{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title":"Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781911534044","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","uuid":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title":"Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet","normalized_title":"criticaltheoryofcommunicationnewreadingsoflukácsadornomarcusehonnethandhabermasintheageoftheinternet","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781911534044","isbns":["9781911534044","9781911534051","9781911534068","9781911534075"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Critical%20Theory%20of%20Communication%20New%20Readings%20of%20Luk%C3%A1cs%2C%20Adorno%2C%20Marcuse%2C%20Honneth%20and%20Habermas%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20the%20Internet","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/search"},"page":{"printed_page":200,"pdf_page":204,"physical_index":204,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"47fa9f72d04bce5b5e8e5351bbdc20c85e4912caee1389fcbd546c8de98b71e5"},"chapter":"C H R I S T I A N F U C H S CRITICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION","content":"Sohn-Rethel has shown that class-based societies have created a division between physical and communication labour. Communication labour has turned into the specific profession of managers, bureaucrats, administrators, planners, and politicians, who plan, execute and control power in social systems. Class rule is based on inequalities. Wherever there is inequality, some form of management and control is needed in order to contain actual or possible resistance with the help of direct, structural and ideological violence. It would, however, be a mistake to assume that communication labour only has an administrativebureaucratic role because since the rise of the culture industry in the twentieth century, communication has also taken on the commodity form. Communication commodities (the large-scale sale of professional knowledge in the form of music, films, software, advertisements, consultancy, news, entertainment, information technologies, etc.) are like all commodities produced by labour. Communication labour in information capitalism has therefore also been ‘proletarianised’ so that we can observe the exploitation of communication workers in diverse class relations. Communication labour is not a clear-cut emancipatory or repressive category. There is dominative communication labour that produces and difuses dominant ideology and proletarianised communication labour that produces communication commodities. Partly these roles are overlapping (e.g. when information workers who sell their labour power share neoliberal and managerialist ideology), but this is no necessity.\n\n6.6.8. Going Beyond Habermas: The Rationality of Action\n\nHabermas (1984a, 22) understands rationality as action for ‘for which there are good reasons or grounds’. An action is the more rational, the more it ‘is connected with them can be defended against criticism’ (Habermas 1984a, 9). Habermas requires this concept of rationality in order to be able to argue that social relations based on communicative action are more rational than those mediated by money and power. But the Latin etymological root of the term rationality, the word ratio, only means that our actions are based on reasoning and thought: humans reflect and have certain goals when acting. The outcome of action is not always morally good, but rationality as goal-making and anticipatory reflection is what distinguishes humans from animals. Even a suicide bomber who wants to kill as many people as possible bases his/her actions on reflection and has specific goals. Most of us will consider these goals and motivations as morally reprehensible, but their irrationality has a clear rationality of irrationality.\n\nCommunication is like all human behaviour always goal-oriented and purposeful. But against Habermas, we have to say that communication is not automatically or intrinsically morally good. Communication is fundamental to human sociality and society, but it is not inherently sacred, enlightening, redemptive, or liberating. It also does not automatically generate consensus and agreement. Communication is the symbolic way we produce and reproduce social relations and thereby our social systems and society. The SS henchmen, who killed Jews in Auschwitz, had to communicate in order to co-ordinate their crimes against humanity. Altruistic people, who organise clothes, shelter and food for the homeless, also communicate with each other in order to organise aid. Both forms of communication are rational, but certainly have fundamental diferences. Habermas is right to draw a distinction between dominative and liberating action. But it is doubtful that this distinction is co-extensive with the one between purposive and communicative action. All action has certain purposes and all social action is communicative. The key distinction is between rational action that serves domination and rational action that aims to transcend domination.\n\n200\n\nCritical Theory of Communication","previous_page":199,"next_page":201}