Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
John Rundell
University of Melbourne
Danielle Petherbridge
University of Melbourne
Jeremy Smith
Ballarat University
Jean-Philippe Deranty
Macquarie University
Robert Sinnerbrink
Macquarie University
International Advisory Board
William Connolly Manfred Frank Leela Gandhi
Agnes Heller Dick Howard Martin Jay Richard Kearney
Paul Patton MICHEL Wieviorka
Volume 13
2011035782
ISSN 1572-459X
ISBN 978-90-04-20976-3
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Contents
Volume Foreword vii
Acknowledgements ix
1. Work, Recognition and the Social Bond: Changing
Paradigms1
Nicholas H. Smith and Jean-Philippe Deranty
PART ONE
vi
contents
PART THREE
Volume foreword
If work is one of the social bonds through which peoples lives can
be made meaningful in the modern world, then the new neo-liberal
environment can disrupt, damage, or destroy these bonds and the
experiences of personal and collective recognition. New Philosophies of
Labour: Work and the Social Bond edited by Nicholas H. Smith and
Jean-Philippe Deranty brings together leading philosophers and social
scientists around the crucial issues of work and recognition in this new
environment of neo-liberalism. One of the areas that The Social and
Critical Theory Book Series has developed over several volumes has
been recognition theory. Smith and Derantys book broadens and
deepens the issue of recognition by opening it up to the experience of
work, its sociality and social bonds and explores the ways in which
recognition is a central part of this experience.
John Rundell, Series Editor
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Acknowledgements
This volume has the shape it has on account of many conversations
between the editors, whose specialization lies within philosophy, and
sociologists, psychologists, economists and other philosophers based
in Australia, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. In addition to
the authors included in the volume, we would particularly like to thank
Geoff Boucher, Keith Breen, Wylie Bradford, Norbert Ebert, Lorraine
Gibson, Axel Honneth, Hermann Kocyba, Michael Pusey, Beate
Roessler, John Rundell, Andrew Sayer, Sean Scalmer, Gillian Vogl
and Shaun Wilson for helping us think through the central issues at
stake. Several of these conversations took place during a conference on
the topic of work and recognition held at Macquarie University in
Sydney in October 2007; others in a series of seminars and workshops
on recognition and the philosophy of work. We thank everyone who
took part so engagingly in these events, particularly the students
at Macquarie University and Goethe-Universitt Frankfurt whose
enthusiasm for the philosophy of labour reassures us of the importance of this barely charted field of inquiry.
A book of this kind, encompassing several disciplines and languages,
requires more than the usual amount of editorial graft. We thank Susie
Turner for her assistance in the first stages of editing and Ruth Cox for
all her help in the final stages. Of course, we take sole responsibility for
any editorial shortcomings. We also thank Lise Andersen and Wilson
Cooper for assistance in preparing the index.
The volume is the culmination of a research project funded by the
Australian Research Council (ARC). The editors, as chief investigators
on the project, would like to thank the ARC for its financial support.
Nicholas H. Smith and Jean-Philippe Deranty
Chapter one
Most notably, they offer alternative ways out of the Platonic and
Cartesian paradigms, with their ahistorical, asocial, and disembodiedconceptions of the human-making feature (be it mind, reason or
freedom). But these trajectories are also shaped by developments
within the post-Hegelian tradition. That is to say, the linguistic turn in
post-Hegelian thought is a response to another way of carrying out the
post-Hegelian agenda. Specifically, it is a response to a conception of
the human condition and the main challenges facing it that has labour
or productive activity at its core.
The linguistic paradigm of post-Hegelian thought has been so pervasive, and the historical and social transformation of the past sixty
years so extensive, that it is now hard to connect with its predecessor
paradigm at all. However, two developments suggest that it may be a
propitious time for forging such a reconnection.
First, there is the emergence over the past couple of decades of a new
paradigm for post-Hegelian thought organized around the concept of
recognition. Owing largely to the work of Axel Honneth, it has become
plausible to suppose, on the one hand, that the social relations that
mark the human life form are fundamentally relationships between a
recognizing being and a recognized one, and on the other, that the
historical unfolding of social relations is fundamentally shaped by
social struggles for recognition.4 Recognition thereby suggests itself as
the key for understanding what it is that makes us human in socially
and historically conditioned ways. Once this step is made, work as a
locus of recognition, misrecognition, the withdrawal of recognition
and struggles for recognition immediately enters the agenda for philosophically informed criticism in the post-Hegelian vein.5
The second development is a heightened awareness of work as a
defining moral, political and social challenge of the times. Critical
social theorists are becoming increasingly concerned by the ways in
which the organization of work, its availability, its distribution and its
quality, can damage processes of individual identity-formation and the
character of societies as a whole. It is no longer pass, as it was not so
4
See, for example, A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of
Social Conflicts, trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994.
5
See A. Honneth, Work and Instrumental Action: On the Normative Basis of
Critical Theory, in A. Honneth, The Fragmented World of the Social, New York, SUNY
Press, 1995; and A. Honneth, Work and Recognition: A Redefinition, in H. -C.
Schmidt am Busch and C. Zurn eds., The Philosophy of Recognition. Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2010, pp. 223239.
6
See L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, London, Verso,
2005.
7
We cannot hope to give this question the complex answer it deserves here.
The best account of the matter remains G. Markus, Language and Production.
from it.10 Instead of citizens discussing and deliberating over the terms
of their collective life, they leave it to a class of bureaucratic and technocratic experts, retreating into a narrow and experientially flattened
private sphere for personal fulfillment. Cultures and traditions which
once lived from open linguistic expression and communication across
generations are abandoned to market forces and degenerate accordingly. The ethos of openness to the truth and learning from the other
embedded in genuine dialogue is replaced by knowingness, closed
horizons, and ethnocentric arrogance. As the scope for effective communicative, dialogical interaction shrinks, communities become more
fragmented, individuals more isolated and spiritually impoverished.
While post-Hegelians of the linguistic turn disagreed over the extent of
this malaise, and its true causes, there was rough agreement that the
particular, broadly speaking spiritual needs of the times were of this
order, and that a linguistic paradigm of critique was best suited to
address them.
From Language to Recognition
The linguistic paradigm continues to hold sway in many areas of contemporary philosophy, particularly those areas that have their roots in
the post-Hegelian tradition. However, a new paradigm has emerged in
this tradition that challenges the primary focus on language and
attempts to fulfill the traditions program in a different way. The work
of Axel Honneth, articulated around the concept of recognition, is at
the heart of this new development.
To understand the motivation behind Honneths dissatisfaction with
the linguistic paradigm, we should first recall that a key aim of the
post-Hegelian program is to tie a theory of the defining features of the
human being, mainly through analyses of human sociality (accounts of
the sociality of the human being and of the social bond), to a critical
diagnosis of the extant historical conditions. This attempt to establish
an internal link between the theory of sociality and the critique of contemporary historical conditions leads to the formulation of a number
of other significant methodological principles.
10
See, for example, Arendt, The Human Condition; R. Sennett, The Fall of Public
Man, London, Penguin, 2002; A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, second edition, London,
Duckworth, 1984; and of course much communitarian criticism of liberalism.
10
The first is a sophisticated, self-reflexive, criterion to ensure methodological consistency. Not only does the anthropological moment
ground the historical diagnosis, more or less directly, by providing the
conceptual and normative resources necessary to characterize and critique the present. Turning things around, as it were, philosophical
reflection must also account for its own historical determinacy, that is,
its place within the historical moment it critically analyses. Philosophy
that defines itself as its own time reflected in thought must be able to
show how it fits in its own time. This is the basis for one of the most
famous post-Hegelian mottoes: the unity of theory and practice. Since
the most fundamental norm is freedom, and philosophical reflection is
driven by a critical impulse, practice denotes the attempt to realize
freedom, in concrete terms, or the search for emancipation in particular social contexts, however the obstacles to freedom are conceived.
This then translates into another famous principle: since philosophical
reflection has to demonstrate a substantive link to the reality that it
critically assesses, the task of critiquing the present cannot be performed by measuring social reality against norms that would be developed independent of that reality, as the Kantian tradition is routinely
accused of doing. Rather, philosophy must be able to show how the
norms underpinning critique can already be found within social reality itself: the movement potentially transcending extant social reality
must be found in the immanence of that reality. On that account, the
philosophy of emancipation is therefore doubly related to social forces
that potentially carry it out: it relies on these social forces to find indications as to the content and historical direction of emancipation; but
it also aims to offer conceptual and normative direction to that real
movement.
It was by judging the linguistic paradigm against this set of principles that Honneth found it wanting. Distortions of communication,
a withering away of the disclosive powers of language, might well be
real, empirical effects of the pathological developments of modern
societies. But to explain social pathologies in terms of distortions of
communication is to mobilise a kind of higher-order analysis that is
situated at a level external to the one at which these distortions are
concretely experienced.11 In other words, the analysis of contemporary
See in particular the following articles by Honneth: Moral Consciousness and
Class Domination, in Honneth, Disrespect. The Normative Foundations of Critical
Theory, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007, pp. 8096; The Social Dynamics of Disrespect:
On the Location of Critical Theory Today, in Disrespect, pp. 6380.
11
12
14
butin a space of reasons or spirit in which the question of the rightness or appropriateness of its self-forming activity can always be asked.
This is also a social space in which subjects come to be themselves in
and through the recognition of others. It is by recognizing each other
as rational animalsanimals whose cognitive and intentional life is
shaped by and answerable to reasonsthat human beings become
rational animals in the full sense.
Redding reminds us that while this philosophical anthropology of
Hegels can fairly be called idealist, it is by no means immaterialist.
Self-defining subjects in Hegels sense are incarnated, material beings,
and recognize each other as such. But then neither is Hegels account
reductively materialist, since what we recognize in each otherasrational
animals is the form of our material embodiment. Redding then considers how Hegels recognitive materialism, as we might call it, at the level
of philosophical anthropology leads to a different kind of political theory than Hobbesian reductive materialism. Whereas in the Hobbesian
account political society emerges from the struggle over the power to
satisfy naturally given appetites, for Hegel politics has its origins in a
struggle over the norms or rules to which acts of will answer. According
to Reddings interpretation, the master/slave dialectic in the Phenom
enology of Spirit is Hegels outline of the first stages of this struggle. The
dialectic begins with all authority residing in the masters will. This
authority is embedded in institutions and social practices which allow,
for example, the master to give orders to the slave. The slave recognizes
the master by acting on these orders, which makes him appear as a
mere will-less instrument of the masters will. And yet in taking on
this role as instrument, the slave has to engage in rational practical
activity. To fulfill the command cook me a fish, the slave must first see
a particular objecta cookable fishand transform it from its raw
state. Redding points out that this forces the slave to engage in a practice of concept application, and thus a kind of inferential activity, that
enables the slave to reach a higher level of self-consciousness than the
master, who is stuck at the more primitive level of relating to objects
in terms of the simple sensuous qualities that make them suitable for
the satisfaction of simple immediately felt desires.
Thus it is by working, by turning the masters imperatives into a concrete reality, that the slave starts to get the edge over the master, at least
as far as the life of the mind is concerned. To be sure the slave still
works for the master, and has to suppress his own desires in the course
of it, but this very suppression or postponement of impulse also serves
16
to raise the slave further out of his merely natural state. The seeds of
self-destruction for the master-slave relation are thus sown. While the
slave recognizes himself in the masters recognition of him as a mere
instrument of will, in fulfilling this role through his labour the slave at
once negates this self-definition. Under the compulsion of work, the
slave learns to see things in conceptually articulated ways, to take distance from immediately given desires, and to recognize his own agency
in those material transformations that satisfy the masters will. Like
Gadamer and other illustrious interpreters of the Phenomenology
before him, Redding notes the crucial point here that the working
activity of the slave is at once a transformation of objects and a transformation of self: an acquiring of skills and dispositions that become
partly definitive of ones character and identity, and so an objective
source of ones sense of self. This triangulation of self, object and other
is thus both a presupposition of the master-slave relation (it is only
through the mediation of objects that the slave serves the masters purposes) and incompatible with it (because it undermines the will-less
status of the slave and the authoritative status of the master). The need
to keep this triangulation in view, both for an adequate philosophical
anthropology and a proper understanding of work, will be a recurrent
theme throughout the chapters of this book.
As Redding points out in the concluding section of his chapter, one
of the central lessons of the master/slave dialectic is the importance of
work in coming to recognize ourselves in something more than objects
of gratification or consumption (the unsustainable standpoint of the
master). Hegel saw that modern capitalist economies endangered this
condition both by removing restrictions on the sphere of consumptionand by organizing the sphere of work in a way that could make
it impossible for rational agents to recognize themselves there. How
ever, it was in the Philosophy of Right, not the Phenomenology, that
Hegel explicitly addressed these concerns about the potentially selfundermining effects of modern civil society. In chapter three, HansChristoph Schmidt am Busch offers an analysis of Hegels approach in
Philosophy of Right and puts it forward as a model for how a critical
theory of capitalism might proceed today.
Schmidt am Buschs interpretation focuses on the role played by the
notions of bourgeois honour, the corporation, and the quest for
profit and luxury in Hegels account of civil society. Bourgeois honour refers to something like the self-respect an individual derives from
being able to support himself and his family by participating in the
18
20
correcting the overly ambitious (in the sense of merely utopian) project of grounding critical theory in a normatively substantive critical
conception of work that he had himself advanced in his earlier essay
Work and Instrumental Action.
According to Honneths new position, it is not the act of working
itself, but the exchange of services, that provides the normative surplus for historically effective, immanent critique of the capitalist
organization of work. Honneth takes the conceptual shape of such
criticism to have been laid out by Hegel and Durkheim. Honneth follows them in supposing that the market-mediated system of production and consumption, the exchange of goods and services that makes
up a modern economy, must have an ethical basis that gives it legitimacy in the eyes of the participants. As we have already seen, in undertaking an exchange, the participants at least tacitly commit to an act
that will be mutually beneficial: if they did not reasonably expect each
other to be contributing to each others good, there would be no
exchange. In other words, actual exchanges are premised on a conception of how they ought to be, even in cases where the norm and the
reality come apart. The norm is counterfactually presupposed, one
might say, in the practice, which itself has a normative surplus ready
to be drawn on for critique. Since the norm of reciprocal and mutual
benefit holds for the exchange of services as much as any other
exchange, in exchanging her labour for a wage, the wage labourer is
entitled to presume that she will be bringing some benefit to another
through the exchangeand so, however directly, helping to satisfy the
needs of othersthrough the activity that also allows her to meet her
own needs as an autonomous private citizen. The obligation to meet
ones private needs through the exchange of services comes with a corresponding right to participate in the social system of exchange, that is,
to earn a decent living on the basis of socially useful and recognized
work performed in the labour market. In this way, criticism of the capitalist organization of labour on the basis of it failing to provide either
a minimum wage or the opportunity to contribute in a recognizable
way to the common good, counts as genuinely immanent criticism
since it draws on the very norms that lend the modern labour market
its legitimacy.
Honneths essay raises a number of fundamental issues: What is the
content and the status of the norms that inform the contemporary
world of work (if, indeed, work is properly understood as a normshaped sphere at all)? What normative standpoint (or standpoints)
22
does well-directed criticism of contemporary work practices presuppose? How should the critique of work be understood as relating to
other forms of rationally grounded social criticism? These issues are
taken up in the chapters that follow by Emmanuel Renault, JeanPhilippe Deranty and Nicholas Smith. While Renault, Deranty, and
Smith are sympathetic to the recognition-theoretic approach to work
outlined by Honneth, and see themselves as building on it, they share
a concern that Honneths redefinition of the relation between work and
recognition unduly weakens the resources available for the criticism of
the modern organization of work, that it does so by restricting the content and scope of the norms that are applicable to work, and that it
does this by passing over the normative purport of working activity.
IfRenault, Deranty, and Smith are right, Honneth has been too quick
to abandon the critical conception of work announced in his early
essay Work and Instrumental Action. In their different ways, they
each argue that a retrieval of that conception will help keep the plurality of norms applicable to work in view, and that it will contribute to
the critical task of keeping the morally charged experience of working
people themselves in focus.
An important first step toward reaching this goal is to appreciate the
range of obstacles that lie in the way of it. Renault draws attention to a
number of these, arising on the one hand from developments in the
lifeworld, and on the other from the prevalence of political theories
that are ill-equipped for the task at hand. Regarding the former, Renault
notes the decline of the workers movement (and the corresponding
rise of neo-liberal, anti-regulation ideology) that has tended to mute
the public and political expression of concerns over work, and the persistence of long-term unemployment that has tended to choke the
social articulation of negative aspects of work (as people feel grateful
for having any secure work at all). These, and other factors identified
by Renault, contribute to the invisibility of work from the perspective
of the lifeworld; but this is matched and compounded by theoretical
perspectives that are blind to the political significance of work. Whereas
the critique of alienation, and with that the critique of alienating work,
was once a primary matter for political theory, nowadays democracy
and justice provide its basic, and in many cases exclusive, normative
orientation. With just one or two exceptions, theories of democracy
ignore problems of the organization of work and theories of justice
deal with work merely insofar as it is a matter of individual choice
and contractual obligation. Within this constellation, Renault argues,
the task of making work visible again from a political point of view has
become paramount.
Renault then spells out an agenda for meeting this challenge. The
first thing to be done is to develop a conception of work that is rich
enough to encompass all the different kinds of normative considerations that bear on work. The norms of justice and democracy certainly
have application here (feelings of injustice obviously arise from working activity and the skills of self-rule needed by citizens of a democracy
can hardly be divorced from the work they do), but the norms of
autonomy and health, Renault argues, are just as important. That is, the
moral and political rights and wrongs of work are partly a matter of the
autonomy it allows and its effect on the working persons health. Acritical conception of work, of the kind once proposed by Honneth, must
be encompassing and differentiated enough to show how work can fall
short in all of its measures. Renault is open to the possibility that these
measures could be theoretically unpacked in terms of recognition, at
least for work under the aspect of employment, but he warns against
the danger of normative reductionism this move threatens. One reason why the focus on recognition as proposed by Honneth might lead
to a normatively truncated conception of work, Renault suggests, is
that it deflects attention from the act of working and the norms that
bear on it. While in Renaults view there are norms of recognition that
apply to working activity, they are distinct from those that feature in
Honneths account, and they do not exhaust the normative content of
the act of working, which also has to do with the encounter with the
real. And finally, any adequate account of the political significance of
work must have something to say about the social relations of domination that permeate working activity. For this purpose, Renault suggests
that Christophe Dejours psychodynamic approach to work might
prove more fruitful than Honneths recognition theory.
The relative merits of Honneths and Dejours approaches to work,
and the possibility of bringing them together in a unified framework,
is explored in more detail in Derantys chapter. Like Renault, Deranty
wants to rehabilitate Honneths early critical conception of work, with
its focus on the normative content of working activity, by way of
Dejours psychodynamics of work. And he does so for the same reason
as that indicated by Renault: the normative presuppositions of the
labour market, and the recognition of achievement or social contribution, do not provide a substantial enough basis for the kind of thoroughgoing critique of work that is called for today. Deranty questions
24
the motivation behind Honneths move away from a critical conception of work (a conception that locates the normative content of work
in working activity itself rather than contribution to the division of
labour or participation in the labour market) on two counts. First, it is
based on a faulty assumption that the decline of craftsmanship as a
model of work means that the norms of autonomous expression and
cooperation no longer have application to modern working activity.
The mistake here, Deranty suggests, is to suppose that the norms of
expression and cooperation can only be interpreted maximally, that
is, as an ideal or perfect state of autarchic, communicatively coordinated (rather than market-mediated) production. This maximalist
conception ignores the possibility of a minimalist account that conceives autonomy and cooperation in work as minimal conditions of
healthy psychic functioning. Not only does Dejours provide us with
such a minimalist account, Deranty argues, but Honneth himself has
developed a general theory of norms as the intersubjective conditions
of self-realisation which is minimalist in a similar sense. The second
reason Deranty gives for thinking that Honneths abandonment of his
commitment to a critical conception of work is unwarranted is that it
is based on the unnecessary requirement that the normative content of
work be universalisable. While it is true that individual workers will
want different things from work, will take to some kinds of working
activity more than others, and will be able to cope in more or less satisfactory ways with suffering experienced at work, it is nevertheless
possible to identify thresholds beyond which restrictions of autonomy
and blocks on cooperation just cannot be psychically or physically tolerated. This, at any rate, is what Dejours clinical practice and research
seems to demonstrate.
Smith adds further arguments in his chapter for retaining something like the critical conception of work once advanced by Honneth.
He begins by reflecting on the criteria to be satisfied by a normative
model of work in a historical context marked by distinctive kinds of
social anxiety around work. He then distinguishes three normative
models of work on the basis of the core norms they posit as most apposite for normative criticism with practical or emancipatory intent: an
instrumental model that takes the core normativity of work to consist
in means-ends rationality; an expressive model in which the core
norms of work are conceived as expressions of values or meanings that
are internal to working practices themselves; and a recognition model
for which the norm of mutual recognition is decisive. Each model
admits of internal variation, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The expressive model in particular, Smith argues, has a range of
conceptual resources available to it which adherents of both the instrumentalist and recognition models have not sufficiently appreciated.
Furthermore, it is especially well-equipped to frame normative criticism of work in the context of the contemporary malaise around work,
an important element of which is anxiety concerning the quality of
work and its effect on the subjectivity of the worker.
The Subject at Work
In the third and fourth parts of the book, the question of contemporary work is approached from a psychological perspective, through the
psychodynamics of work; from a sociological perspective, through the
historical and qualitative sociology of work undertaken at the Institute
for Social Research in Frankfurt; and from what might be called a critical economic perspective, targeting some basic assumptions of orthodox economics that also find their way into mainstream liberal political
theory. In each case, the disciplinary focus produces results with broad
theoretical significance, which a contemporary philosophy of labour
must take into consideration and include in its analysis.
In From the Psychopathology to the Psychodynamics Of Work,
Christophe Dejours presents a brief historical reconstruction and synthesis of the main traits characterising the method of clinical intervention in workplaces he has developed over the last thirty years with his
collaborators at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Mtiers in
Paris.18 Dejours primary interest is practical and clinical, the analysis
of individual and organisational issues arising in real workplaces, and
the ways to resolve them in consultation with workers and management. One might wonder how to reconcile this practically oriented
mode of analysing work with the different modes and aims of philosophy and the theoretical social sciences. In fact, the psychodynamics of
work has much to offer for a renewal of philosophical and general
social-scientific reflection on issues of work and labour. It is as though
18
Other texts by Dejours that can be found in English are: Subjectivity, Work, and
Action, in eds. J.-P. Deranty et al. Recognition, Work, Politics: New Directions in French
Critical Theory, Leiden, Brill, 2007, pp. 7187; and The Centrality of Work, Critical
Horizons, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2010, pp. 167180.
26
28
22
30
directly parallels the level of engagement with materiality, where bodily materiality is usually the lowest level. The study of care work reveals
aspects of human agency and work that have broad anthropological
value. In terms of contemporary politics, this means that debates
around hospital reform, the status of nursing professions, the medical
world, are not just issues concerning a few sectors amongst others in
society, but reveal something very general about society as a whole,
namely, as Molinier puts it, about the implicit civilisational underpinning of contemporary social orders. We might say that social orders
can be characterized in terms of the ways in which they organize and
recognize care work, that is, both the necessity of care and the work
involved in it.
Work and the Changing Face of Capitalism
The psychodynamics of work emphasises the importance of the
moment where the individual agent faces the difficulty of realising the
material task. Recognition takes on a specific meaning when it is
attached to the concrete realization of the task, within a culture of work
and a work collective.
Another strand of contemporary research has drawn attention to
another aspect of contemporary work, and the central significance of
demands of recognition in relation to it. Combining a historical perspective, qualitative methods of inquiry and a philosophically informed
model of socialization, sociologists of work at the Frankfurt Institute
for Social Research have investigated transformations in the cultural
and normative representations surrounding work in the wake of the
great shift in economic structures witnessed in the last decades. How
have expectations of recognition by workers, and the corresponding
demands put on them, evolved with the transformation of capitalist
societies in recent decades, and more specifically the rise of postFordist and post-Taylorian models of economic and work organisation? This is the question they have sought to answer in their recent
work, in close connection to Axel Honneths own philosophical
reflections.24
24
See in particular the essays collected in the volume edited by A. Honneth,
Befreiung aus der Mndigkeit, Frankfurt/M., Campus, 2002, which documents the key
directions of this research programme, and in which the essay by Voswinkel translated
here first appeared in German.
32
Part four of the book contains two exemplary cases of this kind of
philosophically informed sociological inquiry, from two of the leading
sociologists in the Frankfurt School mould: Stephan Voswinkel and
Gabriele Wagner.25 In his contribution, Voswinkel brings out the tensions lodged at the heart of the recognition models underpinning the
previous (Fordist) and current (post-Fordist) modes of economic
organisation. The Fordist model, he argues, continued to rely on values
and norms of the old work ethic. Accordingly, ones social recognition
derives from ones work. If we look at it carefully, however, the link
between recognition and work was not as straightforward as it seemed.
It was not the work itself which provided recognition, but rather the
wealth, power or social position attached to it. As a result, those forms
of work that were low on the social scale provided only minimal or no
recognition, even though the individuals engaged in it would have
been doing a lot of work, notably those engaged in dirty work. As a
result, as Voswinkel sums up, in this older regime recognition must be
based on work but only some types of work find recognition. This
explains the shape of many struggles for recognition during the Fordist
era: many struggles for recognition were triggered by dissensions over
the evaluation of particular work activities, to claim higher material
and symbolic value for them.
One key feature of the social logic underpinning recognition, however, provided a powerful avenue for positive valuation for workers
involved in forms of work without prestige, that is, for the majority of
them. As Voswinkel shows, in reference to Mead, the concept of recognition itself is ambivalent: on the one hand, recognition, as a condition
of subjective identity, provides the basis for individual self-realisation,
or what we could call subjective creativity, the possibility to shape ones
own self. On the other hand, this makes subjective identity structurally
reliant upon social expectations and norms. By making subjective creativity possible, recognition also imposes boundaries on it. This tension delivers two interrelated yet separate meanings of recognition:
inasmuch as it is based on the fulfillment of social expectations by the
individual, recognition is in the form of appreciation. Recognition here
arises within social exchange and reciprocity: the self is socially recompensed for engaging in an exchange of service and counter-service to
25
Other key contributors to this research program include Kai Drge, Ursula
Holtgrewe, Hermann Kocyba and Sighard Neckel. It is a matter of much regret that we
have not been able to include work by these authors in this volume as well.
others (Leistung/Gegenleistung). But recognition awarded to the creativity of the subject, that is, his or her ability to stand out in his or her
singularity, is in the form of admiration, and is no longer tied, by definition, to social reciprocity. The self is recompensed precisely for its
ability to stand out, to win the social competition, in one way or
another. By contrast, for the majority of workers in the old Fordist
model, engaged in forms of work that remained Taylorian in their
operation, recognition in the shape of appreciation could offer strong
rewards for the sacrifices demanded by the work ethic. Indeed, a significant part of the rights and institutions set up during that time, both
within firms (different forms of leave and benefits) and in the broader
social-political context (the different institutions of welfare), could be
interpreted as institutionalisations of appreciation.
With the massive upheavals that have shaken the internal organization of firms and the broader social-economic contexts since the crisis
of Fordism in the late 1970s, recognition as appreciation and the institutions and rights that entrenched it, have come under increasing pressure. In the German sociology of work, an important article by Baethge
in 1991, which outlined the most salient features of the new world of
work and labour, offered key indications for much of the subsequent
sociological research in this area.26 Like the previous one, the postFordist work ethic contains its own ambivalence, well captured by the
central motto of the subjectivisation of work. On the one hand, the
subjectivisation of work denotes the rejection of Taylorian alienation,
the demand by workers to be able to realise themselves in work. On the
other hand, though, this normative demand has also become, in new
management methods and work organizations, a prescription to which
workers have to conform: increasingly, the self of the worker is to identify with the work, the firm, the brand; subjective capacities become
the new source of productivity; individuals are to assume increased
responsibility for the economic viability and profitability of their activity within the firm; and so on.
What happens to recognition in this new context? Because the
normative ideal has become that of subjective self-expression and
self-realisation, the old ethic of self-sacrifice, of doing ones job for
the others (the company or society) no longer holds much value.
26
M. Baethge, Arbeit, Vergesellschaftung, Identitt - Zur zunehmenden normativen Subjektivierung der Arbeit, Soziale Welt, Vol. 42, No. 1, 1991, pp. 619.
34
hinge between system and social integration and are likewise a central
component of the companys social order.
Borrowing from Voswinkel the key distinction between recognition
as appreciation and recognition as admiration, Wagner unveils,
through the example of two middle-management workers in a chemical company, the pitfalls of recognition demands that result from the
demise of the old order and the introduction of new forms of organization. The destabilizing experiences of disqualification and disempowerment made by the two individuals interviewed, both of whom used
to be successful researchers and team leaders, reveal salient features of
the new world of work. Their company has undergone a typical organizational change: significant staff cuts; devolution of financial responsibility to all units in the firm; competition between units; systematic
orientation to financial results as the measure of success; market logic
applied to all activities, including scientific research; full submission to
the client and the shareholder. In this new set up, recognition only goes
to economic performance. This entails that the duties of care and loyalty associated with reciprocal expectations in the old recognitive
regime have gone by the way side.
For the two employees, this mode of operation creates hitherto
unknown difficulties to adapt subjectively to the demands of work. The
marketisation process in the firms internal functioning and the subjectivisation of work create traps of recognition. On the one hand, the
strict orientation to market acceptance as the sole criterion for success,
the use of outsourced services, and the increased demand put on workers to become responsible for more aspects of the work process, disqualifies an older form of recognition as admiration, which was
based on expertise. Reputation established over time and underpinned
by the acknowledgement of competence becomes meaningless when
the only criterion that matters is economic performance. Expertise is
diluted and can be outsourced. Indeed, in this particular example, scientific competence gets in the way of recognition as it tends to make
the economic logic compete and in some instances give way to other
standards. Crucially, the definition of quality work differs greatly
depending on which perspective is favoured, the economic or the
scientific one. One way to deal with the withdrawal of the old style of
recognition is for the workers to appeal to the other form of recognition, appreciation. This is an interesting twist of the new recognition
regime, that workers who previously would have appealed to theirright
for admiration suddenly demand to be recognised for their sacrifice
36
and loyalty, that is, demand appreciation. The first trap of recognition
in the current regime is the difficulty to justify a claim for recognition
as admiration, whilst the basis for recognition as appreciation has
collapsed.
On the other hand, the search for admiration which these two workers cannot abandon contains its own trap. A great imbalance is opened
between on the one hand the lack of control of the workers over the
conditions ensuring market success, and on the other the total responsibility for success that is put on them. In the previous order, when
success was not defined solely in commercial terms, the gap was not so
great. Most importantly, expertise could prove itself in quality work
and by reference to professional standards defined by a specific work
culture. But market success is out of the hands of the competent.
According to Wagner, this great gap between control and responsibility largely explains the absence of a struggle for recognition. The workers keen on recognition as admiration cannot run the risk of questioning
the rules of the game: this would be direct evidence against their
deservedness. A kind of voluntary servitude results in which they
adapt themselves to rules and norms that take control and recognition
away from them.
The chapters by Voswinkel and Wagner provide insight into the
ways in which recent mutations of capitalism have altered the experience of work and the social bonds that develop in and through that
experience. They concern the world of work as it is, illuminated by
contrast to the way it was. They are not, directly at least, concerned
with the justification of the transition from one mode of capitalism to
another, or with how the changing meaning of work could feature in
such justifications. This issue is, however, taken up in the final two
chapters of the book, where the ethical significance of work, understood as its role in constituting a good life, is reasserted as an apt object
of practical, public reasoning in face of the denials of neo-classical economics and liberal political theory.
As Dale Tweedie points out in his chapter, it is hard to make sense of
the idea that the act of working may be a constitutive feature of a flourishing lifethe kind of life people ought to have a chance to leadso
long as work is conceived as sheer disutility or a mere opportunity
cost: that is, as something to be avoided (all things being equal).
Yet this is how work typically is modeled in orthodox economic analysis. Furthermore, the ethically destructive consequences of working
the damage it can do to the life of a worker beyond the brute pain of
38
Following Peter Hall and David Soskice, Keat begins by distinguishing two models of capitalism that do in fact represent real alternatives
for organizing the world of work and shaping economic policy. These
are the Liberal market economies, with their impatient pattern of
share ownership, top-down mode of internal governance, and competitive inter-firm relationships, in contrast to Coordinated market
economies, with their patient capital, more consensual styles of management, and cooperative relationships between firms. Keat then
draws attention to the ethical differences between these forms of market economy. That is, they make it possible, or easier, for individuals to
realise certain conceptions of the good through their work, and they
make it impossible, or more difficult, for individuals to realise other
conceptions. As examples, Keat mentions the intrinsic satisfaction that
comes from skillful, autonomous working activity. This good, as well
as the goods of developing industry specific skills and engaging in collaborative relations with workers in other firms, are easier for individuals to realise in Coordinated market economies than in Liberal ones.
The Coordinated economies also make it easier for individuals to realise a conception of the good in which they are able to develop trade- or
industry-specific skills and their recognition by ones peers. The Liberal
market economies, by contrast, make it easier for individuals to measure the success of their careers, and the goods they realised through
them, in financial terms. Another telling example is relationships of
trust: the institutional arrangements of the Liberal market economies
make it harder for individuals to realise this good in their work, and
for this reason individuals whose conception of the good includes the
enjoyment of such relationships are institutionally disadvantaged by
them.
Such considerations support Keats thesis that market economies are
by no means neutral with respect to the good: they favour the realisation of some conceptions of the good through working activity and
disfavour others. Since the institutional shape of a market economy is
in part determined by a states laws and policies, the deliberations by
which a state arrives at those laws and policies are not neutral with
respect to the good either. Of course this conclusion does not tell us
which conception of the good a given state should favour. But by dispelling the myth of state neutrality, it invites us to think again about
the ethical significance of work and to develop a conception of working activity that is commensurate with this challenge.
PART ONE
Chapter two
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I too have attempted to sketch a picture of Hegel which has these general features.8 In this chapter I want to revisit some of the classic themes
of the masterslave dialectic in order to bring to the fore aspects of
Hegels recognitive treatment of work that may still be significant for us
today. More generally, however, I will also suggest that Hegels treatment of work enables us to avoid misunderstandings about the nature
of his idealism. From his account of work in the masterslave dialectic
we can see that far from being an immaterialist doctrine, Hegels idealism is premised on a radically embodied conception of the mind and
its capacities.
The Struggle for Recognition
In Chapter 4 of the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel sketches a scenario
in which a simple model of political life between a master and his slave
results from a struggle that is in some sense over recognition. The most
obvious comparison here is perhaps Hobbes equally mythical vision
of the establishment of political society from a state of original struggle
through the institution of the social contract, and here it might be
helpful to view Hegels myth as a type of post-Kantian transformation
of Hobbes one. The Hobbesian side of the story is the move that initiates a central theme of modern political philosophy: it is the claim that
the normative basis of human society is to be found not in the will of a
on the theme of recognition in Hegel, What is the Question for which Hegels Theory
of Recognition is the Answer? European Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 8, no. 2, 2000,
pp. 15572; and T. Pinkards Hegels Phenomenology, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1994 and German Philosophy 17601860: The Legacy of Idealism, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2002. While having many internal differences to the
Hegel of Pippin and Pinkard, I would count Henry S. Harris account of Hegel as sharing these general features. See his Hegels Development: Toward the Sunlight 17701801,
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972; The Concept of Recognition in Hegels Jena
Manuscripts, Hegel-Studien Vol. 20, 1977, pp. 229248; Hegels Development II: Night
Thoughts (Jena 18016), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983; and Hegels Ladder:
The Pilgrimage of Reason, 2 vols, Indianapolis, Hackett, 1997. Robert R. Williams, in
Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, Albany, State University of New York Press,
1992; and Hegels Ethics of Recognition, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997
extends the work of L. Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie:
Untersuchungen zu Hegels Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes, Freiburg, Alber Verlag, 1979
to give a comprehensive ethically focused account linking Hegels early work to his
mature Philosophy of Right. A. Wood, in Hegels Ethical Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1990, also stresses the role of recognition in Hegels ethics, although
disassociates it from Hegels more systematic thought.
8
In Hegels Hermeneutics, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996.
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transcendent divine being, but rather in the human will. As Hegel puts
it in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hobbes had sought to
derive the bond which holds the state together, that which gives
the state its power, not from holy scripture or positive law, but from
principles which lie within us, which we recognize as our own.9 The
Kantian side of Hegels model is that this human will cannot be conceived naturalistically, as it is in Hobbes, who famously characterised
the will as the final appetite in a process of practical deliberation.10
While this anti-naturalism is one of the basic features of such idealist
approaches to human society, Hegels refusal to reduce what he calls
spirit to nature has nothing to do with a commitment to any type of
mindbody dualism of the early modern Cartesian approach to the
mind, nor with its remnants in Kants conception of the noumenal self.
Rather than locate Hegels starting point in the modern subjectivist
approach to the mind, we should understand Hegel, I suggest, in relation to Aristotles conception of the human soul as the form of the
human body.11 In contrast to Aristotle, however, Hegel sees bodily
form not as something given but as formed and, indeed, self-forming,
and work is central to the process in which such formation occurs.
But again, the idea of the mind as giving form is central to Kantian
9
G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. III, trans. E. S. Haldane,
Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1995, p. 316. For a view of Hegels politics of
recognition as an alternative to social contract theory see A. Patten, Social Contract
Theory and the Politics of Recognition in Hegels Political Philosophy, in ed. Robert R.
Williams, Beyond Liberalism and Communitarianism: Studies in Hegels Philosophy of
Right, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2001. On the relation of Hegels early
account of the struggle for recognition to Hobbes account of the establishment of the
political community, see L. Siep, Der Kampf um Anerkennung. Zu Hegels
Auseinandersetzung mit Hobbes in den Jenaer Schriften, in Hegel Studien Vol. 9,
1974, pp. 155207.
10
Hobbes effectively identifies the will with an empirical bodily appetite or aversion: In deliberation, the last appetite, or aversion, immediately adhering to the action,
or to the omission thereof, is that we call the WILL; the act, not the faculty, of willing.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, ed.
E. Curley, Indianapolis, Hackett, 1994, ch. vi, 53. In distancing himself from the
faculty of willing, Hobbes was setting himself against the scholastic view going back
to Aristotle of the faculty of the willvoluntasas a type of rational power causing
the action (ibid., ch. xlvi, 28). Instead, Hobbes introduces appetite and aversion as
quasi-mechanically acting on affective states, causally brought about by perceptual
interaction with the world and manifesting themselves in particular actions. This
means that freedom for Hobbes cannot be identified with any notion of a rationally
self-determining will that is presupposed by the Christian Platonist tradition.
11
See, for example, M. Wolff, Das Krper-Seele Problem: Kommentar zu Hegel,
Encyclopdie, Frankfurt, Klostermann, 1992.
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or something like this. Moreover, once we raise any urge to the level of
an endorseable or dis-endorseable conceptualized content, the resulting desire seems to be the sort of thing for which we can ask for an
intelligible reason. Kant had tried to capture that by describing our
actions as flowing not from impulses but from rules or maxims that
guide our practical lives. If I characteristically do action a in context f,
it is because I operate on the basis of the implicit rule do a-type actions
in f-type contexts.
In Kants version, then, the will, rather than being an element of raw
nature is already conceptualized and rationalized. But from Hegels
perspective, Kants attempt to rationalize the will was incomplete.
While he insisted on the conceptual form of the will, Kant nevertheless
still conceived this in terms of the endorsement or dis-endorsement of
an otherwise naturally given content, or inclination. However, Kant
had not thought of the type of rationality implicit in instrumental reasoning as the only or even the essential form of the will, and had
pointed to another form of practical reasoningthe type of moral reasoning that he treated in terms of the categorical imperative, in which
the will is not reliant on any externally given content. Kant thus distinguished between the will as Willkr and as Wille, the latter being the
autonomous will able to prescribe to itself its content; the moral law.14
We might think of Hegel as attempting to integrate these two aspects
of willingthe object-directed will of rationalized inclination, and the
other-directed will of Kantian moralityinto a unified picture in as
much as our willing relations to worldly things are to be contextualised
within conceptually mediated relations to each other. These latter relations Hegel conceived as recognitive relationsrelations within which
we recognize or acknowledge each other as beings with rational wills.
It is an idea similar to Kants moral idea of treating others not as means
to ones ends but as ends themselves, but freed of the formalism of
Kants conception of the categorical imperative. Moreover, for Hegel,
in contrast to Kant, these relations of recognition were constitutive:
not only do they constitute the form of the social life within which
we livethat is, constitute what Hegel called objective spiritthey
also constitute conditions for our capacity to have the type of cognitiveor intentional life that allow us to function within objective spirit.
14
I. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. M. Gregor, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 1314.
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not in individuals but in historically evolving communities of interacting and communicating individuals, that is, individuals linked by relations of recognition. Embodying
nous or spirit (Geist) in this way can sound utterly mysterious until we remind ourselves that the contents of the divine mind were the platonic ideas which Kant had
interpreted as rules rather than transcendent immaterial prototypesrules to be followed, in the practices of theoretical or practical reason. It was these rules then to
which Hegel gave concrete existence by giving them a material basis in the normative
processes constituting the life of actual societies.
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of slaves as made slaves by their nature,18 but from an Hegelian perspective the characteristics of master and slave cannot be reduced to
natural properties but rather require the existence of something more
like normatively defined social statusessomething like differential
sets of rights and duties specified by the rules of the institution. In
Anscombes terminology, the facts making up this form of life will be
institutional onesfacts that hold only in virtue of their being recognized to holdnot brute facts about the natural world, facts that
hold anyway, independently of their being so recognized.19 Moreover,
the concepts that articulate such factsin our simple model, concepts
such as master and slavehave that peculiar normative thickness
that Charles Taylor and others have appealed to in the domain of practical reasoning. To recognize another as ones master is to adopt a certain action-guiding orientation to them, the attitude appropriate to
their slave, just as the inverse holds for the case as recognizing another
as ones slave. It is because practical consequences flow from the application of concepts in these interactions that Hegel refers to them as
logical patterns of inferencesyllogisms. But for Hegel important
consequences follow from the fact that these forms of institutional life
are instantiated in otherwise natural beings about whom there are relevant brute or natural facts.
With the basic parts of this simple model in place, let us reflect on
some of the minimal non-linguistic capacities that would be needed for
a slave to act appropriately within this type of institutionfor example, to be able to act on the order Cook me a fish! First, as is obvious,
the slave would have to have a certain set of capacities or skills, most
obviously the ones making up the technique of cooking, but beyond
those, techniques for catching fish, and so ontechniques that are
linked instrumentally in terms of the relation for the sake of. And
it is difficult to see how such skills could be successfully deployed
without the capacity to make certain types of perceptual judgements,
like the perceptual judgement that some particular fish was, in fact,
cooked. Put simply, the slave would have to be able to differentiate
cooked from raw, that is cookable fish. What can we now say about the
interrelation of these skills?
18
Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge, Mass, Loeb Classical Library,
1998, pp. 1254 b 1520.
19
G. E. M Anscombe, On Brute Facts, Ethics, Religion and Politics: Collected
Philosophical Papers, Vol. III, Oxford, Blackwell, 1981.
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catching it. The slave has learnt to hold his behaviour to the content of
imperatives, and we might think of reasoning practically as involving a
type of inference from one imperative (Cook me a fish!) to another
(Catch me a fish!). Hegel, I believe, had developed a particularly
powerful logic for capturing this type of complex reasoning implicit in
practical activity, and for it he needed to combine elements of
Aristotelian term logic with the quite different patterns of propositional logic.22
The Negating Structures of Perception and Work
In line with his appropriation of Aristotelian logic, Hegel adopts an
essentially Aristotelian approach to the categorical structure of objects
of perception. In perception we grasp an object as an instance of a
kind, which in turn is relevant to the sorts of predicates that can be said
of it (but not, of course, at the same time).23 Thus, in a judgement such
as This fish is cooked, the kind of term involved (that it is a fish, and
not, say, a rock) is relevant to the fact that the predicate cooked and
its contrary raw can be said of it. Moreover, for Aristotle, the terms
that can be predicated of such kinds typically come in groups of contrariesideally, pairs of contraries. We have of course seen this phenomenon before, in the pair of predicates master and slave itself.
Each term is the negation of the other, in the sense that the application of one term excludes its contrary. Moreover, we see this account of
the structure of the perceptual object recur in the context of the masterslave dialectic as the structure of the object worked upon. So, just as
a perceptual object will have the structure exemplified by say, this fish
which I see to be cooked and not raw, the object worked upon will have
just the same structure, but here, raw and cooked are the end points
between which the work effects a transition. To put it another way, to
See my Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought.
In the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel had developed this account of the perceptual object in the context of Chapter 2, Perception. Hegels primary task there had not
been to give a type of phenomenological account of the nature of perception, but
rather to examine a certain conception of the nature of what is. What he there calls
Perception concerns a certain normative standard for what is to count as real, and he
shows that this conception is self-undermining, and is in turn replaced by another
standard, that he calls the understanding. However, it seems legitimate to extract
from that chapter a general conception of Hegels phenomenology of the perceptual
object.
22
23
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story, this will in its essential respects be reversed: it is just the masters
freedom, purchased by the un-freedom of others that will subvert any
capacity for a free and rational life of the mind. The master is a nonlabouring consumer, whose desire is closer to that of the non-human
animalone immediately expressed in the negation, that is the consumption, of the objects of the world. The slave, of course, cannot act
on his impulsive desires, as he has to negate or suppress his own natural desires and replace them with the actions required to serve the
masters conceptually conveyed will.30 This adds a layer of complexity to
the forms of recognition and, importantly, self-recognition that can
occur in this society. And not only does it reflect systematic differences
marking off Hegels approach as a distinctly modern one, it also
points to the degree that Hegels idealism accommodates the idea of
processes working below the level of the overt conceptualisations
articulating the manifest view of the world, and the extent to which
Hegel is able to maintain a distinction between the capacities of the
bearing of a conceptualized social role and the rules constituting
that role.
As we have seen, the masterslave relation is at its basis an institutionally defined recognitive relation. In behaving towards his master as
a master, the slave is continually acknowledging the rightness of the
masters bearing of this status, and the same can be said of the behaviour of the master towards the slave. But each can then recognize himself in the others recognition, and thereby achieve a type of selfconsciousnessthe master understanding himself as a master, and the
slave as a slave. But identity cannot be as simple as the apparently
dyadic relation between the concepts master and slave suggests,
since all relations for Hegel are mediated or triangulated. Thus the
slaves relation to the master is mediated by the objects that the slave
labours upon, as labouring for the master is just what defines the relationship of master and slave.31 This mediation means that while the
slave is addressed by the master as a slave, and so recognizes himself in
that address as a slave, there are other relations that can contribute to
30
Now, by working for another, the Slave too surmounts his instincts, andby
thereby raising himself to thought, to science, to technique, by transforming nature in
relation to an ideahe too succeeds in dominating Nature and his Nature Kojve,
Introduction, p. 49.
31
Similarly, the relation between the slave and the object worked on is mediated by
the slaves relation to the master, because the slave acts on the expressed will of the
master, not on his own desire.
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The Relevance of Hegels Analysis for Today
Hegel himself said that philosophy was its own time comprehended
in thoughts,33 and his time was effectively the turn and first decades of
the nineteenth century. Much has occurred in the world, and especially the world of work, since then. It would be unrealistic, I think, to
assume that we could find applicable solutions in Hegels writings to
problems that could hardly have even been foreseen two hundred years
ago. But conceiving of a problem in the right way is at least the first step
on the way to finding a solution, and in Hegel we find many percipient
clues for how to conceive of problems that seem endemic to the twentyfirst century. Lets consider, for example, the problems that are seen as
following on from the instrumental relation to nature that seems dominant in modernity.
Consider, for example, the criticisms of the scenario of human
emancipation through work that are found in Hannah Arendt, a thinker
whose neo-Aristotelian proclivities show in her attempt to re-establish
the priority of praxis over poisis.34 In short, Arendt had made a
tripartite distinction between labour, work and praxis that was in
some ways akin to Aristotles between animal movement, poisis and
praxis, and in some ways different. Effectively, Aristotelian poisis is
split between the practices designated as work that leave a structure
within which public life will be shaped, such as building a city; and
those that only leave something for consumptionlabouractivities
such as cooking a fish for consumption. The Greeks were correct,
she thinks, in associating the latter with animal existence, and this is at
the heart of a somewhat damning critique of modernity. What the
modern capitalist economy has done is to have geared production to
generalized human consumption, and so the world of work had been
colonized by the world of labour. But even when work is distinguished from labour as not reducible to the realm of nature and necessity, it is still to be regarded as subordinate to praxis because of its
instrumental nature. As in Aristotles analysis, in work the ends are
given to an activity from without, while in praxis, the activity is undertaken for its own sake. In work there is a type of universality that goes
33
G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. W. Wood, trans.
H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 21.
34
H. Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958.
along with the externality of the objective that levels the individuality
of the worker.35
Arendts critique of the project of collective human liberation
through work was partly directed against Marx, and we might think
that it applies equally to Hegel as well, but this, I think, would be a
mistake. Especially following Kojves Marx-influenced reading of
Hegel, there has been a tendency to over-generalize the lessons of the
masterslave section of Chapter 4 in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and
to see the human subordination of nature through work as the framing
narrative of the development of free and rational spirit. But the categories articulating the world of the master and slave are themselves not
adequate to the reality that is developing within its boundaries.
Consider Henry Harris comments on Kojves reading, for example,
where he points out that the masterslave dialectic is framed within
the limited form of cognition that is the analogue (for self-consciousness) of perception, and so this dialectic cannot be generalised to the
shape of the movement of the Phenomenology as a whole.36 The very
dyadic distinction between independence and dependence or subjectivity and objectivity that is modelled in the masterslave relation will
be undermined, as the contradiction at the heart of this relationship
becomes manifest. Hence, the masterslave relation should not be seen
as a distinction that ends up being reproduced at the level of the relation of human to non-human nature. Kojves reading of Hegel essentially belongs to the genre of anthropological readings of Hegel
which, following the left-Hegelian lead of Feuerbach and others, had
put the focus on the expression of a human essence predicated on a
generalized liberation from nature. However, I suggest, this does not
reflect Hegels own account.37 And yet this does not imply that the
35
We might think of her implicit approach to Hegel as a manifestation in the realm
of the analysis of work of the type of criticism that accuses him of a logocentric subsumption of the individual by the universality of the concept, a concept conceived
along Platonic lines as the prototype of some artefact to be fabricated.
36
H. S. Harris, Hegels Ladder, Vol. 1, p. 379n. 33.
37
We might here consider the comparison between the respective analyses of Hegel
and the most famous social theorist to emerge from the left-Hegelian camp, Karl
Marx. Marx might be regarded as having attempted to naturalize Hegels analysis by
transforming an explicitly idealist form of philosophy into a somewhat naturalisticallyconceived scientific theory. Marx correctly perceived that Hegel thought of philosophy as operating at the same level as religion, and extended a type of reductive
analysis of religion to that of philosophy as well. In Hegelian terms this is to collapse
the type of reasoning that properly belonged to Reason or Vernunft, back into the
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opposing right theistic reading of Hegel was correct, after all, since
the mutually excluding determinations of theism and atheism are yet
again instantiations of that same dichotomous structure of which
Hegel is attempting to show the limits.
There are too many dimensions to this nexus between the more
romantically orientated critiques of instrumental reason to which
Arendt belongs and Hegels already complex views to be expanded
upon here, but a few points might be usefully made. Importantly, Hegel
was one of the first philosophers to acknowledge the modern emergence of civil society as a distinct public realm centred on a type of
production that was geared to the satisfaction of basic needswhat he
called the system of need. Moreover, it is clear that he grasped the profound changes that this was to have for the nature of work. Given the
role of work in the transformation of the body and the conception of
the soul as the form of the human body, it is clear that he thought of the
changes brought about by the modern economy in the nature of work
as having implications for changes in the human soul. Indeed, we
might see some of these changes as signalled by Hegels understanding
of the logic of work and activity more generally that is already implicit
in the masterslave dialectic.
I earlier alluded to the modern conception of activity as a type of
making true, and it is this that allows actions to be grasped as chained
in relations of ends and means. For example, if the objective is to make
it true that r, and if we know that if q then r, and also that if p then q,
then we have a prima facie reason to do p. Here we might talk of execution conditions for commands that are analogous to assertability
conditions for assertions, and think of actions as linked in relations of
practical inference analogous to the way we inferentially chain beliefs.
framework of the understanding, or Verstand and that transformation radically
changes the understanding of the historical narrative involved. Marx understood
historical materialism as an explanatory theory somewhat akin to Darwinian evolutionary theory, but Hegels narrative was not meant to be explanatory in that sense.
Rather, it was meant as something more akin to a retrospective genealogy in which the
consideration that is to the fore is that of grasping where the norms that we take as
authoritative came from and grasping the sorts of transformations they have gone
through on the way to being our norms. An explanatory account would explain those
norms away because they are not grasped as the norms of the subjects, us, doing the
explaining. It is this claim to the irreducibility of the normative structure of spirit to
any non-normatively material nature which opposes an idealist like Hegel to materialists like Hobbes or Marx. But, as I have tried to suggest, this does not imply an account
of the logos that can be isolated from the material basis of the lives of the individuals in
which it is embodied.
But the possibility for this type of mediation had been implicit in the
very relation between master and slave. Once the gap is opened up
between impulse and action, which is consequent upon the masters
commanding the slave, this gap can be progressively mediated by intervening steps.
It is this ever-widening gap, of course, that is complained of by the
more romantic critics of instrumental reason. As the division of labour
increases, the output of each persons work will in general be likely to
be directed towards the production of the execution conditions of
someone elses activity. That is, the output of labour is no longer the
perceptible object as it is in the type of work we think of as craftan
object that manifests the very transformations involved in its very production. This is the world where the value of work is measured in very
abstract ways such as in relation to the satisfaction of key performance
indicators or in terms of symbolic status conferred by its monetary
equivalent. It is not the sort of value that can be simply recognized in
the transformations of an object, such as that perceived in the products
of craft activity. The modern capitalist economy is in some sense a
realm in which everybody is theoretically equally the master and slave
to each other, and Hegel is well aware of the contradictions that exist at
the heart of it. Thus while acknowledging the modern markets ability
to meet human needs in ways that are historically unprecedented,
Hegel also recognized the degrading effects of the modern economy,
and the corrosive effects this system has had on the human soul. One
source of this comes from the production of extremes of wealth and
poverty generated by the form of life itself.38 As with his rejection of
Aristotles claim that slaves were slaves by nature, Hegel is crystal clear
that in modernity, the disparity of wealth and power are not the result
of the natures of the rich and the poor. However, aside from the question of poverty, Hegel is aware of the malady that is now spoken of as
affluenza.39 While the type of craft work involved in the production
of an object of recognizable value is essential to the workers grasp of
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, p. 195 and pp. 244245.
See, for example, C. Hamilton and R. Denniss, Affluenza: When Too Much is
Never Enough, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2005; and O. James, Affluenza: How
to be Successful and Stay Sane, London, Vermilion, 2007. We might think of these
diagnoses of the problems of the modern psyche as standing in the tradition originating from J.-J. Rousseaus percipient reflections on the pathologies of the emerging
modern subject in works like A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, in The Social
Contract and Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole, London, Dent, 1973.
38
39
62
paul redding
40
I would like to thank Jean-Philippe Deranty, Axel Honneth, Simon Lumsden,
Emmanuel Renault and Nicholas H. Smith for very helpful comments on an earlier
version of this chapter.
Chapter three
64
Horkheimer wished to provide both an analysis and a critique of capitalism that is informed by moral philosophy.
Although Horkheimer believed that such an enterprise required
empirical studies and could only be carried out on the basis of philosophical, sociological and psychological research,4 his own studies suffered from an unquestioned reliance on Marxs social theory5 as well as
his idea of an unalienated, rational society.6 By contrast, some contemporary philosophers try to achieve the aims of Critical Theory with
a recognition-theoretical framework inspired by Hegelian thought.
Axel Honneth initiated and continues to be the most important representative of the recognition-theoretical turn in Critical Theory. In
fact, Honneth takes recognition theory to be a particularly well-suited
basis for an analysis and a critique of contemporary capitalism that is
informed by moral philosophy. He also draws on Hegelian thought in
an effort to substantiate this claim.7
What are the main arguments behind the kind of Critical Theory
defended by Honneth? Is it successful? In what follows, I shall examine
these questions. First, I will lay out the main features of Honneths
theory (II) and then consider the criticism that both his analysis and
critique of capitalism have received (III). With resources provided by a
new interpretation of several elements in Hegels Philosophy of Right,
D. C. Hoy and T. McCarthy, Critical Theory, Cambridge (USA), Blackwell, 1994;
R. Wiggershaus, Max Horkheimer zur Einfhrung, Hamburg, Junius, 1998, and
R. Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter Schule. Geschichte - Theoretische Entwicklung Politische Bedeutung, Munich, Vienna, Hanser, 2001; and A. Honneth, Eine soziale
Pathologie der Vernunft. Zur intellektuellen Erbschaft der Kritischen Theorie, in eds.
C. Halbig, M. Quante, Axel Honneth: Sozialphilosophie zwischen Kritik und
Anerkennung, Mnster, Lit, 2004, pp. 931.
4
Compare Horkheimer, Die gegenwrtige Lage der Sozialphilosophie und die
Aufgaben eines Instituts fr Sozialforschung.
5
Compare for example M. Horkheimer, Bemerkungen ber Wissenschaft und
Krise, in M. Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, Frankfurt (Main), Fischer,
1932, p. 44; M. Horkheimer, Materialismus und Metaphysik, in M. Horkheimer,
Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, Frankfurt (Main), Fischer, 1933, p. 81; M. Horkheimer,
Materialismus und Moral, in Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, Frankfurt
(Main), Fischer, 1933, p. 128; and M. Horkheimer, Vorbemerkung [zu Kurt
Mandelbaums und Gerhard Meyers Zur Theorie der Planwirtschaft], in M. Horkheimer,
Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, Frankfurt (Main): Fischer, 1934, pp. 221224.
6
Compare for example Horkheimer, Materialismus und Metaphysik, pp.117
and 137.
7
Compare for example A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral
Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson, Cambridge, Mass., Polity Press,
1995 and A. Honneth, Suffering from Indeterminacy: An Attempt at a Reactualization
of Hegels Philosophy of Right, Assen, Van Gorcum, 2000.
66
Compare ibid.
ibid., p. 44.
27
Compare ibid. On this topic see also E. Renault, Taking on the Inheritance of
Critical Theory: Saving Marx by Recognition?, in eds. Schmidt am Busch and Zurn,
The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 241256.
28
Compare A. Honneth, Organisierte Selbstverwirklichung. Paradoxien der
Individualisierung, in ed. A. Honneth, Befreiung aus der Mndigkeit, Frankfurt
(Main), Campus, pp. 141158 and A. Honneth, Work and Recognition:
A Redefinition, in eds. Schmidt am Busch and Zurn, The Philosophy of Recognition:
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 223240 as well as Hartmann and
Honneth, Paradoxes of Capitalism.
29
A. Honneth, Nachwort: Der Grund der Anerkennung. Eine Erwiderung auf
kritische Rckfragen, in A. Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung, 2nd edition, Frankfurt
(Main), Suhrkamp, 2003, pp. 303341.
25
26
68
70
19841987). By contrast, Fraser believes that markets are culturally embedded (see
ibid., p. 212), but that market prices are governed primarily by political-economic
factors that have to be analyzed systems-theoretically.
39
See ibid., pp. 216222.
40
Honneth, Nachwort: Der Grund der Anerkennung. Eine Erwiderung auf
kritische Rckfragen, p. 334.
41
Compare for example Zurn, Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy:
Dilemmas of Honneths Critical Social Theory.
42
S. Voigt, Institutionenkonomik (Munich, Fink, 2002), p. 19.
43
Compare H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, Personal Respect, Private Property, and
Market Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel, in Ethical Theory and
Moral Practice, Vol. 11, 2008, pp. 573586 and Schmidt am Busch, Can the Goals of
the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a Theory of Recognition?, pp. 257283.
72
It should first be noted that Hegel uses the term honor in this context
to emphasize the importance of what it denotes. Indeed, he regards
44
I have discussed Hegels conception of recognition as a person elsewhere.
Compare Schmidt am Busch, Personal Respect, Private Property, and Market
Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel. See also M. Quante, Hegels
Concept of Action, trans. Dean Moyar, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004,
pp. 1355.
45
Hegel, G.W.F., Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. W. Wood, trans.
H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 244. I use H. B. Nisbets
translation of Hegels Philosophy of Right, which I have occasionally altered for the
sake of clarity and consistency. Changes to Nisbets translation are not noted. I quote
Hegels 1821/22 commentary to the Philosophy of Right with my own translations
(see G. W. F. Hegel, Die Philosophie des Rechts. Vorlesung von 1821/22, ed. H. Hoppe,
Frankfurt (Main), Suhrkamp, 2005).
46
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 250256.
47
ibid., 306.
48
ibid., 253, Remark.
49
ibid., 207.
50
ibid., 244.
51
ibid., 207.
74
76
he has for a good life of his own. Against such a backdrop, he is only
recognized [] in [his] own eyes if he does indeed lead a life that
fulfills these three requirements.
In this case, since the conception of honor that the bourgeois holds
is shared by the other members of society, he is also recognized in their
eyes as someone
(i) who has made himself belong to one of the moments of bourgeois society through his own decision;
(ii) who has, by his own effort, earned skills and qualifications
whose application in the work world is of use to society; and
(iii) who does not receives goods from society without producing
goods for society.
As an amendment to what Hegel has said, one should point out that it
is also important for a bourgeois
(iv) to be recognized by the other members of society with regard to
the above points (i), (ii) and (iii).
Thus, it is not only important for such a person to lead a life that fulfills
requirements (i), (ii) and (iii); it is also important for him to be recognized by society on these counts. To take up Hegels formulation above,
it could be said that regarding oneself as being recognized in the eyes
of others is another aspect of an honorable life.
According to Hegels conception of bourgeois honor, then, it is in
the interest of the members of a modern society to earn their living
or satisfy their demand for goodsin a particular way: namely by participating in social processes of production. People who wish to lead
honorable lives in this sense wish not merely to fend for themselves,
but to do so in a way that also fends for others (their fellow bourgeois
and/or the public). Although many economists regard work as merely
something arduous and privative that people endeavor to minimize,63
according to Hegels conception of bourgeois honor, work (in the social
sense of the term) is an integral part of a good life in the modern world.
Hegels idea that this form of honor is a good of great importanceforthe members of modern societies develops out of a socialpsychological analysis of the living conditions of the unemployed and
See, for instance, K. Hillebrand, Elementare Makrokonomie, Munich, Vienna,
Oldenbourg, 1996.
63
V
According to the Philosophy of Right, three types of institutions are
decisive for ensuring that the greatest number of bourgeois can lead
an honorable life: (1.) abstract right,68 (2.) the police69 and (3.) the
corporations.70 Abstract right is correlated to aspect (i) of an honorable life: it protects the private autonomy71 of an individual bourgeois to
decide as an individual72 which career he would like to take up. As
Ihave shown elsewhere, abstract right may be understood as an institutionalization of the mutual recognition of bourgeois as persons
It should be noted, though, that this analysis is part of a speculative philosophical investigation. What Hegel understands by such an approach is a question I have
discussed elsewhere. Compare H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, Religise Hingabe oder soziale
Freiheit. Die saint-simonistische Theorie und die Hegelsche Sozialphilosophie, Hamburg,
Felix Meiner, 2007, pp. 93102.
65
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 245, Remark.
66
ibid.
67
ibid. F. Neuhouser is therefore correct in emphasizing the spiritual satisfactionself-esteem and the recognition of othersthat comes from fulfilling ones
material needs through ones own labor and effort. In F. Neuhouser, Foundations of
Hegels Social Theory. Actualizing Freedom, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press,
2000, p. 173.
68
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 34104.
69
ibid., 231249.
70
ibid., 250256.
71
I use this phrase in the juridical sense. See, for instance, T. Korenke, Brgerliches
Recht, Munich, Vienna, Oldenbourg Korenke, 2006.
72
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 46.
64
78
73
Compare Schmidt am Busch, Personal Respect, Private Property, and Market
Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel.
74
It may not be amiss to signal that Hegels theory of the police is inspired by cameralistic economics. On the philosophical foundations of this school of thought, see
my discussion in Schmidt am Busch, Cameralism as Political Metaphysics: Human
Nature, the State, and Natural Law in the Thought of Johann Heinrich Gottlob von
Justi, in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 16, no. 3,
pp. 409430.
75
Compare Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 236. On Hegels theory of
the police see, for instance, Hardimon, Hegels Social Philosophy. The Project of
Reconciliation, pp. 195197, and P. Franco, Hegels Philosophy of Freedom, New Haven,
London, Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 265277.
76
Compare Schmidt am Busch, Religise Hingabe oder soziale Freiheit. Die saintsimonistische Theorie und die Hegelsche Sozialphilosophie, pp. 156163.
77
S. Gallagher has emphasized this point. Compare S. Gallagher, Interdependence
and Freedom in Hegels Economics, in ed. W. Maker, Hegel on Economics and Freedom,
Macon, Mercer University Press, 1987, p. 174. A. Honneth, by contrast, takes a different view on this point when he accuses Hegel of equating spheres of recognition
and institutional complexes. Compare Honneth, Redistribution as Recognition:
A Response to Nancy Fraser, pp.172173.
See, for instance, Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 207 and 253.
Hegel, Die Philosophie des Rechts. Vorlesung von 1821/22, 256.
80
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 201.
81
ibid., 203205.
82
ibid., 201. It should be noted that Hegel does not use the term system in a
systems-theoretical sense.
83
ibid., 252.
78
79
80
sense that they are under the supervision of the public authority.
As for the rights of corporations, Hegel says the following:
1. Corporations have the right to determine for themselves
whom they would like to take on as members. However, corporations may not engage in hiring practices that would be discriminatory by todays lights. Rather, they are legally bound to
recruit their members according to the following criteria: (i)
the skill[s] or qualifications of the candidate; (ii) the rectitude or willingness of the candidate to observe the regulationsand demands of the law; (iii) societys universal context
or the social need of the goods produced by the corporation. For
Hegel, candidates skill[s] and rectitude are to be determined
objectively. Therefore, in a corporations hiring practices, there
needs to be a general and transparent way of determining which
qualifications are expected as well as what counts as proof
thereof.
2. Corporations have the right to establish insurance systems that
secure the livelihoods of their members should these members
prove unable to work due to illness, accident or old age, and they
are authorized to require their members to contribute to the
maintenance of these systems.84 In this way, they provide their
members with legal claims to financial support in case of an
inability to work. Within a corporation, the protection against
particular contingencies thus takes the form of rights: Insofar
as corporations protect their members, the members have a
right to the corporations help, and thus it is not alms that they
receive, but rather a right.85 Because this is so, in the corporation rectitude [] receives the true recognition and honor
which are due to it.86
3. Corporations have the right to introduce measures by which
their members may gain skills, qualifications or further training,
and they are authorized to require their members to take part in
such measures.
84
In this context, Hegel is thinking of contributions that are proportionate to ones
income. Compare ibid., 253, Remark.
85
ibid., 253.
86
ibid., 253, Remark.
ibid., 238.
ibid., 252.
89
Compare ibid., 162165. See also A. Honneth, Suffering from Indeterminacy.
90
Hegel refers here to his claim that the corporation is like a second family (ibid.,
252) for its members. See above. We can leave this point aside here.
87
88
82
According to this passage, the member of a corporation leads an honorable lifefor he has, as Hegel says, his honor in his estate. We thus
need to address two questions: What does it mean to have ones honor
in ones estate? And how does the corporation contribute to leading an
honorable life?
As we have seen, to lead an honorable life one must
(i) decide for oneself which moment of bourgeois society one
would like to belong to;
(ii) cultivate specific skills and qualifications whose application in
the work world is of use to society;
(iii) earn ones living by applying such skills and qualifications
within the work world; and
(iv) be recognized by society with regard to points (i), (ii) and (iii).
If we assume that abstract right provides sufficient protection for
aspect (i) of an honorable life, as well as the social recognition of this
aspect, then we have to ask: How does the corporation contribute to
the fulfillment of the other three aspects laid out above?
Regarding point (ii): The members of a (properly functioning) corporation possess qualifications whose application in the work world
benefits society. As we have seen, possessing an objective qualification
of skill is a condition of their membership in the corporation, and by
participating in measures for gaining qualifications or further training,
they make sure that they remain in possession of capabilities that are
relevant for production. As members of corporations, bourgeois can
thus earn socially relevant qualifications.
Regarding point (iii): The members of a corporation mutually secure
their livelihood through work and through the operations of an internal insurance system that protects them financially should they be
unable to work due to illness, accident or old age. As a result, the corporate assurance of livelihood is constituted by the mutual work of
these bourgeois: by making a part of their income available for the
support of those colleagues who are not productive at that time, the
working members of the corporation secure not only their own subsistence, but also that of their colleagues.
ibid., 253.
91
84
The social recognition of the professional capability and competence of a corporation member can be analyzed as a two-step process.
The first step concerns an individuals recognition by his colleagues
(step 1) and then his recognition by society (step 2).
Within the corporation, a members recognition as a professionally
qualified and competent individual is based on the ability of other
members of the corporation to judge the relevant qualities of their colleague. Clearly Hegel is of the opinion that the members of a corporation are more capable than most other members of society to make
such judgments. This is not implausible if there exists a professionally
specialized society based on the division of labor. Colleagues sharing a
professional field know which qualifications and efforts are needed in
their work sphere, and they have the competence to judge the qualifications and efforts displayed by their colleagues. On the other hand, in
a highly specialized work world individuals normally lack the knowledge to judge professional performance in other social sectors appropriately. For these reasons, it is plausible to maintain that in a modern
society colleagues are especially qualified to judge their competence.
The recognition that the professionally qualified individual experiences within society (step 2) is based on the recognition that his colleagues accord him (step 1). Following Hegel, the former kind of
recognition takes place when ones recognition by ones colleagues is
rendered public in a specific way. Titles act as the vehicles of this
communication insofar as they distinguish their bearers as members
of a corporation. They are the external sign for everyone that he is
recognized as such, or the publicity of his recognition by his fellow
members, who are in the position to judge his competence.
In regard to the general recognition of the individual as professionally qualified, non-members of a given corporation simply follow the
judgment internally carried out within that corporationjudgment
that is rendered public in a socially determined manner. While nonmembers normally have neither the opportunity nor the professional
competence to judge the capability and competence of a corporation
member, they rely on the judgment of those who, as bearers of titles,
are publicly recognized as competent judges in a particular section of
the work world.95 If such judges esteem someone in the socially
95
On this topic of being recognized as a recognizer see H. Ikheimo, On the Genus
and Species of Recognition, Inquiry, Vol. 45, 2002, pp. 447462, H. Ikheimo &
A. Laitinen, Analyzing Recognition: Identification, Acknowledgement and Recognitive
86
of the professional activities in question. Members of the same profession (or corporation) perform work that is similar enough to be compared on the basis of its content. (For this reason, colleagues are
particularly able to judge one anothers professional capability and
competence). By contrast, many professional activities in a highly specialized work world cannot be compared by reference to their content.
Indeed, what should one select as the measure for a comparison
between, say, scientific, pedagogical, craftsmans and artistic work?
To summarize: in Hegels view, societies characterized by abstract
right, police regulation of markets and sites of corporate production
form a set of institutions that enable people to lead an honorable life,
that is to say
(i) to decide for themselves which moment of bourgeois society
they would like to belong to;
(ii) to cultivate specific skills and qualifications whose application
in the work world is of use to society;
(iii) to earn their living by applying such skills and qualifications
within the work world; and
(iv) to be recognized by society with regard to points (i), (ii)
and (iii).
VI
In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel implicitly upholds the following two
theses:
1. As a member of a functioning corporation a bourgeois is not
interested in attaining an ever-increasing level of (personal)
consumption.
2. As a member of a functioning corporation a bourgeois is not
interested in attaining an ever-increasing level of (personal)
income.
Within the framework of the present study it is simply not possible to
explain why Hegel subscribes to these two theses. However, it is also
not necessary. I will thus limit myself to remarking that Hegel believed
that members of a well-ordered society can fulfill their need for recognition (as persons, bourgeois and members of a political community)
without having either of the interests referenced under headings 1
and 2. Furthermore, such members have no other needs that would
ibid., 306.
ibid., 253, Remark.
99
See, for instance, G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophie des Geistes (1805/06), in Gesammelte
Werke, Vol. 8, ed. R.-P. Horstmann, Hamburg, Meiner, 1976, pp, 242245.
97
98
88
100
90
104
As we have noted, Hegel occasionally employs the expression estate [Stand] as
a synonym for corporation. See section V above. This is also the case here, as indicated by the passage cited above (If the individual is not a member of a legally recognized corporation (and it is only through legal recognition that a community becomes
a corporation), his is without the honor of belonging to an estate []).
105
Hegel, Die Philosophie des Rechts. Vorlesung von 1821/22, 253.
106
107
92
highest possible income because of his concern for the future. This is
so because he can only protect himself against the particular contingencies108 of human existence through savings. This explains why he
strives to maximize his income in his trade and why in doingsohehas
no qualms about making demands in the most impudent manner.
Following Hegels line of argumentation here, one could say that our
theory (a) is well-suited to account for one aspect of the striving for
recognition analyzed in section (i): the interest in always attaining a
higher income for oneself. To explain this, it would indeed be sufficient
to consider the need to secure ones own livelihood (N-1), and to
assume that human actors are selfish and that their livelihood and
satisfaction lack stability (F-1, F-2 and F-3). By contrast, it would not
be necessary to consider the needs to be socially esteemed as a professionally competent individual and as a bourgeois who successfully
earns his living (N-2 and N-3), or the question of whether these needs
are satisfied or not (F-4 and F-5).
With regard to this argument, two critical remarks are in order:
1. In my view, it is questionable whether every effort to increase
ones income can be explained conclusively by the attempt to
secure ones own livelihood for the long-term. The (continuous)
effort to make a fortune that is already very large even larger can
hardly be traced back to such a motive.109 (This striving could
perhaps be understood as a habitualized striving for high income
that originally served to secure ones livelihood for the longterm. However, we can leave this aside due to the following
point.)
2. Attempts to attain a high level of consumption cannot be
explained by the factors named in (a). If striving for an everincreasing income originates in the motivation to secure ones
livelihood for the long-term, it will be accompanied by the effort
to accumulate savings and thus to limit consumptive expenditures. Therefore, costly consumptive manifestations of ones
own success in [ones] trade cannot be explained by what is
stated in (a). For this reason, we require a different theory.
110
Here I leave aside the possibility that consumptive expenditures may also be
financed by inherited wealth.
111
The fact that Hegel shares this assumption is given in 234 and 244 of the
Philosophy of Right.
112
See on this topic W. Sombart, Liebe, Luxus und Kapitalismus. ber die Entstehung
der modernen Welt aus dem Geist der Verschwendung, Berlin, Wagenbach, 1996,
pp. 8589.
94
113
By making this case, I do not say, of course, that the behavior analyzed in section
(i) is the only possible way to compensate for the lack of esteem as a professionally qualified and competent individual. Striving for esteem based on political
power may also be understood in this way. This possibility is discussed by M. Weber.
Compare M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, Munich,
C. H. Beck, 2006, pp. 6869.
96
116
T. Veblen is also of the opinion that consumptive behavior performs a social
representational function. In contrast to Hegel, however, he believes that what is represented in this manner is ones independence from incomes gained through occupational employment. (Compare T. Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption, New York,
Penguin, 2006, p. 21). By way of consumptive expenditures, the members of modern
societies thus wish to show that [their] time had not been spent in industrial employment (ibid., p. 23). According to Veblens theory, then, social esteem does not refer to
what Hegel calls bourgeois honor.
117
Fraser, Distorted Beyond All Recognition: A Rejoinder to Axel Honneth,
p. 211.
118
Honneth, Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser, p. 138.
98
119
I borrow this phrase from L. Boltanski and . Chiapello. Compare Boltanski &
Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism.
120
For this reason, it is inappropriate to maintain that a social theory of recognition
is congenitally blind to economic processes which cannot be reduced to cultural
schemas of evaluation (Fraser, Distorted Beyond All Recognition: A Rejoinder to
Axel Honneth, p. 215).
100
Chapter four
1.Introduction
In Work and Recognition: A Redefinition Axel Honneth seeks to
reorient the critical debate about the organisation of work under capitalism.2 He enjoins us to replace what he calls external criticism,
which is made from a perspective outside the capitalist system and
assumes the availability of forms of work that are unaffected by the
modern division of labour and task specialisation, with immanent
criticism grounded in the normative conditions of the capitalist labour
market. In order to articulate these normative conditions, Honneth
draws on the writings of both Hegel and Durkheim.3 He argues that
the key to uncovering these normative conditions is to view the
primary function of work as fostering social integration rather than
economic efficiency. But as both Hegel and Durkheim saw, the reality
of the division of labour and task specialisation under capitalism
J. Commons, Progressive Individualism, The American Magazine of Civics,
Vol. 6, no. 6, 1895, pp. 562574, pp. 5734.
2
A. Honneth, Work and Recognition: A Redefinition, in eds. H. -C. Schmidt am
Busch and C. Zurn, The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2010, pp. 223240.
3
G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, Newburyport, MA, Focus, 2002 and
E. Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, New York, Free Press, 1997.
1
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makes it difficult for work to perform this function. This raises the
question: under what conditions is the capitalist organisation of work
able to foster solidarity and thereby social integration? For Hegel,
Durkheim and Honneth, the answer lies in the socially integrative
achievements of institutions that support (but are not identical with)
the capitalist labour market.
Traditionally, orthodox or neoclassical economics has not assigned
a constructive place to institutions beyond those necessary for the
maintenance of civil order and the enforcement of contracts. Apart
from these core institutions, others, such as professional associations
and trade unions, are viewed at best as providing a veil for market
forces or at worst as obstacles to the achievement of economic efficiency. By contrast a heterodox school of thought in economics, institutionalism, argues that institutions are crucial to the operation of the
economy in general and to the labour market in particular.4 A further
point of contrast concerns the proper function ascribed to markets.
Orthodox economics proposes that the principal normative goal of the
economy is the achievement of economic efficiency, which in turn
ensures that firms maximize profits and consumers maximize utility.
From this perspective the organisation of work should be structured in
such a way that labour is efficiently allocated. The issue of social integration is not explicitly discussed in this framework, but is assumed to
more or less spontaneously emerge as a by-product of the efficient
functioning of the economy. By contrast, institutional economics recognizes the worth of human labour and the dignity of the worker and
proposes that the achievement of economic efficiency is not the sole or
even primary function of the labour market.5 On the institutionalist
view, work should be organised in a way that ensures the workplace is
not a source of injustice and offers the possibility of personal development and self-actualisation.6
4
Within Economics there are different traditions in institutionalism. Typically a
distinction is made between old and new institutionalism and this is discussed in
a later section. The argument developed in this chapter concerns links between old
institutionalism and recognition theory. A useful introduction to the old institutionalist approach to labour is eds. D. Champlin and J. Knoedler The Institutionalist
Tradition in Labor Economics, New York, M. E. Sharpe, 2004.
5
D. Champlin and J. Knoedler, Prospects for the Future of Institutionalist Labour
Economics, in eds. Champlin and Knoedler, The Institutionalist Tradition in Labor
Economics.
6
B. Kaufman, John R. Commons and the Wisconsin School on Industrial
RelationsStrategy and Policy, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 57, no. 1,
2003, pp. 346.
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106
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13
14
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does not mention. Durkheim believed that because economic life had
become and was becoming more specialised, the state on its own was
not able to regulate economic activity sufficiently to avoid the abuses of
power that undermine the sense of social solidarity that would otherwise spontaneously emanate from the division of labour. According to
Durkheim, there needed to be organisations that could operate in the
social space between the individual and the state, in specialised spheres
of economic activity such as a particular industry. Ideally, the sole
group that meets these conditions is that constituted by all those working in the same industry, assembled together and organised in a single
body. This is what is termed a corporation, or professional group.15
At the time of writing Durkheim reported that unions of either
employers or employees were the social groups that most closely
resembled what he had in mind. However, he noted that whilst it was
both legitimate and necessary that these unions be separate organisations there was little regular contact between them. What was
required was a common organisation to draw them together without
causing them to lose their individuality, one within which they might
work out a common set of rules and which, fixing their relationship to
each other, would bear down with equal authority upon both.16 The
absence of such a common organisation led otherwise to the group
with the most power setting the terms and conditions of work. In other
words, the contract that emerged from bargaining between the two
groups would be a reflection of the power advantage one group had
over another. Such an outcome would more than likely violate a number of the normative conditions outlined by Durkheim. For example,
the group with the most power would be able to coerce the weaker
group into accepting contractual terms that were inferior to those that
would have been negotiated had bargaining resources been equal.
It is difficult to know exactly what type of institution Durkheim had
in mind when he talked about a common organisation appropriate
for modern societies. Indeed, Durkheim argued in the Preface to the
second edition of the Division of Labour that it is not the sociologists
job to set out in detail what this common organisation should look
like. Rather he argues that the sociologists task is to identify on the
basis of detailed analysis the general principles that should be followed
Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, p. xxxv.
Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, p. xxxvi.
15
16
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112
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27
See Hodgson, What are Institutions? and B. Kaufman, The Institutional
Economics of John R. Commons: Complement and Substitute for Neoclassical
Economic Theory, Socio-Economic Review, Vol. 5, no. 1, 2007, pp. 345.
28
Commons, Institutional Economics:Its Place in Political Economy, pp. 7374.
29
Commons, Institutional Economics, p. 655.
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116
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37
See Ramstad, John R. Commonss Reasonable Value and the Problem of Just
Price.
38
Commons, Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political Economy, p. 337.
39
Commons, Progressive Individualism, p. 573.
40
See Commons, Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political Economy and
Ramstad John R. Commonss Reasonable Value and the Problem of Just Price.
41
Kaufman, John R. Commons and the Wisconsin School on Industrial Relations
Strategy and Policy, p. 4.
42
J. R. Commons, Industrial Relations, Papers Reel, Vol. 17, 1919, p. 1; cited in
Kaufman, John R. Commons and the Wisconsin School on Industrial Relations
Strategy and Policy, p. 4.
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43
Kaufman, John R. Commons and the Wisconsin School on Industrial Relations
Strategy and Policy.
44
ibid.
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122
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124
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126
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128
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70
ibid., p. 54.
71
PART TWO
Chapter five
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See J. Dewey, Three Independent Factors in Morals, The Later Works, Vol. 5,
Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois Press, 1988, pp. 279288.
15
A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995.
16
On the link between autonomy, expression and cooperation, see J.-P. Deranty,
Expression and Cooperation as Norms of Contemporary Work, in this volume.
14
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between good and bad human practices. There are indeed very contradictory conceptions of health, they do not usually function as normative criteria, and they have no immediate link with the problem of
evaluation of human practices. But if one understands norms as ways
of making explicit what is a stake in our social experience, and to monitor our practical endeavors to make it better, there is no reason to
reject the ethical and political importance of health17at least if health
is understood and referred to in a negative way, especially with regard
to the various social situations where the feeling that something is
going wrong in our life is able to contaminate all our existence and to
alter our mental health. As Dejours plainly states it in his book Travail
usure mentale, work is a condition of mental health, an opportunity for
recovery, and a possible cause of extreme psychic suffering.18 If health
is understood as a condition of positive freedom, this other norm can
be conceived of as closely linked as well as complementary to this former one. It is worth noticing that the psychic investment in ones body
and in ones creativity within a cooperative community of work belongs
to the conditions of individual and collective autonomy. But it is also
important to highlight that the norm of health is able to capture other
aspects of the normative problems experienced at work. In fact, individuals do not complain only about injustice and domination. They
also complain about stress and unbearable conditions of work, about a
suffering at work that is able to undermine the meaning of their activity, and efforts to colonize not only their professional life but also their
social and private life.
It seems to me that a normative conception of work has to refer to
the norms of democracy, of justice, of autonomy and health. One interest of a theory of recognition is to offer a model to associate these four
norms, but maybe one of its limits is to reduce them to a common
term. Understood in the Honnethian framework, positive recognition
is a condition of collective and individual autonomy, as well as a condition of justice and good life. Conversely, the denial of recognition can
constitute an obstacle to democratic life, as well as lead to a loss of indi
vidual autonomy and to an alteration of identity (or psychic health).
17
For this pragmatist argument, see for example J. Dewey, Reconstruction in
Philosophy, Boston, Beacon, 1948, chapter 7; and Experience and Nature, New York,
Norton, 1925, chapter 10.
18
C. Dejours, Travail usure mentale, Paris, Bayard, 2000 (third ed.). For a comparison between Honneths and Dejours account on work and recognition, see E. Renault,
Travail et reconnaissance, Travailler, No. 18, 2007, pp. 119135.
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144
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the real of its work, that of its raw material, that of its infinite distance
from all the strong evaluations that are shaping identity and with all
recognitive expectations. What is coming to the fore, here, is that recognition is not the only condition that enables one to identify with
ones activity. Other conditions depend on other subjective dynamics
of activity.27
A second important normative problem relates to what Dejours has
termed deontic activity. Because the real work is always different
from the prescribed work, working involves normative invention. And
the necessity for individuals to cope with their suffering also drives
them either to sublimation or to rigidified psychic defences. Mental
health depends largely on the possibility of using collective norms to
produce sublimation of the suffering. Instead, individuals and communities of workers will resort to psychic or collective psychic defences
as modes of denial of the problems and, because of the rigidity of these
defences, will lose the normative creativity that is part of mental health.
This point is important to note because it plays a great role in the
degradation of working conditions, in a context in which, as Dejours
has pointed out, the intensification and decreasing protections of work
produce more suffering at work, whereas managers are sometimes
tempted to manipulate collective defences and denial to increase the
productivity of work, increasing again, therefore, the suffering at work.
As a conclusion of the discussion of this second challenge, it seems
that a theory of recognition can definitely provide the various normative principles that are required by a critical conception of work as
employment and as working activity. In this respect, Honneth and
Dejours offer complementary insights, and it seems that each of them
offers a conceptual framework in which the theoretical proposal of the
other could be integrated.
c. A Definition of the Social where Work As Such Exists
The third challenge deals with the social theory in which the problems
at work would exist. If a conception of work has to contribute to a
social critique of work, it must capture the social processes that produce the normative problems of work. What does that mean? Let me
address this problem with three brief remarks.
27
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Chapter six
1
A. Honneth, Work and Instrumental Action: On the Normative Basis of Critical
Theory, (1980), in ed. C.C. Wright, The Fragmented World of the Social. Essays in
Social and Political Philosophy, New York, Suny Press, 1995, pp. 1549; A. Honneth
and H. Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, trans. R. Meyer, Cambridge University
Press, 1988 (German edition: 1980), pp. 1825; A. Honneth, Critical Theory, (1989),
in The Fragmented World of the Social, pp. 6191; A. Honneth, The Capitalist
Recognition Order and Conflicts over Distribution, in N. Fraser and A. Honneth,
Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb,
J. Ingram and C. Wilke, London, New York, Verso, 2003, pp. 135159. For a detailed
study of the shifts in Honneths conceptualisation of work in relationship to struggles
for recognition, see Nicholas H. Smith, Work and the Struggle for Recognition,
European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 4660. See also the passages in
my study of Honneths writings, specifically dedicated to work: J. -P. Deranty, Beyond
Communication. A Critical Study of Axel Honneths Social Philosophy, Boston and
Leiden, Brill, 2009, notably pp. 4360, and pp. 410425.
2
A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts,
trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994, pp. 121131.
3
Work and Recognition: A Redefinition, in eds. H. -C. Schmidt-am-Busch and
C. Zurn, The Philosophy of Recognition. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,
Lanham, Lexington Books, 2010, pp. 223239. Republished in German in Das Ich im
Wir. Studien zur Anerkennungstheorie, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 2010, pp. 78102.
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jean-philippe deranty
This kind of immanent criticism will appear all the more modest if
we consider the fact that Honneths new characterisation reinstates
norms that remain close to the ones used in the initial argument. The
main difference rests not so much on the content of the norms but
rather on their methodological status. Honneth now argues that these
norms are not to be externally applied from some external ontological
standpoint. Rather, they should be extracted from the normative presuppositions underpinning contemporary markets. But if it can be
shown that the norms used by Honneth remain similar in their content, then my arguing for the usefulness of the initial normative framework might seem of little merit and of little use. The first point in my
argument, however, is not so much to defend the normative value of
expression and cooperation, but to defend the place in which they
were found in the initial proposal, that is, the activity of work itself.
This is what a deep-psychological, phenomenological approach like
that of Dejours allows us to do.
In the end, though, this methodological discussion impacts also
on the scope of the norms of expression and cooperation. The basic
intuition at the heart of this chapter is that one gives only a truncated account of the normative significance of work experience
for modern subjects if one interprets its ethical weight solely from
the perspective of the individuals inscription in the division of labour.
The full ethical weight of the work experience can only be fully measured if work is approached also as subjective activity. It is in that very
specific sense that the craftsman model will be defended in this
chapter.
Finally, this difference in methods, which leads to a different description of the ethical weight of work, also has political implications.
Honneth now rejects the norms inherent in the subjective activity of
work because of the alleged impossibility of articulating such normative dimensions in proper practical discourse. This argument is surprising as it seems to run counter to the gist of Honneths earlier
objection to Habermas approach to normativity. Was not the model of
a struggle for recognition devised precisely in order to account for
the transformation of inchoate experiences of injustice and suffering
into valid, practical claims? If that were the case, then the theory of
recognition would, despite its authors reservations, provide the
theoretical means to think of the ways in which the myriad of diffuse
experiences of ill-being at work can still fuel substantive political
contestations.
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1. The Norms of Work: Work as Activity
that was potentially shared by all, a mastery which the apprentice could
aspire to.9
Autonomy within the production process means secondly that the
worker can retain a sense of control in the act of production itself. The
act of production could in theory represent a double alienation: first by
directing the workers forces towards an activity that would be perceived as painful constraint. This is work as toil, as exertion of physical
and mental forces, as travail and labour (labeur). And secondly, the
finished product, as a coagulation of the workers labour-power, could
appear metaphorically as the objective proof of the stealth of the workers strength and life powers. The norm of expression, however, inverts
this possible reading: activity is nothing if it is not exerted; the act of
work itself, working, and the product of work, present to the worker the
possibility to develop, apply and demonstrate his or her vital skills.
This is the ideal of an organic process in which the workers skills are
objectified in a finished product.10 The process is organic because the
working activity remains unified throughout, the aim of the activity is
present at every one of the productions stages, and so the worker
retains a sense of purpose even in the most exerting or debilitating
moments, and indeed sees a concrete incarnation of his or her ideas
and purpose in the finished product.
On what grounds does Honneth reject these two norms, cooperation and expression, and the general ideal of an autonomous work
activity, as a valid normative framework to critique contemporary
work formations?
The main ground is the inappropriateness of the craftsman model to
account for the reality of socially organised work. Most work in contemporary society cannot be appropriately measured to a high standard of holistic autonomy simply because it involves a high degree of
interconnection and interdependence amongst all social agents. To
uphold the craftsman ideal is therefore to commit a logical mistake, by
generalising from a few cases where work indeed continues to be akin
to artistic production, to all instances of work.11 The craftsman ideal is
too utopian in the face of the constraints and conditions that prevail
in real work. Drudgery, subordination to superiors, dependence on clients, and so on, make the ideal of work along the model of craft or art
See R. Sennett, The Craftsman, Yale University Press, 2009, p. 54.
Honneth, Work and Recognition, p. 226.
11
ibid., pp. 227228.
9
10
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completely unrealistic. This is all the more true today with the rise of
the service sector in contemporary economies, indeed with the shift to
a new paradigm of work, from production to service, in which ever
greater number of work activities are redescribed and redesigned as
services. As Honneth writes,
in this sector, no product is constructed in which acquired skills could be
mirrored, rather the worker merely reacts with as much initiative as possible to the personal or anonymous demands of those in whose service
the respective task is performed.12
As a result of the chasm between the reality of modern work and the
excessive ideal of holistic work, the latter in fact only ever remained a
dream, notably in the era where work and the organisation of labour
were the burning issues in social and political confrontations:
as vivid and enthralling as all these ideas about the emancipation of work
were, they ultimately failed to have any effect on the history of the organisation of societal labour. Although the romanticised model of the craftsman and the aesthetic ideal of artistic production had sufficient impact
to alter permanently our conception of the good and well-lived life, they
exerted no real influence on the struggles of workers movements, nor on
socialist efforts to improve working conditions and give the producers
control over these conditions.13
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represent a real critical leverage point. This is so first of all for theoretical reasons, but it can also be demonstrated empirically, via the examples of real social struggles.
But then the way in which Honneth pursues the Left-Hegelian tradition in this particular paper might seem paradoxical since Hegel is
upheld as a better conceptual solution to his later theoretical offsprings whereas the Left-Hegelian tag generally denotes the reverse,
namely an approach anchored in later authors for whom Hegel
furnishes only a set of basic methodological and conceptual presuppositions. This paradoxical take on Left-Hegelianism characterises
Honneths general approach since The Struggle for Recognition at least,
but it is especially striking regarding the work question since Marx, the
most significant Left-Hegelian, is also the philosopher who in that
particular tradition tied the analysis of contemporary social-economic
orders substantially to the fate of work, in all of its dimensions. Thus,
one cannot help but interpret the absence of any direct reference to
Marx as an implicit point made by Honneth. When he writes in rejection of the craftsman model, particularly amongst the socialist heirs
of early German Romanticism, the idea spread that all human labour
should possess the self-purposeful creativity exemplified by the production of works of art, it is difficult not to think first and foremost of
Marxs early writings, or his famous characterisation of work in the
Grundrisse.17 Against the background of Honneths significant earlier
work in critical Marxist exegesis, and given the continued predominance of the Marxian reference for a critique of contemporary work,
Honneth seems to imply that it is in Hegel and not in Marx that an
appropriate critique of contemporary political economy can be
grounded, that is, a proper immanent critique of capitalism.
This return to Hegel away from Marx, however, might come at a
cost, depending on ones theoretical options. Honneths analysis is
premised on the idea that market-mediated exchange and more particularly, the market-mediated exchange of labour, the marketmediated division of labour, are synonymous with capitalism. Given
that for him the norms of critique can only be found in the immanence
17
Marx, Grundrisse, trans. M. Nicolaus, London, Penguin, 1973, p. 611: (Adam)
Smith has no inkling whatever that this overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating
activityand that, further, the external aims become stripped of the semblance of
merely external natural urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual
himself positshence as self-realisation, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom, whose action is, precisely, labour.
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18
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jean-philippe deranty
22
Through the modern division of labour, Marx writes, Capital seizes labourpower by its roots, Capital I, p. 481. Modernity sees the emergence of an industrial
pathology, p. 484. For a detailed analysis of this naturalist strand in Marxs critique of
capitalism, see Stphane Haber, Alination. Vie sociale et exprience de la dpossession,
Paris, PUF, 2007.
23
To human life and to natural life more generally. The famous chapter on Largescale industry and agriculture in Capital I links tightly the two forms of life degradation: Capitalist production only develops the techniques and the degree of
combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the
original sources of all wealththe soil and the worker, Capital I, p. 638.
24
See a particularly telling page in The Struggle for Recognition (p. 48), in which
Honneth uses the term of Versehrbarkeit as he appropriates Hegels Iena theory of
recognition. His core normative concepts of integrity, successful self-realisation,
unimpeded realisation of goals or positive self-relations all relate back to this
notion of essential vulnerability.
same question twice, in relation to the two core norms in view, expression and cooperation.
A simple argument can be made to rescue the norm of autonomy in
the expressivist sense. It is one thing to argue that the subject at work
demands a certain level of autonomy in the conduct of the task, and
that he or she suffers when that level of autonomy is not present; and
it is a different thing to argue that the whole production process must
be organised in such a way that every individual worker, whatever
their individual task, must remain in full control of her or his task from
beginning to end. It seems as though Honneth is arguing against
autonomy on the basis of the second maximalist claim. The reason why
he does so relates to the problem of the practical legitimacy of normative claims. Against the grain of his earlier work, he now follows
Habermas much more closely in arguing that only universalisability
makes a normative claim practically receivable. Since it is not possible
to universalise a claim to autonomy (because this is unrealistic given
the reality of contemporary work), the feelings and sentiments of contemporary workers denied autonomy and who, in one way or another,
express this discomfort have no decisive normative value. But one
might object the following: just because a claim cannot be maximally
universalised does not necessarily make it normatively irrelevant.
We consider the political dimension of the problem in the last section. Honneths rejection has a lot to do with the capacity of a claim to
be politically justified and practically effective. In this and the next section, we remain at the descriptive level and investigate whether there is
not a way to reintroduce expression and cooperation as two norms of
work, once the burden of their potential universalisability has been
bracketed. The question then is not whether it would make any sense
politically to criticise modern work on the basis of autonomy, but
whether modern work can be described, inasmuch as it has a normative component that is not just instrumental, as entailing a demand for
autonomy. In the end we will see that indeed a strong normative core
of contemporary work can be described in the language of autonomy,
and that it is in fact Honneths own approach to politics that allows us
to delineate realistic modes of politicisation on this basis.
In this chapter, normative therefore designates the dimensions
of work when the latter is considered as a practice involving human
subjectivity, by contrast with a mere instrumental approach to work
interested only in the articulation of means to productive ends. In
other words, normative conclusions are drawn from psychological and
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phenomenological considerations. This will strike many as an inherently flawed methodology, given the tendency today to identify
normativity with discursive redeemability. However, I believe this
approach to the normativity of work can be defended. Normative after
all simply denotes at first what differentiates the right from the wrong
in given practices. Normative here will mean what is right and wrong
for working subjects, insofar as they are human subjects. The basic
assumption here is that, whatever their subjective construct, no human
subject is left unaffected by the experience of work and some forms of
work (work organisations, types of tasks, work relations and so on)
affect human beings for the worse. The approach to the normative is
thus the following: if some practices of work impact negatively on the
agents, they are normatively wrong.
This approach is heavily influenced by the way in which Christophe
Dejours deals with the question of work. Dejours psychodynamic
analyses of work situations, and the theory of work he has developed as
a result of his practice as a clinician, are premised on the idea that one
cannot form a proper judgement of what work means to individuals if
one does not bring into the analysis a sufficiently rich notion of what a
human subject actually is and requires, as a result of this constitution.
As soon as one takes a realistic view of the human subject as an individualised, unified, yet fragile, construct binding somatic, psychological and intellectual resources, then work must appear at first as a
challenge because of the many constraints that are structurally present
in it. Work is necessarily a challenge to body, soul and mind. As a
result, all work is potentially pathogenic because all work involves
constraints which can impact more or less deeply on an individuals
subjective construct. Suffering is for Dejours an irreducible part of
all work.25 The key questions therefore turn on the analysis of the ways
in which these pathogenic traits are dealt with by subjects and organisations, in the negative and the positive: for example, under what
conditions work ceases to be a destructive experience; what the thresholds are after which the constraints become active factors of subjective disintegration; what specific individual and collective defence
mechanisms are developed to deal with the suffering involved in work,
and so on.
The earlier chapters of Travail, Usure Mentale focused on the most
obvious source of tension between subjectivity and work, namely the
See in particular the text by Dejours published in this volume.
25
26
For another clear exposition of this essential feature of work, see also Le Facteur
Humain, Paris, PUF, pp. 3846.
27
It is a well established fact that even in fully taylorised work, production can only
occur through the initiative and creativity of workers.
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organisation of work did not anticipate,28 with the added implied element: in the fulfilment of a productive task. For Dejours, in order to
understand the moral and existential impact of work on human subjects, one must view it as subjective activity, as working. From this
point of view, work is the activity that is required of subjects in order
to bridge the gap between what is prescribed and what is demanded for
the productive end to be met.29
This vision of work leads to a highly specific normative consideration. The gap between the prescriptions and the effective realisation of
the task is an irreducible source of suffering because it can be bridged
only in conditions that are rarely available in real work organisations.
So again, it is the work organisation that is implicated in the emergence
of subjective suffering, but this time not directly as an affront to what
human subjects are and are capable of, but indirectly, as an obstacle to
their inherent desire to fulfil their tasks.
In all these cases, however, the normative bedrock is the possibility
for the working subjects to make sense of their activity. Sense here is to
be taken in the psychodynamic acceptation: can the working subject
integrate the activity in her or his subjective economy or does the
activity, in any one of its dimensions, represent too much of an affront
to subjective identity? Can the subject symbolise, that is, appropriate
into his or her own subjective life, the suffering that work represents
for him or her?
How do these two structural traits of work, the tension between
organisation and subjectivity and the gap between the prescriptions
and the realisation of the job, relate to the question of autonomy?
In the first instance, that is, the tension between organisation and
subjectivity, the link is straightforward: since the difficulties arise for
28
Quoted from the chapter by Dejours in this volume. In Le Facteur Humain, the
definition is the following: The coordinated activity deployed by men and women in
order to overcome that which, in a utilitarian task, cannot be obtained through the
strict execution of the prescribed organisation, p. 43.
29
Productive ends, utilitarian tasks in the note above, should not be taken in a
restricted, productivist sense, as excluding forms of work activity not directly related
to the production of goods. They point to all forms of activity whose primary feature
is the realisation of a socially defined good, whether the latter is a commodity, a service
or a form of care. Despite the great differences in all these kinds of work, all involve an
active engagement on the part of the worker, to circumvent the resistance of the real
and realise the task at hand. Using a similar approach as Dejours, Pascale Molinier has
shown the irreducible dimensions of skill use and technical know-how involved in
care. Indeed, as the chapter in this volume shows, she argues that it is important to
define care as care work to do justice to its ethical and political significance.
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35
This is one the main criticisms expressed by Alain Ehrenberg in his recent attack
on the growing influence of the suffering paradigm and Dejours influence in the
French debate, in La Socit du Malaise, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2010. Interestingly,
Ehrenberg also takes Honneth to task and, politely but forcefully, contrasts his analysis
of the rise of depression in Western societies with Honneths interpretation of the
latter.
questioning his grounding of normative social critique in a thick theory of the subject. Honneths response is that recognition does not designate the content of subjectivity but the conditions for the development
of autonomous subjectivity. The same applies to Dejours proposal.
However, beyond the idiosyncrasy of individual pathologies,
Dejours also identifies collective forms of pathology that are grounded
in general traits of work and affect large parts of the population. The
definition of work as subjective activity demanded of the subject to
bridge the gap between the prescribed and the real is true of all work.
The impact of constraining work organisations and in particular the
impact that organisations have in making the bridging of the gap more
difficult, these are again universal features in the subject-work relationship. Given the essential vulnerability of subjective constructs, it is
impossible for work not to represent, at some level, a source of discomfort and a challenge to subjective identity. The variability of individual
reactions to specific work situations remains an objection only within
certain limits, only in relatively benign cases. There are thresholds,
physical, emotional and intellectual, beyond which work becomes
more and more constraining and affects more and more people. To
give examples of contemporary problems arising in relation to the factors highlighted in Dejours approach: when the rationalisation of
work processes means that fewer workers are to achieve the same productive targets as previously (physical constraint); when increased surveillance makes the possibility of imaginary evasion more risky or
impossible; or when constantly changing or ever increasing demands
from the hierarchy give a sense of radical hopelessness.
Thresholds can be taken in an extensive or an intensive sense.
Extensively, Dejours argues that the pathologies of contemporary society are due to a large extent to the nature of work in neoliberal economies, because of the fear generated by new forms of work and work
organisation (fear of unemployment, fear arising from systematic
competition, from constant evaluation, and so on).36 In this case, we
could say that the thresholds have been crossed for a great number of
people, in a simple numerical sense. A rich and growing literature on
the magnitude and intensity of suffering caused by post-fordist work
organisations seems to lend massive, if indirect, empirical support to
36
In particular in Souffrance en France. La banalisation de linjustice sociale, Paris,
Le Seuil, 1998.
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jean-philippe deranty
this side of the argument.37 But the notion of threshold remains valid
in smaller work units, this time in an intensive sense: here the analysis
can restrict itself to the smallest of units, down to a single individual
case, without losing sight of general work conditions, as in the case of
suicides at work, which remain exceptional in any given particular
workplace, but can be taken as symptoms of a general degradation of
working environments.
In response to the second part of the objection, regarding the usefulness of the notion of autonomy for concrete work situations, again, it is
based on a misunderstanding similar to the ones that have been raised
against recognition theory. The notion of autonomy as capacity to
appropriate meaningfully ones own suffering remains unspecified
only for as long as it is not applied to a concrete case, a social analysis
or the study of a particular work place. Of course, a great many factors
can contribute to blocking the subjective symbolisation of suffering:
material, institutional, intersubjective, factors arising from the productive demand, and so on. What a Dejourian notion of autonomy adds
to the analysis of these factors is a unique, and it seems to me indispensable, focus on the very activity of work. But such a focus is not to the
detriment of all the other dimensions mentioned. Rather, the subject at
work is the point at which all the other dimensions converge. The key
point though is that it is not just a social subject, but also a subject
engaged, with body, mind and soul, in the activity.
This is the point where the difference with Honneths approach is
most substantial. In attempting to redefine the possibility and the
meaning of a critique of modern work,38 Honneth also aims to maintain a strong connection between the conceptual, normative analysis
and the reality of pathologies of work as documented by clinical and
sociological analysis. His attempt remains squarely a work of critical
37
Amongst the immense literature on the rise of stress, burnout, muskeletal pathologies, and more generally the psychological and physical cost of work intensification
and flexibilisation, let us note simply, for the American context, a classical, particularly
clear study, which showed a clear link between individual suffering and the socialeconomic context: C. Maslach and M. Leiter, The Truth about Burnout, Jossey Bass,
1997. In the French context, two recent studies, directly informed by Dejours model,
give a particularly vivid picture of the situation: M. Pez, Ils ne mouraient pas tous,
mais tous taient touchs, Paris, Pearson, 2008; P. Coupechoux, La dprime des
opprims, Paris, Seuil, 2009.
38
See Honneths Organised Self-realisation. Paradoxes of Individuation, European
Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2004, pp. 463478, and Paradoxes of Capitalism,
Constellations, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2006, pp. 4258 (with Martin Hartmann).
theory targeting, and indeed largely taking its conceptual cue from,
social pathologies. But his interpretation of the ways in which the
critique of work needs to be properly conducted makes him view these
pathologies as arising solely from the social, intersubjective vulnerability of modern subjects, from the fact that they cannot escape taking
part in the contemporary division of labour. Everything comes down
to the possibility or not of taking place meaningfully in the division of
labour. There is no doubt that this dimension is crucial for subjective
well-being. Indeed, Dejourss own critical interventions on the social
impact of changes in the world of work overlap to some extent with
Honneths on this point.39 But Honneths new approach seems to be
tailored only to a certain band of pathological phenomena. It must
leave out of sight a number of other ways in which work affects modern subjects. By definition, Honneths social-psychological approach
excludes the possibility for social critique to target pathologies arising
from the ergonomic side of work: the reality of work cadences, material working conditions, productive pressures, the ever increasing
number of prescriptions constraining the productive act (safety, quality, quantity, behavioural constraints, and so on).
Secondly, Honneths new approach to work can only study subjective impacts of work organisations from a sociological perspective as
paradoxes of self-realisation.40 The psychological problem is limited to
the relation of subjects to themselves as a result of the social mediations that frame and influence these self-relations. For Honneth, the
key affect in neoliberal society is the suffering from indeterminacy,
39
I have attempted to relate their two theories of work and recognition in Work
and the Precarisation of Existence, European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 4,
2008, pp. 443463.
40
Honneth in fact comes close to the impact of work as an activity when he refers
to studies conducted at the Institute in Frankfurt, highlighting the rupture between
performance (Leistung) as engagement of the worker in the activity and performance
as mere success measured by productive and economic targets. Implicit in these studies is the normative significance of the correlation between the workers active engagement in the task and the recognition he or she receives. See the two studies by Stephan
Voswinkel and Gabriele Wagner in this volume as well as H. Kocyba, Was leistet
das Leistungsprinzip?, ed. R. Zwengel Gesellschaftliche Perspektiven: Arbeit und
Gerechtigkeit, Essen, Klartext Verlag, 2007, pp. 163177, as well as H. Kocyba and
S. Voswinkel, Die Kritik des Leistungsprinzip im Wandel. in eds. K. Drge, K. Marrs
and W. Menz Rckkehr der Leistungsfrage, Berlin, Sigma, 2008, pp. 2137. For a synthesis of the research of the Frankfurt sociologists of work and a comparison with
Honneth and Dejourss own theories of recognition and work, see E. Renault,
Reconnaissance et travail, Travailler, Vol. 18, 2007, pp. 117135.
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jean-philippe deranty
which arises from the fact that the great push for individualisation
which characterises modernity and indeed represented a revolutionary force, has become a productive factor, used by managements and
organisations to increase productivity, flexibility, and to dismantle the
old, rigid structures, which offered some forms of legal and institutional protection for subjects. As a result of the exploitation for economic purposes of this increased individualism, the search for
individual self-exploration and self-definition, the pressure to constantly self-present in the best possible light, to ensure ones employability, and the resources of intimate relations, are put under extreme
pressure.
Such a diagnosis is certainly very convincing, but it deals only with
the pathologies that arise from the relation between the individual and
the broad social framework. If we follow Dejours, the subjective
impacts of the new economic arrangements are not limited to problems of self-definition from a social perspective. In order to be able to
look precisely at the way in which new forms of management and
organisation of the work processes affect subjects, it is important to put
the light precisely on those interactions, which require us to descend
from too general a perspective, and enter the hidden abode of production. To mention just one, especially striking, example highlighted by
Dejours, the immense spread of fear and anxiety in current workplaces
means that the suffering of others is less and less perceptible to the
subjects, and that, as a result, there is less and less compunction to do
bad things to others. Brutal retrenchment, increased surveillance,
destruction of solidarity, blackmail of different forms, form the reality
of contemporary work. The psychological impact of this is immense
and can be felt in the broad social sphere, well beyond the workplace.
Yet it cannot be properly uncovered unless one seriously focuses on the
subject in concrete work situations.
What is the link between the definition of autonomy proposed here
and expression? Since the key idea is the utter dependency (physical,
psychological and intellectual) of the subject at work, it is clear that
expression here cannot be the unattainable ideal of a worker in full
command of the entire mode of production. The psychological detour
Dejours suggests leads to a more low-key version of expression. The
crucial conceptual link is provided by the category of meaning.
The possibility for the subject to integrate meaningfully the working
activity in his or her subjective economy, despite the challenges the
activity necessarily represents, can be described as the capacity to
become minimally the subject of ones own activity. When that is realised, the subject can sense that he or she is the actual subject of work:
she or he can see herself in it. The activity is not necessarily a perfectly
adequate development of all of the subjects skills, and the product
(or services rendered) might not be perfect mirrors of those subjective
resources. But within the activity, the subject can retain his or her sense
of self. As vague as this might sound at first glance, Dejours detailed
approach to work in fact shows to what extent the conditions for this
to happen are in fact varied and precise.
4.Cooperation
The same remark that was made about autonomy within the activity
can be made at the outset about autonomy in the sense of the free
cooperation of independent agents: there might well be a minimalist
account of cooperation, one in particular that focuses on its importance for the psychic economies of working subjects, which would be
radically different from an unrealistic, maximalist understanding of
cooperation, understood as external, pre-capitalist exchange between
autarchic producers.
Again, Dejours makes substantial propositions in this sense and
helps to defend a certain version of cooperation as a norm to critically
analyse contemporary work, with a view in particular to its general
social and political significance.
In order to retrieve the normative importance of cooperation, Imust
briefly introduce Dejours own account of recognition as it relates to
the working process. As we have seen, the first decisive element in
Dejourss analysis of work was to take into account the gap between
the prescriptive and the effective in the productive process. The second
crucial discovery relates to the structural importance of recognition.
As the chapter published in this volume shows very well, recognition
is one of the key factors to determine the ultimate meaning of suffering in work. Given that suffering always threatens to sever the link
between subjective identity and the subjects activity, the role of recognition, in allowing for a meaningful articulation between the two,
is decisive:
The symbolic recompense accorded through recognition comes from
the production of the meaning which it confers on the work experience.
This is the meaning of suffering in work: as we have seen, it originates in
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jean-philippe deranty
and is consubstantial with every work situation, insofar as it is above all
a confrontation with systemic and technical constraints.41
This is very close to the recognition Dejours talks about in From the
Psychopathology to the Psychodynamics of Work. The key difference,
however, is the one already noted. Honneth interprets the phenomenon and the norms it entails in social-theoretical terms, in terms of the
relationship between subjectivity and its social environment. The skills
of the working subject, the minimal complexity of the productive task,
Honneth, Recognition and Work, p. 231.
44
176
jean-philippe deranty
are means for an end: ways for the subject to make a valid contribution
to the general division of labour. From this perspective, cooperation
has no inherent normative role to play. In Dejours model on the other
hand, the recognition of the activity is in and of itself a source of subjective validation (or suffering when it is lacking): the subject demands
to be recognised for his or her activity, for the precise contribution
to a productive task, and this is structurally dependent on extant
cooperation.
Indeed, we could also point out that this Dejourian take on cooperation is quite close to what Hegel and Durkheim had in view in their
respective references to the division of labour in society. When Hegel
writes that the working subject takes place in the division of labour
durch Bildung und Geschicklichkeit, through education and talent,45
the second term refers unmistakably to the concrete exercise of skills
that demand recognition qua skills. We can see in this term an anticipation of Dejours insistence on practical intelligence as subjective
skill that is both instrumentally demanded for the success of production and normatively in need of recognition. Later on, in the section on
the corporation, Hegel states explicitly that the subject gives himself
or herself reality, qua subject, by particularising his or her activity in
embracing a particular profession, in joining a specific productive area
of society. Once again, it is through the exercise of concrete skills,
through the development of a specific type of practical intelligence,
through Ttigkeit, Flei und Geschicklichkeit, through his activity,
diligence and skill,46 that a subject becomes a full subject. The corporation, then, is defined not just through the general division of labour,
in mere functional terms, but also through concrete types of activities.
To say it differently, the normative significance of the division of labour
is not just social but also technical. But the technical division of labour
is premised on cooperation.
This concrete, practical, sense of recognition one achieves through
ones activity in a professional collective is even more explicitly
expressed in Durkheim. Indeed, it appears most expressly in the
very quote Honneth uses in his article. According to Durkheim,
G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, #199, trans, H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 233. The reference to a professional culture, in
the technical sense of the term (a culture arising from shared skills and techniques), as
the ground of the corporation, is more explicitly developed in Hegels Iena writings.
46
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, #207, p. 238.
45
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jean-philippe deranty
meaning to the activity, can be realized only in the professional community, via the judgement of the peers, that is, through cooperation.
5. Work and Politics
The problem of politicisation is the final great objection to the norms
of expression and cooperation. Even if it were true that those norms
are, as Dejours argues, essential psychological dimensions for working
subjects, this does not automatically make them norms that would be
appropriate for a more general social criticism and for concrete political demands. Indeed, how could one base a concrete political discourse
on the heterogeneity of individual pathologies and the highly specific
problems arising in particular work places and industries?
On this point, however, we must note that Honneths rejection of the
norms of the craftsman for their impossible universalisation is surprising, given the thrust of The Struggle for Recognition. In that book,
Honneth had argued precisely that the true leverage for social critique
and for positive political claims was in fact to be sought in the structural conditions that are necessary to enable subjects to develop positive forms of self-relation. Indeed, the argument then was decidedly
anti-Habermassian: the fact that normative demands cannot be directly
universalised does not speak against their normative value. It is precisely the work of social movements, under conditions described
precisely in chapter seven of the book, to develop the practical and
normative arguments that transform the normative claims arising
from the experiences of injustice and disrespect, often known only
implicitly in the sense of violated expectations, into explicit, normatively valid practical claims.49
We might ask why the same process of universalisation through the
specific cultural and political work of social movements could not also
apply to the norms of work. The fact that such social movements might
be weak or, in some cases, barely survive is no argument against their
possibility or indeed their desirability.50 Indeed, Dejours has shown in
49
For a substantial development of this argument, see Emmanuel Renault,
L exprience de linjustice, Paris, La Dcouverte, 2004.
50
In fact, in some North-European countries, norms of autonomy at work, in a
sense close to what we have described here with the help of Dejourss psychodynamics,
are very much part and parcel of the compromise between employers and employee
organizations, see D. Coats, Quality of Work and a New Politics of the Quality of Life.
A Progressive Agenda for the Workplace, Per Capita Research Paper, 2008.
the case of the French public sphere how the inability of the organised
labour movement post-1968 to look beyond the sole questions of
employment and to insist on the importance of working conditions
and autonomy at work, had been a historical failure for which todays
workers were paying the price.51 The pessimism with which we must
view any practical proposal to radically alter the organisation of workplaces and working conditions today is not an argument against the
denunciation of their deleterious effects. In any case, it is only if one
keeps in view all that work can do to subjects inasmuch as they are
engaged in working activities, that one can do justice to the suffering
these inflict on them.
51
Chapter seven
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nicholas h. smith
184
nicholas h. smith
2
See Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss, Affluenza, Crows Nest, Allen and
Unwin, 2005.
3
On the notion of life-goods I am deploying here, see Charles Taylor, Sources of
the Self, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
4
Influential statements of the view that the motivation for overwork has mutated
from a work-ethic of diligence and sacrifice to an amoral desire for consumption
include Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, New York, Norton, 1978, and
Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, London, Heinemann, 1979.
For an interesting discussion of these views see Russell Muirhead, Just Work,
Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2004.
5
On the long-term decline of the quality of work under capitalism, see Harry
Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth
Century, New York, The Monthly Review Press, 1974.
186
nicholas h. smith
188
nicholas h. smith
have this guiding, regulating feature. On the other hand, the instrumental character of the core norms of work means that instrumental
reason can be called upon for purposes of critique, since more efficient
production can better meet those non-moral, non-ethical needs that
human beings have on account of their physical existence. Furthermore,
more efficient technology may also relieve people of the burdens of
participating in the system of production, understood as the means by
which the material, pre-ethical needs of a population are satisfied.
The instrumental model thus combines the following ideas that
define its normative character. First, it construes work as the kind of
activity humans must undertake merely to survive as natural beings.
The ultimate end at stake here, the reproduction of mere life or continuation of natural organic being, is not itself taken to be a moral or
ethical purpose, though of course it provides the material condition
for the realisation of such purposes. Second, the worth or good of work
lies primarily in its role in producing and allowing for the consumption of goods and services that raise the quality of this natural life.
Work is thus conceived as an instrumental rather than an intrinsic
good. And third, work-activity that has production as its end and is
guided by the norm of instrumental reason must be distinguished
from the kind of activity in which distinctively human moral and ethical capacities are exercised, in which intrinsically valuable goods are
enjoyed, andin the truly moral casesunconditional, categorical
worth experienced.
This set of ideas about the normativity of work, which goes back to
Aristotles distinction between poieisis and praxis, is widely subscribed
to in the post-Hegelian tradition, but Arendts and Habermass formulations of it in the mid-twentieth century are perhaps the most familiar
and consequential.15 Arendt distinguished action from both work
The instrumental model of work in post-Hegelian thought is developed by way of
various interpretations of Aristotles distinction between poieisis and praxis. As a
reminder, poiesis, or production, is the making or bringing about of something useful,
and is governed by the norm of technical or instrumental reason (techne). For Aristotle,
the value of poieisis lies solely in the thing made or brought about, the end for which
work-activity is the means. The work-activity itself, abstracted from the product, has
no value. This contrasts with praxis, which is action guided by the norms of moral
reason (phronesis). Good praxis, as opposed to good poiesis, is its own end, worthwhile
for its own sake, and so an intrinsic good. Praxis, but not poiesis, is an excellence of the
agent; it perfects the agent in the sense of contributing to the agents full self-realisation
as a moral being. For extended discussion of Aristotles distinction and its influence,
see James B. Murphy, A Natural Law of Human Labor, American Journal of
Jurisprudence, 71, 1994, 7195, and by the same author, The Moral Economy of Labour,
New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1993.
15
and labour precisely to bring out the moral and ethical normative
specificity of action in contrast to the utilitarian world of work and the
brute organic sphere of labour.16 Both working and labouring, in
Arendts sense, have only instrumental value, the difference being that
the value created by labour is used up almost immediately (in order
to keep the labourer alive) whereas work is done for the sake of useful
things that endure.17 It is only with action, or rather speech and action,
that we insert ourselves into the human world.18 As is well-known,
Habermas articulates a similar thought when he distinguishes labour,
again understood as instrumental action, or action properly guided by
the norms of instrumental reason, from interaction or communicative action, which is properly guided by the norms of reaching an
understanding.19
Arendts distinction between action, work and labour, and
Habermass distinction between labour and interaction, provide a conceptual framework for a normative model of work of the instrumental
type. But they also have the effect of radicalising the instrumental
model in a problematic way. For up to now, I have presented the instrumental model as a thesis about the core norms of work. The core norms
of work, according to this model, are instrumental. But the Arendt/
Habermas thesis we are looking at now suggests that the norms of
work are solely instrumental. Work and labour are subject to the norms
of instrumental reason, and only those norms, by definition. This is
problematic because it invites the question: granted that work is of
instrumental value, why does that exclude the possibility that it is of
intrinsic value? What compels us to conceive of work as only instrumentally valuable, as subject exclusively to the norms of instrumental
reason?
James B. Murphy has pointed out that Aristotle could not countenance a conception of work as both intrinsically and instrumentally
valuable because of his commitment to a metaphysical distinction
between immanent and transitive activities.20 Transitive activities,
16
Action alone is the exclusive prerogative of man, Hannah Arendt, The Human
Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958, p. 22.
17
ibid., p. 99.
18
ibid., p. 176. Arendt continues: This insertion [into the human world] is not
forced upon us by necessity, like labour, and it is not prompted by utility, like work
(ibid., p. 177).
19
See Jrgen Habermas, Labour and Interaction: Remarks on Hegels Jena
Philosophy of Mind, in Habermas, Theory and Practice, London, Heinemann, 1974.
20
John B. Murphy, A Natural Law of Human Labor, 73.
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nicholas h. smith
suchas making things, are only completed upon the completion of the
object external to them. In and of themselves they are incomplete. It is
the nature of immanent activities, such as contemplation or experiencing joy, on the other hand, to be complete in themselves. As these kinds
of activity were mutually exclusive, Aristotle concluded that work, as a
transitive activity, could at best only have instrumental value.
While this metaphysical style of thinking is alien to Arendt and
Habermas, nonetheless a similar type of consideration leads them artificially to exclude the possibility of non-instrumental norms applying
to work. If we just consider Habermass position, we can see that it rests
on premises that make the idea of work as both an instrumental and an
intrinsic good, or as subject to both non-moral and moral norms, seem
spooky. For this idea suggests an intrinsic normative content to a kind
of activity that can be specified independently of our intersubjective,
and more precisely linguistic, constitution. Work as instrumental
action may enable us to cope with the contingencies of nature better,
but it does not transcend the contingency of the natural world. Only
the norms embedded in linguistic interaction manage that.21 From this
perspective, a more than instrumental conception of the value and
normativity of work can seem to represent an inadmissible regression
to an enchanted world.
But a more formidable obstacle to a conception of work as possessing both instrumental and intrinsic value arises from the central role
attributed to instrumental reason in the diagnoses of the times of the
first generation Frankfurt School, which Habermas sought to refine.
The central thought here is that the pathologies of the modern world
arise from the domination of instrumental reason, a thought which is
by no means unique to the Frankfurt School but which is most explicitly and systematically taken up there. On this conception, instrumental reason is the essence of the scientific-technological-industrial
complex that reifies and imprisons us.22 Accordingly, critical theory is
by definition the critique of instrumental reason. While Habermas
was able to extricate himself from the idea that instrumental reason as
such was intrinsically bad, it is not surprising that he found it difficult
21
What raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we know: language, Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy Shapiro, London,
Heinemann, 1972, p. 314 (Postscript).
22
See T. W. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, tr. J. Cumming,
New York, Herder and Herder, 1972 [1947].
to see anything intrinsically good about it, or about the main kind of
social activity governed by itnamely, work.23
This consideration is just as telling in Arendts case, for whom
labour and work are not just distinct from action, but threats to it.
This at any rate is the diagnostic position taken up in The Human
Condition. Arendts position is well-knownand widely embraced
for its affirmation of plurality and its critique of the modern tendency
toward homogeneity. But what is the archetype of the sameness that
threatens to engulf us? The labour gang.24 For Arendt, the labour
gang exemplifies the qualitatively undifferentiated, nature-like (indeed
herd-likeonly more menacing) unity of collective labour. This
unity extinguishes all awareness of individuality and identity, such
that all those values which derive from labouring, beyond its obvious function in the life process, are entirely social and essentially
not different from the additional pleasure derived from eating and
drinking in company, or in other words, no different from the mere
organic satisfactions of non-human animals.25 There is no true plurality in labouring, merely the multiplication of specimens which are
fundamentally all alike because they are what they are as mere living
organisms.26 Admittedly, labouring is not working, in Arendts
technical sense, but even the activity of work as distinct from labour
cannot set up a true realm of plurality in which men qua men can
appear.27
In a revealing footnote, Arendt cuts through what she rather aloofly
calls theories and academic discussions of work that attribute a more
than instrumental value to it by invoking a survey, conducted in 1955,
showing that a large majority of workers, if asked why does man
work? answer simply in order to be able to live or to make money.28
This is presented as rough empirical confirmation of the instrumental
model of work Arendt advocates, according to which the normative
content of work lies solely and simply in its instrumental value. But
the surveys available to us today suggest the matter is much more
23
See Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. T. McCarthy, Boston,
Beacon Press, 1984.
24
Arendt, The Human Condition, pp. 213214.
25
Ibid., p. 213.
26
ibid., p. 212.
27
ibid.
28
ibid., pp. 127128, note 75.
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nicholas h. smith
complex.29 These show that work matters to people for a wide range of
reasons, and not just reasons of an instrumental type, according to
which the good of work lies in the means it provides to satisfy ends
independent of it. There are goods that are specific to work activity,
and which can only be enjoyed by taking part in that activity, which
also go some way to explaining why people work.30 Instrumental reason alone does not provide an adequate answer. This also holds if we
raise that question not just at the micro level, at the level of individual
motivation, but at the macro level of socio-economic forces. To consider the world of work as a labour market determined solely by norms
of efficiency and instrumental rationality, or indeed as a norm-free
zone of optimally coordinated action-consequences, is to ignore the
ethical decisions, and so the ethical reasons counting for and against
them, that shape economic policies and institutions.31 Decisions of a
more than purely instrumental kind are also at play when the social
division of labour is modelled practically on the technical division of
labour.32 Moral and ethical norms, not just norms of instrumental reason, are operative here too, and contribute to the melange of social
forces that any adequate explanation of why people work would have
to take into account.
If the instrumental model radicalised in the manner of Arendt and
Habermas gives a simplified account of why people work, it also seems
limited as a framework for understanding the contemporary malaise
around work. It is confined to an interpretation of the work-life imbalance as a conflict between intrinsic life-goods and merely instrumental
values, and cannot make sense of the possibility that a conflict between
intrinsically valuable life-goods is involved. It also makes it difficult to
see how the quality of work can become a serious source of disappointed normative expectations. And although it places great weight
on the values of autonomy and responsibility, it does not anticipate
that work would become a key site of anxiety around them.
29
See for example, Shaun Wilson, The Struggle over Work, London, Routledge,
2004.
30
See Robert E. Lane, The Market Experience, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1991.
31
This point is convincingly argued by Russell Keat in his contribution to this
volume.
32
See John B. Murphy, The Moral Economy of Labour, and William J. Booth,
Households: on the Moral Architecture of the Economy, Ithaca, Cornell University
Press, 1993.
33
For an attempt at spelling out in more detail this meaning of expression,
see Nicholas H. Smith, Expressivism in Brandom and Taylor, in eds. James Chase,
Edwin Mares, Jack Reynolds and James Williams, Postanalytic and Metacontinental:
Crossing Philosophical Divides, London, Continuum, pp. 145156.
34
See Herbert Marcuse, On the Philosophical Foundation of the Concept of
Labor in Economics, Telos, 16, Summer 1973 [1933], 937.
35
See Karl Marx, Excerpts from James Mills Elements of Political Economy [1844]
and Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, in Marx, Early Writings, London,
Penguin, 1974.
36
In addition to Dejours contribution to this volume, see Dejours, Subjectivity,
Work, and Action, Critical Horizons, 7, pp. 4562; Christophe Dejours and JeanPhilippe Deranty, The Centrality of Work, Critical Horizons, 11, 2, 2010, 167181;
and Jean-Philippe Deranty, Work as Transcendental Experience: Implications of
Dejours Psychodynamcs for Contemporary Social Theory and Philosophy, Critical
Horizons, 11, 2, 2010, 183225.
194
nicholas h. smith
Second, and more commonly, expressivism contains an anthropological thesis about the role of work in the development of human
capacities. This thesis can be presented transcendentally, as if working
(in some suitably abstract sense) were a condition of the possibility of
human, rational powers, or teleologically, such that working activity
functions as the medium in which human flourishing or self-realisation
at both the individual and species level takes place. The prototype
for the former type of argument is the dialectic of self-consciousness
in Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit.37 According to this argument, it
is through working that slave-consciousness, relative to masterconsciousness, rises to the universal through externalisation and
objectification of its powers, such that the externalisation and objectification of subjective powers in working is revealed as a structural feature of human subjectivity in general.38 Marxs manuscripts of 1844
and comments on James Mill are classic sources of the latter type of
argument.39 In more recent formulations of the anthropological dimension of work, the emphasis may lie in the role of work in maintaining
psychic integrity,40 in securing the positive self-relations (such as selfrespect and self-esteem) needed for a good life,41 or in the basic human
goods that work provides.42 But whether the argument is presented
transcendentally (work as a condition of human subjectivity) or teleologically (work as a vehicle of human self-realisation), the crucial
point for our purposes is that the normativity of work has to do with
the role of work in giving expression to, and facilitating the development of, distinctively human capacities.
The norms at issue at the first two levelsnamely the self-expression
of life or being, and the formation and development of distinctive
human capacitiesare supposed to apply to human beings generally.
But the norms that working brings to expression may have a more
local character. That is to say, there may be goods that are specific to
particular working practices in the sense that they can only be enjoyed
37
See G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1977 [1807].
38
See especially ibid., paragraphs 195 and 196.
39
See especially Marxs account of alienation from the species being in the
Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts of 1844.
40
As in Dejours psychodynamic model (see note 36 above)
41
As in Axel Honneth, Struggle for Recognition, tr. Joel Anderson, Cambridge,
Polity, 1995.
42
As in John B. Murphys neo-Aristotelian account in The Moral Economy of Labor
and in Robert E. Lanes account of work in The Market Experience.
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nicholas h. smith
198
nicholas h. smith
earlier expressivist conception is that it is no longer plausible to suppose that working activity has a proper shape for which the selfdirected exercise of productive powers is exemplary. Put bluntly, this is
because most work today is concerned not so much with the production of objects but with the delivery of services. As soon as one has to
deliver a service, all sorts of considerations come into play, such as
responding to variations in customer demand and adapting to fluid
technological and social environments, which the model of autonomous self-expression, or the craftsman ideal, is hardly well suited for.
There is also just too much variation in the kind of work that has to be
done to make one model of working activity normatively appropriate.
As Honneth puts it, given the multiplicity of socially necessary work
activities, it seems impossible and absurd to claim that their autochthonic, internal structures demand that they be organized in one specific way.49 In lacking both a rational grounding and a firm foothold in
the actual world of societal labour, the critical conception of work, and
by implication expressivism more generally, is shown to be inadequate
as a normative model of work, Honneth now argues.
Honneth is surely write to note that aspirations for meaningful work
fit into conceptions of the good that are not shared by everyone, and
that craft-like production of objects forms only a small part of the contemporary world of work. Still, it may be that these points call only for
an amendment of the expressive model, including Honneths own early
version of it, rather than wholesale rejection. For in response to the
first point, one could argue that conceptions of the good are unavoidable when it comes to the organisation of work, and that the unavoidable choice between one form of work organization (say, one that
generates and equitably distributes meaningful work) and another
(say, one that sacrifices the quality of work to other considerations) is
one that can be made with more or less justification, depending on the
strength of the ethical reasons behind it.50 The mere fact that the aspiration for meaningful work finds expression in non-universalisable conceptions of the good does not deprive that aspiration of rational status.
This is all the more evident in Honneths own version of expressivism,
with its critical conception of work, since the basic norm it draws
ibid.
See Russell Keats contribution to this volume, and his Choosing between
Capitalisms: Habermas, Ethics and Politics (available on-line at http://www
.russellkeat.net).
49
50
upon is autonomy. Assuming that the capacity to express ones autonomy in the work one does is a good (rather than a right), clearly it is
not one which is just a matter of esoteric wishes or caprice, on a rational
par with any other conception. It has a good claim to be part of a good
life. It is even arguable that the demand for autonomy is the rational
claim par excellence, the claim that rational agents ought to make for
their work, the claim that should trump all others as far as practical
reason is concerned. We would not consider autonomy to be such a
contingent, dispensable good in other life-contexts. But even if we
grant that heteronomy is more acceptable for the worker than, say, the
citizen, we are still left with good reasons for favouring work with certain qualities (such as some degree of autonomy) rather than others
(such as the near absence of self-directed activity).51
The expressivist model may also be able to answer Honneths second
criticism, though it may have to modify itself accordingly. Honneths
main point is that the provision of services that makes up the bulk of
working activity today does not have the structure of the externalisation of subjective powers in an object we take to be characteristic of
craft activity. The counterfactually presupposed norms of craft work
should therefore not feature in a normative model of work, in our
practically demanding sense, since they are not in fact the core norms
of contemporary work, and lack an effective history. Such a normative model would only be able to furnish external criticism, as
Honneth puts it. But what if the norms of craftsmanship were not to be
understood in such a restricted way; restricted, that is to say, to the
external expression of a subjects knowledge in an object? What if the
meaning of craftsmanship were to opened up to include work done
well for its own sake in the provision of services as well, indeed in a
potentially unlimited field of activities?52 The expressivist could then
appeal to standards or norms that are internal to working practices of
all kinds, but which are compromised, or undermined, or corrupted by
contemporary regimes of work. The expectation that one should be
able to do a good days work, or a job well done, is after all common
to very many trades and professions, if not all of them, and certainly is
For a more detailed account of the importance of autonomy in this context, and
of the difficulties approaches such as Honneths have in dealing with it, see Beate
Roessler, Meaningful Work: Arguments from Autonomy, unpublished ms.
52
As suggested in Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, New Haven, Yale University
Press, 2008.
51
200
nicholas h. smith
53
See for example the contributions by Pascale Molinier and Gabriele Wagner to
this volume.
54
I have discussed Honneths approach to work prior to the publication of Work
and Recognition: A Redefinition in Nicholas H. Smith, Work and the Struggle for
Recognition, European Journal of Political Theory, 8, 1, January 2009, 4660. In that
piece I emphasized the link between the recognition model and expressivism, whereas
here (partly in response to Honneths proposed redefinition) I am more concerned
with their differences.
202
nicholas h. smith
58
See the contributions of Stephan Voswinkel and Gabriele Wagner to this
volume.
204
nicholas h. smith
then some shared norms, norms that are more or less explicitly
accepted by everyone despite them having different understandings of
the principle of achievement, would need to be identified.
We can read Honneths proposed redefinition of the relation
between work and recognition as an attempt at overcoming this weakness in both the expressivist model of work and the first, esteem-based
formulation of the recognition model. According to this second version of the recognition model, the normativity of work arises from the
conditions of recognition prevailing in the modern exchange of services.61 Drawing on Hegel and Durkheim, Honneth argues that modern market economies gain their legitimacy from a norm of mutual
recognition according to which subjects mutually recognize each
other as private autonomous beings that act for each other and thereby
sustain their livelihood through the contribution of their labour to
society.62 The moral basis of the modern labour market resides in the
reciprocity of the obligation to work for ones living by satisfying others
needs, on the one hand, and the opportunity to do reasonably paid
work which involves a minimal level of self-directed skilful activity on
the other. The availability of paid work which can support a decent
standard of living is thus a rational claim for subjects who are ready to
deliver a socially useful service through their labour. Likewise, the
availability of meaningful work, of work that requires the kind of skills
that an autonomous person can be expected to possess and which
other autonomous persons can recognise as such, amounts to a rational
claim under modern market-mediated conditions of social reproduction. Put negatively, a market economy that deprives subjects of the
opportunity to do work complex enough to be commensurate with the
status of autonomous agency at a minimum wage is inconsistent with
its own normative conditions. It prevents individuals from securing
self-respectas Honneth puts it following Hegelfor themselves as
autonomous agents, even though the legitimacy of modern societies
depends crucially on its capacity to make the bases of self-respect
available to everyone.
Clearly the normative presuppositions of exchange, if they are valid
at all, hold for all acts of work insofar as they are mediated by the
labour market. The reach of their validity is not restricted, so to speak,
by particular cultural horizons of interpretation of the principle of
Honneth, Work and Recognition: A Redefinition, p. 225.
Ibid, p. 230.
61
62
63
64
206
nicholas h. smith
reality and when he suggests that it would only take a flip of perspectives (from that of social integration to system integration) to bring
out the economic naivety even of his preferred recognition model.65
Still, the recognition model, in both its esteem-based formulation
focusing on the principle of achievement and its respect-based variation focusing on the normative presuppositions of exchange, presents
an alternative to both the instrumental and the expressive normative
models of work. The advantage it shares with the expressive model
over the instrumental model is that it can address concerns about the
degradation of work, or the lack of availability of meaningful work,
which is an important element in the current malaise around work.
Itcan do this by appeal to the norm of mutual respect that forms the
moral basis of the market-mediated exchange of services. But because
it takes the normative content of work to reside in the normative conditions of the exchange of labour, rather than the activity of working
itself, it does not have the resources that are available to the expressivist
model for supporting normative criticism of the quality of work. This
kind of criticism can hardly be divorced from expressivist insights
about the intrinsic value of working activity that allows for the expression of a subjects practical intelligence in a context of cooperation.
These insights are quite compatible with the idea that work is also an
instrumental good, and that it is instrumental in bringing about intrinsic goods that have little to do with work. Indeed, I have suggested that
this is just the conceptual framework we need for making sense of
worries about the work-life imbalance. The reminder that work is not
the only good, and that it actually needs to be brought in balance with
other goods, serves as a warning against a hyper-expressivism that
would reduce the good human life to working life. This is the nightmare that propels radical instrumentalism about work, but we can
reject it without embracing the idea that the normative content of work
is exhausted by mean-ends rationality.66
PART THREE
Chapter eight
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christophe dejours
2
The major part of the initial 1980 essay was devoted to the description of the
defence strategies which workers develop to contain suffering and its effects on health,
on the one hand, and the decline in production quality on the other. Following
the publication of this work, the focus of clinical investigation shifted from mental
illnesses to research on the defence strategies. These strategies are much more specific
to the work situation and its particular constraints than mental illnesses in the strict
sense, given that the symptomatic form of the latter depends more on each workers
individual psychic structure than on the characteristics of the concrete situation
involved in psychopathological decompensation.
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christophe dejours
3
See C. Dejours, Chapter 1, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail,
Editions de lAOCIP, 1988, Vol. I.
4
See H. Frankfurt, Freedom of the will and the concept of a person, The Journal
of Philosophy, Vol. 68, 1971, pp. 520.
214
christophe dejours
Twelve years later, the situation has considerably evolved. The psychopathology of work has become an original practice, in the full sense of
the word, namely as a means of intervention in work organisation
which is subject to strict methodological and ethical rules and based
on practical reasoning. The psychodynamics of work is first of all a
praxis.5 But it is not only a mode of intervention in the field; it has continued to be a knowledge-producing discipline. The 1980 essay on the
psychopathology of work was primarily centred on clinical investigation and deliberately left aside the enormous theoretical problems
which the latter raised. Giving form to this clinical experience first
implied significant theoretical breaks: with medicine, with psychiatry,
with psychoanalysis, ergonomics and the traditional psychology of
work (essentially tied to experimental psychology). But the shape of
the theoretical reconstruction was not yet fully conceivable.
What has remained from these breaks is the originality of an
approach situated outside the paradigm of the applied sciences and
this originality has consistently been confirmed ever since. The psychopathology of work was no longer an applied psychology, nor was it
a psychiatry applied to the world of work like that of Sivadon and
Amiel,6 much less a psychoanalysis applied to work situations like certain movements in psycho-sociology.
Does this mean that the investigation was totally nave and
untouched by any intellectual heritage? This was certainly not the case.
We definitely drew on the other theoretical corpuses but used them in
an essentially critical way, namely by seeking to give form to the empirical matter which, precisely, resisted interpretation by means of existing knowledge. In other words, we were trying to capture part of reality,
of what resists the heuristic power of available scientific corpuses.
And this was no longer with the intention of resolving reality in algorithms, which would be a vain effort, but in hope of bringing out an
intelligibility of work situations which would take into account the
irreductibility of that reality. Probably because it has survived that
tumultuous phase, the psychopathology of work, in the new form of
the psychodynamics of work, can now assert the primacy of research
For our use of the terms practice, praxis, practical reason, and practical wisdom,
see P. Ladriere, La sagesse pratique, Raisons Pratiques, Vol. 1, Paris, Editions de
lE.H.E.S.S., 1990, pp. 1538.
6
See P. Sivadon and R. Amiel, Psychopathologie du travail, Paris, Editions Sociales
Franaises, 1969.
5
216
christophe dejours
10
See F.-A. Isambert, Le dsenchentement du monde. Non-sens ou renouveau du
sens, Archives des Sciences sociales de religions, Vol. 61, 1986, pp. 83103.
218
christophe dejours
220
christophe dejours
222
christophe dejours
automation brings out unpredictable, non-standardised new problems, requiring the development of new know-how, as Boehle and
Milkau have clearly demonstrated in the case of the new technologies.20 Automation inevitably generates new challenges to the activity.
In other words, a fresh look at work organisation leads to refuting
the traditional division between conception and execution. All
workinvolves conception. The resulting definition of work therefore
stressesits human dimension. Work is human by definition because it
is called upon precisely where the mechanical-technological order is
insufficient.
Creativity and Work
From this same point of view, work is the creation of what is new,
unprecedented. Adapting prescriptive work organisation requires
bringing into play initiative, inventiveness, creativity and specific
forms of intelligence close to what common sense would call ingenuity.
Boehle and Milhau speak of subjectivising activity (subjektivierendes
Handeln) to characterise this intelligence which is deployed specifically in the field of practice.21 We would speak of worker intelligence
or practical intelligence, not to say that it is proper to workers and
would only be exercised in manual tasks, but to indicate that it appears
in its purest, most typical form among workers and in practice. Our
analyses show that worker intelligence is also indispensable in socalled intellectual or scientific tasks and even in theoretical work in the
strict sense. The analysis of the specific form of intelligence required by
problems stemming from activity is closely tied to the metis (cunning
intelligence) of the Greeks described by Dtienne and Vernant,22 as
distinguished from the application (execution) of instructions, which
has more to do with themis (or what Boehle and Milkau call objectifying activities). That said, the exercise of practical intelligence raises
problems concerning the way the social, psychic and cognitive requisites of its functioning come together, an issue which has only been
sketched out so far and largely remains to be explained.
20
See F. Bhle and B. Milkau, Vom Handrad zum Bildschirm. Munich, Campus,
1991.
21
ibid.
22
See M. Detienne and J. -P. Vernant, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and
Society, Chicago University Press, 1991.
Above all, the discoveries, clever interpretations, innovations stemming from interpretations of the prescribed organisation, and the
experimentations and singular experiences of work, all have to be
coordinated. Otherwise, there is a major risk of disorder and misunderstanding among agents, which ruin the potential advantages of
worker intelligence in terms of production quality or plant safety. But
beyond coordination, there remains perhaps the most important problem of all: cooperation.
Cooperation and Work
Cooperation represents an additional level in the complexity and integration of work organisation. Unlike coordination, it entails not simply
the logical and cognitive conditions for a successful linking up of individual activities but the will of the persons involved to work together
and to collectively overcome the contradictions arising from the
organisation of work.
As a consequence of the primordial gap between prescription and
reality, cooperation is inherently impossible to define beforehand.
The form cooperation should take cannot be determined in advance.
And because the content of cooperation escapes any a priori definition, it cannot be ordered either. Cooperation depends, moreover,
on the subjects freedom and the forging of a common will. For this
reason, any attempt to dictate it results in a paradoxical command.
In the absence of cooperation, the situation is equivalent to what we
observe in work-to-rule, in other words, bringing production to a halt.
Research in the psychodynamics of work has specifically dedicated
itself to the analysis of this difficult question, which is decisive for both
the efficiency of work and the economy of suffering and pleasure
in work.
Trust and Work
Above all, cooperation requires relationships of trust between subjectstrust in colleagues, subordinates, as well as company heads
and managers. But this is not self-evident. Trust is often lacking, and
even when it exists, it remains fragile. In a world of work where the
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very idea of trust generates bemused, if not ironic reactions, assertingthat it is an essential dimension of work, quality, safety and securitymay seem like a utopian dream. Our investigations demonstrate,
however, that the need for trust is not a fantasy. Without trust, we
are faced with distrust and suspicion. Bluntly stated, trust is a battle.
Real work organisation cannot be neutral where trust is concerned:
trust or distrust, cooperation or disorderthese are the alternatives.
The mechanisms of trust have thus gradually become a major issue,
both empirically and theoretically. Analysing these mechanisms has
caused us great difficulties. It now seems possible to conclude that trust
is not a feeling and that it is not of a psycho-affective nature. It stems
mainly from deontic activity, which is to say, the elaboration of agreements, standards and rules framing the way work is performed.
Explaining the mechanisms of trust in work relationships helps us to
understand what the rules of work or the rules of the trade consist
of and how they are constructed and stabilised.23
Thus, the adaptation of work organisation entails the creation of
ethical conditions. This essential dimension introduces into the ordinary management of work organisation a part which goes beyond
technique. Work depends not just on techne, or even poiesis. It also
depends on praxis.24
Subjective Mobilisation and Work
Beyond the coordination of each subjects individual contributions to
the building of work organisation and beyond the ethical or even political conditions underlying the construction of relationships of trust
between workers, cooperation only becomes real if the latter have the
desire to cooperate (orexis). What are the conditions which bring people into the dynamics of the construction and development of work
organisation? The psychodynamic analysis of work has made progress
on this last point in recent years. The findings may be briefly summed
up as follows.
23
See D. Cru, Les rgles de mtier, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le
travail, Editions de lAOCIP, Vol. I, 1988, pp. 2950.
24
See Dejours, Pathologie de la communication, situations de travail et espace
public: le cas du nuclaire.
25
See Dejours and Jayet, Psychopathologie du travail et organisation relle du travail dans une industrie de process.
226
christophe dejours
combating the suffering proper to managers in dangerous industries.26 The psychodynamic analysis of work has not only permitted
clinical investigation to bring out the specific forms of collective
defence strategies used by managers to fight their own suffering on
the job; it also permits the analysis of the dynamics of group-togroup relationships (managers and workers) when communication
is hindered or distorted by the intervention of defensive strategies
against the suffering of one group or another.27
Gratitude for the workers contribution to the organisation of work.
This second aspect of recognition is only granted sparingly in most
of the situations we have studied but it exists nonetheless.
The lack of recognition is one of the recurring themes in the world of
work. It is not a marginal demand but a key issue in the psychodynamics of cooperation. It is possible to analyse the intermediate links in the
dynamics of recognition but we cannot go into all the details here.
What follows are some of the main points.
Recognition entails the rigorous construction of judgements bearing
on the work carried out. These are made by specific agents who are
directly involved in the collective management of work organisation.
(As we shall see, such judgements presume the efficient functioning of
the work collectives, notably where peer judgements are concerned). It
is possible to distinguish between the different types of judgements
constituting recognition: the judgement of usefulness, made by someone else along a vertical line, namely superiors and subordinates, but
possibly by clients, and the judgement of beauty, made on a horizontal
level, by peers, colleagues, members of the team or the larger professional group.
These judgements all have one particular feature in common: the
fact that they bear on the work accomplished, in other words, on
the doing rather than the person. But recognition of the quality of the
work carried out can also concern personality in terms of a gain in
identity. To put it differently, the symbolic recompense conferred by
recognition may become meaningful in relation to subjective expectations of self-fulfilment. But the ontological sequence is capital here:
26
See C. Dejours, Travail et sant mentale : de lenqute laction, Prvenir,
Vol. 19, 1989, pp. 319.
27
See Dejours, Contributions of the psychodynamic analysis of work situations
to the study of organizational crises.
228
christophe dejours
EGO
OTHERS
SUFFERING
RECOGNITION
See F. Sigaut, Folie, rel et technologie, Techniques et culture, Vol. 15, 1990,
pp. 167179. Republished in Travailler, Vol. 12, 2004, pp. 117130.
28
29
See C. Dejours, Note sur la notion de souffrance, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et
souffrance dans le travail, Editions de lAOCIP, Vol. 2,1988, pp. 115125.
230
christophe dejours
a collective structure). In the 1980 essay, there was no explicit reference to the concept of the collective. It was only accessible to us by
virtue of collective defence strategies. In fact, the contribution of
such defensive strategies to the construction of collectives still seems
quite important. But does that allow us to assume that the collective
is essentially the outcome of a defensive dynamic? This question was
raised by Nicolas Dodier in particular.30 Since then, and notably on
the basis of Damien Crus studies,31 we have been able to identify
other specific contributions to the constitution of the collectives
which, on the contrary, stem from processes oriented towards the
search for quality and pleasure in work.
The crucial role of work rules (along with defensive strategies, which
can also be analysed as defensive rules) subsequently led to assigning
a key role to professional ethics in the building of the collectives. Lastly,
the function of language (along with language practices) has emerged
as increasingly significant; it now figures among the main research
paths to be explored. Asserting the central role of the collective and
making it a forceful concept in the psychodynamic analysis of selffulfilment, however, also means taking into account its unstable, perpetually incomplete nature as an inherent difficulty in the regaining of
identity in work.
This summary of the dynamics of recognition in work situations
suggests that cooperation is inseparable from the economics of identity and mental health in work. As already stated, the subjective mobilisation necessary for the ordinary management of work organisation
cannot be dictated. And it is useless to dictate it because it is generated
spontaneously by expectations of self-fulfilment. The practical problem confronting us is just the opposite. Most subjects in good health
hope to have the opportunity to build their identities in the social
sphere through work. This hope is so great that it gives rise, in ethical
terms, to the demand for a right to contributeto contribute to responsibilities for civic life,32 or in this case, responsibilities for the organisation of work. The practical problem, then, consists in not interrupting
See N. Dodier, La construction sociale des souffrances dans les activits quotidiennes de travail, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail, Paris, Editions
de lAOCIP Vol. 2, 1988, pp. 95114.
31
See Cru, Les rgles de mtier.
32
See P. Pharo, Politique et savoir vivre, Paris, LHarmattan, 1991.
30
33
See Dejours, Travail et sant mentale : de lenqute laction, and D. Dessors and
C. Jayet, Mthodologie et action en psychopathologie du travail (A propos de la souffrance des groupes de rinsertion mdico-sociale), Prvenir, Vol. 20, 1990, pp. 3143.
232
christophe dejours
it is more rational to take into account the subjective rationality of behaviours than to dismiss it in the name of teleological and axiological
rationalities.
Methodology and Action
Researchers and clinicians ask those specialising in the psychodynamics of work to explain the methodology of their investigations, whether
this involves the handling of proofs concerning the clinical data
invoked or the epistemological status of validation criteria. And it is
true that at the time the 1980 essay appeared, that methodology was
still vague. But it was elaborated in the years that followed, mainly in
response to pressure from the scientific community. In fact, it took
seven years to arrive at the first acceptable formulation, which was presented in the 1988 publication Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail
(Pleasure and suffering in work), bringing together material from the
interdisciplinary seminar on the psychodynamics of work mentioned
above. This methodology has since proven itself and for the most part,
does not seem to require major modifications. However, we shall highlight certain points which, after the fact, have turned out to be particularly difficult to handle and we shall also add several observations of a
more epistemological nature. In our view, the methodology of the psychodynamics of work is totally original. But instead of being a virtue,
this has turned out to be a problem, for theoretical and epistemological
discussion on the one hand, and its transmission to clinicians and
researchers on the other.
1. The first distinctive feature of this methodology is the absence
of questionnaires or interviews. The investigation depends above
all on the involvement of workers brought together in an ad hoc
collective. There is no individual interview. Nor are the researchersalone in facing the workers. They too always intervene as a collective, the investigation collectivea small groupwhich also
maintains functional ties with the larger collective now composed
of our laboratorys research team. This larger collective is constituted both as a resource and as a control collective, so named
in order to indicate that the confrontation between the investigation collective intervening in the field and the whole of the research
team aims at a broader analysis of the whole of the intervention
underway. Indeed, we shall see that the investigation is also an
See Dodier, La construction sociale des souffrances dans les activits quotidiennes de travail.
35
See J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. T. McCarthy,
Beacon Press, 1985, German Edition 1981. See also P. Ladriere and C. Gruson, Ethique
et gouvernabilit, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1992.
34
234
christophe dejours
arguments justifying it, has been suggested to us by Grard Mendel, who also called for work between collectives in the methodology he developed for socio-psychoanalysis.36 There, he stressed
the importance of introducing a rigorous economy of group-togroup relations into the socio-psychoanalytical intervention.
2. The second particularity of the investigations methodology results
from the originality of the facts to be constructed scientifically. We
already indicated that suffering, along with the principles controlling defensive strategies and the cooperation of individual contributions to work organisation, to some extent escaped both outsiders
and the subjects themselves. To put it more concisely, we can go
back to the idea that the agents intelligence is often ahead of their
consciousness of it. Intelligence has two meanings here: it designates a specific mode of exploring the work situation based on the
subjectivising experience of the work on the one hand, and the
understanding of that experience on the other, namely the elaboration of its intelligibility. The originality of the facts to be constructed
stems from the advance which the intelligence of the experience
enjoys over its intelligibility for the subject.37 The defensive strategies, which we have described elsewhere at great length, are another
source of difficulties with regard to the facts to be constructed insofar as they contribute to hiding the reality of the suffering and its
dynamic relationship with work. Hereand this second point is
capital in the methodologythe psychodynamic analysis of work
does not undertake scholarly interpretations based on the paradigm of applied sciences, even less that of expertise. Such an
approach, to borrow Alain Cottereaus excellent turn of phrase,
would have less to do with diagnosis in the strict sense than with
dia-gnosis.38 The meaning of the subjective experience of work
and suffering cannot be produced from the outside. The analysis of
the subjective dimension of work, or the objectification of subjectivity necessarily entails access to the meaning which the situation
See G. Mendel, La socit nest pas une famille, Paris, La Dcouverte, 1992.
On the concept of experience here, see the notion of subjectivising activity
in Y. Schwartz, Exprience et connaissance du travail, Paris, Editions Messidor, 1988;
and F. Bhle, and B. Milkau, Vom Handrad zum Bildschirm. Eine Untersuchung zur
sinnlichen Erfahrung im Arbeitsproze, Frankfort am Main, Campus, 1988.
38
See A. Cottereau, Plaisir et souffrance, justice et injustice sur les lieux de travail,
dans une perspective socio- historique, in ed. C. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le
travail, Editions de lAOCIP, Vol. 2, 1988, pp. 3782.
36
37
236
christophe dejours
The Authenticity of Speech
But the request itself is not self-evident. Under what conditions can it
be considered sufficiently explicit to permit the beginning of the investigation? Does the request result from a spontaneous process or does it
have to be sought out or even provoked? This is a difficult question and
a constant subject of debate. In any case, the request requires a rigorous
effort of elaboration, or working on the request. One case has been
specifically studied in terms of its different stages, and notably the one
called the socialisation of the request, which involves its construction
as a request which is socially validated by the different company
players.42
If rigorous work on the request and the ethical principles framing it
are determinant with regard to the validity criterion of authenticity, the
overall validation of the data and their interpretation does not rely on
it alone. There are other modes of verification, notably at the time of
the two oral and written reconstitutions which conclude the investigation phase proper. Before going any further, however, it must be
stressed that this specific requirement of the psychodynamic approach
with regard to the request, undoubtedly constitutes the greatest problem for the handling of this instrument, not only from a technical
standpoint (working on the request is tricky) but above all due to the
fact that the set-up thus constituted, with its many participants, is
unwieldy and time-consuming.
The Ability to Listen
The second question we have to address here concerns the intersubjective conditions for the elaboration of the subjective experience of work. In
order for the subjects speech acts to allow the working-through of
real-life experience, it is not enough to have a mechanism of dialogue
alone, namely someone who speaks and someone who listens. Even if
there were no ambiguity about the workers request, listening would
not be enough to bring about a miraculous emergence of meaning.
This depends also on the nature of the listening. Very briefly stated,
pp. 115131 and P. Bourdieu, Introduction la socio-analyse, Actes de la recherche en
sciences sociales, Vol. 90, 1991, pp. 319.
42
See Dejours and Jayet, Psychopathologie du travail et organisation relle du travail dans une industrie de process.
238
christophe dejours
listening only produces an effect when it takes risks, in the same way
that speaking out takes risks. Listening and hearing, which means
understanding something new in what is spoken, leads to a first risk.
Above all because hearing the suffering of someone else, penetrating
the tragedy in Politzers sense of the word, is upsetting and destabilising for the researchers psychic functioning. From the very beginning
of the work on the request, the psychodynamics of work investigations
turn out to be extremely painful for the researchers. Others have had
the same experience, notably psychoanalysts and ethnologists.43
The second risk for the researchers involves their relationship with
established scientific knowledge. As we have already indicated, an
investigation only works if the entire theory of the psychodynamics of
work is constantly put to the test of reality, even if this means that it
loses its legitimacy or interest for the researchers because the real-life
situations are incompatible with its theoretical corpus. Indeed, this is
why the control collective mentioned earlier was set up.
The third risk taken by the researchers is more decisive. Willingly or
not, they commit themselves to the workers participating in the investigation. The fact that the investigation must arise from a request, as a
methodological principle, inevitably implies taking a stand in relation
to that request. Here, it is worth recalling that the request is only
acceptable when it is explicitly formulated in terms of a request for
understanding and analysing the work situation, not as a therapeutic
one. But this should not be misunderstood: while the investigation collective does not commit itself to resolving the problems raised by the
relationship to work organisation, it does, on the other hand, commit
itself to doing everything in its power to arrive at the intelligibility of
the situation. This is a weighty commitment and one which implies
significant risks, because we cannot be certain in advance of reaching
conclusions which satisfy all the validation criteria. Thus, the researchers are prey to the same anxiety they face with any scientific problem,
except that here, by contrast with other research approaches, they are
in a real situation and in real time. And the researchers success or failure is also responsible, in part, for the subjective future of the workers
who, from their own end, have taken the risk of getting involved in the
investigation. These conditions as a whole characterise what we would
call risky listening.
43
See G. Devereux, De langoisse la mthode dans les sciences du comportement,
Paris, Flammarion, 1980.
When the three risks identified here actually come into play, they
inevitably confront the research collective with an additional one
which, in our opinion, is even more imposing: in some field research,
the action engaged by the investigation often goes far beyond it, leading to circumstances in which the individual researchers are sought
out, and it is impossible for them to avoid the moral or even legal obligation to testify publicly about their scientific work. This situation
occurs when the problems the investigation raises about the contradictions inherent in the organisation of work set off debates extending
into the public sphere. The obligation to testify arises from a double
constraint. For one thing, the refusal to testify is not neutral and can
act to the advantage of certain participants and the disadvantage of
others, thus implying a lack of fairness. And for another, the debates
sometimes become polemical and certain participants resort to
manoeuvres attempting to disqualify the research group or even the
entire laboratory, or indeed, the scientific community at large. In this
case, abstention becomes untenable.
The three (and possibly four) dimensions of risky listening are
thus inseparable from the methodology of the psychodynamics of
work. This is why we have come to define the psychodynamic analysis
of work situations, above all, as we stated at the beginning of this chapter, as a practice of intervention and not simply as a classical analytical
science which produces knowledge.
This is also why the investigation methodology in the psychodynamics of work follows the action research model. Many other forms
of investigations in the human and social sciences claim to go back to
action research. But in most cases, this means that the investigation,
through its own dynamics, provokes changes in the situation studied.
In the case of the psychodynamics of work, however, the changes in
question are not simply side effects of the scientific research, to be
recorded for purposes of evaluation and validation. In the psychodynamic analysis of work, the changes which the investigation may generate engage the responsibility of the researchers collective, even
within the action itself, because what is involved is suffering.
However, the forms of this responsibility and commitment, which
are strictly governed by respect for the ethics of evidence, make the
content and nature of the researchers intervention radically different
from those of the other participants in the action underway. In any
event, risky listening ultimately appears to be the counterpart, for the
researchers, of what the request represents for the workers.
240
christophe dejours
In our view, this methodological setup provides the basis for what
might be considered an equitable relationship between the speech motivated by a request and risky listening. This economy of intersubjective
relations in the investigation methodology of the psychodynamics of
work is critical for the efficiency of the pragmatic dimension of language relative to its capacity for working-through or bringing out the
meaning of the real-life experience.
Thought and Action
A final remark to bring this section to a close: we have seen how access
to the intelligibility of the workers experience projects the researchers,
whether they like it or not, into action itself. And the same is true for
the workers. The collective working-through of the work experience,
through the investigation, transforms the workers subjective relationship to their work situation. After the investigation, whether they like
it or not, their interventions in the discussion space devoted to the
organisation of work cannot be the same as before because they do not
perceive it and think about it in the same way. Action is thus inseparable from the work of elaboration, even if the latter has only involved
thought and speech. The practice of the psychodynamics of work
investigations suggests that the theoretical locus of the action is in the
very work of thinking and there is no reason to maintain the traditional philosophical distinction between thought and action.
From Intersubjectivity to the Test of Objectification
This long digression on methodology should now enable us to address
several epistemological questions more succinctly. These issues, raised
by the shift from the psychopathology of work to the psychodynamics
of work, must be examined if we want to determine the possible role of
the new discipline within the scientific domain. Even if some authors
consider this a futile task,44 we feel it is unavoidable. However incomplete and awkward it might be, the debate is introduced here to indicate the main lines of research which exchanges with researchers in
44
See J. -C. Passeron, Le raisonnement sociologique. Lespace non popprien du raisonnement naturel, Paris, Nathan, 1991.
theoretical sociology have suggested to us over the past few years. The
psychodynamic analysis, as we have already indicated, cannot lead to
the observation or revelation of pre-existing occurrences. The investigation brings out a reality by the very process of interpreting speech.
Researchers and philosophers have constructed an entire tradition
around the questions raised by the recourse to interpretation and the
role of interpretation in scientific work. The psychodynamics of work
is a discipline which makes use of the technique of interpretation with
the methods described above. As such, it comes under the epistemology of the historico-hermeneutic sciences, which Habermas distinguishes from the empirico-analytical (ie. experimental) sciences.45 The
fact of referring to the Habermassian conception, however, requires us
to raise another question, even if we cannot discuss it here, namely
whether the psychodynamics of work does not also belong to the critical sciences, to the extent that, like psychoanalysis, it is basically aimed
at an effort of reappropriation and emancipation based on the critique
of the distortions of communicative action.46
Notwithstanding Gadamers warnings about the opposition between
truth and method and his intention to create a philosophical hermeneutics rather than constituting the bases of a methodology for the
social sciences,47 we would be tempted to think that the work carried
out in recent years on methodology in the psychodynamics of work
helps to demonstrate the possibility of building a hermeneutical
method in the narrow sense of the term.48 The methodology of the
psychodynamics of work gives a possible form to the application
criteria which Gadamer considers capital for establishing the hermeneutical stance and approach. A systematic epistemological discussion
concerning the relations between the psychodynamics of work and the
hermeneutic approach would lead us to consider a dimension which is
generally excluded from our subject: in contrast to poiesis, which finds
a concrete form of expression in the object produced, praxis requires
45
See J. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. J. Shapiro, Beacon Press,
1972 [1968].
46
See B. Flynn, Reading Habermas Reading Freud, Human Studies, Vol. 8, 1985,
pp. 5776.
47
See H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. Marshall,
London, Continuum, 2004 [1960].
48
See J. Ladriere, Hermneutique et pistmologie, in J. Gteisch and R Kearney,
Paul Ricoeur: les mtamorphoses de la raison hermneutique, Paris, Cerf, 1991,
pp. 107126.
242
christophe dejours
244
christophe dejours
246
christophe dejours
terms is isolated from the other two that the risk of alienation and
madness emerges. Let us go back to Sigauts analysis:
REALITY
OTHERS
EGO
Mental alienation
When the subject is cut off from reality and recognition by others, he
or she is abandoned to the solitude of the classic madness known as
mental alienation.
WORK
SUFFERING
RECOGNITION
Social alienation
EGO
OTHERS
Cultural alienation
Last of all, when the subjects acts are recognised by others but this
recognition takes place, on both sides, in a psychic world which has
lost its ties with reality, we are, according to Sigaut, dealing with cultural alienation. This is the case of sects. But it can also be the case of
certain communities of researchers, practitioners or even political
leaders cut off from their base, or administrations cut off from reality.
Nor does cultural alienation only concern exceptional situations; it
also takes more ordinary forms which can nonetheless be extremely
serious in certain work situations. In one of our investigations, workers
or supervisors were aware of anomalies in assembly, of tasks carried
out in a slapdash way, of defective drills or measuring devices, of serious breaches of specifications or even blatant frauds in the accomplishment of certain stages of the work, which in their view called quality or
plant safety into question. The chain of authority lent a deaf ear to
these repeated warnings coming from the base.
Many incidents, notably the most serious ones, are not reported
back to management. What gets excluded is reality, while company
heads and executives debating questions of management, administration and doctrine are cut off from the reality of the work, in other
52
See A. Bensaid, Apport de la psychopathologie du travail ltude dune bouffe
dlirante ague, Archives des Maladies Professionnelles, 52, Paris, Masson, 1990,
pp. 307310; C. Dejours, Introduction clinique la psychopathologie du travail,
Archives des Maladies Professionnelles, Vol. 52, Paris, Masson, 1990, pp. 273278;
C. Dejours, T. Collot, P. Godard and P. Logeay, Syndromes psychopathologiques
conscutifs aux accidents du travail (incidences sur la reprise du travail), Le travail
humain, Vol. 49, 1986, pp. 103106.
248
christophe dejours
53
See Bensaid, Apport de la psychopathologie du travail ltude dune bouffe
dlirante ague, Dejours, Introduction clinique la psychopathologie du travail, and
C. Dejours, La charge psychique de Travail, in quilibre ou Fatigue par le travail?,
Intervention aux Journes nationales de psychologie du travail, Paris, ditions ESF/
Enterprise moderne ddition, Vol. 1, 1980.
54
See H. Hirata and D. Kergoat, Rapports sociaux de sexe et psychopathologie du
travail, in ed. Dejours, Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail, Vol. 2, 1988, pp. 131176.
250
christophe dejours
Chapter nine
252
pascale molinier
3
In France the nursing profession is predominantly female. In 2004, 87% of nurses
were female. However, this varies across different sectors: 47% of males in psychiatry;
27% in anaesthetic services; and only 1% in pediatric services. There were 740,000
assistant nurses and hospital assistants (91% and 81% female respectively). See Sabine
Bessire, La feminisation des professions de sant en France: donnes de cadrage,
Revue franaise des affaires sociales, La Documentation franaise, 2005, 1, pp.1933.
4
See E. C. Hughes, Men and Their Work, Glencoe, IL., Free Press, 1958; Good
People and Dirty Work, Social Problems, Vol. 10, 1962, pp. 311.
5
See D. Lhuillier, Le sale boulot, Travailler, Vol. 14, 2005, pp. 7398.
6
ibid. p. 73.
care as work253
254
pascale molinier
care as work255
256
pascale molinier
care as work257
being asked) for the boss to use in the next meeting. Another type of
inconspicuous skill (savoir-faire discrets) is that of the cleaner who
manages to clean a table without upsetting the researchers desk.
Another example still is that of being able to avoid saying to parents
that an important event in their childs development, for example her
first steps, happened in the childcare during their absence. These skills
are inconspicuous or discreet in the sense that in order to achieve their
goals, the means used to do so must not draw the attention of those
who benefit from them and must be mobilised without expecting gratitude for it. As a result, care work becomes visible mainly when it fails,
when a smile becomes too forced or disappears from the nurses face,
when a gesture is too mechanical, when the response to a request takes
too long, when the child comes back from childcare bitten or scratched
by another or when the housewife makes the homes cleanliness a form
of domestic tyranny.
The invisibility of care work, which is intrinsic to it, and belongs to
its very essence, results in a chronic deficit of recognition. As a general
rule recognition is difficult to obtain because it has to be granted to
work that is actually accomplished (and not to its theoretical presentation in charts, protocols, job descriptions, and so on) and it relies on
two separate types of judgement:
1. First the judgement of beauty evaluates work by assessing its conformity to the rules of the trade but also its originality, that is, its
capacity to find new solutions to the problems encountered. This
judgement is delivered by peers, mostly through the symbolic forms
of integration within the collective, and through admiration.
2. The judgement of utility relates to the social, economic or tech
nical usefulness of work. It does not evaluate the means used
but verifies that the goals have been achieved. It is delivered by
those further up the hierarchy, and is materialised in the form of
the wage, qualification, promotion and the attribution of more
resources.
The dynamics of recognition rests upon the collective capacity to make
judgements of beauty and utility, with as little contradiction and as
much congruence, as possible. This implies that it is possible to regularly discuss the difficulties encountered by the team, in the internal
public space of the company or the institution, so that the prescription
can be changed in a more realistic way and made more compatible
with the demands of the task and more respectful of the meaning that
258
pascale molinier
care as work259
No, they responded, they were serving them, thats all.20 In the article
he wrote about them, Jacques Lacan thought he had discovered an
anticipation of the tragedy that was to unfold in the coldness that characterised the relationship between the masters who seem to have
strangely lacked human sympathy and the haughty indifference of
the servants.21 It was as though the presence of love would make it fine
to be served and thus to subordinate; and as though love by itself erased
the chore aspects inherent in care work. What one forces the other to
endure as a result of ones own dependence is therefore veiled by the
combined effects of inconspicuous skills and the justification of service
work by the love of the provider towards the beneficiary. The relationships between love and care work are complex. To love can be a
way to survive for the care giver. It is often believed that love comes
first, and causes the involvement in care work, whereas many situations show that the attachment to the persons cared for is only secondary, or even that this attachment creates a psychological situation
which makes the constraints even more difficult to endure. An example of this is the immigrant nurses from Southern countries who leave
their own children to come and look after children from the North: in
the absence of my own children, the best I could do was to give all my
love to this child, one of them said. Or said another: I work ten hours
a day, I do not know anyone in this area, this child gives me what
I need. All this illustrates how love is naturalised by their female
employers in the terms of the loving and warm temperament of the
women from the South.22
How can we separate care work from the love which tends to mask
it, to justify it or make it unbearable? The pragmatic knowledge of the
nurses and auxiliary nurses, their inconspicuous, discreet skills and
their naturalisation under the category of womanhood are not the only
causes of the invisibility of their work. The ambiguous status of the
writings. In 1963, Louis Le Guillant published an article in Les Temps Modernes
(Sartres journal), entitled Laffaire des soeurs Papin (Nov. 1963, p. 868913) [Added
by the editors].
20
See L. Le Guillant, Laffaire des surs Papin, Les Temps Modernes, Vol. 216,
1963, pp. 869913, p. 894.
21
J. Lacan, Motives of Paranoid Crime: The Crime of the Papin Sisters, Critical
Texts, No. 3, 1988, pp. 711, p. 7.
22
Hochschild, Le nouvel or du monde. On the ambiguity of the feelings mobilised
by waged domestic work, see also S. Esman, Faire le travail domestique chez les
autres. Transcription de linstruction au sosie suivi du commentaire, Travailler, Vol. 8,
2002, pp. 4572.
260
pascale molinier
mobilised affectivity on the one hand, and the care relation on the
other, constitute another motive of the invisibility of care, or more precisely of the difficulty to account for it publicly.
In my fieldwork research, the material is gathered in small groups of
a few people who have agreed to talk about the difficulties of their
work. A beautiful woman recounts with uneasiness that she has agreed
to the request of a sick patient in intensive care who was confined to his
bed through tubes and pipes. He had asked her if she could arrange her
hair in a way he found suited her more. Is this still care or is it already
a transgression, a kind of erotic play? How far can self-sacrifice (don de
soi or literally, to give oneself) go before losing oneself? How do the
nurses manage not to confuse everything? The erotic dimension of
their relationship is not lost on the nurse. This gesture of arranging her
hair made her uneasy. If however she did agree to fulfil the patients
desire, it is not out of love for him, but out of compassion. The nurses
often say that the main reason they can sometimes transgress the rules
is their conviction that the patients have no one else to look after them.
In this particular group of nurses, this story elicits others which once
again poses the question of the boundaries that cannot be crossed,
even out of compassion. For instance, they tell of an old man who
asked to be slipped into a short nightgown of pink lace. The nurses
agreed to put it on him, but refused to wash him in it when he also
requested this.
The knowledge of the nurses can hardly be formulated in the public sphere because this knowledge about our intimacy reveals not
only that vulnerability is the norm, but also that as vulnerable beings
we are also twisted beings: the twisted beings that have to be cared
for, and those who care for them who are no less twisted themselves.
Indeedthe title of this chapter could just as well be twisted vulnerabilities as mutual vulnerabilities. Mutual vulnerabilities is only an
approximation, partly inaccurate, to indicate that it is more apt to
think of the asymmetry characteristic of the care relation as a form of
work, one for the other, rather than as one is vulnerable, the other
not. This is because, as the psychodynamic of health work suggests,
it is not possible to take into consideration the vulnerability of the
other without mobilising ones own sensitivity, that is, without taking
the risk of being destabilised by the twisted expressions of ones own
subjectivity.
To relegate intimate bodily care into the category of dirty work,
tasks performed by the least qualified women, is therefore an easy way
care as work261
out for everyones peace of mind. Indeed, we can add that the cultural
taboo relating to the activities of touching human waste and dead bodies, as well as the discourse of those who accomplish these tasks, tends
to opportunely mask the taboo that goes even deeper relating to sexuality and the ambiguities of affectivity.
The nurses, and even more so, the auxiliary nurses, cannot describe
their work using general representations, even less can they model it
through numbers and diagrams. In order to make someone understand what they do, they have to tell a succession of twisted stories
where vulnerability is in no way synonymous with innocence, transparency or goodness. This succession of stories which the nurses
tirelessly tell each other as soon as the opportunity arises helps them
build a common ethic that cannot be separated from a community of
sensitivity. What is one to do when one keeps finding two old ladies in
the same bed every morning? Can one tolerate that a patient secretly
drinks alcohol? A dying patient prefers to smoke rather than eat
should one give him this last pleasure? Or should one give in to his
family who refuse to accept the imminence of his death and demand
that the auxiliary nurses confiscate his cigarettes and force him to eat?
Making oneself pretty, tolerating anothers sexuality (and a twisted one
at that), letting someone drink or smoke, authorising illicit pleasures
and sometimes authorising them to oneself: what these peers judge
collectively is not the transgression itself, according to the norms of
(well done) work and the good life, but rather the degree to which the
transgression belongs to the sphere of care. What orients public deliberation is not the intimate dimension of pleasure for the personperhaps the nurse did take some pleasure from the seduction of her raised
hairbut rather the highest shared goal of health work, which consists
in ensuring that the other suffers the least. Conversely, deliberation is
also what enables the nurses and auxiliary nurses to avoid giving in
without control to transgression and its ambiguities. Recognition by
their peers unfolds in the very exercise of this community of sensitivity, via the mediation of those stories that constitute it and through
which the rules of the trade are constantly elaborated. Those rules enable them to adjudicate over what belongs or does not belong to good
work.
Even though care work at first appears difficult to grasp, it is accessible through narration. Transforming it into a story does not aim for
truth or objectivity but it tends to give expression to what cannot be
expressed, namely that which resists the dominant symbolic order.
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pascale molinier
Can any of this be said publicly? There is a great risk that the attempt
to bear witness to the effects of the real upon ones own subjectivity
leads one to become ensnared in the traps of confession, in a situation
where the other is judge and censor of a subjectivity that would then be
perceived unilaterally as inappropriate or deviant. Most models of care
escape this danger because they cheat with reality by not accounting
for the sexually incorrect character of the care relation, which is anything but a marginal dimension of it, or by overlooking the disgust and
hate that care work sometimes causes towards recipients.23
Politics and Practice, Virility and Femininity
The nurses movement which emerged in France at the end of the
1980s represented an important shift in the history of this profession.
It contributed to legitimacy for the nurses, of the values associated
with their work. But their collective power of action did not reach its
goal of modifying the perception of the representatives of the state. The
encounter between them failed. The representatives of the state, after
an initial stage where they were destabilised, eventually managed to
reduce this legitimacy and the political scope of the nurses movement
by reducing it to feminine pathos. A member of the health ministers
department summed up the misunderstanding in the following terms:
It was incredible. These girls from the nurses coalition, they would
tell you in detail the problems of their everyday life! They were quite
moving and touching, but how can you negotiate with a slice of life?
Whilst on the other side: We realised that the quality of care is not
their problem. For them, things have to work without the human side
being taken into consideration. They have no clue about what a hospital is really like, our life.24 It is interesting to note that in the nurses
discourse, the quality of care and the human are identified. The
definition of care stands at the heart of the misunderstanding.
Undoubtedly the nurses strategy was not the best one; it is important to be able to change the mode of enunciation when one shifts
from the practical to the political. However, beyond their failure,
See Cohen, Histories de naissances et de mort; P. Molinier, La haine et lamour,
la bote noire du fminisme? Une critique de lthique du dvouement, Nouvelles
Questions Fministes, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2004. pp. 1225.
24
The quotes are from Kergoat, Imbert, Le Doar, and Snotier, Les infirmires et
leur coordination 19881989, pp. 107108.
23
care as work263
ifwewant to find a mode of expression more appropriate to the political expression of care, a necessary condition is to understand the
obstacles to the understanding between the politicians and the nurses
(and more broadly the care providers). Amongst these obstacles, some
are defensive.
Indeed what the two quotes above demonstrate is that the nurses
and the state (through its representatives) not only expressed themselves on different levels, but also in different registers, the virile and
the feminine respectively, which made them unable to hear each other.
By feminine and virile, I mean defensive positions that have nothing to
do with the essence of men or women, but have everything to do with
the arbitrariness of the social and sexual division of labour.25 This arbitrariness creates different experiences leading to forms of subjectivation that are not only very distinct, but also antagonistic. There is a
conflict of interest between collective defence strategies that are elaborated to support the suffering caused by care work, on the one hand,
and the collective defence strategies of politicians, managers and doctors who are mainly male. What does this refer to? Research in the
psychodynamics of work has shown that the involvement of workers is
mostly dependent on the symbolic resonance that can exist between
work and the inner space inherited from childhood, that is, on the possibility of using what they do to develop a sense of self and overcome
the suffering inherent in their psychological development. Suffering
therefore predates entrance into the world of work. Suffering is an
experience that cannot be separated from embodimentno suffering
without bodyand that can never be fully represented. As a result,
subjective suffering is always awaiting its meaning, both to allow the
subject to perform a reflexive return to its being in the world, and to
25
The thesis of a simultaneous construction of gender identities and the sexual
division of labour can be found in a number of authors. Lisa Adkins, Mobile Desire:
Aesthetics, Sexuality and the Lesbian at Work, Sexualities, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2000,
pp. 201218 in particular, following Judith Butler, insists on the mobile, or even flexible (in the neo-liberal sense) characteristics of gender identities produced by service
activities, especially in commercial activities. In contrast, my own research leads me to
emphasise rather the contribution of work to the parts of gender identities and the
sexual division of labour that are the most fixed and the least susceptible to change,
inasmuch as these parts resist change because of their defensive function. Although
I cannot develop this point further here, men (who are in the minority in a female
collective) can take on feminine defence strategies, and women virile defence strategies. For example, women doing male work (in the social sense) are not necessarily
different from men. They can well be, however, when expectations and injunctions
addressed to them are different.
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pascale molinier
direct the latter towards action on the world. This is the point where
the subject encounters work: for better, when work is such that it creates something; but also for worse, when work is an obstacle to selffulfilment, when it borders on the absurd or confronts the subject with
major psychological threats like fear. People do not all fall ill in such
deleterious but very ordinary circumstances, because they are able to
develop defence mechanisms between health and sickness. Our
research has shown that certain ways of talking, certain behaviours
and attitudes than can seem aberrant or irrational in the face of classical forms of rationality, become highly intelligible from the point of
view of the function they fulfil in allowing self-preservationwhat
could be called their pathic rationality. In contrast to what psychoanalysis teaches about individual defence mechanisms, it appears that
these odd forms of behaviour belong in fact to systems that are constructed collectively. In other words, there exist ordinary forms of
cooperation whose main purpose is a defensive one, namely to prevent
subjects from thinking about what makes them suffer at work.26
Precisely speaking, in work situations that are dangerous for physical
integrity (the building industry for example) or for psychic integrity
(in particular when one has to assume responsibility for the lives of
others, or accomplish a task that conflicts with ones moral sense),
work collectives mostly composed of men defend themselves against
fear and/or moral suffering by constructing collective defence strategies centred on:
The denial of mens vulnerabilitya real man has no fear/has no
feelings.
The disregard for the vulnerability of others.27
In other words, all those who demonstrate vulnerability, whatever
their biological sex, are excluded from the category of real men.
Whereas from the perspective of care there can only be one model of
the human beinghomo vulnerabilisthe virile defence ideology
constantly reiterates a bipartite division of human beings which
opposes them and hierarchically ranks them: man/woman, strong/
weak, autonomous/dependent, reason/unreason. Such an ideological
construct creates a dominant system of thought we can only escape
with great difficulty.
See Dejours, Pathologies de la communication.
See C. Dejours, Souffrance en France. La banalisation de linjustice sociale, Paris,
Seuil, 1998.
26
27
care as work265
266
pascale molinier
Self-mockery as a Way of Dealing with Defeat
care as work267
not denied. On the contrary they are relived and domesticated through
well-crafted stories, many times recounted and embellished throughout a career. These stories attempt to circumscribe the irruption of the
realdefined as what resists mastery through conventional means
not in order to push it outside of shared representations, but rather to
control its effects on the psyche. These stories help transmit and reiterate a culture of the craft/trade (mtier) which is nothing but a way of
living (art de vivre) with defeat. This specific ethos of the nurses craft
is all about acknowledging the limits of all things, starting with ones
own limits, in the face of death, madness, the waste produced by
human bodies, sexuality, and so on. It is also about accepting the failures of embodiment, first and foremost of ones own, notably in the
failures of ones body, for example when the nurse feels her blood curdling, her legs become weaker, disgust, uncontrollable giggles, excitement, and so on. All of this shows that even though self-mockery
coupled with mockery enables the nurses to take a certain measure of
distance and detachment, the latter is anything but indifference. Rather,
such detachment enables the acceptance and elaboration of vulnerability. However, the self-mockery that makes the experiences of care sayable within the collective of peers also makes it unacceptable outside
this narrow circle (outside recognition by the peers). The experiences
of nurses and auxiliary nurses in its authentic expression cannot be
accepted from the vantage point of the dominant (virile) positiona
subjective position which prohibits individuals from laughing at their
own weakness or from expressing any tenderness towards the twisted
individuals that we all are. These stories which constitute in fact a narrative of the experience of care are perceived as slices of life, as anecdotal and not quite serious, and paradoxically can even be taken to
represent a lack of respect towards the patients. The very health of the
staff providing care appears improper. How can you laugh about it?
The Contingency of Care
Nursing is by essence the work of women, wrote Dsire Magloire
Bourneville, who as leader of the reformist doctors at the end of the
nineteenth century was the main proponent of the introduction of
nurses into the public hospitals of Paris.29 The nurse was considered
In Le Progrs mdical, Vol.7, 1878, p. 388.
29
268
pascale molinier
atthe time the main vector for the humanisation of care. The candidate
was to be young because that would ensure she would be docile and
malleable so she could be educated according to her own nature (as
a woman), and become an assistant that was tender and dedicated
towards the patients. However, the rationalisation of scientific charity through the division of labour constantly increased during the first
half of the twentieth century. Services are organised according to
pathologies, the organs to be cured, the different ages of life. Health
work becomes more and more fragmented: the distribution of basins
(urinals) and thermometers is assembly-line like, and so on. What is
asked of the nurses is only their obedience (they are considered solely
as operational staff with no power of decision) and their composure in
the face of suffering and deathnot their capacities for compassion.
In the 1970s, a new wave of the humanisation of the hospital
emerges, denouncing this organisation of work and the reification of
patients designated by their room number, the name of their pathology, or even their sick organ.30 Common rooms are abolished, psychiatric hospitals and nursing homes are reformed, and new types of
organisation are invented, like the sectors, day hospitals, long stay, palliative care, child-mother hospitalisation, and so on. New nursing
schools teach a new conception of the nurse, inspired by the AngloSaxon tradition of clinician nurses, which rests on a more holistic conception of the person. New tools and practices are introduced.31 A new
profession is invented: the auxiliary nurse. Their presence, especially
for the patients in long stay, brings an undeniable improvement of living conditions. On all these levels, progress is undeniable, but it is fragile. Today, political choices concerning the restructuring of hospitals
are made according to management and accounting principles. In
particular, the main exercise consists of counting what treatments
of pathologies are cost-effective, or not based on a conception of the
treatment that is entirely aligned with productivist models. The main
proponent of this kind of hospital management in France writes:
It is wrong to oppose quality and quantitative evaluation. Agreed, not
everything can be measured easily, but companies in the industrial sector have established quantitative measurements for the satisfaction of
their clients, rates of faults in the manufacture of electronic components,
See M. Abiven, Humaniser lhospital, Paris, Fayard, 1976.
See B. Walter, Le savoir infirmier. Construction, volution, rvolution de la pense
infirmire, Lamarre-Poinat, 1988.
30
31
care as work269
rates of error in payroll or invoicing systems. Quality can also be measured. This is exactly what the zero default in quality circles aims for32
32
270
pascale molinier
become the good conscience of the elites. The main tasks for this interdisciplinary reflection would therefore be the following: to account for
the tensions, twists and contradictions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity; to acknowledge the impact of the organisation of work on the
capacity to provide respectful handling of patients; to analyse the
cursed share of dirty work in care workand most importantly, not
to dissociate the two; to account for the complexity of care work on a
psychological level; to uncover the forms of virility in expert discourses; and to identify the blind spot of work in political analysis,
especially of female work.33
Translated from the French by Jean-Philippe Deranty and Nicholas
H. Smith.
33
This essay was first published in French as Le care lpreuve du travail.
Vulnrabilits croises et savoir-faire discrets, in eds. Patricia Paperman and Sandra
Laugier, Le souci des autres. thique et politique du care, Paris, Editions de lEHESS,
2006, pp. 299316.
PART FOUR
Chapter ten
1
Special recognition is due to Ursula Holtgrewe for her part in developing many
aspects of this concept and the reflections in this essay. The essay was first published in
German in Axel Honneth ed., Befreiung aus der Mndigkeit, Frankfurt/M., Campus,
2002, pp. 6592.
2
See T. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, New York, MacMillan, 1899.
3
See M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York,
Scribner, 1958 [1920].
274
stephan voswinkel
1. Recognition through which Type of Work?
276
stephan voswinkel
278
stephan voswinkel
280
stephan voswinkel
and trade unions were so important as they made it possible to establish forms of appreciation without this sense of assistance. They established true relations of recognition instead of patriarchal company
communities (Betriebsgemeinschaft), which Kotthoff named company
citizenship (Betriebsbrgerschaft).23 And it seems plausible that with
such institutions a basis and an arena of recognition were created in
which wide-ranging demands of self-realisation and self-determination
could be developed by the employees and their representatives.
On the other hand however this form of recognition under Taylorian
conditions was alsoor even, justthe other side of the devaluation
of Taylorised work, its depreciation in terms of prestige, and the contempt towards workers in the work processes, their reduction and
objectification to the status of operatives in an optimised functional
system. We know that subjectivity, in the actual practice of the Taylorian
system, was in no way eliminated, indeed was often the condition for
the actual functioning of the work systems. But subjectivity played that
role only tacitly, not really as being recognised, or indeed only as tacitly recognised.24 Subjectivity lived in the hidden situations of companies, as Konrad Thomas25 said, or, as Volmerg, Senghaas-Knobloch
and Leithuser put it, in the lifeworld of the company,26 that is, in the
informal handing out of reciprocal consideration between foreman
and worker, but also in the creative and playful attempts at putting the
work situation in a new light. On the one hand, such recognition was
iron-clad in rituals of appreciation: for instance in twenty-fifth anniversaries of employment and company vacations. On the other hand, it
was consolidated by regulations such as work rights, by social policies
at the level of the company and the State that transformed the claim
to appreciation into a rights claim, a claim that ensured that the dimension of (selective) care was no longer present; a dimension, which
even though it might have been a guarantee of recognition, would
have still entrenched the power and authority of the company. Examples
23
See H. Kotthoff, Betriebsrte und Brgerstatus, Wandel und Kontinuitt betrieblicher Mitbestimmung, Mnchen/Mering, 1994.
24
See H. Kocyba, Der Preis der Anerkennung: Von der tayloristischen Missachtung
zur strategischen Instrumentalisierung der Subjektivitt der Arbeitenden, in eds.
Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, 2000, pp. 127140,
p. 128.
25
See K. Thomas, Die betriebliche Situation der Arbeiter, Stuttgart, 1964.
26
See B. Volmerg, E. Senghaas-Knobloch and T. Leithuser, Betriebliche Lebenswelt.
Eine Sozialpsychologie industrieller Arbeitsverhltnisse, Opladen, 1986.
282
stephan voswinkel
of such regulations are: sick leave provisions and certain rights, insurances and company bonuses linked to seniority. Such rituals and regulations were thus secured collectively, without the deep logic of
contempt (Missachtungslogik) of Taylorism being undermined by
them.
Domestic and family workif I may be allowed this shift of focus
that is unusual in mainstream sociology of workfollowed a similar
pattern. This type of work does not receive any recognition as admiration either: it is rather appreciated as a form of fulfilment of duty.
Gabriele Wagner has emphasised the gender dimension in recognitive
relations of work and has characterised it aptly as a form of recognition
based on harmonious inequality.27 This aspect is well captured in
the image of the mother who is excluded from public life and may
expect admiration through the career of her husband, but appreciation
as a mother happy to sacrifice herself, who might claim this appreciation in the rituals of Mothers day. In this particular case, there
was, other than industrial work, no possibility to counteract the patriarchal logic of appreciation through institutionalisations and regulations of recognition.
Both fields of appreciationTaylorian work and domestic and family workcorresponded to the duty ethic of work, which manifests
precisely the sacrifice aspect of work granting a right to a claim of
appreciation.
The Taylorian form of recognition can therefore be delineated in
three categories: it misrecognised work and workers through the
objectification of work processes, the reduction of working individuals to beings akin to machines,28 and in such a context the recognition
of subjectivity was only possible tacitly. Such non-recognition of work
was to some extent compensated by appreciation for contribution to
the common creation of value, although this appreciation took patriarchal forms (as in the case of care), or more cooperative or more legalised forms (such as company citizenship). This mode of recognition as
appreciation rested on the duty ethic of work, in which work was
defined as a burden rather than as self-realisation, and the honour of
work was linked precisely to supporting this burden.
Wagner, Anerkennung und Individualisierung, p. 185.
E. Senghaas-Knobloch and B. Nagler, Von der Arbeitskraft zur Berufsrolle?
Anerkennung als Herausforderung fr die industrielle Arbeitskultur im Rahmen
neuer Organisations- und Managementkonzepte, in eds. Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and
Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, 2000, pp. 101126, p. 110.
27
28
29
See M. Moldasch and D. Sauer, Internalisierung des MarktesZur neuen
Dialektik von Kooperation und Herrschaft, in ed. H. Minssen, Begrenzte
Entgrenzungen, Berlin, 2000, pp. 205224; G. Bender, Lohnarbeit zwischen Autonomie
und Zwang, Frankfurt am Main/New York, 1997.
30
See M. Schumann, Frit die Shareholder-Value-konomie die Modernisierung
der Arbeit?, in eds. H. Hirsch-Kreinsen and H. Wolf, Arbeit, Gesellschaft, Kritik,
Berlin, 1998, pp. 1930; R. Springer, Rckkehr zum Taylorismus? Arbeitspolitik in der
Automobilindustrie am Scheideweg, Frankfurt am Main/New York, 1999.
31
See M. Faust, P. Jauch and P. Notz, Befreit und entwurzelt: Fhrungskrfte auf dem
Weg zum internen Unternehmer, Mnchen/Mering, 2000; U. Heisig and W. Littek,
Wandel von Vertrauensbeziehungen im Arbeitsproze, Soziale Welt, Vol. 46, No. 3,
1995, pp. 282304.
32
See K. Inkson, A. Heising and D. M. Rousseau, The Interim Manager: Prototype
of the 21st-Century Worker?, Human Relations, Vol. 54. No. 3, 2001, pp. 259284.
284
stephan voswinkel
37
See M. Schumann Frit die Shareholder-Value-konomie die Modernisierung
der Arbeit?; C. Kurz, Repetitivarbeitunbewltigt, Berlin, 1998.
38
See S. Voswinkel, S. Lcking and I. Bode, Im Schatten des Fordismus. Industrielle
Beziehungen in der Bauwirtschaft und im Gastgewerbe Deutschlands und Frankreichs,
Mnchen/Mering, 1996.
286
stephan voswinkel
also eroded in the mode of appreciation. Thirdly, this shift from a culture of work based on objectified functionalism to one based on the
model of the subjectivisation of work also opens up new recognition
potentials for employees. As Senghaas-Knobloch and Nagler have
argued, employees find in the new culture of work a professional role
which contains more scope for freedom, social and professional competences as well responsibilities.42 The subjectivisation of work can
therefore be experienced by the employees as a new recognition of
their capacities and competences.
The combination of all these transformations makes it necessary to
talk of the ambivalence of the subjectivisation of work, and of the paradox of the recognition of subjectivised work.
5. The Paradoxes of the Recognition of Doubly Subjectivised Work
Subjectivisation, as was shown, has two different meanings. On the one
hand, it relates to the dimension of the increased demands placed on
subjectivity, self-responsibility and self-management: direct management becomes contextual, control is transformed from a control of
procedures to one targeting results and success; concrete work processes are increasingly left to the activity of the individual. On the other
hand, subjectivisation relates to the demands placed by workers on
their work.43 They also expect to find room for self-responsibility as
well as opportunities for self-realisation, and are no longer satisfied
with receiving a salary for a docile fulfilment of tasks. One could say in
pointed fashion that workers today do not work because they have to
but because they want to.
There might well be some elective affinity between these two
dimensions of the subjectivisation of work, as Heidenreich argues.44 If
we relate these two dimensions to each other, however, some paradoxical relationships between them come to light. Behrens had also alluded
to the latter as early as 1984, when he pointed to the new emerging
288
stephan voswinkel
constraint consisting of opting for a form of self-presentation as virtuoso of self-realisation.45 Hermann Kocyba calls these constraints
linked to self-presentation appellative subjectivisation:
under the conditions of modern management strategies, employees having normative expectations of their work as meaningful, fulfilling activity is itself the object of normative expectations which are activated
through a number of social techniques and training methods.46
When the workers high on performance (Leistungsoptimierer) emphasise the fun aspect of work, theyas Pongratz and Vo highlight
do not mean that it is entertaining, in the sense of the society of fun
(Spagesellschaft), but rather, they mean the kick they get out achieving high goals through their total involvement and effort. Central here
is the (positive) abnormality of work, as another employee in an
IT-business emphasises:
When my work is needed, when what I accomplish is in a certain way
unique or when Im the only one who can accomplish that, then I feel I
am needed, and that feels great. If on the other hand Im just another cog
47
290
stephan voswinkel
in the machine, that can always be replaced, then work is not important.
Then it makes no sense.49
advancement) than about the fact that her involvement has not been
sufficiently valued. She says:
Ive just experienced it with the business administrator. Because I am, I
mean, because I didnt have the full intent, I knew that I would not go
further in this house, but nobody cares about it. I am a bit disappointed
about it. There were two of us and normally we get a bunch of flowers
from the management, but this time we had the exam in May, the result
in July and we received the flowers in October. I nearly didnt take them.
I thought that was too stupid. I was really disappointed about that.53
292
stephan voswinkel
is a central form of capital. In order to secure and increase it, the subject must deal with recognition strategically, precisely it must treat it as
a form of capital and strive to secure and increase it. Since, however,
the increased fluidity of organisations also makes it increasingly difficult to calculate which forms of subjective investment will be rewarded
in what kind of reputation, the strategic attitude towards reputation
becomes increasingly difficult. As a result, the increased importance
taken by recognition as reputation is paradoxically paralleled by its
increased insecurity for the self-entrepreneur. It seems necessary to
build multiple reputations and to avoid being trapped by the current
form of reputation. This risks making the subject into an object of
ever changing external relations, which form and if need be even transform his/her fluid self.57
One way of bringing subjects to observe their valuation and reputation through others can be called desubjectivised evaluation. This is
the organised transformation of external demands into needs of the
subject itself. The subjects are surrounded by evaluations and feedbacks, in which the permanent, total 360 observation of performance
and behaviour takes over the function of the mirror of others. The performances of co-workers and superiors is continuously submitted to
evaluation by the colleagues, superiors and subordinates, and communicated to the people concerned through individual performance profiles.58 With this management through indicators, quantitative data,
often directly related to market outcomes, are directly communicated
to the workplace as transparent constraints and serve as benchmarks
for the evaluation of action. They put a figure on the degree to which
the results of individual action correspond to the aims and requirements of the company.
What is striking about this form of evaluation is that it is not accompanied by the setting up or the demand for improvement measures.
57
G. Wagner, Berufsbiographische Aktualisierung von Anerkennungsverhltnissen.
Identitt zwischen Perspektivitt und Patchwork, in eds. Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and
Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, p. 148.
58
See U. Brckling, Totale Mobilmachung. Menschenfhrung im Qualitts- und
Selbstmanagement, in eds. U. Brckling, S. Krasmann and T. Lemke,
Gouvernementalitt der Gegenwart, Frankfurt am Main, 2000, pp. 131167, p.151; O.
Neuberger, Das 360-Feedback. Alles fragen? Alles sehen? Alles sagen?, Mnchen/
Mering, 2000; B. Runde, D. Kirschbaum and K. Wbbelmann, 360-Feedback
Hinweise fr ein best-practise-Modell, Zeitschrift fr Arbeits- und Organisation
spsychologie, Vol. 45, No. 3, 2001, pp. 146157.
294
stephan voswinkel
c ontextualised fashion. And paradoxical relations of recognition provide no clear indications of processing by the subjects.
In summary, relations of recognition of subjectivised work can
therefore be understood as paradoxical in two senses:
When subjectivisation in the sense of self-organisation and selfrealisation in work is normatively expected by companies, it turns
into an external demand. However, since this external demand
appears as the subjects own need, no claim of recognition, in the
sense of appreciation, can derive from its fulfilment.
Recognition as admiration for success and self-realisation presupposes that one gives up the claim to appreciation for normal
performances and self-sacrifice. With this, however, recognition
becomes dependent on the contingency and fluidity of success. It
must be striven for strategically, but thereby loses its expressive
meaning as positive valuation of identities.
The erosion of the moral resources enabling subjects to receive and
demand appreciation deepens the competitive meaning of recognition. From now on, workers who only perform normal duties, those
who remain unnoticed, those that do not have success only experience
non-recognition and lack of regard, without being captured by the recognition through appreciation. As a result, they must take responsibility for their lack of recognition, precisely because they have not been
able to present a case for admiration.
6. Potential Developments for Recognition in the Context of Doubly
Subjectivised Work
The shifts in the relations of recognition, namely the erosion of appreciation and the increased significance of admiration, in no way represent a process without contradiction and conflict. To begin with,
relations of recognition are not simply the result of changed relations
of production and economic processes. Rather, they are established,
defended, transformed and culturally shaped by the subjects themselves. A change in social-economic relations, which influence the
shape of recognition relations, can trigger crises of recognition.62
62
See S. Krmmelbein, Identittskrisen als AnerkennungskrisenUmbrche von
Erwerbsarbeit und Sozialstruktur in den neuen Bundeslndern, in eds. Holtgrewe,
Voswinkel and Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, 2000, pp. 193216.
296
stephan voswinkel
Their distinction designates rather how performances and characteristics are socially defined and valued. It points therefore to the meaning
of recognition. To take one example: someone who works endlessly
without regard for their own health can well show thereby that they
sacrifice themselves for the firm, and the social world values this
exactly in this sense. Or they thereby show how resilient they are, since
nothing can overwhelm them, and the social world admires the exploits
of the Stachanows and Henneckes of capitalism.66 However, the same
sense of recognition granted by the social world also withdraws recognition in another sense, since the worker has demonstrated that he/she
was in fact overwhelmed. The worker has not applied his/her resources
in a way that was sufficiently economical and rational. He/she can
therefore not expect to be given favourable consideration, instead, he
/she has put in question the foundation of the business.
If recognitionas admirationrequires success, employees cannot
afford any mistakes; investment that is not justified by immediate success is not worth it. The changed relations of recognition thus support
in their turn the short-term economy. Recognition opportunities
become increasingly more uncertain and take more and more the
form of a market-reward which occurs ex post. For success can be
influenced by the effort of the workers only to a limited extent.67
Especially when subjectivisation is tied to marketisation, recognition
and success are intimately associated. Success on the market then
entails a tautological self-recognition. Brckling has expressed it in the
following terms: If someone has success, they have earned it; if someone does not have success, its because they did something wrong.
Empowerment and humiliation go hand in hand.68
66
In 1935 the miner Alexej Stachanow was said to have exceeded his work targets
fourteenfold. He was made into a hero by the Stalinist leadership who founded the
Stachanow-movement in order to force an increase in production. The miner Adolf
Hennecke was made into the Stachanow of the DDR in the 1950s. He managed
apparently after the manipulation and preparation of his working conditionsto
exceed his work quota by 387%. It is plausible to view the freelancers and workaholics
of the New Economy as the new Stachanowists, whose success can fail to materialise
just as much as the fame of one-day stars.
67
U. Holtgrewe,
Meinen Sie, da sagt jemand danke, wenn man geht?,
Anerkennungs- und Missachtungsverhltnisse im Prozess organisationeller
Transformation, in eds. Holtgrewe, Voswinkel and Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit,
2000, pp. 6384, p. 64; Voswinkel, Transformation des Marktes in marktorientierten
Organisationen.
68
Brckling Totale Mobilmachung. Menschenfhrung im Qualitts- und
Selbstmanagement, p. 162.
Then she remembers a previous occasion where she tried to get admiration but her attempt was not met by recognition on the side of
management:
Beyond this sense of responsibility, I used to have the dream of excellence, to achieve something special, something big, something exceptional. For a while that was a strong motivation for my work. Now I find
this absurd, silly, insignificant. This desire for excellence is activated
through praise and recognition.
The desire for excellence and admiration appears after a while absurd,
because this type of work cannot be sustained in the long term:
Independent of the question whether 9 hours of work per day is a lot or
not, Ive had to realise that the situation is now almost unbearable. But I
cant see my workload substantially decreasing any time soon.69
What happens after the reckoning and disenchantment has set in? To
begin with, how can one ensure that a work performance is acceptable
and good enough over time, and what type of recognition can there be
when work is subjectivised? For businesses that no longer want to
engage in long term engagements, it can become tempting to react to a
fall in performance with early exclusion and an increase of control.
Subjectivised pressure to succeed for some; re-Taylorisation for the
others: that could be the outcome of this scenario. But then this would
be a Taylorism without recognition through appreciation.
Quoted in eds. Moldaschl and Vo, Subjektivierung von Arbeit, p. 315.
69
298
stephan voswinkel
70
See Neckel
Leistung und Erfolg. Die symbolische Ordnung der
Marktgesellschaft; Neckel and Drge, Die Verdienste und ihr Preis: Leistung in der
Marktgesellschaft.
71
See Holtgrewe Anerkennung und Arbeit in der Dienst-Leisungs-Gesellschaft;
U. Holtgrewe and S. Voswinkel, Kundenorientierung zwischen Mythos,
Organisationsrationalitt und Eigensinn der Beschftigten, in ed. D Sauer, Dienst
Leistung(s)Arbeit. Kundernorientierung und Leistung in tertiren Organisationen.
ISF Formschungsberichte, Mnchen, 2002, pp. 99118.
Chapter eleven
1
I am thankful to Silviana Galassi, Birgit Geissler, Veronika Tacke and Stephan
Voswinkel for clarifying discussions. This essay was first published in German in
the sterreichische Zeitschrift fr Soziologie, 33:3, 2008, 2042. Thanks are due to
the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their valuable tips and constructive
arguments.
302
gabriele wagner
2
See D. Sauer and V. Dhl, Die Auflsung des Unternehmens. Entwicklungstendenzen der Unternehmensreorganisation in den 90er Jahren, in Jahrbuch sozialwissenschaftliche Technikberichterstattung, ed. Institut fr Sozialwissenschaftliche
Forschung, Mnchen; Internationales Institut fr Empirische Sozialkonomie,
Stadtbergen; Institut fr Sozialforschung, Frankfurt M.; Soziologisches Forschun
gsinstitut, Gttingen; Berlin,1996, pp. 1976. See also M. Moldaschl, Internalisierung
des Marktes. Neue Unternehmensstrategie und qualifizierte Angestellte, in Jahrbuch
sozialwissenschaftliche Technikberichterstattung, 1997, pp. 197250.
304
gabriele wagner
10
H. Kocyba, Der Preis der Anerkennung. Von der tayloristischen Missachtung
zur strategischen Instrumentalisierung der Subjektivitt der Arbeitenden, in eds.
U. Holtgrewe, S. Voswinkel and G. Wagner, Anerkennung und Arbeit, Konstanz,
UVK, 2000, pp. 127140.
11
See H. Kotthoff, and J. Reindl, Sozialordnung und Interessenvertretung in
Klein- und Mittelbetrieben, in ed. E. Hildebrand, Betriebliche Sozialverfassung unter
Vernderungsdruck, Berlin, Edition Sigma, 1991, pp. 114129.
12
The management studies by M. Baethge, J. Denkinger and U. Kadritzke, Das
Fhrungskrfte Dilemma. Manager und industrielle Experten zwischen Unternehmen
und Lebenswelt, Frankfurt/Main, Campus, 1995, as well as those of M. Faust, P. Jauch,
and P. Notz, Befreit und entwurzelt: Fhrungskrfte auf dem Weg zum internen
Unternehmer, Mnchen, Mering, 2000, are concerned with the dimension of social
integration, but not with the recognition perspective which is advocated here.
An overview of the themes and findings of management research and the profound
changes in the self-interpretations of the highly qualified are to be found in H. Kotthoff
and A. Wagner, Die Leistungstrger. Fhrungskrfte im Wandel der Firmenkultureine
Follow-up-Studie, Berlin, 2008.
13
A. Kieser, ber die allmhliche Verfertigung der Organisation beim Reden.
Organisieren als Kommunizieren, in Industrielle Beziehungen, Vol. 5, 1998, pp. 4575.
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that older employees are not simply written off, and that in cases
of doubt, rules are not just implemented without further consideration. Alongside the more or less extensive fulfilment of such expectations, the duties of gratitude18 of the employers towards their
employees materialise in the principle of seniority, in Christmas
celebrations, in company jubilees as well as in the union-secured
continuation of payment in case of illness. The examples show that
relationships of appreciation [Wrdigungsbeziehungen] go beyond
the logic of a market-centred exchange of equivalences in favour of
an asymmetric reciprocal social exchange.19 The employees are precisely not treated as pure commodity labour-power, as personnel
number so and so (Bleibtreu). Rather they are appreciated [gewrdigt]
as belonging to a company community20 to which they contribute
as members.
Conversely the recognition mode of appreciation normatively
commits the employees to be prepared to adjust themselves to the
company and to orient their individual career plans not to short term
calculations of opportunity, but rather to the long term of the companys development. This includes the expectation that individual
employees will consider the companys interests in their private lifeplans and, when necessary, adapt their life plans to company requirements. Relationships of appreciation span a reliable horizon of
normatively-binding duties of care on the employer side and particular duties of loyalty on the employee side. The recognition mode of
appreciation creates an ideal figuration of harmonic imbalance21 in
which integration and faithfulness are exchanged for protection and
consideration.22 In this asymmetric figuration, it is not autonomy
and individualism which are rewarded with recognition, but rather
submission and a willingness to contribute.
18
See G. Simmel, Dankbarkeit. Ein soziologischer Versuch, in Schriften zur
Soziologie, Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, 1986, pp. 210220.
19
See S. Voswinkel, Reziprozitt und Anerkennung in Arbeitsbeziehungen,
in eds. Frank Adloff and Steffen Mau, Vom Geben und Nehmen. Zur Soziologie der
Reziprozitt, Frankfurt/Main, Campus, 2005, pp. 237 256.
20
See Kotthoff, Anerkennung und sozialer Austausch. Die soziale Konstruktion
von Betriebsbrgerschaft.
21
See B. van Stolk, Der Staat als Ernhrer, in ed. C. Eckart, Selbstndigkeit von
Frauen im Wohlfahrtsstaat, Stiftung Hamburger Institut fr Sozialforschung, Hamburg,
1990, pp. 2739.
22
See G. Wagner, Anerkennung und Individualisierung, Konstanz, UVK, 2004,
p. 255.
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310
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32
See N. Luhmann, The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Structures in Modern
Society, Social Research, Vol. 43, No. 1, 1976, pp. 130152.
312
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314
gabriele wagner
33
See R. Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in
the New Capitalism, New York, Norton, 1998.
316
gabriele wagner
318
gabriele wagner
the investment of time and work today on the basis of what they will
only find out tomorrow.37 In this organisationally prescribed anticipation of uncertainties the input and output dimensions of performance
diverge. Or put differently: one might well show commitment, put
ones qualifications and working hours at the service of the common
cause, but if the result of the work is not rewarded by the market, then
all the effort has simply failed, and is therefore not given recognition.38
Thus in the performance based concept of Management by Results
the whole input side, including expert qualifications and acknowledgement of contributions, is systematically disregarded.
Bleibtreu sharply criticises the limitations of this concept:
So when I think now what percentage of my working day I use to get
the daily business running, in order to ensure that my plants are really
growing, its a percentage rate that, on some days, lies between 60, 70, 80
per cent. Sometimes its almost 100 per cent. But its only the strategic
aims which are seen. () No one sees anymore how much work goes
into it. () Daily work is no longer acknowledged (Bleibtreu).
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See R. Paris, Die Politik des Lobs, in Paris, Stachel und Speer. Machtstudien,
Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp,1998, pp. 152195.
42
ibid., p.160.
41
There are two sides to personal responsibility: on the one hand the
autonomy that is materially supported, of being able to take decisions
and push them through, and on the other hand the ascription of
responsibility onto the decision maker for the consequences of the
decision. In the company surveyed, the two sides are out of balance.
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gabriele wagner
324
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equally powerless. They see very well that the new direction of the
company is a consequence of management decisions. Furthermore the
difference between market and organisation is and remains clear to
them. This knowledge leads them to demand that all remaining room
for manoeuvre be explored. In the name of the old order they address
normative expectations to the management. Its responsibility does not
remain invisible.
However, in so doing, Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu become caught
up in the muddled conglomerate of old and new claims to recognition
and thus paradoxically, on the level of social integration, prepare the
way for colonisation. The attempt to secure recognition in the mode
of admiration leads, under the conditions of the new order, to the risk
of a recognition-driven self-exploitation. This is not least because
admiration for individually attributable success in the final instance
refers the subjects back to themselves, and this also holds in the case of
failure. The attribution problem in the recognition mode of appreciation is different. Although from a sociological perspective it can be
observed that the new performance policy and its attendant instruments, with their market-centred focus on results, structurally preprograms the failure of the acknowledgement claim, the interviewees
Schmidtmeier and Bleibtreu deal with the structural conflict in an
intensely personal manner. The normative expectations they address
to their superior Schneidt have to do with the appreciation or acknowledgement they are due, which remains a powerful mode of recognition
capable of providing personal orientation. This personal attribution of
responsibility abstracts from the structural context in which Schneidt
is positioned. In their narratives he appears as a cool executive organ of
the new thought. Whether Schneidt as a person is a driven highachiever without consideration for others, or whether he is himself
driven by upper management (or a mixture of both), cannot be determined on the basis of the material. On the other hand the perspective
of recognition enables us to systematically reconstruct the expectations and claims which Bleibtreu and Schmidtmeier direct at the attribution figure Schneidt. Their conventional way of attributing
responsibility, which focuses on persons and not on market structures
conceived as anonymous, is grounded in the recognition mode of
appreciation, which rewards integration and loyalty with protection
and consideration.
For highly qualified employees however this is a problematic mode
of recognition. After all in this particular mode of recognition it is not
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Chapter twelve
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4
See J. K. Galbraith, The Economics of Innocent Fraud, Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Co, 2004, pp. 1720.
330
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pleasure or pain these conditions cause at any given time. Rather, over
time, the work people do and the environment in which they work will
also influence the capacities and skills they have, and so the kind of life
they can live, or indeed the types of people they become. Adam Smiths
well-known critique of the nascent industrial working conditions he
observed was based on just this point.5 Smith worried that the mundane and repetitive working conditions brought on by the division of
labour in factory production were not just unpleasant, but could also
undermine the workers mental and social capacities, and so their ability to interact in meaningful and fulfilling ways with others. From this
perspective, even work that is well-remunerated and relatively painless
may be deleterious to human welfare if it repressesor fails to
developthe capacities that are necessary to live a rich and fulfilling
human life.
2. Economic Analysis of Work: Three Models
This section outlines three economic models of work, which are drawn
predominately from orthodox (neoclassical) economic explanations of
labour supply. A full economic analysis of labour supply must address
three issues: the source of available labourers (that is, population size
and growth); how people allocate their available time between labour
and other activities (that is, work versus leisure); and how labour time
is distributed between different possible tasks or industries (for example, mining versus accountancy).6 The latter two issues in particular
require at least a minimal response to the questions raised in Part 1,
since these issues require a direct account of what motivates people to
work, and at least an indirect account of how the choice to work or not
work makes a person better or worse off overall.
Of course, there are limits to how substantive a model of work it is
reasonable to expect economists to provide here, in so far as the aim of
their analysis is to explain movements in labour supply rather than to
provide a comprehensive account of what work really is. However,
drawing on Spencer and Pagano, I argue that there has been a progressive marginalisation of the act of work in orthodox economic theory
5
See A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Vol. 2, London, J. M. Dent and Sons, 1954,
pp. 263264.
6
See G. Becker, Economic Theory, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1971, p. 160.
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334
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On the Future of the Working Class that work in its best sense,
the healthy energetic exercise of faculties, is the aim of life, is life
itself.22
Model BThe Opportunity Cost of Work
While Jevons and Marshall arrive at very different conceptions of
the significance of work overall, both economists adopt substantive
models of the act of work by explaining labour supply and worker
welfare through the specific pleasures and pains of the work experience. However, according to Lionel Robbins, such substantive models
of work were almost universally rejected by 1930, in favour of an
opportunity cost approach to labour supply. On an opportunity cost
model, work always has costs, but these costs are not identified with, or
derived from, the (painful) experiences of labouring. Rather, the costs
of work are ultimately to be regarded as being the pull of foregone
leisure or foregone present income,23 which is to say, as the leisure
time or alternative income that workers must always sacrifice to devote
some of their limited time to work.
The main insight behind the opportunity cost approach is that
devoting time to work always requires a sacrifice of some other valued
activity, provided it is (fairly uncontroversially) assumed that a person
has many desired activities and only so much available time. For example, Jevons thought that intellectual work such as engineering was
unusual in potentially providing sustained pleasure, due to the inherently interesting nature of the task. Yet the opportunity cost doctrine
emphasises that even where his or her work is pleasurable, the engineer must always sacrifice other valuable uses of his or her time to
work, for example, time with friends or family. Hence, working has at
least some cost to the engineer irrespective of whether the experience
is in itself pleasurable or painful.
What is controversial is that analysing work as a sacrifice of opportunity costs alone excludes consideration of how different working
conditions may affect the welfare of workers at work, and in turn affect
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Knights position here is that the basic patterns of labour supply can be
determined without introducing the pleasures or pains of working into
the analysis, because people always need incentives to compensate
them for the opportunity cost of work. Consequently, peoples choice
to work or not work at any time can be modelled as a relationship
24
See Pagano, Work and Welfare in Economic Theory, pp. 113114. See also
I. Steedman, Welfare Economics and Robinson Crusoe the Producer, Metroeconomica,
Vol. 51, 2000.
25
F. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, New York, Harper Torchbook, 1965, p. 63.
26
ibid., p. 68.
27
F. Knight, A Suggestion for Simplifying the Statement of the General Theory of
Price, The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 36, No. 3, 1928, p. 357.
between the incentives work provides and the opportunities that work
costs. However, what Paganos response reveals is that the incentives
and costs in Knights analysis can only be of a particular kind: wage
and leisure opportunities rather than changes in the conditions under
which wages are earned.
Model CCompensation and Commodities
The opportunity cost model retains Jevons conception of labour as
essentially a cost borne for consumption, but it reinterprets that cost as
due to lost opportunities rather than the painful experience of the act
of work. Yet if what Knight terms the inner experiences of labour are
indeed a matter of indifference, then some important features of
labour supply seem inexplicable. For instance, how can the relatively
high wages required to induce people to work in especially demanding, dangerous or unpleasant conditions, such as on an offshore oil
rig, be adequately explained without some reference to the particular experience of this kind of work, such as the loneliness, cold, and
physical exertion? Or contra-wise, how can the relatively low wages
people accept for work which offers unique opportunities for selfdevelopment or self-expression, such as casual academic labour, be
explained without reference to how this work is experienced as especially satisfying in itself?
Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize winning economist and developer of
the human capital approach to labour supply,28 responds to these
questions by modeling work as producing two distinct types of income
or reward: (1) money wages; and (2) commodities such as satisfaction, which enter preference functions directly, and which he alternativelyterms psychic income.29 Psychic income captures the utility or
disutility that people are assumed to derive directly from the act of
work, and explains why some people accept lower wages for work that
they find more intrinsically satisfying over higher paid alternatives.
Beckers example is of a college graduate who chooses to enter the ministry when that person would have earned substantially more over
their lifetime working in business.30 Their lost wages are offset by the
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340
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ibid., p. 73.
See Derantys analysis of Dejours model of the subject in J.-P. Deranty, Work
and the Precarisation of Existence, European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 4,
2008.
35
36
37
342
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344
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41
346
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more conducive to human welfare at work will not only make labourers better off by that very fact, but may also create an additional incentive to supply labour hours. Dejours and Sennett then provide insight
into the conditions such alternative forms of work organisation would
need to fulfil.
Finally, if Marshalls broader economic conception of work is
also retrieved, then the possibility for a constructive contribution is
greater still, since Dejours and Sennett both connect the development
of human capacities through work to the good life as such. Dejours
develops a far more nuanced analysis than Marshall of how working
conditions may prompt self-development rather than injuries or
pathologies, and in the process, Dejours makes an even stronger
case for the centrality of the act of work to the good human life.42
Sennetts distinctive contribution is to draw out how the structure or
shape that different types of capacity development provide to life may
be relevant to the well-lived life. While the gradual and progressive
development of craft skills is conducive to the well-lived life, the development of a chameleon-like capacity to shift between tasks, projects
and co-workers, as cultivated by modern forms of work organisation,
may have the opposite effect. If Sennett is right, the desirability of
different kinds of work depends not just on the extent to which they
develop or repress human capacities, but also on whether they develop
the right kinds of capacities: those that provide depth, meaning and
structure to human life.
42
See Deranty, Work and the Precarisation of Existence, especially pp. 447 and
452.
Chapter Thirteen
* This is a revised version of a paper given in September 2006 at the Political Theory
Workshops, Manchester Metropolitan University. I am grateful to Lynn Dobson, Ricca
Edmondson, Jonathan Hearn, John ONeill and Jonathan Seglow for their comments
on earlier drafts.
1
Amongst influential proponents of state neutrality are J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice,
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971, and R. Dworkin, Liberalism, first published
in 1978 and reprinted in A Matter of Principle, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985,
pp. 181204. A defence of state neutrality against many of its critics is presented in
W. Kymlicka, Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality, Ethics, Vol. 99, 1989,
pp. 883905. For an overview of these debates, see S. Mulhall and A. Swift, Liberals and
Communitarians, second edition, Oxford, Blackwell, 1996.
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2
My position has been strongly influenced by the defences of perfectionism in
J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986, and G. Sher,
Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1997. Like them, I understand perfectionism as the view that ethical considerations are
legitimate grounds for state action, but not that they are the only such grounds: considerations of right or justicein Habermass terms, moral considerationsare also
important (J. Habermas, On the Pragmatic, the Ethical, and the Moral Employments
of Practical Reason, in Justification and Application, trans. C. Cronin, Cambridge,
Polity Press, 1993, pp. 118). Both Sher (Beyond Neutrality, pp. 3134), and Raz
(Morality of Freedom, pp. 110112) note that formulations of PSN differ in the levels
of state action to which it applies, ranging from constitutional provisions to any item
of public policy. I shall assume that it applies (at least) to the basic institutions and legal
provisions that serve to constitute a certain kind of economic system.
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2. Two Varieties of Capitalism
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I will now make use of Hall and Soskices analysis to indicate how the
institutional character of each variety of capitalism differentially
favours or disfavours the realisation of certain conceptions of the good.
It should be emphasised, however, that what I will argue is in no way
sanctioned by their own work and reflects quite different theoretical
interests to theirs. Hall and Soskice use their analysis to develop a theory of comparative institutional advantage which enables them, for
example, to explain the dominance of different economic sectors in
LMEs and CMEs, and to assess the implications of globalisation for the
convergence or otherwise of different kinds of capitalism. By contrast,
I shall be applying the idea of comparative institutional advantage to
conceptions of the good.
As noted in the previous section, Hall and Soskice are concerned to
show how the institutional differences between LMEs and CMEs
impact on the organisation and conduct of firms. These latter differences, I will now argue, may be expected to affect the relative ease or
difficulty with which individuals can realise various conceptions of the
good related to the work they do, since it is firms that provide the
immediate institutional settings for their possible realisation. The cases
that will be presented are intended only as illustrative; they are by no
means the only ones, nor necessarily the most important.
Consider, first, the ease or difficulty with which conceptions of the
good involving different kinds of work-satisfaction might realistically
be pursued. Here it could be argued that CMEs are more conducive
than LMEs to the achievement of intrinsic, as distinct from extrinsic, satisfactions. There is a good deal of evidence that intrinsic satisfactions are most readily experienced when the work that people do
combines high levels of skill with significant degrees of autonomy.9
That this is more likely to be available in CMEs is implied by the claims
that Hall and Soskice make in the following passage, where they identify the characteristics of firms in CMEs that make them better suited
sense that I give to complementarity differs slightly from the more technical definition provided by Hall and Soskice: Introduction, p. 17.
9
See the analysis of this evidence by Robert Lane, including his depiction of the
privileged class of workers, whose jobs offer self-direction, substantive complexity
and challenge, variety, little supervision, and intrinsic satisfaction of excellence or selfdetermination (R. Lane, The Market Experience, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1991, p. 302). My suggestion is that, if Hall and Soskice are right, the size of
this class will be greater in CMEs than in LMEs.
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356
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14
The neutrality principle may be formulated in terms either of realisation, or of
adoption, as Raz notes (Morality of Freedom, p. 112); I take it in the former sense
throughout.
15
On these two forms of institutionalism, see P. Hall and R. Taylor, Political
Science and the Three New Institutionalisms, Political Studies, Vol. XLIV, 1996,
pp. 936952. I put aside what they identify as a third form, historical institutionalism,
since in the respects that matter here it tends to draw on one or other of the first two.
various specific kinds of institution, including that of the firm, and also
to explain the behaviour of individual agents, given certain preferences, by reference to the institutionally determined costs of satisfying
these in particular ways.16
Sociological institutionalists have criticised rational choice institutionalism on a number of important grounds. One of these is for its
failure, or refusal, to explain preferences themselves: more specifically,
for regarding preferences as exogenous, rather than endogenous, with
respect to institutions.17 But such institutional determination or shaping bears only upon the adoption of preferences (or conceptions of
the good), and not their realisation, and hence is not relevant for my
purposes. Rather, the key departure from rational choice institutionalism that my claims imply concerns the relationship between institutions and what may be termed the objects of peoples preferences, that
is, what it is that they desire or wish to achieve, as distinct from the fact
of their having such a desire.
For rational choice theorists, these objects can be specified without reference to the institutions concerned and the social activities
they encompass: institutions are conceived as instrumentally useful for
the satisfaction of preferences whose objects can exist without these
institutions (and are presumed actually to do so, prior to the creation
of the relevant institutions). By contrast, in the kinds of examples I
have presented, institutions are conceived as supporting (or undermining) the complex social relationships and activities which the
objects of these preferences either consist in or depend upon.18 It is the
16
An important application of rational choice institutionalism is the transaction
costs analysis of the firm, as in O. Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism:
Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting, New York, Free Press, 1985. For criticisms, and
alternative forms of institutional analysis in this area, see W. Lazonick, Business
Orgamization and the Myth of the Market Economy, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1991, and N. Foss, Theories of the Firm: Contractual and Competence
Perspectives, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Vol. 3, 1993, pp. 127144.
17
See, for example, S. Bowles, Endogenous Preferences: The Cultural Consequences
of Markets and Other Economic Institutions, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 36,
no. 1, 1998, pp. 75111. Hodgson argues that what chiefly distinguishes the new institutionalism in economics (roughly, rational choice institutionalism), which he
opposes, from the old institutionalism, which he supports, is the formers treatment
of preferences as exogenous to institutions: G. Hodgson, What Is the Essence
of Institutional Economics?, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. XXXIV, 2000,
pp. 317329.
18
This claim might best be developed through Razs account of collective goods and
what he terms social forms, in Morality of Freedom.
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360
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21
The logic of the following considerations might be expressed like this: the fact
that these two economic systems, with their different ethical characters, can and do
operate in a liberal-consistent manner, implies that it must be possible to construct a
justificatory argument for each of them, and their respective uses of state power, which
relies upon ethical reasons but does not thereby threaten liberal principles; there is
thus no need for liberals to accept PSN.
22
Hall and Soskice, Introduction; the same point is made in Whitley, Divergent
Capitalisms. See also Schmidt, Futures of European Capitalism, on the differences
between the managed capitalism of Germany and the state capitalism of France
(not a CME, in Hall and Soskices terms).
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the good life for humans involves deciding for oneself what kind of
life to pursue.23
This autonomy requires both the (inherited or acquired) capacity to
make such decisions and a range of options between which to choose.
But crucially, for my purposes, what might make these options good or
bad ones to choose is not itself part of this liberal ideal: the value of
autonomy is distinct from that of the options chosen, about which perfectionist liberalism insists on saying nothing.24 So although perfectionist liberals allow the state to act non-neutrally with respect to the
(liberal) good of autonomy, this permission does not extend to its
favouring specific ways in which this autonomy may be exercised:
there is no place for ethical reasons related to the (supposed) substantive value of the kinds of life between which autonomous choices are
made. By contrast, liberal perfectionism as I have defined it here permits the state (also) to act on the basis of these latter kinds of ethical
reasons, provided that various liberal requirements are met.25 One
might put this by saying that, for the liberal perfectionist, the state may
legitimately act to favour (both liberal and) non-liberal conceptions of
the good, but in doing so it must not act il-liberally.
23
My distinction between perfectionist liberalism and liberal perfectionism is
stipulative: the two phrases are used interchangeably in the literature, both normally
referring to what I identify as the former position. Both positions, as I define them
here, are concerned with the permissible grounds for state action, and reject the neutralist exclusion of ethical grounds for this: that is, they reject PSN; but liberal perfectionism is far more permissive than perfectionist liberalism. As Mulhall and Swift
point out (Liberals and Communitarians, pp. 249252), these debates about state neutrality should be distinguished from another set of debates, at a deeper level, about
whether or not liberal political principles are to be grounded in a distinctive ethical
position (comprehensive versus political liberalism). I shall ignore these latter
debates, merely noting that comprehensive liberalism does not entail rejection of
PSN.
24
As Sher notes (Beyond Neutrality, p. 14), there is no inconsistency in claiming
both that liberalism rests on a certain conception of the good, namely autonomy, and
that the state should be neutral with respect to the value or goodness of the options
between which individuals are to make autonomous choices.
25
Liberal perfectionism, as I characterise it here, has much in common with the
position taken in J. Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and
Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. Raz argues that the state has a duty to
provide people with an adequate range of valuable options between which they can
choose, as well as ensuring that they can develop the various capacities required for the
autonomy exercised in making these choices. Crucially, for Raz, as for my liberal
perfectionist, the criteria by which the value of the options are judged are not themselves based on, or derivable from, that of autonomy.
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As it is by Hayek, for example: see ONeill, The Market, ch. 5, on the relationship
between neutralist and perfectionist liberal elements in Hayeks view of markets,
exchange and individual autonomy.
30
More generally, that market economies can take significantly different institutional forms is itself an important fact, since political and theoretical debates about
economic systems often assume that choosing to institute a market economy identifies a determinate institutional or political project, thereby ignoring the normative
relevance of institutional variation. For criticism of Habermas in this respect, see
W. Forbath, Short-Circuit: A Critique of Habermass Understanding of Law, Politics
and Economic Life, in eds. M. Rosenfeld and A. Arato, Habermas on Law and
Democracy: Critical Exchanges, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998, pp. 272
286. I criticise Habermass view of the place of ethics in political judgments about
economic systems in R. Keat, Choosing Between Capitalisms: Habermas, Ethics and
Politics, Res Publica, Vol.15, No. 4, 2009, 355376.
29
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31
This view is encapsulated in Schmidts labelling of what Hall and Soskice call
LMEs as market capitalism, as distinct from the managed capitalism of what they
call CMEs: Schmidt, Futures of European Capitalism. The strongest argument for
LMEs being more market-like than CMEs would be based on the greater scope of
markets in the former, especially with respect to financial markets.
32
I develop this argument in Keat, Anti-Perfectionism, in the case of what might
be seen by neutralists as unacceptable subsidies for meaningful work in CMEs. More
generally, I argue there that political theorists who attribute neutrality to the market
rely on the kind of individualistic understanding of markets to be found in neoclassical
economics and its conceptual successors, and that the opposing position I have outlined here depends on replacing that with an institutionalist (but not new institutionalist) alternative.
LMEs nor CMEs posed any threat to liberal principles, and it seems
reasonable to infer that the same is true of other kinds of market economy, whether capitalist or non-capitalist. Whether this compatibility
with liberal principles extends beyond the category of market economies is an issue I shall not pursue here. But even if it does not, so that
liberally constrained perfectionism turns out to require the choice of
some kind of market system, one can expect there to be significant
ethical differences between these kinds, and according to the position
I have argued for, judgments about these ethical differences can play a
legitimate part in political choices between them.
Of course, there will also be many non-ethical differences, which
will also be relevant to these political choices, since liberal perfectionisms inclusion of ethical considerations does not imply the exclusion
of non-ethical ones or their lesser significance. As well as standard
measures of economic performance, these will include issues of distributive justice and social welfare that (have been assumed here to)
belong to the category of the right rather than the good.33 Further,
even restricting oneself to ethical considerations, the kinds of differences between LMEs and CMEs suggested in Section Three are by no
means the only or necessarily the most important ones, since not only
was the analysis primarily illustrative in purpose, but it was restricted
to conceptions of the good within the domain of production. What
would also need consideration are the goods of consumption, along
with the ethical impact of both production and consumption on the
character of non-economic practices, relationships and institutions.34
Admittedly, the more that the extent and complexity of the relevant
ethical issues is recognised, the more it may seem that their inclusion
33
For example, Hall and Soskice (Introduction) claim that CMEs are more compatible with social or Christian democratic welfare systems than are LMEs, and generate lower degrees of income inequality. However, whilst supporting these claims, it is
argued in Estevez-Abe et al, Social Protection and the Formation of Skill, that CMEs
are less egalitarian than LMEs with respect to issues of gender: rates of workforce participation by women are lower in CMEs than in LMEs, there is a higher degree of
gender-based job segregation, and the gaps between female and male (rates of) pay are
greater.
34
See Keat, Cultural Goods, on various aspects of the justification for market
boundaries. In Consumer-Friendly Production or Producer-Friendly Consumption
(ibid., pp. 133148) I discuss Lanes argument (Lane, The Market Experience) that production is more important than consumption as a source of human well-being.
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russell keat
38
Rawls argues that no society can be equally hospitable to the realisation of all
conceptions of the good; my point here is that, having recognised this, the members of
a political community should decide collectively on which set of possible conceptions
of the good are to be favoured by their societys economic institutions. Choosing the
market is not a way of avoiding this decision.
39
That is, they can adopt the justificatory version of PSN, accepting that its consequential version cannot in practice be realised.
Notes on Contributors
Christophe Dejours is Chair Professor (Psychoanalysis, Health,
Work) at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Mtiers, Paris. He is
the author of many books on psychoanalysis, psychosomatics, pathologies of modern work and the social impact of work pathologies. In
2009 he published Travail vivant (Payot), a two-volume monograph
presenting the main aspects of the psychodynamics of work. His most
recent publications include Suicide et travail. Que faire? (with F. Bgue,
PUF, 2010) and as editor, Observations cliniques en psychopathologie du
travail (PUF, 2010).
Jean-Philippe Deranty is Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Macquarie University, Sydney. He has written extensively on French
and German philosophy, notably on Critical Theory and recognition.
His recent publications include Beyond Communication. A Critical
Study of Axel Honneths Social Philosophy (Brill, 2009) and, as editor,
Jacques Rancire. Key Concepts (Acumen, 2010).
Russell Keat is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory in the School
of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh. His research is
concerned with the ethical character and implications of market institutions. Publications include Cultural Goods and the Limits of the
Market (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Recent papers are available at
www.RussellKeat.net.
Craig MacMillan is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of
Economics at Macquarie University. His research interests include the
moral limits of markets, institutional approaches to labour markets
and child labour. His recent work on internal labour markets in
Australia has been published in the Australian Journal of Labour
Economics.
Pascale Molinier is Professor in Social Psychology at the University
of Paris North. Her research is dedicated to the links between work
and mental health from the perspective of gender. Her publications
include LEnigme de la femme active (2003); Les Enjeux psychiques du
372
notes on contributors
notes on contributors373
Index
action
as distinct from work and labour 58,
155, 188189, 191
collective 12, 112, 117, 277, 356
instrumental 189, 190
theory of 27
activity
coordinated 142, 143, 166
deontic 146, 209, 224
productive (poietic) 35, 54, 137,
142, 157, 167, 354, 355
professional18
subjectivising 222, 234
self-forming15
technical141
working 16, 2227, 3738, 137139,
141146, 152, 155, 172, 182,
193194, 197199, 206
agency 14, 16, 19, 31, 56, 201, 204
alienation 22, 33, 114, 135, 148, 155,
193, 203, 210, 212, 245249
animals 5, 11, 5354, 58, 113, 310, 314
non-human55
rational 2, 7
Anscombe, E. 50, 51
anthropology 6, 214
expressivist5
philosophical 12, 15, 16, 372
of work 152
Arendt, H. 2, 9, 58, 60, 135, 154,
188192, 328
Aristotle 14, 44, 4754, 188190, 195,
334, 364
atomism, versus holism 19
authority 15, 79, 80, 108, 116, 154,
214, 247, 278, 281, 321
automation222
bargaining, collective 20, 118121,
127128
Behrens, J. 286288, 319
biography 309, 313
Boltanski, L. 4, 92, 98, 137, 186
bond, social 9, 177
Bourdieu, P. 99, 134, 237,
capacities 116117, 127, 154, 157,
170172, 197199, 204, 257258,
270, 276, 313, 363
376
index
index377
Habermas, J. 2, 42, 63, 69, 135, 153, 163,
189192, 198, 201, 233, 241, 348, 365
colonisation thesis 304, 323
health 120, 138140, 149, 167, 200, 217,
243, 254256, 264, 267, 290, 296
mental (psychic) 140, 145146,
210213, 220, 226, 229230,
250, 256
as norm 23, 139, 140
Hegel G. W. F. 121, 4162, 71107,
118, 128129, 145, 159161, 175177,
194, 204
Idealism 43, 45, 51, 55
master-slave dialectic 14, 43, 52,
59, 60
Phenomenology of Spirit1415,
4143, 5253, 59, 194, 277
Philosophy of Right 14, 16, 4344, 61,
64, 7193, 98, 101, 176
Heidegger, M. 2, 29, 41
hierarchy 30, 54, 136137, 141143,
147, 165, 169, 174, 257, 342, 351
history, philosophy of 6
Hobbes, T. 14, 4345, 48, 53, 57, 60
Honneth, A.
The Struggle for Recognition 42, 104,
151, 200
Work and Instrumental Action 3, 21,
22, 104, 138, 151, 196
Work and Recognition: A
Redefinition 3, 20, 67, 101,
104105, 115, 125, 128, 151, 154,
158, 197, 200, 204
honour282
bourgeois1618
Horkheimer, M. 6364, 190
Hughes, E. 133134, 141, 143, 252
human
distinctive faculties 14, 45
factor 27, 174
soul 44, 47, 60, 61
Hume, D. 14, 45
identity
ego-identity 275276, 288
formation 3, 34, 275276
versus personality 227
professional325
ideology 183, 264
neo-liberal 22, 133
illness 27, 8082, 211212, 231, 306
income 17, 6970, 74, 80100, 115, 136,
175, 183, 327328, 335, 337338, 367
individualisation 12, 172, 277
378
index
life
as core norm of work 17, 30, 3637,
54, 7386, 136, 156, 184199, 206,
242, 261, 330335, 342346, 358
goods 184, 189, 192
world137
love 6566, 81, 201, 248, 253, 259260
Luhmann, N. 293, 310
Lukacs, G. 6
luxury 16, 17, 72, 8789
MacIntyre, A. 19, 195, 354
management 220, 224225, 230231,
268269, 288, 292, 297, 302, 310, 318,
320322, 351
methods of 33
Marcuse, H. 193
market economy 106, 209, 364
coordinated versus liberal 38,
350356, 358, 360362, 365367
market
-centred 303, 306, 321, 322, 324
constraints311312
deregulated 67, 99
ethical basis of, 17, 21
financial355
internal labour (ILM), 121125,
mechanism 110, 299, 344
-orientation307
secondary125
success 36, 305, 308, 317, 319,
322, 325
marketization 35, 293296, 299, 301,
303, 309, 322323
Marx, K. 6, 41, 5960, 64, 103, 133, 161,
196, 364
Capital 154, 158, 160, 162, 167, 177
Grundrisse159
Manuscripts of 1844193194
Mead, G. H. 32, 127, 145, 275, 288
mind, and body 44, 4748
misrecognition 3, 202, 295, 299
modernity 14, 58, 61, 160162, 172
morality 46, 184, 277, 279
Murphy, J. B. 185, 188189, 192,
194, 334
mutual benefit 19, 21
narrative 5960, 242, 265, 342
naturalism45
needs 59, 21, 86, 9192, 100, 106, 157,
188, 204, 253, 291292, 338
system of 6062, 74
neo-liberalism6667
normativism19
normativity 49, 57, 139, 153, 164, 182,
188, 194195, 201204
normative content of work 23, 24,
141143, 190191, 196, 206
normative surplus 31
norms (see expression, cooperation,
work)
of efficiency 141, 145, 192
of health 23, 139140
moral 105, 187188, 190, 192, 197,
280
nursing 31, 195, 252, 267268
ontology
ontological significance of work 193
social12
organisation
formal/informal 218, 304
pain 113, 134, 155, 184, 238, 354, 265,
329340, 344
Papin sisters 258, 259
paradigm 911, 13, 28, 115, 156, 168,
196, 201
interactionist147
language4
production47
recognition 14, 12, 1415, 201
pathology 168169, 249
mental 212, 245
social4,
psychopathology 2526, 174175,
209210, 212217, 229, 231, 240,
247248, 250
perfectionism 348349, 362, 363364,
367
performance 29, 35, 61, 84, 94, 167174,
183, 274299, 302326, 342344,
348350, 367
Plato4748
pleasure 113, 143145, 184, 191, 209,
213, 223, 229232, 245249, 261,
329338, 344
poiesis54-58, 188, 224, 241242
power
bargaining 20, 108, 117118,
128129
relations 27, 218, 220221
pragmatism 112, 135, 139, 140
praxis215216
revolutionary6
versus poiesis 5458, 188, 224,
241242
index379
precarious work 186187, 252
production
mode of 37, 103, 172
relations of 129
professions
hierarchy of 141
profit 69, 102, 105, 134, 203, 307, 311,
317, 351
quest for 1617, 72, 87, 89, 98
psychoanalysis 214215, 234, 241,
244245
psychodynamics 23, 2531, 152,
174175, 178, 209250, 251, 256,
258, 263
psychology 12, 19, 66, 111, 113, 116,
147, 212, 229, 245, 249250, 328
of work 144, 215, 218
Meadian127
negotiational 114, 126127
rational choice theory 18, 358
rationality 7, 8, 12, 24, 28, 46, 205206,
213214, 233, 264
axiological231232
instrumental 182183, 192, 197,
231, 244
rational animal 2, 7, 11, 1415
rational society 64
recognition and 14, 231
subjective 212, 221, 231232, 242
teleological 221, 232
real (the) 28, 57, 137, 143145, 147148,
166167, 169, 174, 298, 267, 340
reason
as human-making feature 3
instrumental 4546, 6061, 182,
187190, 192
practical 48, 51, 62, 199, 215, 348
space of reasons 15
reciprocity 11, 3233, 204, 299, 355
recognition
and income 18, 6970, 8893,
9596
and success 295298
as admiration 3436, 294
as appreciation 3336, 282
as gratitude 227
as ideology 13
as practical attitudes 11
as prestige 32, 141, 274, 278279, 286
claims 288, 294, 298299, 313, 316,
319, 324
deficit of 257
denial of 140141, 145
380
index
index381
psychopathology of 26, 209217, 229,
231, 240, 247, 249
quality of 25, 37, 107, 123, 184, 186,
198, 206, 298
rationalisation of 169
real 26, 144, 146, 155, 166, 168,
219220, 224, 233
rules230
satisfaction 186, 353
sciences209
situation217
sociology of 25, 3334, 282
struggle for 42, 153, 245,
320321, 341
subjectivisation of 283288
Taylorist 211, 282285, 297, 299
to-rule223
work/life balance 183186
workers movement 22, 133
workforce 122, 125, 129, 342, 344,
354, 355, 367
working
conditions 119, 125, 137, 145146,
156, 165, 171, 179, 243, 288, 296,
329335, 342346
class 6, 17
day 318, 332, 333
workloads 297, 316, 317