. I find these arguments persuasive. I see no reason why they do not hold also for the capitalist workplace and the modern, restricted, nuclear family.

10
Here, too, I follow McCarthy, ibid. He argues that in modern, state administrative bureaucracies, managers must often deal consensually with their subordinates. I contend that this is also the case for business firms and corporations.

11
See, for example, the brilliant and influential discussion of gifting by Pierre Bourdieu in
Outline of a Theory of Practice
, trans. Richard Nice, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977. By recovering the dimension of time, Bourdieu substantially revises the classical account by Marcel Mauss in
The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies
, trans. Ian Cunnison, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1967. For a discussion of some recent revisionist work in cultural economic anthropology, see Arjun Appadurai,
The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, especially the chapter titled “Commodities and the Politics of Value.”

12
TCA II, 348–9; McCarthy, “Translator's Introduction,” xxvi–xxvii. The expressions “pragmatic-contextual” and “natural kinds” are mine, not Habermas's.

13
TCA I, 94–5, 101; TCAII, 348–9; “A Reply to My Critics,” 227, 237, 266–8;
Legitimation Crisis
, 10; McCarthy, “Translator's Introduction,” xxvi–xxvii. The expressions “absolute differences” and “difference of degree” are mine, not Habermas's.

14
TCA I, 72, 341–2, 359–60; TCA II, 179; “A Reply to my Critics,” 268, 279–80;
Legitimation Crisis
, 20–1; McCarthy, “Translator's Introduction,” xxviii–xxix. Thompson, “Rationality,” 285, 287. It should be noted that in TCA, Habermas draws the contrast between system and lifeworld in two distinct senses. On the one hand, he contrasts them as two different methodological perspectives on the study of societies. The system perspective is objectivating and “externalist,” while the lifeworld perspective is hermeneutical and “internalist.” In principle, either can be applied to the study of any given set of societal phenomena. Habermas argues that neither alone is adequate. So he seeks to develop a methodology that combines both. On the other hand, Habermas also contrasts system and lifeworld in another way, namely, as two different kinds of institutions. It is this second system lifeworld contrast that I am concerned with here. I do not explicitly treat the first one in this essay. I am sympathetic to Habermas's general methodological intention of combining or linking structural (in the sense of objectivating) and interpretive approaches to the study of societies. I do not, however, believe that this can be done by assigning structural properties to one set of institutions (the official economy and the state) and interpretive ones to another set (the family and the “public sphere”). I maintain, rather, that all of these institutions have both structural and interpretive dimensions and that all should be studied both structurally and hermeneutically. I have tried to develop an approach that meets these desiderata in Chapter 2 of the present volume, “Struggle over Needs.”