Labor Exchanges

The historical materialism fathered by Karl Marx is a milestone-like achievement in the history of human thought, and it is a sublation to the traditional metaphysics of western philosophy and an ontological new horizon generated from the deep analysis of capitalism. Yet the genuine spirit of this doctrine has long been obscured by the modern analysis of it. Habermas brought forward an idea of the reestablishment of historical materialism, trying to reconstruct historical materialism from the perspective of an ontology, so as to recover its vitality in our own time. Nevertheless, the doctrine of his reestablishment of historical materialism, being devoid of deep understanding of Marx's philosophical revolution as well as his misreading of him, he didn't ultimately disclose the revolutionary feature of the practical critique due to historical materialism's taking-root in the world of life.The failure for his reconstruction doctrine to reach its end was due to his abandonment of the critique of political economy. He tried to reconstruct historical materialism according to the theory of communicative action, and substituted communicative paradigm for productive paradigm as his essential paradigm of the capital-critique, and replaced the production mode with the normative structure as the measure for social development, and used communicative reason as the practical consciousness to sublate social power. This doctrine illustrated all roundly from the perspective of cultural consciousness, whose real aim it was to improve social order while admitting the existing social principles, was incapable of leading to the construction of new order. Nevertheless, this effort of trying to advance historical materialism under new historical condition still has its revelatory value. It can't be erased at one stoke, since it really protrudes the necessity and urgency of putting to an end to the modern reading of historical materialism.This enquiry includes three sections. The previous three chapters constitute the first section. It probes into the cause of Habermas' reconstruction doctrine of historical materialism, which includes his three critiques of Marx, namely, his critique of the productive paradigm, of the conscious philosophy of aesthetic labor, and of the "epistemological absentness". These three critiques are really the critique of the concept -labor, which is central to Marx's historical materialism. It is its key conclusion that the fundamental defect of Marx's historical materialism is the productive paradigm, and it must be replaced.Chapter 4 constitutes the second section. This section deals with Habermas' way of reconstruction. The following idea runs through his reconstruction doctrine , that is, since cultural consciousness' central role in advancing the process of history, our main task now should be the reconstruction of the evolutional logic of the normative structure, the most important part of which is to substitute the communicative paradigm for the productive paradigm. Habermas cuts in the Relational Principle from the angle of language, the purpose of which is to replace the Substantial Principle of self-consciousness, and argues for the language-mediated intersubjective Relation Model. The evolutional logic of the normative structure, whose reconstruction in the respect of individuality depends on the common structure of consciousness existing between the individual development and the social one, while whose reconstruction in the respect of society begins with the modification of the essential concepts and suppositions of historical materialism. It substitutes communication for labor as human being's fundamental feature of the reproductivity.It substitutes the behavioral agent in the social life for the genus agent as the undertaker of the social evolution; It modifies the theory of the priority of the economical basis over the superstructure with the new concept of the productive relation, relocating the relation between productivity and productive relation; Finally, it establishes the institutionalized rational structure, that is, normative structure, as the principle of social organization.Chapter 5, being the third section of this enquiry, is my comment on Habermas reconstruction doctrine. The first division of this chapter points out the basic dilemma of his reconstruction doctrine, namely, his new knowledge theory in fact being the obscurity to the aesthetic revolution. It consists of two questions. Firstly, whether communicative paradigm indeed initiate a revolution against the traditional metaphysics; secondly, whether the communicative reason can overcome the social conflict. The discussion of the first question carried on two aspects. One is the analysis of the authenticity of the intersubjective model, and the other is the analysis of whether language can make the authentic intersubjectivity be established. Through these analyses, I draw the conclusion that the communicative paradigm has no superiority over the productive paradigm which is sufficient to substitute the former for the latter. From the discussion of the second question I draw the following question, that is, the communicative reason in the final analysis has apriority. Therefore, it can't really sublate the aesthetic conflict among human beings living in the realistic world. The second division of this chapter turns to the exposition of the positive significance of Habermas' reconstruction doctrine. It is a complement to the expansion of the historical materialism's critique of the cultural consciousness of the capital society. Furthermore, to the present age's development of historical materialism, its dilemma enmeshed as such has the importance of revelatory value.