Resituating Jürgen Habermas as a Critical Theorist of the Left

• In Event: Critical Theory and the Global Left in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Abstract

Many prominent critics, including Raymond Geuss, Gabriel Rockhill, Judith Butler and Amy Allen, accuse Habermas of having abandoned the radical leftist ideals of the Frankfurt School. On their view, his communicative revisions to critical theory defuse the critique of capitalism present in the work of the first generation, thus turning critical theory into a quietist, mainstream political liberalism. Even more sympathetic readers like Bill Scheuerman, have argued that over the course of his long career Habermas has moved from radicalism to resignation. This paper pushes back against this popular perception. Instead, I argue that we should take Habermas’s claims that he is a “radical reformist” supporter of a “non-communist Left, to the left of social democracy” seriously.
My argument proceeds in three steps. I start by situating Habermas in within the tradition of the Frankfurt School. Contrary to common perception, by the 1940s much of the first generation had already abandoned any semblance of radical critique and had lost their orientation to the workers movement; by this point, critical theory had become a self-referential “message in a bottle” (Flaschenpost). Second, contrary to the accusations of his critics, I contend that Habermas’s critical theory does provide us with the tools to engage in a powerful critique of contemporary capitalism. More specifically, I argue that Habermas’s “colonization thesis” provides him with the tools necessary redeem his claims of radical reformism by calling for a new approach to politics in which the forces of capitalism are subordinated to democratic decision-making. Finally, I reconstruct how Habermas has sought to reconnect critical theory to leftist politics. Unfortunately for him, while Habermas’s political activism was too much for Horkheimer, who drove him out of Frankfurt in 1959, his reformist rejection of revolutionary violence was insufficient for more radical activists at the time, leading to his break with the student movement in 1968. Despite these setbacks, he has continued to try engage theory to practice since then in his work as a public intellectual.

Author

• Peter J. Verovšek, University of Groningen