When we form sentences or speak with others, we do not perform measurements and do not weigh one word or sentence against another word or sentence in a quantitative manner. Money has the role of expressing and representing the amount of average labour objectified in commodities so that they can be exchanged. It quantifies the value of commodities. Human language is fundamentally diferent from money. It is first and foremost qualitative in character, it has certain general rules agreed by custom over hundreds of years (syntax), operates with meanings of combinations of symbols (semantics), and is used in specific contexts that interact with meanings (pragmatics). It is a combination of linguistic form and structure, social interpretation, and societal efects. Language does not function based on the logic x commodity A = y money M. Its essence is that it is qualitative and transcends the logic of measurement. This does, however, not mean that the products of labour cannot be turned into commodities. In commodity-producing societies, the access to linguistic products can certainly be commodified, which then results in exchange-relationships and measurements such as: 1 hour of psychological consultation = £60, 1 hour of financial advice = £100, entry to 1 theatre performance = £12.50, translation costs per word a text = £0.1, etc. Communication as such is alien to the commodity form. It can in a capitalist society, however, be force-fit into measurements such as 1 linguistic unit = £y.
Baudrillard is a prototypical representative of a cultural reductionism that reduces and dissolves labour and production into culture and sign systems.
6.4. Labour/Communication Dualism: Jürgen Habermas
Habermas’ theory of communicative action makes a sharp distinction between on the one hand purposive (instrumental, strategic) action (including labour) that is orientated on success and on the other hand communicative action that is orientated on reaching understanding (Habermas 1984, 285–286). Work is for Habermas always an instrumental, strategic and purposive form of action, whereas communication’s goal is to reach understanding. Habermas separates work and communication. This separation goes back to Hegel’s philosophy.
6.4.1. Work and Interaction
In the article Arbeit und Interaktion (Work and Interaction), Habermas (1968) argues that Hegel (1803/1804, 1805/1806) in his Jena lectures on the philosophy of spirit argued that work and interaction are two ways by which human beings relate to the world, organise the relationship between subject and object, and thereby constitute their self-conscious minds. Habermas (1968) based on Hegel’s Jena system of philosophy argues that consciousness and the mind would be media of communication. The diference between work and interaction would be that the first is a form of strategic action and the second oriented on understanding. Strategic action would make decisions without trying to reach understanding with others (Habermas 1968, 22).
Beyond Habermas: Rethinking Critical Theories of Communication
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