Critical phenomenology and the dialectical foundations of social change

Abstract

Marx's view of industrialization as the cul? mination of the social process of modern capitalism (especially the division of labor and its hierarchical control) has been strengthened and clarified by the critical Marxists' (Lukacs, Gramsci, the Frankfurt school) dialectical anal? yses of the deep cultural dimensions of that process. Technological development to aug? ment the hierarchical control of production for profit is formed by and in turn further shapes this sociocultural process. American mainstream politics, its mediating structures institutionally set in the corporate capitalist economy and allegedly rooted in a "pragmatic realist" tradition, is bounded, in reality, by the technological world-view. Activities undertaken within this horizon ultimately are aimed at domination, "mastery", or "control" inasmuch as the "outside world" is pictured as a field of resource objects to be exploited by calculative/ manipulative approaches. The Frankfurt "critique of instrumental rationality" is integral to a dialectical theory of this system which, in certain transfigured forms, overshadows the so-called "anti-capitalist" bloc as well. The Frankfurt critique should be understood as broadening, not replacing, the general Marxist critique of industrial capitalism. Perhaps what has yet to be thoroughly under? stood is the achievement of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse in helping to show that a self-critical socialism worthy of the name must slip the cultural yoke of the technological world-picture wherever the latter is projected. In confronting the cultural roots of the modern capitalist world system, along with the new sociocultural formations of the technological world-view, the Frankfurt school paved the way for insights into the recent anti-socialist politics of technocratic elites in the era of "detente" (e.g. Brezhnev vs. Brzezinski). Here I shall attempt to assess the relevance of (1) the Frankfurt school critique of instru? mental rationality and cultural reification, and (2) the critical phenomenology of the life world and the "material apriori" for (3) a post-modern perspective on the New Left, and the radical theory of social change (especially at the "metatheoretical" level) in the United States. A "post-modern" critical theory, con? cerned as it is with reconstituting social totality and cultural temporality as dimensions of modern political life, focuses not only on in? dustrial capitalism as its primary institutional setting but also on the technological world view as the predominant cultural horizon of contemporary elites. Such a theory must link critique and praxis in order dialectically to transform the time structures of human historical life as well as its social spatial condi? tions. Dialectic of Enlightenment by Hork? heimer and Adorno is a major work of critical marxism especially because it illuminates the Herbert G. Reid is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Kentucky.