Socialism and
"complex society"
JURGEN Habermas is the leading social theorist writing in the German language; he has courageously stood out against both the development of right2 wing and postmodernist theory, and attempts to witch hunt the Left in West Germany. In the mid-1970s he was already warning against the rise of the new conservatism as a consequence of the capitalist crisis, as well as exposing the fallacies of all the fashionable "post-" ideologies.' This record shows that his furious attacks on Rudi Dutschke and the SDS in the late 1960s i which he later regretted) had not put him in the camp of the right wing.
Habermas is best known for his theory of "communicative action".? This theory, which counterposes communicative action to "instrumental egoistical" action, stresses the rationality and solidarity of human communication. Rationality and solidarity are in-built in language. No wonder then that Habermas bitterly rejected all theories which stress the irrationality and inherent competitiveness of "human nature"
But, except in his personal stand against conservatism, the political implications of his social theory have been unclear. However his latest reflections on socialism after the fall of Berlin Wall' reveal a detailed critique of "orthodox" Marxist politics with an explicitness Habermas has not attempted before. It is a critique infinitely more intelligent than either postmodernist irrationalism
or the pop "end of history" thesis of Fukuyama, and one which poses real problems for revolutionary Marxists which cannot be dismissed with a
Habermas lists a number of "errors and defects" of orthodox Marxism which make it impossible to comprehend, or develop a correct programme a) Marxism limits itself "to phenomena that can be disclosed from within the horizon of a society based on labour", leading to "a narrow concept of practice that attributes an unambiguously emancipatory role solely to industrial labour and the development of the technology of productive forces".
Which in turn "precludes consideration of the... ambivalences of the increasing domination of nature and the potential for social integration beyond the b) Marxist theory had a "holistic conception of society" which imagined that society would become subject to rational control if capital was suppressed. Thus "theory blinded itself to the resistance inherent in the system of a differentiated market economy" whose regulative devices "cannot be c) This analysis was "caught up in an over-concrete conception of conflict connections between the social, subcultural and regional surfaces structures"
and the "abstract deep structures" of a "differentiated economic system"
(Habermas is repeating here a familiar critique of the so-called "reductionism" of the Marxist base/superstructure theory, and the Marxist theory of class "interests"). This has led to a simplistic theory of the state.
d) Marxism has a "restricted and functionalist analysis of constitutional e) Marxism was caught in the "theoretical tramlines" of Hegel's system, which had the dual consequence of making the theory "teleological" — the secret of history being the inevitability of socialism - and thus implicitly lible knowledge, and denied all risk in its social programme, it gave rise to a f) Complex societies "are unable to reproduce themselves if they do not ed through a collective representative (the state), without the "medium of money" to integrate a highly differentiated society, it becomes dysfunctional g) Marx"s programme of a community of the "associated producers", espe-
26 International Marxist Review polemical wave of the hand.
for, "complex societies". These briefly summed up are:sphere of social labour". 4 replaced by administrative planning"
and social agencies"
democracy"
claiming for Marxism "infallible knowledge"
"questionable type of vanguardism"
leave the logic of the market economy intact"
and collapses.
• But in complex societies "there are no straightforward
'. Since Marxism claimed infal-
', which was in practice sectarian.
". While administration is need-
cially as expounded in the 1844 Paris manuscripts, bore the marks of a response to early industrialism. Thus it nostalgically looked back to the pre- capitalist community - "the family, the neighborhood, the guild". But this is inappropriate in considering an alternative programme for modern, complex, societies. Such societies cannot be successfully integrated on the basis of simple popular administration. Thus the Marxist conception of "popular sovereignty" of the associated producers makes simplistic assumptions about
Habermas is making a critique based on a thorough knowledge, and not a caricature, of what Marxist positions actually are. But in the end, his critique comes down to saying: your theory has a simplistic notion of history; a one- sided critique of constitutional ("bourgeois") democracy; and most crucially, it cannot cope with the real, practical complexities of running a society with an intense division of labour and a dense "civil society": only the market can
It is hard to validate Habermas' point that Marxism assigned an unambiguously "emancipatory" role to industrial labour. Indeed the famous statements about the life of "man" under socialism in the Critique of the Gotha Programme point rather in the opposite direction. Human liberation is the progressive suppression of industrial labour. Again, this point it contradicted by
Habermas' claim that the society of the associated producers looks back-
On the other hand Habermas has a point that Marxism sees liberation in terms of the development of the productive forces, and that this gives rise to a
"productivist" bias. In one sense human liberation through the development of the productive forces is self-evident: only the growth of productive technique can reduce the necessary labour time for the reproduction of society.
This is, surely, not "economic growth for its own sake", but developing pro-
But there are two points of this critique which have an important validity.
First, that Marxism has often forgotten the "ambivalences of the domination of nature" (i.e. the ecological critique of Marxism). Second, that "the forms of organization of the workforce concentrated in the factory are supposed to supply the infrastructure for the development of an association of the cal sm ne lin of Is1She ed of be ict rd 's" 1". nof he ily al) a lot 0of al ehow social solidarity can be forged.
do that.
producers"
Industrial labour and "productivism"
wards to pre-capitalist, pre-industrial society.
duction and technology to abolish industrial labour.
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Socialism and "complex society" 27
28 International Marxist Review
Recent contributions have tended to refute the idea that in Marx's own writings consideration of ecological questions "is precluded", as Habermas claims. Marx himself was quite aware of the damage done to the environment by capitalist industrialism. But that is a different thing to noting that in much post-Marx Marxism the progressive development of industrialization is treated as unambiguously positive, and the earth's resources are treated as effectively without limit.° From this point of view, Marxists have to address the question of economic development. It is surely unproven that the development of the productive forces is such that only their reorganization provides a basis for socialism, and eventually communism on a world scale. In other words, it is a little bit dogmatic for Marxists today to be against economic growth, and the further development of the productive forces. Of course, what type of industrial development has to be undertaken is another matter. In any case it would be wishful thinking to imagine Marxists have solved definitively solved this crucial problem, or that no further theoretical work on this issue needs to be done. That does not preclude Marxists from being able to advance an action programme which would substantially halt the ecological damage to the planet.
The identification of the factory as the site of popular sovereignty of course owes its origin to the Bolsheviks and the experience of soviets in the Russian revolution. In other words, the idea of popular assemblies based on where the working class is concentrated in its daily activity had an obvious rationality in a period when the working class was indeed daily concentrated in factories; and the notion of the factory, mine or shipyard soviet was obviously applicable to contemporaneous revolutions, for example in Germany in 1918-19. But even at that time it had distinct limitations, for example in the de facto exclusion of women who were home workers.
But there is nothing inherent in the notion of popular sovereignty through local assemblies which necessarily privileges "industrial labour", ", or indeed the labour process at all. The founding logic of soviets is that, well, the factory is where the workers confront the bosses. In late capitalist society this is not exclusively the case. There is every reason to think that popular assembles, the embryo of future organisations of popular sovereignty, could arise not only in workplaces, but in local communities, on housing estates or other geographical units. Of course modern capitalism is still based on wage labour; but in advanced capitalist countries millions of working class people are excluded from the labour process, and labour time is hardly the same centre of people's lives as when factory workers usually worked a 10 or 12-hour day. If factory soviets are our sole idea of popular sovereignty under social-
ism, then only a small minority of workers, for example in a country like
In dependent Third World countries of course the industrial working class, although a much bigger minority than in Lenin's time, is still a minority.
Revolutionary experiences, for example in Chile, show the importance of popular organizations among the urban poor of the barrios, and among the peasantry — categories which cannot be abolished at a stroke through social
These considerations of course do not deal with the larger question of direct versus representative democracy, or the general issue of constitutional
The Marxist conception of history is a huge debate, which we cannot adequately cover here. Habermas, like nearly every serious critic, repeats the essence of what Karl Popper wrote in his famous Poverty of Historicism and volume 2 of The Open Society and its Enemies; namely that Marxists have a teleological theory of history which posits a successive order of modes of
Few Marxists today accept any "iron law" of the development of successive modes of production which every society inevitably goes through. In any case Marx himself explicitly criticised such notions in his speculations about the possibility of socialism in Russia being based on the development of the peasant commune. In these writings he specified that what he and
Engels had written about the progress from slave society to feudalism, and from feudalism to capitalism was an empirical summing up of what had actually happened in western Europe, not some inevitable schema for the whole world. And, as everyone knows, it was only the Stalinist codification of
"Histmat" which ever posited inevitable stages of development.
Neither has any intelligent Marxist ever projected an inevitable outcome of world history in socialism. It is one thing to discuss the "logic" of socialization which is "immanent" in the progressive socialization of labour and pro-
Juction under capitalism (in the big trusts etc). It is another thing to have a strictly teleological account of world history, although in some of Marx"s more "programmatic" pronouncements, for example the 1858 Preface, the one of inevitability can perhaps be detected. Socialism is a programme to be fought for, not an inevitable end point. Indeed, from the viewpoint of formal
-
S n
S
S f
1 production, and an inevitable end-point in socialism.
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Britain, will be involved revolution. democracy, which we deal with below. History Socialism and "complex society"29
logic at least, an inevitable consequence hardly requires a conscious struggle
These objections do not exhaust Habermas' critique. The centre of it is the accusation that because Marxists regarded themselves as the agents of an inevitable process, written into the course of world history, they regarded of vanguardism" and hence sectarianism. It would be a brave Marxist who could assert that, with everything we know about all the currents that have made claim to Marxism, there is nothing to this accusation. It is not a question of justifiable and exemplary class hostility and partisanship; surely
Marxists were right in seeing themselves (and the working class) as ethically privileged against, for example military dictatorship and fascism (and so does Habermas for that matter). Rather it is a question of sectarianism, by the
Stalinists but also certain sectarian types of Marxism, to movements and agenda for social progress and change; for example towards pacifist movements, ecological movements and religious-based movements with a dynam-
But in the end this is not a very substantial criticism by Habermas. Surely any serious person has to take their own social theories seriously, i.e. provirectification by experience. It is hard to see "vanguardism" and "sectarian-
The heart of the Habermas" critique is his notion of "complex society"
which is "highly differentiated" and which can only be integrated through the medium of a combination of the state and the market. At issue here is the very viability of the programme of a society based on the radical suppression of market forces and the rule of the "associated producers"
There is an ahistorical slippage in Habermas' account of complex society which we should investigate. Late capitalism is not unique in having a dense civil society, but it is a civil society of a particular type. For example, German capitalism in the Weimar republic had a furiously intense civil society, made up of thousands of voluntary associations, political, sporting, cultural ?,
This was indeed a society which could be called "complex" and highly differentiated.. But of course it was very different to capitalism in modern
30 International Marxist Review to achieve it.
themselves as "ethically privileged"
ic against capitalism.
sionally regard them as being "correct"
ism" in that.
Complex societies which involved nearly the whole active population.
', which gave rise to a "questionable type
", pending further study and potential
advanced societies. The complexity of modern capitalist societies involves not only voluntary associations, which hardly structure the social life of the mass of the working class, but the fragmentation of work and the privatization of leisure. Only very partially does the working class gather in huge bastions to do its daily labour. Leisure time is concentrated on the private household and the private car, at best the narrow world of close family or friends. Even the breakdown of the nuclear family, far from leading to the creation of multiple new types of community and solidarity, has led to social fragmentation and the massive increase in the number of single-person households. Some of these are of course voluntary, but all research shows millions of people living in social isolation in this complex and highly differ-
Of course it is a caricature to imagine working class leisure time being bounded simply by the TV. Tens of millions of working people in Europe and constructively use their leisure time in "work" & But this is different to the public association of clubs; most often these hobbies are pursued individ-
Now Marxists have theorized all this very unsubstantially. To what extent is this development of work and leisure the result of conscious choices of the mass of citizens, for example? The clubs and public associations typical of
Weimar Germany existed in a society without the development of widespread private transport, without widespread personal access to expensive equipment and without the TV and other electronic gadgets. Is not this what people want? Actually, the working class in advanced countries does not want to abandon TVs, electronic devices, and, regrettably, the private car.
But neither is there any evidence that the society created by the privatization of leisure and the fragmentation of work has created a society in which satisfies the deepest cravings of the masses not only for material well-being but for sociability and solidarity (which is not to imply that even a basic level of
The point of this digression is that Habermas, paradoxically in the light of his whole theoretical project, seems to have adopted a quietist or resigned attitude in the face of the social fragmentation which is at the heart of the concrete complexity of this society. He is saying in effect, if we start off with this ype of complex society, how can we integrate it except through a mix of nore or less bureaucratic adminstration and the market? The answer is, if we start off with this type of complex society, then we cannot. In other words, and this underlies much of the debate about the market, if you assume a entiated society. y 1 le le ty se Iy, ifm
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and the U.S. are passionately involved in "hobbies" ually or with a few friends. material well being exists for all). Socialism and "complex society" 31 ", an attempt to creatively
32 International Marxist Review socially fragmented society, with alienated work and leisure, then you have two choices: the domination of the market, or bureaucratic planning (or a mixture of both). If we pose the alternative of a society which functions according to the logic of democratic planning, then it presumes a different type of complexity; namely the self-activity of the masses in the adminstration of work and society. Either you accept the market, or you posit a reversal of the whole way in which social life is structured.
The only real objection to that is to say that it is impossible: the mass of people are not interested. The outcome could only be deeply pessimistic conclusions, ultimately based on a sceptical account of "human nature"
In any case, this is a typical reply of opponents of the idea of the "associated producers"; the producers do not want to be "associated", they want to get on with their own private lives without having to worry about politics and the public sphere. This argument has the immense advantage of being based on apparent common sense, and practical experience. How many socialists know from mass public campaigning that the most common response is not hostility, but apathy and outright indifference? Recently the idea of a "crisis of citizenship" has grown up, to sum up the alienation of the mass of people from politics and public administration. But on this point, surely the evidence is that this is not a constant, but acts in accordance with empirically definable variables; namely, the less influence people think they have, the less relevance to their lives politics has, the less they are interested. How else do we explain only 50 per cent bothering to vote in U.S. elections. In other words, we could at least argue as an alternative theory, that indifference to the public sphere and the intense privatization of late capitalism is socially constructed, and could potentially be broken. And that TV in itself is not an insuperable barrier to a social complexity of the "Weimar" type. It must however be conceded that an immediate leap to the involvement of the whole of the active population, permanently, in political decision-making is an idealized scenario. Cracking the privatized existence of modern capitalism is not going to make everyone a politico. It is perhaps possible that most people would take an active interest in the affairs which affected their workplace, and their locality. But even if we pose a radical reduction of working time, why would everyone want to use a lot of their free time in strictly "political" activity, at least as far as national and international matters are concerned? Probably many more people under socialism would have views on these questions, but that is another matter. It follows that public political affairs always require representative democracy, even in the most perfect participatory system. And that means elections, and elected assemblies. In
this sense, Habermas is wrong when he says that Marxists have a too negative attitude to constitutional democracy. Yes, we are utterly cynical about the modern political game in advanced capitalist societies, and on that we happen to be part of the overwhelming majority in those societies. No, we are not cynical or hostile to popular soveriegnty, elections and elected assemblies. And the point about socialism is not that it is possible to involve every citizen in every decision, but that it is possible to massively widen the scope and range of popular sovereignty beyond its highly formalised, utterly limit-
Habermas' case for the market is based also on more familiar arguments about the complexity of decision making in a society making millions of different products. How can their production and sale be co-ordinated by planning in advance, without a spontaneous regulator like the market, when there
There is a huge literature on this question' but much of the discussion is cased on a misunderstanding. No serious Marxist has ever proposed the aboition of the market, the production of goods for sale using the medium of money, before the advent of a society of abundance; or thought that every economic decision could be planned in advance. The question is whether the
¿verall priorities of society can be planned, not whether every single ecocomic transaction can be forseen, or be within the socialized sector of the
Advocates of the view that only the market can make complex societies
* ork forget the recent evidence of advanced capitalist countries themselves,
* hich until the advent of the neo-liberal mania had considerable state secers. This represented at least a modification of the market; indeed a "pure"
market exists nowhere. If we successively proceed with the analogy of the cate sector in advanced capitalism during the Keynsian-interventionist periid. we can pose the following problems. Does the economy stop functioning there is a state railways system? Obviously not. The same goes for all pub-
:; utilities, the steel industry, coal mining, ship building and so on, all of
- hich have been nationalized in some advanced capitalist countries.
Now, from a purely economic rather than political angle, would the British conomy stop functioning if the chemicals and food industries were in the wate sector? Again, clearly not. As we proceed with the hypotheses, it is ve a ns int asal of enatget the on sts not
SIS ple nce ble elewe rds, blic ted, ble t of ing italnost orkcing ctly are ews tical fect s. In
The economy
= onomy.
ed and indeed "dessicated" character under capitalism.
are tens of millions of decisions to be made?
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Socialism and "complex society" 33
34 International Marxist Review clear that the pro-market argument comes down to three basic propositions:-
1) While a bigger or smaller socialised sector is possible, it breaks down if it becomes dominant because relations between enterprises cease to be guided by profitability, and hence economic rationality (defined as the production of goods for which there is a market). Useless goods or unmet demand are the result.
2) A basically socialzsed economy needs a plan, but a plan can never predict, and adapt itself, to needs and effective demand in the real world.
3) Production can only be generated by the profit motive, that is what gets the goods and services that people want to them.
Every individual economic transaction cannot be predicted, but aggregates evidently can. Despite the overall anarchy of the market, "planning" is obviously necessary for every capitalist enterprise; each capitalist tries to "predict" the market, and thus step up or slow down production. There is no fundamental reason why the overall yearly demand for, say, shoes cannot be predicted. It is not possible to plan centrally every sale of shoes or every style for that matter. But it is obviously possible to decide that X number of shoes will be needed, using Y factories. The notion that a socialized economy must breakdown is based on the experience of the hyper-centralized bureaucratic command economy, an obvious ideological ploy.
Neither is it clear why planning cannot be modified in response to market indicators. Clearly if the demand for shoes rose 50 per cent in one year the plan would not cope. But neither, except by imports, would the capitalist market. Demand does not bring forth automatic production in any system. And since shoes would not be free, why should the demand increase so dramatically?
Any functioning socialist economy could neither be totally planned, nor, for a long time, totally socialized. But the assertion that "complex societies" could not cope with planning of overall aggregates, especially the way put by Habermas, is based on a logical fallacy. Complex societies "don't work when socialized"; but the kind of complex society he is talking of has never been socialized, so how does he know?
If we put aside the technical arguments, we always get to the heart of the matter in market ideologies: it is protit, making a quick buck, that gets things done, gets things produced, stirs people to creative etfort. And this is, of course, because people are naturally lazy, self-seeking and only worried about themselves. It turns out to be exactly the same argument as that which underlies the view that the mass of people will never be interested in the adminstration of society. If it is true, we must surely conclude that capitalism
is the most perfect possible form of human society, and that social solidarity
What does socialism mean today? According to Habermas socialism as traditionally understood "is no longer a goal, and realistically speaking never has been". We have to proceed rather to by understanding modern capitalism, and a realistic programme of progressive action. Schematically his posia) The classic conflict in capitalist society was between labour and capital but today this is no longer the case. Rather "the conflict over the distribution of wealth has been institutionalized by the welfare state in such a way that a aroad majority of people in work confront a minority of marginal groupings"
nuch over the questions of work and wealth, but over questions like ecology c) Capitalism tries to reduce political choices to technical choices within he status quo; this must be rejected by a "re-moralization" of public life d) It is unknown whether the self-administration of society was ever possi-
-ie; given the changes in modern society is it now, from all practical points of
::ew, impossible. We now need a mobilization of citizens, within the frame-
* ork of constitutional democracy, to prevent the political content of democracy being "desiccated". We must aim at "transforming socialist ideas into a radically reformist self-criticism of capitalist society". But above all this
-eeds the mobilization of citizens to fight the spontaneously generated priorises of capital, which we know is "indifferent to its social and natural costs"
Not much purpose would be served here by laboriously attempting to argue
• hat is right and wrong about these ideas by turn (although the idea that the
*elfare state is more or less sacrosanct and has defused class struggle is a
•ery one-sided and increasingly anachronistic theorization of West German
=xperience). More interesting is to see what lies behind this theorisation and
In some ways Habermas is saying that we have to return to a minimum procramme, of limiting the damage that capitalism can do. But obviously his
-pproach is quite different to that of the mainstream of social democracy if he eets tion'° is:
es viтеno be ple es
USt tic ket the list m.
SO
IOT, es"
by nen een the ngs
, of ried lich the ism is a pipe-dream.
Alternatives to the status quo
* ithout power."
and the position of women.
what it represents.
Socialism and "complex society" 35
, which are not so
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b) The Left must respond to "changing cultural priorities" round issues and struggles which stress social solidarity.
36 International Marxist Review today. His activist stress on the struggle of citizens, of bringing big moral choices into public life, of combating the worst inequalities and oppressions of capitalism, and defending the environment are a million light years away from Mitterrand and Gonzalez, and a million times better.
But his programme is not social democratic in another way — it is far removed from "classical" social democracy (and contemporary left social democracy of the Tony Benn type) with its stress on the working class and the ultimate goal of socialism. Classical social democracy of the 1920s and 1930s was much more optimistic about long term prospects than Habermas seems today.
It should be clear from our account that a lot of what Habermas says resumes and summarizes things which are very common on the Left. At the core of all this are two things which bear down on the Left world-wide. The first is the damage done to the prospects of radical social change by the capitalist offensive after 1975-6, with its defeats of workers' struggles and its demoralization of political and social vanguards worldwide. And the second has been the explosive and devastating effect on socialist self-confidence and morale from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc. Of course, the two things are closely related to one another, and they combine to create the impression that something fundamental has happened from which there is no turning back; to all intents and purposes capitalism has won a decisive historical victory. !2
The extent of the effect of the collapse of the USSR on socialist morale is a bit surprising. Of course, it is a victory for world capitalism. But, leaving aside the Stalinists, here you have thousands of people, social democrats and socialists of every type, who repeated as holy writ the (simplistic but basically correct) idea that the USSR had nothing to do with socialism, now traumatized by its collapse. Worse, arguing that this proves the impossibility of democratic socialism, and that any kind of planning cannot possibly work! This is a terrible ideological collapse.
Habermas' account though is deeply pessimistic about the social changes wrought in advanced capitalism. Although he states himself sceptical if the self-adminstration of the toilers was ever possible, he believes that the changes in consciousness of the masses makes it now totally inconceivable. One is reminded of Trotsky's statement!) that if revolution does not come, there is nothing for it but to abandon the goal of socialism, define a new minimum programme of partial and democratic demands and begin the long haul back.
But Trotsky's bleak speculations differ in one major respect from Habermas' conclusion. Trotsky's idea was based on the assumption of the com-
plete victory of counter-revolution, a globalized destruction of working class independence and intiative which turned people into "modern slaves"
in the world today? The total victory of capitalism and the crushing of all working class intiative and struggle; with no hope, anywhere of social and
That Jurgen Habermas has finally given up on socialism demonstrates a real historical myopia. His theory of communicative action has led him to constantly reassert the importance of human solidarity, of reason, and the possibility of its victory. By settling for the partial struggle of reason to limit capitalism's damage, he gives up the hope the ultimate victory of reason over
We say this is historical myopia because, evidently, the current demoralization of the Left internationally is the product of an historical moment that will change. As ever, the prospects for socialism depends on the ability of those who incarnate its programme to withstand a period of adversity.
There is a final irony in Habermas" position. Although criticising the various "post-" ideologies, he has ended up adopting the same basic position as the post-Marxist advocates of "radical democracy", like Ernesto Laclau and
Chantal Mouffe. ' Radical democracy today will always end up as a protest novement within the system. Protest movements, and individual social novements always lack a hegemonic thrust because they are not the bearers of a global alternative; indeed the attempts by Laclau and Mouffe to posit one in a "social imaginary" negotiated between social movements is absolutely
Habermas has actually come to conclusions which parallel those of
Fukuyama. Fukuyama says that liberal capitalism is the end point of history, and a good thing too; Habermas does not think it is such a good thing, but concedes the main point — capitalism cannot be transcended.
This is all a matter of the historical role of the working class, and indeed the
*hole of the foregoing discussion has really been about this issue. Those
*ho abandon, in words or inreality, socialism today are really saying: the working class, the majority, are incapable of running society. We are back to ine of Habermas' key theoretical influences, Weber, in the insistence on the
*eed for expert adminstration, for bureaucracy, for elites. And if all that is sue, then it is not just some sectarian notion of socialism, but the founding rogramme of Reason — liberty, equality, fraternity — which is down the moral ssions away is far social ss and Is and ermas s says At the e. The e capiand its second ce and course, create here is ve hisale is a eaving ats and asicalraumaility of work! hanges il if the chang. One is there is inimum 1 back. Haberle comminimum programme would be "to defend the slaves".
political progress?
unreason.
: orlorn and incredible in this respect.
astorical drain for ever.
'. The
'. Is that where we are
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Socialism and "complex society" 37
38 International Marxist Review
Notes
1. See Autonomy and Solidarity, Interviews with Jurgen Habermas, Verso 1986.
2. See his "Theory of Communicative Action".
3. "What Does Socialism Mean Today?" in After the Fall, Verso 1992
4. Ibid pp 33-40. All quotes in this section refer to these pages.
5. Reiner Grundman, Ecology and Marxism", New Left Review 187
6. "Marx and Natural Limits", Ted Benton, New Left Review 178
7. See The Nazi Seizure of Power, the experience of a single town, by William Seridan Allen,
Renguin Books
8. This incidentally is rather a vindication of the position of Marx in the Critique of the Gotha
Programme; that humanity's real "life-activity" under socialism would be "work".
9. See E. Mandel, "Socialism and Planning", New Left Review 169. The discussion is reviewed in A. Callinicos, The Revenge of History (Polity Press 1992).
10. After the Fall, pp 40-45
I1. This is a rather crude rendering of of Andre Gorz's "Goodbye to the Working Class" idea.
12. Cf Fred Halliday, inter alia, "Reply to Edward Thompson", in After the Fall (op cit) p. 110
13. See the article "The USSR in War" in the collection In Defence of Marxism (Pathfinder).
14. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Verso, 1986.