Jean L. Cohen - Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory

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title	:	Class and Civil Society : The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory
author	:	Cohen, Jean L.
publisher	:	University of Massachusetts Press
isbn10 | asin	:	0870233807
print isbn13	:	9780870233807
ebook isbn13	:	9780585236735
language	:	English
subject	Communism and society, Critical theory, Proletariat, Social classes, Social conflict, Civil society, Marx, Karl,--1818-1883.
publication date	:	1982
lcc	:	HX542.C6 1982eb
ddc	:	335.4/11
subject	:	Communism and society, Critical theory, Proletariat, Social classes, Social conflict, Civil society, Marx, Karl,--1818-1883.

Page iii Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory Jean L. Cohen

Page iv Copyright 1982 by Jean L. Cohen All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America LC 82-11104 ISBN 0-87023-380-7 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Page v For Cele with all my love

Page vii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Fulbright Commission for providing the financial support in 1975-76 for the early stages of this project. I am also grateful to Dr. Joseph Murphy, former president of Bennington College, for his intellectual encouragement and financial assistance for the final stages. My stay as a Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute at Starnberg, West Germany, in the winter of 1981 provided the context for stimulating discussion, out of which the last chapter of this book was formed. My conversations with a number of intellectuals and scholars over the years have been essential to the creation of this work. I shall mention only the most important among many: Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Agnes Heller, Mihaly Vajda, Ferenc Feher, George Markus, Claus Offe, Albrecht Wellmer, and, finally, Emil Oestereicher, my dissertation director. Neither this book, nor the intellectual and political development it bespeaks would have been possible without my ten-year affiliation with Telos as an associate editor, and discussions with other editors, especially, Paul Piccone and Dick Howard. Finally, and above all, I would like to thank Andrew Arato. Of all the above mentioned friends, his intellectual support, manifested in continuous discussions at nearly every stage of the manuscript, was the most important.

Page ix Contents Preface xi Introduction 1 Part One The Genesis of the Classical Doctrine of Class 1. Civil Society and Its Discontents 23 2. The Philosophical Presuppositions of the Class Theory 53 3. Class and History: The Evolutionist Version of the Theory 83 4. The Historical Writings 111 Part Two Systemic Theory and Class Analysis: The Problem of Panlogism 5. Historical Genesis and Class 134 6. System and Class: The Subversion of Emancipation 150 Conclusion: Toward a Critical Stratification Theory 194 Notes 229 Index 259

Page xi Preface This book is not intended as a work in Marxology. Rather, I seek to make a contribution, however modest, to the development of a new critical theory of society. Why a new critical theory of society? Why proceed through the oeuvre of Marx at all? The old Critical Theory, the project of the Frankfurt School, had, despite its many revisions of Marx, a deep orthodox Marxist strain. Its vision of the underlying contradictions of modern society involved the simple alternative: either the increasing crisis of capitalism and the victory of the industrial proletariat or a "one-dimensional" society containing all social change, occasioning the decline of the subject and of culture itself. The original Marxian project sought to assess, account for, and address the major social movement of its time, the workers' movement. The economic contradictions of capitalism, the social struggles of workers against capitalist rationalization and for the democratization of both economy and polity were the dominant themes. Despite the continuities between contemporary Western societies and their nineteenth-century counterpartsthey are still capitalist, still civil societies, with states that are even more fully formally democratic than beforethe transition from liberal to late capitalism has decisively altered all the key terms of the classical project. Yet clearly what we are confronted with is not the final vision of Critical Theory: a one-dimensional universe in which the culture industry and successful economic expansion and growth have succeeded in papering over all contradictions, suppressing conflict, and creating the happy consciousness. On the contrary, social movements are proliferating in nearly every sector of society. New social actors are addressing an entirely original range of issues and challenging the cultural model (progress and growth) and hierarchical structures of contemporary Western society. Although the workers' movement has been "institutionalized," welfare-

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