How Knowledge About Society Influences the Development of Society: A Lesson from Historical Materialism
âThe bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Natureâs forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground â what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?â This is how Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1977, 40f.) describe the major innovations of their time in their Communist Manifesto of 1848. The new technologies reflected the radically altered living conditions worldwide, and closely relatedâas mentioned in the quoteâthe establishment of the middle-class and the capitalist economy supported by it. Marx and Engels were well aware that the new technologies also profoundly affected the natural foundations necessary for the existence of societies. They saw, too, that changing natural conditions in turn affected social relations1 even when they had a limited understanding of these interdependencies. Fundamentally problematic is their view of how knowledge takes form and effect in processes of social development. In my view, this leads to a fundamental conceptual error in their theory of social development.2 Which is why it is worthwhile to study Marx â and Engels â work, for we can learn from their mistake.
Let us briefly look at how Marx and Engels address the issue of internal changes in a society. In every society, they wrote, exist a class of rulers and a class of the oppressed. Both classes try to advance their interests; class struggle shapes the history of human societies. In hindsight, different types of societies can be made out in the course of history. They are each defined by specific conflicts about the modes of production. These conflicts between ruling and oppressed class can only be solvedâso Marx and Engelsâwhen new relations of production evolve from the old ones. This dynamic, they claimed, was essentially also true for bourgeois society. They were well aware that bourgeois society brought forth wealth and a degree of individual freedom like never before in history. But the wealth and civil liberties were built on the poverty and misery of an oppressed class, the proletariat, whose existence was mostly shaped by exploitation and alienation. According to what they assumed were regular processes of social development, Marx and Engels expected that ârevolution ⊠is imminentâ (Marx and Engels 1978, 245, translation J.J.). And with the Manifesto they wrote for the Communist League, they tried to actively participate in those revolutionary processes.
Today, more than 150 years after the Communist Manifesto was first published, the stated views still inflame the passions: Some dismiss it as a colossal delusion, others praise the brilliance of its conceptual framework and its analyses. Still others are still waiting for the proletariat to rise against its oppressor, and they come up with various reasons for why the revolution has not yet taken place. But for the most part, debates about whether Marx and Engels got it right or wrong, quickly end in an ideological stalemate. I find it more constructive to look at what is pretty much common sense, namely that nobody today would seriously claim that the works by Marx and Engels and especially the Manifesto of the Communist Party have been without consequences. To put it differently: Their works (as well as the works of other writers of the workersâ movement) propagated new ideas and started new processes of thought and communication . Individual works, like the Manifesto and Marxâ seminal Capital: Critique of Political Economy (1867), have become important signs . They may be contested signs , but they embody a kind of knowledge that has given people the power to act (indeed with a particular independence as to whether the purported views are correct or questionable).
It is obvious that Marx and Engels , in their conceptual framework, did not sufficiently consider to what extent knowledge may influence the development of societies. They scientifically analyzed society but could not imagine the immense social transformations resulting from the institutionalization of scientific rationality . Of course, they would not have denied that knowledge can considerably influence the shaping of social conditions. Knowledge, in their view, is a result of social conditions. It can thus become itself an object, used to ascertain whether oneâs own actions are correct. Marx and Engels did not give enough attention to this second aspect, though. They developed their conceptual framework out of a critique of German idealism, but did not see how their new knowledge about social developments could bring people to correct their behavior in such far-reaching and comprehensive ways that eventually structural laws were invalidated or transformed. Instead, they adhered to a rigidly determinist framework for their analysis of social history. They never understood that with Darwinâs theory of evolution a new conceptual world had emerged that made it possible to describe social development neither as a determinist process nor as a wholly random one.3
For sustainability discourse , the idea of an open but not random future is constitutive. One cannot participate in sustainability discourse from a position at the end of history. For implicit in the concept of sustainable development is the hope that societies will undergo fundamental structural changes and find knowledge-based solutions to the problems of their existenceâincluding their internal contradictions. The concept is based upon two assumptions (for social theory indeed ridden with prerequisites), namely that social developments can be goal-oriented, and that knowledge is essential for the shaping of societies. These assumptions lie at the root of other discourses of social practice, as well, whenever members of a society communicate about ethical problems of lifeâbe it tax evasion or assisted dying. But sustainability discourse differs from these in at least one essential aspect: The concern for sustainable development is built on the insight that all life and action is bound to material conditions, and it consequently aims to clarify how current interdependencies between society and nature can be organized in a way as to not jeopardize the existence of society in the future. Asking for a way to bring about nondestructive interdependencies between nature and society dramatically intensifies the need for reliable knowledge, a problem other practical discourses struggle with as well. For another problem is added to the problem of how to make predictions about future events: How can research in the natural sciences and the social sciences be correlated, to develop reliable knowledge about how societies can be shaped and about the future consequences of those changes?
This last point is far from trivial. The production of knowledge usually differentiatesâoften with good reasonâbetween the research subjects of natural sciences and social sciences. Up until now the relevant academic discourse is mostly characterized by conceptual and methodological uncertainties. These intensify when statements are made about interdependencies that are defining the limits and possibilities of future options to shape society.
For what will in the future be considered an event that is likely or certain to occur, depends largely upon what kind of structural laws are taken as the basis of social development. Let us, for example assume I consider class struggles an objective law of social development that is true at any given time or place. Then it is plausible that I will wait for the proletarian revolution, not only at the end of the nineteenth century,4 but even still in the twenty-second century. Statements about the necessary ecological embedding of contemporary societies depend just as much on conceptual preconditions. Which processes are classified as ânaturalâ or âworthy of preservationâ, for instance, is defined not least by how nature and society are conceptualized and how they are differentiated from each other.
And already we are in the middle of a discussion about fundamental methodological questions of a science of coevolution . But first, we can conclude what we have learned from the discussion of Marx and Engels â theoretical framework: Theories and conceptual frameworks can only adequately explain social change, when they account for the fact that the knowledge they produced has itself become an enabling factor of change, and when they address their own transformation.
The Society That Needs Changing in Sustainability Discourse
âSustainability discourse â can be defined as all the efforts to preserve the conditions that make it possible for societies to exist in the future. These efforts can include verbally articulated reflections such as moral appeals, ethical concepts, and research results. They also include actions that directly or indirectly aim at securing the future of societies. For any action is always embedded in social contexts and has social meaning , even when it is not directly related to other people but is performed as a solitary act. For example, if someone throws their recyclable paper in the bin for nonrecyclable waste and not in the appropriate paper recycling bin, theyâhowever obliquely and without overt intentâtell their fellow citizens that they do not believe recycling to be a feasible sustainability strategy.
My own definition follows the concept of discourse , as it is used in classical pragmatism and poststructuralism. Consequently, I am not establishing âdiscourseâ and âaction â as opposite terms, and discourse as a concept is not used to establish reflections and debates as subordinated to action (cf. e.g. Habermas 1981a, b). Quite to the contrary, both terms relate to the same subject, namely social life. But they look at it from a different point of views: From the point of view of action, society is seen as a conglomerate of purposeful activities; from the point of view of discourse, society is a conglomerate of various ways of making sense of reality. The terms thus imply each other. Accordingly, a discourse includes all human manifestations that can convey meaning .
The differences between discourses can be seen in their specific, clearly distinct themes. Sustainability discourse is not identical with nature discourse or environmental protection discourse. And yet, there is a certain overlap between these three discourses....