Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet

6.6.4. Niklas Luhmann’s Fetishism of Modern Media

One must be very careful to distinguish between anthropological and historical means of communication, especially in respect to symbolically generalised media. Money and markets are not eternal, but historical features of communication in societies that are based on exchange-value. Economic relations can also be organised as gifts and co-operatives instead of as exchange and markets. The institutions of liberal democracy are dominant in contemporary modernity, but are not co-extensive with and not the only means of political communication. Liberal democracy contains as the negative dialectic of its own enlightenment also totalitarian tendencies. There are specific historical forms of communication media’s organisation. Economic institutions organising production, distribution and consumption, political institutions organising decision-making, and cultural institutions organising collective meaning-production are the most fundamental symbolically generalised media of communication. Money, markets, parliaments, dictatorships, etc. are only specific historical expressions of these media. In class-based society, such structures and the practices they mediate are contradictory and contested. The problem of Luhmann’s theory of communication is that it is a theory of modern society that presents the structures of modernity as general structures characteristic for all societies.

We would like to call “symbolically generalized” the media that use generalizations to symbolize the nexus between selection and motivation, that is, represent it as a unity. Important examples are: truth, love, property/ money, power/law; and also, in rudimentary form, religious belief, art, and, today, standardized “basic values”. In all these cases this – in a very diferent way and for very diferent interactive constellations – is a matter of conditioning the selection of communication so that it also works as a means of motivation, that is, so that it can adequately secure acceptance of the proposed selection. […] Further discussion of this must be left to a theory of society, but the general theory of social systems and their communicative processes can serve to draw attention to the highly selective character of these functionally privileged modes of communication. Language, media of dissemination, and symbolically generalized communication media are thus evolutionary achievements that interdependently ground the processing of information and increase what can be produced by social communication. This is how society produces and reproduces itself as a social system (Luhmann 1995, 161–162).

Power is, for Luhmann, a negative form of violence and domination. He speaks of money, power and religion in the context of a theory of generalised communication media and a general theory of social systems. He projects contemporary Western capitalist societies as models for all societies and thereby categorically eliminates theorising non-capitalist societies. He thereby also underestimates the contradictory character of modern society as advancing antagonistic potentials of domination (instrumentalisation) and co-operation. Luhmann’s theory is a fetishistic, uncritical theory of communication and society.

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6.6.5. Communication History and Institutions

The mediation of communication is connected to diferent organisations of spaces and times of communication. Communication can take place at the same time or at diferent times (synchronous/asynchronous communication) and at the same place or at diferent places. Means of communication allow the temporal and spatial distanciation of communication and are at the same time constructing joint social spaces of communication that re-embed disembedded communication. Humans can traverse distances and stay connected to each other and communicate with each other in a mobile manner with the help of communication technologies.

The history of communication technology is however not simply a history of spaces and times of communication or of scientific-technological progress. There are actual social needs and institutions that bring about new spatial and temporal organisations of communication and new communications systems. Class rule, political rule and their combination in specific forms of politicaleconomic rule (empires, nation states, imperialism, global capitalism, etc.) require communicative orders that organise social relations of domination in time and space. The history of communication(s) is therefore bound up with history of class, domination and class struggles. Williams (1989, 172) therefore stresses that communications are not simply technologies, but at the same time social relations, which is why ‘communications systems have always to be seen as social institutions’.

6.6.6. Work and Communication: Communication at Work and the Work of Communication

There is an etymological diference between work and labour (Fuchs 2015, 24–25). Marx (1867) expresses this duality as the dialectic of concrete and abstract labour. Work is the social production of novelty that satisfies human needs. It is the concrete dimension of human production. Abstract labour in contrast refers to the class dimension of work organised in class-based societies. So whereas work is a general feature of society, labour is the organisation of work in class-based societies, which implies unequal ownership, surplus appropriation, and exploitation. What is the relationship between work and communication?

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We must distinguish between communication at work and the work of communication. Work is a social relation, in which humans co-operate in order to co-produce new reality that satisfies human needs. Communication is a social co-ordination in the work process. Communication at work means that all work is a social relation and therefore requires communication for the co-ordination of social production. Williams writes that ‘communication and its material means are intrinsic to all distinctively human forms of labour and social organization’ (Williams 1980, 50). Besides communication, also anticipatory, creative cognition is a key aspect of work, as Marx (1867, 284) stresses:

But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally. Man not only efects a change of form in the materials of nature; he also realizes [verwirklicht] his own purpose in those materials.

From Rossi-Landi and Hund, we can take the idea of the work character of communication and the work of communication: communication is human work because it produces social meaning in the form of shared words, sentences, arguments, texts, discourses, and entire languages. In communication, humans are co-producers of meaningful information in society. The work of communication is a metaphor for foregrounding the productive, active and creative character of social information. Also Marx stresses that the symbolic realm is one, in which humans engage in real, active production: ‘Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc., that is, real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms’ (Marx and Engels 1845/1846, 36).

But communication is not just work, but also the foundation for understanding: through communication, humans learn to understand the world and the motivations and individual information of others. Other than Habermas, we should not assume that understanding automatically means moral agreement, but rather only the interpretation of the social world in order to make meaning of it. So communication is a specific form of work, but it is as social meaning and as the process of understanding the world at the same time also more than work. Work that is not purely individual, but a social relation conducted in a group, is also communicative in character. It is a productive social activity organised by communication that creates novelty and satisfies human needs. But it is not just, but more than communication.

Work and communication are therefore seen from both sides identical and non-identical, which is just another formulation for the work/communication dialectic. Human production is social and therefore a communicative relation (communication at work). Communication is itself productive and therefore a specific form of work (the work of communication). Work is the productive aspect of human activity, whereas communication is human activity’s aspect of meaning-making in social relations. Meaning and social relations are themselves particular forms of production – symbolic and social production. They do not simply exist, but need to be created and reproduced.

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6.6.7. Communication Work

Communication work is a particular form of work that creates information (see figure 6.1). All work is based on a dialectic of the body and the brain, physical activity and mental activity. But we can distinguish between work that is predominantly physical and work that is predominantly cognitive and communicative. Physical work creates tangible products that you can touch and feel. Information is in contrast an intangible product that stores and communicates meaning and represents something else for which it stands as a symbol. Communication work is a social production process that creates information and information technologies. Information is often produced, disseminated and received by information technologies such as the networked computer. The production of these physical information technologies is also part of communication work, but is physical work. A subset of physical work is communication work that creates information technologies. In contrast, information work is mental communication work that produces social meaning. Physical work and information work are two connected aspects of communication work – they create communications and communication.

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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.

6.6.8. Going Beyond Habermas: The Rationality of Action

Habermas (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.

Communication 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.

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6.6.9. Instrumental and Co-operative Communication

By domination we mean social relations, in which one group controls and uses resources and exerts physical, structural or ideological violence in such a way that it derives benefits for one group at the expense of others. Domination can result in economic privileges through labour exploitation, political privileges through control, cultural privileges through ideological dominance. We can therefore distinguish between the accumulation of economic resource-power, political decision-power and cultural definition power as forms of economic, political and cultural domination. Domination is based on instrumental rationality and instrumental communication: dominative social relations are organised in such a way that one group instrumentalises others. Exploitation, control, manipulation, and exclusion are expressions of instrumental rationality. Instrumental communication is communication based on instrumental rationality. Co-operative rationality is opposed to the dominative logic of instrumental rationality. It does not aim at creating, reproducing or deepening domination. Its goal is social relations that transcend domination and create contexts that allow all humans to benefit and lead a good life. Co-operative rationality aims politically at participatory democracy, whereas instrumental rationality in the last instance means fascism. Co-operative communication is communication that is based in cooperative rationality.

The history of class-based societies is also a history of the clash between instrumental and co-operative rationality. Whereas dominant groups aim to find ever newer ways of how to instrumentalise humans in their interests and how to communicate such domination as ideological necessary, inevitable and without alternatives, dominated groups have the potential to resist, to self-organise alternatives that challenge instrumental rationality by embryonic forms and social systems of co-operation and to collectively communicate their opposition and the need for a society grounded in co-operative rationality.

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6.6.10. The Rationalities of Communication and Raymond Williams’ Distinction Between Authoritarian, Paternal, Commercial and Democratic Communications

The distinction between instrumental and co-operative rationality is important for the world of communications. Raymond Williams (1976, 130–137) distinguishes between authoritarian, paternal, commercial and democratic organisational forms of the media. The first three can be understood as political, cultural and commercial expressions of instrumental reason in the organisation of media systems. Authoritarian communications mean that there is state control, manipulation and censorship of the media. Such systems’ ‘purpose of communication is to protect, maintain, or advance a social order based on minority power’ (131). Paternal communications are authoritarian systems ‘with a conscience: that is to say, with values and purposes beyond the maintenance of its own power’ (131). There is ideological control that aims to impose certain moral values on audiences because it is assumed that such morals are good for citizens and that the latter are too silly to understand the world. In commercial communications, there is commercial control: ‘Anything can be said, provided that you can aford to say it and that you can say it profitably’ (133). All three forms are instrumental: they instrumentalise the media as tools for control and domination.

In contrast democratic communications are based on co-operative rationality. Communications are ‘means of participation and of common discussion’ (134). Williams argues for a ‘cultural democracy’ that combines public-service media and local media. ‘The idea of public service must be detached from the idea of public monopoly, yet remain public service in the true sense’ (134) of public service content. Instrumental and co-operative media are contradictory forces. Williams observes the tendency that the commercial colonisation of communications dominates: ‘All the basic purposes of communication – the sharing of human experience – are being steadily subordinated to this drive to sell. […] The organization of communications is then not for use, but for profit’ (Williams 1976, 25). The ‘commercial has been steadily winning’ (Williams 1976, 137). This tendency holds true until today. Only cultural forms of class struggle can drive back the capitalist colonisation of communications.

6.6.11. Towards A Dialectical Critical Theory of Communication Beyond Habermas

A critical theory of communication is dialectical in a manifold sense. It theorises that the dialectics of work/communication, body/mind, individuality/ sociality, internalisation/externalisation, subject/object, practices/technology, communication/media, agency/structures, communication/communications, instrumental communication/co-operative communication that are fundamental determinants of communication.

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Jürgen Habermas has made important contributions for theorising communication, but his dualist idealisation of communication falls short of a dialectical critical theory of communication. It is therefore time to go beyond Habermas in critically theorising communication. This goal can be achieved by drawing on the diverse tradition of cultural Marxism in an open manner that is curious about less well-known texts, tries to connect thoughts from various authors, including the Frankfurt School and other versions of cultural Marxism, and relates to new developments in society and theory.

Notes

1 Sectors in the Forbes 2000 data included in the information sector for this calculation were: advertising, broadcasting, communications equipment, computer and electronic retail, computer hardware, computer services, computer storage devices, consumer electronics, electronics, Internet shopping and distribution, printing and publishing, semiconductors, software and programming, telecommunications.

2 The mobilities industry included for this calculation the following industries: car industry, railroad construction, transport, logistics, oil and gas, airlines.

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred\_Sohn-Rethel

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean\_Baudrillard

5 See: Exchange, in: Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline. com/index.php?term=exchange (accessed on 12 December 2015).

6 Compare also the following formulations: ‘modern societies attain a level of system diferentiation at which increasingly autonomous organizations are connected with one another via delinguistified media of communication: these systemic mechanisms – for example, money – steer a social intercourse that has been largely disconnected from norms and values, above all in those subsystems of purposive rational economic and administrative action that, on Weber’s diagnosis, have become independent of their moral-political foundations’ (Habermas 1987, 154). ‘I have distinguished the steering media that replace language as a mechanism for coordinating action from the forms of generalized communication that merely simplify an overly complex nexus of communicative action, and that in doing so remain dependent on language and on a lifeworld, however rationalized’ (Habermas 1987, 277).

7 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst\_Holzer

8 ‘gesellschaftliche Produktion’ (translation from German)

9 Translation from German: Habermas ist ‘nicht imstande, die wesentliche Bestimmung der gesellschaftlichen Produktion zu erkennen: daß im Prozeß der Produktion eben nicht nur die Produktivkräfte entwickelt werden, sondern auch die gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen – eingeschlossen:

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‘Kommunikation’, ‘Interaktion’ – die die Menschen in diesem Produktionsprozeß miteinander eingehen’.

10 See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev\_Vygotsky

11 See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin\_Voloshinov

12 Translation from German (CF): ‘Vielmehr wird über die gesellschaftliche (sich materiell und geistig vollziehende) Arbeit eine ‘bedeutungsvolle Umwelt geschafen, und zwar insofern, als sich mittels der Zwecke, die in der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit mit dem Ziel der Lebenssicherung und -entwicklung vergegenständlicht werden, Bedeutungen realisieren’.

13 See: http://www.ferrucciorossilandi.com

14 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wulf\_D.\_Hund

15 Translation from German (CF): ‘Gesellschaft konstituiere sich wesentlich durch Kommunikation

16 Translation from German (CF): ‘Wie jegliche Arbeit, ereignet sich auch Kommunikation immer nur als Produktion

17 Translation from German (CF): ‘Arbeitscharakter der Kommunikation’

18 See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond\_Williams

References

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