The Study Of Alienation Of Communication

As a mode of existence of human beings, social communication plays an important part that can not be ignored in human life. Human looks forward of equal, free and amiable communication, but in real life, the alienation of communication is hard to overcome. Material relationship has become a central part in all social relationship and materialized social communication. It makes human social activities lack of equality and freedom and relationship between human beings becomes estranged. Both Marx and Habermas have been studied the alienation of communication. This paper aims to interpret Marx' and Habermas' theories of alienation of communication and tries to provide reasonable advices on how to deal with this problem scientifically in the new period of modernization construction.In the first part of this paper, the development of Marx's theory of alienation of communication is introduced and explained chronologically based on some works of Marx. In early time, deeply affected by the philosophy of Hegel and Feuerbach, Marx's theory is characterized by speculation, which is obviously reflected by his criticism of alienation of communication in "Mill Notes'. In the medium term, with the construction of the dialectical materialism and historical materialism, Marx has realized the inevitability of the alienation in the developing process of human and society. So he analyzes this phenomenon and draws a conclusion that the mandatory division of labor and private ownership are the root causes. Later, the theory of "Three Patterns of Human Society" is put forward. Marx points out that the three patterns have to be developed one by one and the alienation of communication will be eliminated in the third pattern in which productive forces has been highly developed.The second part clarifies Habermas' theory of alienation of communication. Habermas argues, with the excessively expansion of 'Instrumental Rationality', the 'system' invades into the 'Life-world' and causes 'colonization of life-word', thus the alienation of communication emerges. He agues that construction of communication rationality, interpretation of language, resistance against expansion of 'Instrumental Rationality', realization of rationalization of life-world and all-round development of human are all necessary for eliminating the alienation of communication.The third part conducts a comparative study between Marx's theory of alienation of communication and that of Habermas and points out that actually Marx and Habermas's studies are from two different perspectives because of the different social environments. The former emphasizes productive practice and the close relationship between social communication and productive activities. It believes that the alienation of communication can be eliminated only by eliminating mandatory division of labor and private ownership when productive forces is highly developed. The latter believes that productive activities only improve the productive forces and bring in material riches, so, free, democratic and equal communication is necessary and the rationality of communicative action is the way to establish harmonious communication relationship. In this part, it also makes comments on Habermas theory of alienation of communication and lists some of its limitations, such as it has some features of 'Utopia'.The last part focuses on practical significance of the alienation of communication. The theory of alienation of communication can help us recognize more clearly about the formation process of alienation of communication under the conditions of the socialist market economy, and it has important methodology significance for us to identify true or false alienations scientifically and treat them rationally. At the same time, Marxist theory of alienation of communication requires that we shall insist on the central task of economic construction, strive to liberate and develop the productive forces and promote social overall progress and human overall development. On the other hand, Habermas emphasis on language-based communication rationality, respect and understanding between peoples, social rules and regulations, which are significant for constructing the socialism harmonious society in China.