This is a draft version. Please cite final as Feenberg, A.Rethinking Reification. Georg Lukacs: The Fundamental Dissonanceof Existence, (Eds: T Bewes, T Hall). Continuum, 2011.

Rethinking ReificationAndrew Feenberg (feenber@sfu.ca)

IntroductionThe difficult task of the intellectual historian consists in

explaining how ideas that are no longer credible could once haveenjoyed prestige and currency. The still more difficult task ofthe philosopher is to discover in such outdated ideas a hiddencore that is credible in our time. We can only be grateful toAxel Honneth for having undertaken this philosophical task in hisrecent Tanner Lectures on Lukács’s concept of reification. Hisreasons for attempting to recover this nearly forgotten conceptare shared by many who have watched with dismay as philosophicalsocial criticism was reduced to a branch of moral theory. AsHonneth rightly points out, injustice is not the onlyphilosophically significant social problem. What he calls “socialpathologies” would have to be addressed even in a just society.Reification is one such pathology.

Nevertheless, despite my appreciation for Honneth’s project, Ibelieve he has missed the most important dimension of Lukács’sconcept of reification. Honneth identifies reification withindividual attitudes and practices that tend to block recognitionof the other. These have collective consequences when widespread,hence the reference to social pathologies. His analysis of thevarious forms taken by reification in this sense is interestingand provocative. But, for better or worse, the individual is ofonly marginal interest to Lukács. Psychological attitude scarcelyenters the picture, even when he discusses consciousness.

Lukács’s discussion of reification focuses on socialprocesses, specifically on what today we would call the dialecticof structure and agency. What is worthy of an effort at recoveryin the concept of reification is the role of rationality in this

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dialectic. The social pathology that concerns Lukács is not thelack of recognition, important though that may be, but rather theoverwhelming predominance of rational structures that distort andoppress the human lives they contain.

This problematic—the role of rationality in the relation ofstructure to agency—can be further developed outside theframework of Lukács’s Marxist assumptions. It suggests the needfor a renewal of democratic theory, not just around the formalquestion of rights, but around the substantive issues thatconcern human beings trapped in oppressive economic,administrative, and technological structures. This is in fact theapproach I have taken in developing the critical theory oftechnology.

Technology was a key example and source of reification forLukács and became still more central in the thinking of the firstgeneration of the Frankfurt School. These thinkers argued thatcapitalism creates a productive apparatus designed to support itssocial structure. The agency of the individuals was ever moresuccessfully channeled as they adapted to this technological“second nature” which, the Frankfurt School claimed, had spreadfrom work to every aspect of life. Reification describes thestandard mode of perception and the practices associated withthis “one-dimensional society.” Democratization of thetechnologized world is therefore its dereification. I will returnto this point in my conclusion.

This chapter expands these introductory remarks. I will firstshow that Honneth’s individualistic approach fails to grasp thecore of Lukács’s theory of reification. I will follow thesecritical remarks with a discussion of Lukács’s theory based on areading of History and Class Consciousness. Later sections of thischapter discuss the relation of the Lukácsian concept ofreification to political events and to the early FrankfurtSchool. In conclusion I will offer some suggestions for applyingthe concept of reification in a critical theory of technology.

Reification and RecognitionHonneth’s lectures lend themselves to two misunderstandings.

On the one hand, he invokes an “existential” concept ofrecognition as awareness of the specifically human qualities of

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human beings which he does not adequately distinguish from thenormative concept of recognition as a desirable relation to otherhuman beings. This confusion motivates the three commentaries byscholars who criticize Honneth’s argument at the end of the book.On the other hand, Honneth’s presentation wavers between anaccount of reification based strictly on the literal meaning ofthe word’s roots, and a critique and interpretation of Lukács’stheory of reification. Since Lukács’s role in introducing theterm into social theory is well known and acknowledged by Honnethfrom the start, this ambiguity is particularly confusing. I willfocus on it throughout this chapter.

Honneth goes to some lengths to show that the meaning ofreification is forgetfulness of recognition of the other. Hewrites, “the independence of those practices whose successfulexecution demands that we ignore all the human properties of ourfellow human beings can lead to intersubjective reification”(Honneth, 2008, 156-157, see also, 25, 54). But just how far hisdefinition strays from Lukács’s should be clear from his claimthat Lukács erred in describing wage labor and commodity exchangeas reified. Yet these are Lukács’s principal examples! Honneth’sconclusion is nevertheless logical. Exchange and wage labor arebased on contractual relations which imply recognition of theother. This is what makes exchange different from theft and wagelabor different from slavery.

But Lukács surely knew this and could hardly have failed todistinguish between exchange and theft, wage labor and slavery,nor is it plausible that he completely misunderstood his ownconceptual innovation. If the conclusion is false, one of thepremises must be false. In this case it would seem that theexclusive identification of reification with the failure ofrecognition is the source of the error. It is easy to confirmthis. In History and Class Consciousness Lukács discusses reification atlength in relation to Marx’s concepts of alienation and thefetishism of commodities and Max Weber’s concept ofrationalization, but rarely in terms of human relations.

How does Honneth arrive at his rather unusual interpretationof a concept which Lukács introduced with a very differentmeaning? Why not simply say at the outset that “reification isbeing used here in a sense completely different from Lukács’s

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definition”? The answer is a link Honneth believes he can findbetween his concept and that of Lukács. Were he able to bridgethe gap between them with this link, his redefinition ofreification could stand as a developing stage in a traditionstemming from Lukács and continuing through the history of theFrankfurt School down to the present. This is certainly one wayof saving the concept from obsolescence, but I will argue that itneither the only nor the best way.

Honneth notes that Lukács has various different descriptionsof what constitutes reification. The most fruitful, in Honneth’sview, is as an attitude of objectivity or detachment. The wordLukács uses to describe this attitude is “contemplation,” withthe emphasis on the distancing and passivity connoted by theterm. Honneth draws out the implications of this notion of thereified subject as fundamentally an observer rather than anauthentic actor: “In the constantly expanding sphere of commodityexchange, subjects are compelled to behave as detached observers,rather than as active participants in social life, because theirreciprocal calculation of the benefits that others might yieldfor their own profit demands a purely rational and emotionlessstance” (Honneth, 2008: 24-25).

Honneth claims that Lukács’s critique of reification impliesas its corollary a more fundamental non-reified relation to theworld. In some passages Lukács describes this relation as worldconstituting. This alternative to contemplation depends onoutdated idealist premises.. More interesting to Honneth arethose passages in which Lukács advocates an alternative “mode ofpraxis characterized by empathetic and existential engagement”(Honneth, 2008: 29). This formulation suggests an affinitybetween Lukács and Heidegger. In Heidegger’s thought humanexperience is grounded on the prereflective givenness of theworld in an engaged attitude of “care.” Lukács and Heideggerarrive at similar conclusions through a critique of theprevailing Cartesian paradigm of subject-object relations. Weparticipate in the world at a fundamental ontological levelbefore viewing it as a subject opposed to an object.

Honneth finds further evidence for his notion of “engagedinvolvement” in Dewey. With Dewey he argues that “we experiencesituations in such a way that we ‘take care’ to maintain a fluent

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interaction with our surroundings. In what follows, I will referto this primordial form of relation to the world as ‘recognition’in its most elementary form” (Honneth, 2008, 37). Honnethconcludes that Lukács, Heidegger and Dewey are all aiming at thesame fundamental idea: “the notion that the stance of empatheticengagement in the world, arising from the experience of theworld’s significance and value, is prior to our acts of detachedcognition” (Honneth, 2008, 38). All three philosophers argue thatemotion, reason and sensation are joined in an original relationto reality that founds objectivity and detachment.

Honneth now redefines reification as an objective view of theworld that forgets its origins in recognition. Where suchforgetfulness becomes habitual and widespread, it leads tovarious social problems. Note that this is not an argumentagainst detached cognition but for awareness of its basis in theprereflective experience of recognition. Honneth claims thatLukács was unclear about this and regarded objective thought assuch as reified. In an effort to avoid this confusion, Honnethrestricts reification in the primary sense to the failure ofrecognition of other persons. Things figure in his concept ofreification only insofar as reifying persons leads to reifyingthe meanings those persons attribute to things. This restrictioneliminates the hint of romantic critique of reason that hauntsthe Lukácsian formulation.

Honneth’s reflections on recognition in this sense arediscussed in the commentaries that follow his lectures. JudithButler, Raymond Geuss, and Jonathan Lear have interesting thingsto say about recognition, but none of them attempt to verify theaccuracy of Honneth’s interpretation of Lukács. I will show thatHonneth’s reflections lead him far from Lukács’s concept ofreification but surprisingly close to some ideas Marcusedeveloped toward the end of his life. To unravel the confusion weneed to go back to the notion of contemplation to understand itsactual significance for Lukács.

Reification as a Social ConceptOn the face of it Honneth would seem to have a point. Reified

thought in Lukács does indeed involve a detached attitude towardpeople and things Lukács calls “contemplative.” And it is true

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that in his 1967 Preface to History and Class Consciousness Lukácsaccuses his earlier self of confounding reification andobjectivity in general. But the text is a lot more complicatedthan Honneth (and the later Lukács himself) are willing toconcede. To explain what I mean I must now go over Lukács’sargument. This entails discussing many ideas which theintellectual historian will tell us are outdated, but in theconclusion to this chapter I hope to redeem at least some ofthem.

Lukács introduces the concept of contemplation to explain thereified form of social theory and practice under capitalism.Reified social reality is treated as a “second nature,” with lawsthat appear as rigid as those of the first nature described bynatural science. The reified subject explains social reality onthe model of natural science and acts on it technically. Thetechnical manipulations are based on knowledge of the laws and donot change them. As Bacon said, “Nature to be commanded must beobeyed.” Here is one typical summary of this approach.

Man in capitalist society confronts a reality ‘made’ byhimself (as a class) which appears to him to be a naturalphenomenon alien to himself; he is wholly at the mercy ofits ‘laws’, his activity is confined to the exploitation ofthe inexorable fulfillment of certain individual laws forhis own (egoistic) interests. But even while ‘acting’ heremains, in the nature of the case, the object and not thesubject of events (Lukács, 1971: 135).

This is what Lukács means when he says that reified practicestands in a “contemplative” relation to a world it cannot alterin any fundamental respect (Lukács, 1971: 89, 97-98). History andClass Consciousness does not criticize contemplation in the everydaysense of the word, but understood as an aspect of a technicallymanipulative relation to the world. This is sufficientlyproblematic without suggesting as do both Honneth and the laterLukács that the book condemned objectivity in general.

I do not see how there can be any question that this is whatthe Lukács of 1923 means. He gives several examples in the firstpart of the reification essay in History and Class Consciousness. Thecapitalist investor stands in a contemplative relation to thestock market. He tries to position himself in relation to trends,

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not to control the trends. The worker in an automated factorystands in a similarly contemplative relation to the self-actingmachine which he operates from an external position rather thanhimself acting as the center of production with the tools ofcraft in hand. Bureaucracies too have the form of a rigid, lawfulsystem. In sum, the three principal bases of a modern society,the economy, the technology, and the administrations are reifiedin the sense that the individual cannot alter their laws, onlyunderstand and manipulate those laws to personal advantage.

Now, as we have seen Lukács’s concept of reification doescontain a reference to objectivity and detachment as reifiedmodes of experience, but instead of exploring the nature of adereified experience as does Honneth, Lukács emphasizes thepractical aspect of overcoming reification. He regards immediateexperience as thoroughly reified and grounded in the socialstructure. The experiential sources of resistance are explainedas a historically specific mediation, and not as an ontologicalfoundation. This is why he does not pursue the project thatinterests Heidegger and Dewey and attempt to get beneathreification to an original prereflective relation to reality, butinstead turns to historical action for an understanding ofresistance. This focus directed his attention to the dynamic ofthe underlying reality that has been reified. He described thisdynamic with three concepts: tendencies, processes, and action.

Reification masks the tendencies of a historical process thatis based ultimately on human practical activities rather than onlaws. This underlying reality is known, Lukács claims, in Marxistsocial theory, and not in phenomenological analysis. Hence he isnot antagonistic to objectivity and detachment in general,insofar as these cognitive attitudes belong to every socialscience, including Marxism. This is not an inconsistency butindicates the specificity of the objectivity and detachmentLukács attributes to reified thought. Here we reach thephilosophical nub of the matter.

What is it about reified thought that qualifies itsobjectivity and detachment as problematic? The answer to thisquestion is found in the second part of the reification essaywhich I will summarize with scandalous brevity here. Lukácsargues that Kant’s philosophy exemplifies reified thought at the

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highest level. According to Kant, experienced reality isstructured by formal intuitions and concepts such as space, time,causality and substance. These categories “give” reality in theform of thinghood, that is, as enduring entities with essentialproperties and accidental relations to other entities. Modernscience, which is Kant’s model of the exercise of pure reason,grasps these entities in purely rational forms. Lukácsunderstands this to mean that the laws of natural scienceabstract the quantifiable dimension of their objects and propounduniversal propositions such as Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “Toevery action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.” Toapply this law specific content must be supplied. One would needto know what specific action was involved and what force itexerted to calculate the consequence of the law. Bourgeois socialscience and economics employ the same kind of formal laws tounderstand society.

The formalistic character of these natural scientific lawsgives insight into nature, as Kant supposed, but it gives only adistorted view of historical processes that depend on humanaction. This is because the “content” of the historically givensociety has the power to alter its structure. It was Hegel whounderstood the limitations of Kantian formalism and freedphilosophy to conceive of history as a domain in which form andcontent interact in a prior unity, the unity of human actionwhich generates both structures and events. This advance madepossible Marx’s dialectical critique of political economy and theconcept of proletarian revolution.

Why this Marxist detour from philosophy to political economy?Some of the reasons are familiar, such as Marx’s distaste forutopian speculation. But this is not how Lukács understandsMarx’s strategy. Rather, the point of the Marxian approach is toshow the historical tendencies leading to socialism emergingwithin the categories of the capitalist economy as tensions,breakdowns, crises, failures. Marx shows that the formal laws ofeconomics fail to embrace the concrete content of economic lifeunder capitalism.

Say’s law can serve as an illustration. It holds that thetotal supply of goods and services in a free market economy willexactly equal the total demand at any given time. This law is

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contradicted by economic crises in which a glut of goods outpacesdemand, bankrupting producers and impoverishing workers.

Crises are a consequence of the social fragmentationcharacteristic of reification. While partial sub-systems of thesociety such as particular enterprises are highly rationalized,the interactions between these sub-systems are “irrational” inthe sense that they are not organized and planned as they wouldbe under socialism. Thus the Marxist “anarchy of production,”which describes the total system, is in fact complemented by arigid order at the level of its sub-systems.

Lukács interprets crisis theory in terms of the antinomy ofform and content he develops in his critique of German idealism.The sum of the rationalized domains such as enterprises andbureaucratic administrations does not add up to the totality.What is left out is the concrete life process that overflows therationalized sub-systems in every direction. That life processcomes back to haunt the rationalized domains in the course ofclass struggles. These struggles bring to the surface the humanbasis of the society which has been constrained and hidden by thereified forms. That human basis is the proletariat.

Capitalism is exposed to the practical critique of theproletariat in a way no previous economic system was sovulnerable. This is because only insofar as the members of acapitalist society relate to it in a reified fashion can itfunction at all. Individuals must conceive themselves asindividual agents, relating through objective systems such asmarkets. They must adopt a “contemplative” attitude and seekpersonal advantage in these systems. In sum, the reifiedstructuration of the society depends on the reification ofconsciousness. Lukács calls this mode of perception/structure a“form of objectivity” to get away from any subjectivist notion ofmere illusion.1 Capitalism has a reified form of objectivitywhich is perceived and acted upon in a reified disposition,closing the circle of social construction.

When that form of objectivity breaks down, the system is1 The concept of “Gegenständlichkeitsformen” disappears in the English translationand becomes “objective forms” and similar renderings. This obscures theconnection between Lukács’s argument and the German idealist tradition. Cf.for example, Lukács (1971: 7, 13, 83), and the original in Lukács (1968:178,185, 257).

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threatened. And the threat is permanent. The worker is constantlyaware of the difference between his social form and his realcontent as a person. Where, for example, a speed-up orlengthening of the working day is perceived by the capitalist asa simple matter of increasing the quantity of labor powerpurchased at a given price, for the worker this “quantity changesinto quality”.

The worker cannot help but  penetrate the reified quantitativedeterminants of this form of objectivity. He is inevitably awareof the real qualitative degradation of life and health associatedwith an intensification or extension of work activity. Thus, “thequantitative differences in exploitation which appear to thecapitalist in the form of quantitative determinants of theobjects of his calculation, must appear to the worker as thedecisive, qualitative categories of his whole physical, mentaland moral existence” Lukács, 1971: 166). The revolutionconstitutes the mediation of the reified social order, itstransformation through the self-conscious resistance of theproletariat to its own form of objectivity as wage labor, imposedon it by the system.

This theory of class consciousness has problems of its own,but it resolves an aporia that typically afflicts dystopiancritique and is sometimes attributed to Lukács. In Heidegger, forexample, the technological enframing at times appears so total asto block all awareness of it, including Heidegger’s own theory(Belu and Feenberg, 2010). Lukács is often interpreted to saythat reification is similarly total, excluding the verypossibility of the revolution he foresees. But in fact theform/content distinction saves Lukács from the aporia. Formally,reification is total in the sense that it provides the “form ofobjectivity” of both objects and subjects in capitalist society.But form and content are not identical. The content overflows theform of objectivity and has the power to modify it. Revolutionarysocial transformation consists most fundamentally in this processof modification.

The Dialectic of MediationLukács’s conception of revolution conforms loosely to the

Hegelian pattern of alienation and re-appropriation noted by

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Martin Jay in his introduction to Honneth’s lectures (Honneth,2008: 4). The social world is created by human action and itsalienated form can therefore be overcome through human action.The proletarian revolution dissolves the rigid systems ofcapitalism into the “processes of human relations” from whichthey arose and which can transform them. But this formulationseems to oppose institutions and actions as such. Socialism wouldbe a society without institutions, subject at every moment to thevagaries of the mass movement. The alienated rationality ofcapitalism would be overcome in a collective decisionism, a kindof romantic immediacy writ large (Adorno, 1973: 374). In theseremarks Lukács appears to oppose agency and structure asalternative modes of social organization.

So formulated his program sounds quite simplistic and indeedJay and Honneth dismiss it. They are, I think, influenced byHabermas’s systems theory which depends on the concept ofdifferentiation to explain the phenomena Lukács describes withthe concept of reification. Differentiation describes theinstitutional separations characteristic of modern societiesbetween politics, economics, the family, the church and so on.This “fragmentation” is useful because it makes a complex largescale society possible. A differentiated social subsystem such asthe market cannot be disalienated by human action any more than agame of soccer can be disalienated by abolishing the rules. Inboth cases, the relative independence of structure from agency isa condition for accomplishing worthwhile ends and not an offenseto human freedom.

But the differentiation model has a weakness which Honnethhimself identified in his early book The Critique of Power.Sociologists tend to view differentiation not only as useful butas a universally valid achievement. This ignores the structural“underdetermination” of systems. Their specific design in anygiven situation is not warranted by the nature of rational actionalone but is also contingent on decisions that reflect specificinterests. Those decisions and hence the structure of thedifferentiated systems could have been different. Honneth writes,“Technical rules incompletely prescribe the respective form oftheir transposition into concrete actions. Possibilities ofaction are closed not by a repeated recourse to purposive-

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rational considerations but only through the application ofnormative or political viewpoints” (Honneth, 1991: 254).2 WhatHonneth asserts here of systems applies equally to technologies.3

Indeed, the concept of underdetermination is central to currenttechnology studies. I will return to this point in the conclusionof this chapter.

On this account political action shapes systems by alteringthe rules under which they operate without thereby destroyingtheir rational form. But then systems should be judged onpolitical terms. For example, they may be shown to be more orless democratic, depending on the degree to which they areconfigured to respect civil rights and the will of the majority.Where undemocratic systems are democratized by broad publicinterventions, their transformation could be loosely described asa re-appropriation without implying a return from differentiationto immediacy. Passages in Lukács’s book which point in thisdirection co-exist with other passages that seem to demand atotal “dissolution into processes” of the rational systems ofcapitalism.

These considerations take us to the heart of the problem ofLukács’s book. The enormous gap between the two poles of hisargument, classical German philosophy and Marxist politics, isnever entirely bridged. There remain curious exaggerations thatexpose his argument to easy criticism. Honneth notes somethingsimilar, the co-existence of an “official” line that ishopelessly idealistic and a more “moderate” “unofficial” linethat can provide the basis for a recovery of his contribution(Honneth, 2008: 27; cf. Feenberg, 1981: 124-132; and Feenberg2011). We differ on the nature of that unofficial line but not on2 I have discussed Honneth’s book at length in Feenberg (1995: chap. 3). Withthis argument, Honneth eliminated two ambiguities in Habermas’s theory. On theone hand, it seemed on occasion that Habermas viewed systems as rational insome absolute sense and that therefore any action to change theirconfiguration would be de-differentiating and regressive. On the other hand,it was difficult to tell whether systems in Habermas’s view were distinguishedfrom the lifeworld analytically or in reality. Honneth made it clear that thedistinction was analytic, that system and lifeworld are not separate spheresbut interpenetrate, and that no absolute rationality presides over theconfiguration of systems but rather human, all too human, decisions.3 For my objections to the Habermasian exclusion of technology from thesystem/lifeworld analysis, see Feenberg (1999: chap. 7.)

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the interest in pursuing the ambiguities of Lukács’s argument. The focus on classical German philosophy leads Lukács at times

to formulations that resemble Fichtean identity philosophy. Theidealist “identity of subject and object” is transferredimplausibly to the proletariat. Overcoming the antinomy ofsubject and object and restoring their unity appears then as an“exigency of reason” in the Hegelian sense. Honneth notes thistrend in Lukács’s argument and concludes that “by grounding hiscritique of reification in this way, he has robbed it of anychance of social-theoretical justification” (Honneth, 2008: 27).This is a conclusion reached by many critics of Lukács, includingAdorno and Habermas.

This aspect of Lukács’s argument is partially contradicted byanother more realistic approach based on a Hegelian-Marxistconcept of mediation. According to this approach reification isgradually overcome in a long term process and not dissolved in asudden recovery of absolute agency. Human freedom and initiativeincrease relative to the structural impediments of a rationalizedsociety as the proletariat gains power and initiates thetransition to socialism.

Lukács makes this point repeatedly in different waysthroughout the third section of the reification essay, but neverdevelops the argument formally in relation to the problematic ofclassical German philosophy analyzed earlier in the essay. Hewrites, for example, that “Proletarian thought does not require atabula rasa,” but rather it starts out from reification which,for the first time, makes it possible to understand that societyis a human product (163). Socialism is a reorganization of thesociety around a dialectical mediation of the capitalistinheritance.

He argues further that reification is never completelyeliminated but that it is repeatedly overcome in an “unbrokenalternation of ossification, contradiction and movement” (199).And he rejects the humanist tendency to make man himself into anabsolute “in place of those transcendental forces he was supposedto explain, dissolve and systematically replace” (187). Theproletariat is thus not able to constitute or posit reality fromsome transcendental beyond. “It is true that the proletariat isthe conscious subject of total social reality. But the conscious

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subject is not defined here as in Kant, where ‘subject’ isdefined as that which never be an object” (21).

Lukács invokes Hegel’s famous principle that “the true [beunderstood] not only as substance but also as subject.” Like theHegelian absolute, the proletariat too “moves in a self-createdworld” but that world simultaneously “imposes itself upon [it] infull objectivity” (142). The reference to the ambitious notion ofa “self-created world” is thus instantly deflated by the “fullobjectivity” explained in Marxist social theory.

Lukács’s theory of mediation suggests a very different imageof the revolution from the classic one derived from the Frenchand Russian revolutions. Although those earlier experiences stillinfluence Lukács’s notion of historical development as a suddenreversal—how could they not in 1923?—his theory could just aswell support an evolutionary pattern in which reification and itsovercoming stand in a permanent relationship of ever renewedconflict and resolution. The “revolution” would alter theconditions of that conflict, favoring either structure or agency.This approach implies a theory of modernity as a differentiatedsocial formation with two variants, a capitalist one in whichreification is predominant and resistances suppressed, and asocialist one in which the relations between reification andresistance are reversed, the resistances modifying malleablereified systems subject to continuous revision.4

This interpretation of Lukács’s theory of mediation—his“unofficial line”—bears a certain resemblance to Honneth’sindependent revision of the concept of reification. Honnethdistinguishes between reified and unreified stances, the oneunaware of its basis in recognition, the other aware (Honneth,2008: 56). Lukács, in the interpretation presented here,distinguished between structures that obscure the practices inwhich they originate and structures that are caught up in a

4 It might be objected that reification is no longer reification if it isrelativized by proletarian practice in this manner, but this is to ignore onceagain the significance of the form/content distinction for Lukács. What ismost fundamentally "reified" are formal-rational social structures, whatevertheir relation to the corrective practices in which their failure to embracecontent finally surfaces. The definition of reification does not hinge onwhether those practices are frequent or infrequent, violent or peaceful, buton the formal character of social rationality.

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conscious dialectic with those practices. In each case theduality of objectivity and recognition, structure and agency iseither blocked or taken up consciously as a mediation of thefirst term. But despite the formal similarity there is aconsiderable difference in the critical import of the twointerpretations. Honneth concedes at the end of his book that onhis account reification as a social pathology is rare,exemplified by institutions such as slavery that operate “at thezero point of sociality” (Honneth, 2008: 157). Lukács’s conceptof reification has a much wider application and suggests a pathtoward the general transformation of modernity and the emergenceof a new form of social rationality.

What is that form? At the philosophical level, the answer isthe dialectic, reflected practically in proletarian resistance.But the dialectic is a critical tool and not a positive doctrine.It cannot be institutionalized in rationalized social structuresand it is impossible to believe that any modern society couldfunction without them. This is why Lukács treats it as a dynamicrather than an institution. Marx’s own answer was vague andambiguous. Under socialism the “assembled producers” wereexpected to organize production in function of human needs ratherthan the market. This answer points in two opposite directions,on the one hand toward more participation and on the other handtoward economic planning which, as we have learned from history,is the work of a bureaucracy. Lukács’s answer is no more clearand this had consequences for his politics that eventually led tohis unfortunate compromise with Stalinism.5

Reification After Lukács My description of Lukács’s theory of reification is quite

different from Honneth’s. But apart from the problem ofinterpretation, there remains the more interesting question ofwhat can be salvaged from this theory. This was no doubt moreimportant to Honneth than providing a sound interpretation of atext few bother to read anymore. In emphasizing the role ofrecognition Honneth continues Habermas’s communication-theoreticapproach in an original way, overcoming a certain intellectualist5 I have discussed the early source of this problem in Lukács’s later work inFeenberg (2002).

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bias for which Habermas has often been criticized. The sketch ofLukács’s theory of reification I have offered sends us furtherback for precedents in the early Frankfurt School’s critique ofinstrumental reason. That critique can be renewed in contact withthe theory of reification which was one of its most importantsources.

Lukács had an extraordinary vision of proletarian revolution.He believed in the emergence of a unified historical subjectcapable of acting consciously on the “totality” of society fromout of a strategic position giving it leverage on that totality.The failure of this vision has rendered his politics obsolete.Nevertheless, if by “reification” we mean, as did Lukács, therational form of capitalist society and an associated technicaldisposition, then clearly the concept still has interestingapplications. Perhaps we can recover something worthwhile fromthis concept and from Lukács’s notion of mediation as the logicof a radical politics of dereification. Just as Lukácsreconstructed the arguments of classical German philosophy in anew context, extracting the concept of dialectics from a specifichistorically outdated formulation, so may we salvage the form ofLukács’s argument for our new situation. It is this approach toLukács’s theory on which I will focus in the remainder of thischapter.

The notion of reification is useful for grouping under onerubric a wide variety of phenomena characterizing modernsocieties. Certain forms of social interaction in these societiestend to be differentiated from each other and from everyday life.Thus economic interaction is institutionalized in markets,dealings with the state in bureaucracies, and production intechnically based enterprises. Each of these domains exhibitsqualities of rationality such as equal exchange, classificationand application of rules, and precise measurement andoptimization. These are formal qualities just as Lukács supposed,and they shape the rather disorganized and chaotic stuff ofeveryday life.6

The rationalized systems are only partially differentiatedfrom the lifeworld. They are still subject to intervention and

6 I have developed the concept of social rationality in chapter 8 of Feenberg(2010).

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transformation from below, although the closer they are to thecore of the capitalist economy, the more they are armored againstresistance and regulation. They are also interdependent invarious ways, some obvious, such as the relation between marketsand production, others less obvious, such as the impact of law onshaping the boundaries of the other systems. Recently, thedifferentiated domains have begun to borrow methods andtechnologies from each other in a pattern which is now identifiedwith progress. For example, government bureaucracies employ evermore complex computer technologies and are increasingly subjectedto forms of accountability that imitate the functioning ofmarkets. Markets depend on communication technologies to an everincreasing extent, enabling their globalization, while productionis organized by highly bureaucratized managements. Theseinteractions and mutual dependencies tend to create anincreasingly technologized system of social rationality thatspreads into every aspect of modern social life (Beniger, 1986).

Reification in this sense forms the background to the politicsof resistance that emerged with the New Left in the 1960s and‘70s. This was an anti-dystopian politics that attacked the“system” in the name of human values. In Honneth’s account, thispolitics is associated with a brief revival of interest in Lukácsand dismissed, but it actually represented a first attempt to dowhat Honneth himself has attempted, namely to recover the coremeaning of the concept of reification. Those New Left scholarswho encountered Lukács’s early work felt they had discovered thesources of the theory of the “one-dimensional society” in whichthey lived.7

In diametrical opposition to the technocratic consensus of theday, the New Left criticized the dominant model of technicalprogress and the way of life it supports. This explains why theFrankfurt School was so influential despite the difficulty of thewritings of its leading members. The critique of technology inoccasional comments by Adorno and lengthier analyses in Marcuse’swork in particular had a considerable impact. Habermas, amongothers, believed this coincidence of views on technology was theresult of a similar romantic disdain for rationality (Habermas,1970). But Habermas’s critique certainly overstates the case.7 See for example Feenberg (1981) and Löwy (1979).

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Adorno writes, for example:It is not technology which is calamitous, but itsentanglement with societal conditions in which it isfettered….Considerations of the interests of profit anddominance have channeled technical development: by now itcoincides fatally with the needs of control. Not by accidenthas the invention of means of destruction become theprototype of the new quality of technology. By contrast,those of its potentials which diverge from dominance,centralism and violence against nature, and which might wellallow much of the damage done literally and figuratively bytechnology to be healed, have withered (Adorno, 2000: 161-162, note 15).

This passage is no more than a promissory note which Adornonever fulfilled, but Marcuse went much further. His argument foran alternative “technological rationality” follows directly froma social diagnosis of technology’s destructive development. Theproblem is not in the nature of reason as such, as irrationalistphilosophers contend, but in the specific form rationality takesin a reified, one-dimensional society. But this implies thatanother form of rationality is possible (Marcuse, 1964: chap. 8).

Although much derided today for its immaturity and extremism,the New Left established the horizon of progressive expectationsfor our time. It launched movements such as the environmental andfeminist movements that continue to challenge the dominantconsensus. The demand for a new direction to technical progressand a more participatory organization of modern life has not goneaway. It forms the background to the work of Habermas and Honnethhowever much they may resist the undesirable association. It istrue that many issues have changed, but where the Left is activeit continues to advance the argument of the 1960s for a newconception of progress and a more participatory society.

In the 1960s and ‘70s the positive side of Lukács's argumentseemed to have no practical implications. Adorno and Horkheimernever attempted to develop an account of the redemption for whichthey hoped. Marcuse was the only member of the Frankfurt Schoolwho took seriously the potential of the New Left, not as arevolutionary vanguard but as prefigurative model of a newsensibility capable of inspiring radical change.

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Marcuse argued that the culture of capitalism was antagonisticto life itself. He detected in the counter-culture a quasi-somatic resistance to the careers and rewards offered by thesystem. Increasingly, as society became richer, competition andwar could be perceived as unnecessary and the false promise ofconsumerism demystified. If these attitudes and perceptionsspread, he believed, they would prepare a revolution that wouldnot only affect political and economic institutions buttechnology as well. A “new sensibility” would transform whatLukács would have called the form of objectivity of the societyand this would have consequences for the design of all rationalsystems, including those supposedly neutral systems based onscientific-technical knowledge.

Marcuse did not, however, employ the Lukácsian term butintroduced the phenomenological concept of an “aestheticLebenswelt” through which life-affirming values would enter intoperception itself. Values in Marcuse’s sense representpotentialities of human beings and things, both artifacts andnature. These potentialities correspond to intrinsic needs anddevelopmental possibilities. In a variation on the dialectic ofform and content, Marcuse offers a dialectic of empirical realityand potentiality. His vision of a reformed technology involvedincorporating values representing these potentialities into thetechnical disciplines and designs. from which they had beenexpelled by capitalism. This would distinguish socialisttechnical disciplines and technologies from modern value freetechnological rationality which contains no intrinsic telos.Marcuse writes:

The critique of technology aims neither at a romanticregression nor at a spiritual restoration of 'values.' Theoppressive features of technological society are not due toexcessive materialism and technicism. On the contrary, itseems that the causes of the trouble are rather in thearrest of materialism and technological rationality, that isto say, in the restraints imposed on the materialization ofvalues (Marcuse, 2001: 57).

A rationality that “materialized” life affirming values byincorporated them into its structure would provide the basis forthe reconstruction of society and nature as a peaceful,

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harmonious world. In sum, technology could be redesigned undersocialism to serve rather than to dominate humanity and nature.8

Marcuse’s argument, like that of Lukács, turns on the conflictbetween the domain of prereflective experience that interestsHonneth and the rational systems that constrain the individuals’lives. But unlike the Heideggerian "world" to which Honneth makesreference, the structure of experience in Marcuse and Lukács is ahistorical form of objectivity. The conflictual encounter betweenexperience and social rationality is the source of the historicaldynamic. In Lukács the experiential level is assimilated to arather traditional concept of class consciousness, but Marcuseoffers something much more interesting. His concept of anaesthetic Lebenswelt refers to a prereflective realm of experiencelike that which grounds Honneth’s view of recognition. Andalthough Marcuse does not use the term “recognition,” this iseffectively what he intends by his notion of treating nature as asubject.

Like Honneth Marcuse recognizes the existential dimension, the“facticity” of human life on the basis of which consciousnessdevelops through recognizing a reality and appropriating anidentity. Honneth’s discussion of self-reification and itsovercoming is suggestive in this context. Honneth argues that weare neither spectators on our own inner states nor can weconstruct them at will, but rather, that we learn to expressinarticulate feelings that precede language. This expressive orreflexive model of consciousness presupposes two preconditions.In the first place, the individuals’ socialization must havesupplied conceptual means for interpreting feelings, and in thesecond place, they must enjoy a certain degree of self-recognition without which they could not affirm their ownfeelings (Honneth, 2008: 70-71). This aspect of Honneth’sargument could be developed in a theory of resistant sensibility.

These are suggestive similarities between the arguments ofHonneth and Marcuse, but there are still more fundamentaldifferences. Honneth’s notion of the grounding of objectivity inprereflective experience lacks tension because he does not extendhis critique to the form of objectivity of modern society.

8 See Marcuse (1969). For more on Marcuse’s views on technology, see Feenberg(2005: chap. 5).

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Marcuse remains much closer to Lukács in highlighting thetensions between experiential ground and objective forms. AndMarcuse does not restrict recognition to intersubjectiveexperience as does Honneth but extends it to things in general.This poses many problems but also makes for a more ecologicallyoriented theoretical framework.

As we have seen, Marcuse no more than Lukács imaginesrevolution as a return to immediacy. The notion of mediation withwhich Lukács theorizes the overcoming of reification suggests away of elaborating Marcuse’s politics of technologicaltransformation. I have argued elsewhere that the politicalstruggles emerging around technology in the last thirty yearscorrespond in a much reduced form to that program (Feenberg,1999: chap. 6). These struggles do not promise a classicalrevolution, but they do exhibit the mediation of formalrationality in which Lukács’s dialectic consists and theyexemplify Marcuse’s notion of value oriented technologicalredesign. I believe that developing this approach to technologyis a more fruitful way of saving the concept of reification fromobsolescence than Honneth’s attempt at a purely intersubjectivereconstruction of the concept.

This formulation of the concept of mediation is reminiscent ofthe notion of a “tragedy of culture” developed by Simmel andtaken up by Lukács in his pre-Marxist literary criticism. Thenarrowness of social forms confines and constricts the spiritwhich, rebelling individually, falls victim to society. WhenLukács discovered Marxism, he did not completely abandon thisromantic theory but rather transformed it in two dimensions,first, by positing collective rather than individual resistance,and second, by substituting rational systems for socialconventions as the barrier to fulfillment. The identification ofthe collective with the Marxist proletariat and the forms withcapitalism effectively masked the romantic background of thetheory. The collapse of those identifications exposes thatbackground again and Lukács’s critics have attacked him preciselyon this point. Can we avoid regression to those romantic originsin deploying the concept anew in the context of disseminatedtechnical politics? To do so we must reconstruct Lukács’s twomodifications of his own early romanticism. I believe we can do

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this by focusing on the role of technical networks in assemblingcollective subjects.9

Radical Philosophy of TechnologyI want to conclude this chapter by developing the connection

between the theory of reification and contemporary struggles overtechnology. This is one domain in which the theory, in somethinglike its original formulation, retains surprising relevance. Butto demonstrate its relevance requires a far more informedunderstanding of technology than we usually find among criticaltheorists. The historical context of Marxism was one in whichtechnology was confined for the most part to the factory. In thatcontext, struggles over technology were generally subordinate towider labor struggles over wages, working conditions andpolitical power. The extension of technology into other domainsin the first half of the 20th century met little resistancealthough, as the Frankfurt School showed, it had disastrousconsequences for the socialist movement. All this changes in morerecent times as technology has become the object of struggle inmany domains. It is this which must be explained and the field oftechnology studies is useful for this purpose.

Modern technology is more than a tool. It is an environmentand structures a way of life (Woolgar, 1991; Akrich, 1992). Thistechnology exhibits the underdetermination of rationalitydiscussed earlier. At every stage in its development choicesappeared and decisions were made that were strongly influenced bythe interests of the dominant capitalist class. Thus the currenttechnological system responds not just to universal interests ofthe human species but also to the specific requirements ofcapitalist development Noble, 1984). As Honneth says in thepassage cited earlier, “Possibilities of action are closed not bya repeated recourse to purposive-rational considerations but onlythrough the application of normative or political viewpoints.”

Of the many possible forms progress might have taken, we havea particular one. This is evident in the structural indifferencethis technology exhibits to the welfare of workers, consumers andthe natural environment. There is nothing specifically“technological” about this indifference, nor is it particularly9 I owe thanks to Martin Jay for pointing out this problem.

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“efficient” from the standpoint of society as a whole whateverits helpful contribution to corporate profits. This indifference,made possible by the operational autonomy of the capitalist andhis representatives, forms the background of current strugglesover technology.

These struggles burst out in many domains, aroundenvironmental issues, medical issues, in education, on theInternet, and so on. They are carried on with very differentmethods, everything from hacking to law suits to consumerboycotts, to protests and demonstrations. Politically, theyappear weak, even marginal, compared to the great issues of warand peace, civil rights, taxation, and so on. However,cumulatively they are changing the nature of technologicallyadvanced societies as ordinary people gain agency in thetechnological system (Oudshoorn and Pinch, 2003).

This is particularly clear in the case of the environment andthe Internet. In both these domains the technical traditionsinherited from earlier iterations of modern technology have beenchallenged by ordinary people with a very different conception ofhow technology should be designed. The challenges have led tomajor transformations in the technical disciplines andtechnologies that depend on them. We are only at the beginning ofthis process of democratic intervention into technology. Thereadjustments that will result may very well go beyond what weimagine today.

In what sense can this process be described as mediating areified rationality? The professional technical disciplines havegrown up with capitalism and share in its biases. The consequenceof this intimate relationship between knowledge-making andeconomic power is felt not only in the form of the professionsbut also in the content of the knowledge on which they base theirclaim to authority and the designs of the systems they shape. Insome cases, for example, the management science that grew out ofFrederic Taylor’s innovations, it is practically impossible todistinguish contents of general validity from those relative to aparticular capitalist organization of production. In other cases,the biases are less pervasive and evident, and only becomevisible in the course of social conflicts over their effects.

As these conflicts become increasingly commonplace a pattern

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emerges that resembles a dialectical process of mediation. Likethe political economy Marx criticized, the technical disciplinesare reified “sciences” that both describe and shape aspects ofthe lifeworld. Of course they differ from economics in manyrespects, but they share its alienation from the social processesthat underlie them. Where the forms imposed by these disciplinesand institutions fail to represent adequately the needs of thosethey enroll, resistances emerge. These resistances are not merelynegative.

In technology studies, competition and conflict around a newinvention end as one contender gains final victory. This processof “closure” is also referred to as “black boxing” the winningdesign. The structural forms of modern societies consist in largepart in such black boxed technological designs. Mediation in thesense I have introduced the term here is a reopening of thestructural “black box” and a rediscovery of its underdeterminednature. Such mediation occurs most often where technical networksembrace and harm unwitting or powerless participants.

Participation in a technical network constructs a latentcollective that may emerge as a community of struggle where itstechnical involvement evokes needs that overflow networkboundaries. Thus, for example, exposing a neighborhood to toxicwastes enlists it unawares in a network that threatens the healthof its members. The famous case of Love Canal illustrates thisphenomenon. Although experts were brought in to reassureresidents of this neighborhood, the community believed it wassickened by toxic wastes and enlisted scientists and governmentin pursuit of compensation. Many other environmental strugglesresemble this one. Official, supposedly “scientific” definitionsof the situation are challenged by victims on the basis of theirown interpretation of their experience (Callon, et al., 2009). AsHonneth argues, their “feelings” must appear valid to themselvesfor a struggle to be possible at all. Validating those feelingsis a political task. A resolution is reached when both knowledgeand the human situation are modified to take experience intoaccount.

This pattern is not confined to industry and its side effectssince technology is everywhere. Consider the case of AIDSpatients desiring to enlist in medical experiments in the 1980s

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at the time the disease was first recognized. The experimentswere designed to drastically limit participation and in somecases placed an onerous burden on patients. Through their illnessthe patients belonged to a medical network that excluded themfrom their only hope of a cure. In this and similar cases theneeds at issue are not simply physical but emerge in the contextof the technical system. It was medicine’s conception ofexperimentation that both created the need and blocked itssatisfaction. These patients gained confidence from theirpolitical mobilization in gay rights struggles and acted on theirown understanding of their interests against the advice of themedical profession until the designs were finally modified(Feenberg, 1995: chap. 4).

The process of resistance in cases such as these “mediates”the “forms” imposed by society. These forms enter a dialecticwith the human beings whose lives and activities they structure.New rational configurations emerge in response to contestationsthat modify a technical environment which may again requirerevision at some future date as new needs emerge to challenge it.This is precisely what Lukács expected from socialist revolutionalthough the language in which he expressed himself can be readto call for an absolutism of the subject he did not intend.

The theory of this new modern order remains to be written. Ifit were to gain force over time, its culture might perhapsrealize concretely some of Marcuse’s speculations on a newsensibility. Its science and especially its technology wouldsurely evolve in different directions from those that nowprevail, undoing much of the work of the 19th and 20th centuriesin the process. Other rational systems such as bureaucracies andmarkets would take a different form in this alternativemodernity, and democracy would disseminate over the whole surfaceof its institutional structures instead of being confined tooccasional elections.

These reflections suggest that the contribution of Lukács andthe early Frankfurt School is not exhausted. Their critique ofrationality can help us once again to understand an unprecedentedpolitical situation, this time not as Marxist class struggle norin a dystopian critique of progress but through developing thedemocratic implications of the politics of technology.

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