The Fortunes of Feminism. Nancy Fraser
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capitalism exclusively or primarily as the evil of reification. It must also be capable of foregrounding the evil of dominance and subordination.44
* I am grateful to John Brenkman, Thomas McCarthy, Carole Pateman and Martin Schwab for helpful comments and criticism; to Dee Marquez and Marina Rosiene for crackerjack word processing; and to the Stanford Humanities Center for research support.
1 Karl Marx, “Letter to A. Ruge, September 1843,” in Karl Marx: Early Writings, trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, New York: Vintage Books, 1975, 209.
2 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. Hereafter, TCA I. Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Vol. II: Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981. Hereafter TCA II. I shall also draw on some other writings by Habermas, especially Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press, 1975; “Introduction,” in Observations on “The Spiritual Situation of the Age”: Contemporary German Perspectives, ed. Jürgen Habermas, trans. Andrew Buchwalter, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984; and “A Reply to my Critics,” in Habermas: Critical Debates, ed. David Held and John B. Thompson, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. I shall draw likewise on two helpful overviews of this material: Thomas McCarthy, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Habermas, TCA I, v–xxxvii; and John B. Thompson, “Rationality and Social Rationalisation: An Assessment of Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action,” Sociology 17:2, 1983, 278–94.
3 TCA II, 214, 217, 348–9; Legitimation Crisis, 8–9; “A Reply to my Critics,” 268, 278–9. McCarthy, “Translator’s Introduction,” xxv–xxvii; Thompson, “Rationality,” 285.
4 TCA II, 208; “A Reply to my Critics,” 223–5; McCarthy, “Translator’s Introduction,” xxiv–xxv.
5 I am indebted to Martin Schwab for the expression “dual-aspect activity.”
6 It might be argued that Habermas’s categorial distinction between “social labor” and “socialization” helps overcome the androcentrism of orthodox Marxism. Orthodox Marxism allowed for only one kind of historically significant activity: “production,” or “social labor.” Moreover, it understood that category androcentrically and thereby excluded women’s unpaid childrearing from history. By contrast, Habermas allows for two kinds of historically significant activity: “social labor” and the “symbolic” activities that include, among other things, childrearing. Thus, he manages to include women’s unpaid activity in history. While this is an improvement, it does not suffice to remedy matters. At best, it leads to what has come to be known as “dual systems theory,” an approach which posits two distinct “systems” of human activity and, correspondingly, two distinct “systems” of oppression: capitalism and male dominance. But this is misleading. These are not, in fact, two distinct systems but, rather, two thoroughly interfused dimensions of a single social formation. In order to understand that social formation, a critical theory requires a single set of categories and concepts which integrate internally both gender and political economy (perhaps also race). For a classic statement of dual systems theory, see Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Toward a More Progressive Union,” in Women and Revolution, ed. Lydia Sargent, Boston: South End Press, 1981. For a critique of dual systems theory, see Iris Young, “Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A Critique of Dual Systems Theory,” in Women and Revolution, ed. Sargent; and “Socialist Feminism and the Limits of Dual Systems Theory,” Socialist Review 50–51, 1980, 169–80. In sections two and three of this essay, I develop arguments and lines of analysis that rely on concepts and categories that internally integrate gender and political economy (see note 30 below). This might be considered a “single system” approach. However, I find that label misleading because I do not consider my approach primarily or exclusively a “systems” approach in the first place. Rather, like Habermas, I am trying to link structural (in the sense of objectivating) and interpretive approaches to the study of societies. Unlike him, however, I do not do this by dividing society into two components, “system” and “lifeworld.” See this section below and especially note 14.
7 TCA I, 85, 87–8, 101, 342, 357–60; TCA II, 179; Legitimation Crisis, 4–5; “A Reply to my Critics,” 234, 237, 264–5; McCarthy, “Translator’s Introduction,” ix, xvix–xxx. In presenting the distinction between system-integrated and socially-integrated action contexts, I am relying on the terminology of Legitimation Crisis and modifying the terminology of The Theory of Communicative Action. Or, rather, I am selecting one of the several various usages deployed in the latter work. There, Habermas often speaks of what I have called “socially integrated action” as “communicative action.” But this gives rise to confusion. For he also uses this latter expression in another, stronger sense, namely, for actions in which coordination occurs by explicit, dialogically achieved consensus only (see below, this section). In order to avoid repeating Habermas’s equivocation on “communicative action,” I adopt the following terminology: I reserve the expression “communicatively achieved action” for actions coordinated by explicit, reflective, dialogically achieved consensus. I contrast such action, in the first instance, with “normatively secured action,” or actions coordinated by tacit, pre-reflective, pre-given consensus (see below, this section). I take “communicatively achieved” and “normatively secured” actions, so defined, to be subspecies of what I here call “socially integrated action,” or actions coordinated by any form of normed consensus whatsoever. This last category, in turn, contrasts with “system integrated action” or actions coordinated by the functional interlacing of unintended consequences, determined by egocentric calculations in the media of money and power, and involving little or no normed consensus of any sort. These terminological commitments do not so much represent a departure from Habermas’s usage—he does in fact frequently use these terms in the senses I have specified. They represent, rather, a stabilization or rendering consistent of his usage.
8 TCA I, 341, 357–59; TCA II, 256, 266; McCarthy, “Translator’s Introduction,” xxx.
9 Here I follow the arguments of Thomas McCarthy. He contended, in “Complexity and Democracy, or the Seducements of Systems Theory,” New German Critique 35, Spring/Summer 1985, 27–55, that state administrative bureaucracies cannot be distinguished from participatory democratic political associations on the basis of functionality, intentionality, and linguisticality since all three of these features are found in both contexts. For McCarthy, functionality, intentionality, and linguisticality are not mutually exclusive. I find these arguments persuasive. I see no reason why they do not hold also for the capitalist workplace and the modern, restricted, nuclear family.
10 Here, too, I follow McCarthy, ibid. He argues that in modern, state administrative bureaucracies, managers must often deal consensually with their subordinates. I contend that this is also the case for business firms and corporations.
11 See, for example, the brilliant and influential discussion of gifting by Pierre Bourdieu in Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977. By recovering the dimension of time, Bourdieu substantially revises the classical account by Marcel Mauss in The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnison, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1967. For a discussion of some recent revisionist work in cultural economic anthropology, see Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, especially the chapter titled “Commodities and the Politics of Value.”
12 TCA II, 348–9; McCarthy, “Translator’s Introduction,” xxvi–xxvii. The expressions “pragmatic-contextual” and “natural kinds” are mine, not Habermas’s.
13 TCA I, 94–5, 101; TCAII, 348–9; “A Reply to My Critics,” 227, 237, 266–8; Legitimation Crisis, 10; McCarthy, “Translator’s Introduction,” xxvi–xxvii. The expressions “absolute differences” and “difference of degree” are mine, not Habermas’s.
14 TCA I, 72, 341–2, 359–60; TCA II, 179; “A Reply to my Critics,” 268, 279–80; Legitimation Crisis, 20–1; McCarthy, “Translator’s Introduction,” xxviii–xxix.